The Vigilance Project

Inependence Day - 2010

2010-07-05T06:00:00.004-07:00

July Fourth marks the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence; the announcement that the British colonies established in the new continent would no longer yield to the edicts of Great Britain and would establish a new system of self rule based on the principals that their freedoms were ordained by God and not granted by the British crown.

Like many, I received a mass e-mail signed by Barack Obama and sent through democraticparty@democrats.org; the official e-mail link to the Democratic National Committee to commemorate the 4th. I will reprint that e-mail below for the benefit of those that may not have received one:

Paul --
The Fourth of July is especially dear to my family. For us, it is not just our nation's birthday. It is the day Michelle and I became parents 12 years ago. And I can't wait to watch the fireworks with Malia on her birthday tonight, as we do every year.

As we celebrate the profound pride of being American, today is a time to honor the women and men in our armed forces, whose immeasurable bravery and sacrifice have made our country what it is today.That sacrifice is shared with husbands and wives, with sons and daughters, with fathers and mothers, who are asked to wait at home as their loved ones protect our nation. Their heroism, too, has helped pave the path of our freedom.

Even before we moved into the White House, Michelle was a champion for those military families. She has witnessed their struggles, and she has made it her personal mission to fight for them. On this Fourth of July, she recorded a personal message, commemorating our nation's birthday and paying tribute to these families.

Please take a minute to watch Michelle's video -- and join us as we honor our military families here and abroad.

:http://my.democrats.org/page/m/4052b0db/51f4b9d/6b18329e/74b960b9/1130136430/VEsE/.

From all of us, happy Independence Day.

Thank you, and may God bless America.

President Barack Obama
July 4th, 2010

The President’s message mentions family and fireworks or more specifically, his family and fireworks. Yes, just as any confirmed narcissist would do, he has even managed to make Independence Day about him. It’s not just our nation’s birthday…it’s the day that he became a parent twelve years ago. In all fairness he did mention the brave men and women serving in America’s armed forces and I have no issue with that except to say that he failed to mention the real reason we celebrate the Fourth of July.

Considering the President has a staff of speech writers, advisors and special advisors, I doubt that failure was an oversight. Perhaps the President fears that drawing attention to the Declaration of Independence would create additional impediments for his radical Progressive (Socialist) agenda. Let’s face it; the Declaration of Independence was more than just a document that announced our intention to sever ties with Great Britain. The Declaration also included a list of grievances that the colonists noted as justification for their actions. Many of the grievances written into the Declaration of Independence are once again becoming issues in the United States but this time the oppressor is not the King of England, it is the Federal Government itself. Don’t believe me?

Well, the Declaration begins, in part, by saying that “…to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government…” It is clear to most that the passage of TARP, Healthcare Reform and the current drive to pass the cap and trade and immigration reform legislation has all happened without the consent of the governed. In fact, the polls against such legislation and the massive public outcry witnessed throughout the process displays that this administration has not only sought to forward their agenda without the consent of public but in spite of it.

One of the grievances listed in the Declaration says: “He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.” Doesn’t that sound like the entire argument behind Federal opposition to the Arizona Illegal Immigration Law (SB1070). The Governor signed a bill into law presented to her by the duly elected State Legislature to address the immediate and pressing need of reigning in illegal immigration and the crime that accompanies it. Once signed into law, the Federal Government is now prepared to sue Arizona because Immigration policy, in their interpretation, is the sole responsibility of the Federal government; a responsibility that the Federal Government has chosen to ignore for political expedience.

How about this one? “He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.” No, I’m not making this up…it’s in the original document. There are hundreds of agencies and panels created by the new healthcare bill alone. Let’s not forget the debt reduction panel that is now meeting in secret to figure out how the American Tax payer is going to resolve the trillions this President intends to add to our already massive public debt. Of course their findings will not be released until December 2010, well after the mid-term elections. We have a gulf oil spill commission to study the effects and suggestions to effect remediation of the leak but just this past week, the President established a second commission to oversee the operations of the first commission. The EPA under the Obama administration is using their newly expanded powers to threaten Congress to vote for Cap and Trade or else. If Cap and trade is not passed, the EPA warned Congress, the nation will face dire economic consequences as the administration unilaterally enacts carbon restrictions that will bring American businesses to a halt.

How about: “He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation”. What is Cap and Trade, Climate Accords and the U.N. Small Arms agreement other than allowing a commission of foreign powers to exact controlling power over the citizens of America without our consent or representation"? Yes, it can be argued that there is representation because those agreements must be ratified by the Senate, but we have all seen the coercion and bribery used to gain Senate support for other items in the President’s agenda so can we be absolutely certain that the rights of free American’s are being protected if the process allows any meetings to be held in secret? Do we really have representation if we are bound to foreign agreements once they are ratified and have no power to rescind bad agreements through our electoral process?

Then there is: “For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.” The Federal Government may not have suspended the State legislatures but the actions of the Federal Government since the inception of the Progressive Era have rendered them increasingly impotent. The Federal Government has gained control of millions of acres of State lands and in some cases, lands equal to 90% of the State’s entire land mass. Those lands can not be exploited for their rich mineral deposits nor can they be used for private purposes that could generate billions in revenues for the afflicted States. States that have enacted legislation to protect the Second Amendment rights of their citizens to own guns for hunting and for their own protection have received letters from Federal authorities reminding them that Federal Law supersedes State law under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution. States that have enacted legislation to protect their citizens from having to purchase healthcare insurance because of the unlawful mandates in the healthcare bill are facing court challenges under that same Supremacy Clause.

Of course, to have that supremacy, the Federal law in question must be constitutional but now that we have adopted a policy that allows ideologues with no judicial qualifications to be seated in the Supreme Court simply because their politics favor the President’s agenda, is there any doubt that the highest court in the land is now as completely corrupted as the Federal Government is?

No, the President will not mention the founders or the actual Declaration of Independence on Independence Day. He knows full well that if more people actually read this incredibly important document or took an interest in the Founding Fathers that not only his agenda, but the Democratic Party as well as the Progressive movement would be brought to their knees. Do not be fooled by the Obama’s feigned respect of the armed forces. Progressives know all to well that everyone in the military has taken an oath to support and defend the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic and that this oath takes precedent over the orders issued by the commander in chief. Obama’s glowing admiration of the military is meant simply to hold them at bay while he continues to “transform America” little by little; hoping they won’t notice until he’s done.

Paul

The Young, The Old and The Truth

2010-06-28T06:00:00.000-07:00

For as long as I can remember, there has been a divide between the young and the old. Middle aged men decry the waste of youth on the young and the young respond in kind; accusing the old men of stubbornness and of being single minded or worse, senile. Many have dismissed these difficulties as unavoidable noting that the old and young will always be at odds because the old have been tempered with the scars, bruises and pains of harsh experience and the young see the world in the simplest terms because their dreams have not been tested against brutal reality.

This is partially true. Plato wrote about the hardships parents had with their teenagers more than two thousand years ago and some of Shakespeare’s greatest works were centered on the passion of the young pitted against the blindness of their parents. The young look at our old photos, hear us talk about record players and black and white television and eventually argue that their meager experiences were earned in far more complex times than their parents knew and therefore, their experiences are at least equal, if not superior to those earned in the veritable stone age that their parents grew up in. The real shame is that these passionate young people don’t know how much they don’t know.

This is not to say that they are not capable individuals; many are highly intelligent and motivated and will invariably become the next generation of leaders. They are politically active and genuinely want to contribute to making America a better place. Their ideology is based largely on what they have learned in school, college and through a deeply flawed news media. If they only knew how much of the truth has been kept from them in order to shape their opinions and tenants, they might actually have very different ideas. In fact, I would bet that a wave of anger would sweep through the younger generations if they ever found out that they were being played as pawns by a group of globalist elitists far older and cynical than they ever imagined their parents to be.

The real game and the ultimate battleground is information. At first, only conservative leaning news organs, mostly Fox, would dare speak out against the President and his agenda. The Obama administration responded to those unflattering stories by dismissing Fox as not being a “real” news network. That worked for a while but now other networks and news outlets have started to come out of the ether and harsh criticisms have begun to seep into the coverage offered by CNN, MSNBC and even the L.A. Times! In order to counter the negative stories that have recently been taking a toll on Obama’s ratings, the President actually told a group of graduating students that too much information can be a distraction. After all, he couldn’t very well say that all of those media giants have somehow slipped out of the mainstream and have relinquished their status as “real” news networks simply because their coverage of him has become something less than the adoration he once enjoyed. Of course the real question is will those students heed the President’s advice or will they begin to ask themselves why an American President would suggest that public disregard any information and simply rely on official government sources?

In the past, even our most sinister Presidents were politically savvy enough to avoid hinting that they sought to actively control information. While they may have been silent on the issue, sadly, their records are rife with actions to sanitize not only the news, but history itself. Entire pieces of American history have been carefully scrubbed out of the text books and curriculum the American students see from the moment they walk into first grade right on through their college years. Fortunately, with the internet the truth is still out there but before you can find it, you have to know the right questions to ask.

The purge began in earnest during the Progressive Era of the early 20th century. Woodrow Wilson, a Progressive Democrat, saw to it that school text books were cleared of all information pertaining to African American patriots that fought and died as heroes in the American Revolution. Wilson actually went further than that; purging blacks from Federal jobs and in segregating the military. Isn’t it funny how those little tidbits of history are curiously left out of the studies of Woodrow Wilson? In fact, anything that doesn’t portray Progressivism as an enlightened and benevolent ideology is similarly struck from the public record. Of course, if you perform a simple Google search about Wilson’s segregation of the military, the elimination of blacks from civil service or the editing of school books during his administration; suddenly, pages and pages of documents begin to appear.

These students have been taught to believe that America was a bigoted nation founded on the belief that black slaves, and even white women, were denied basic rights by a ruling class of elderly white men. They have been taught that the three-fifths rule proves this legitimized racism when the Constitution was drafted with a provision that slaves represented only three-fifths of a human being. Would these students be surprised to know that more than five thousand African Americans fought side by side with whites in the Revolution; many serving with historical distinction. That is until Wilson’s school book purge made that information unavailable to students.

Would they be amazed to know that an African American was one of the first patriots killed in the Boston massacre and that many more would die a hero’s death in every major battle of the war? Would they be shocked to learn that not only did New England elect America’s first black judge during the early 1790’s but that he was continually re-elected, eventually serving for over forty years? Would they believe that America’s first black Speaker of the United States House of Representatives had been seated in 1869? Suddenly, this doesn’t sound like the history of a racist nation at all.

So what of the evil three-fifths rule? What the learned professors at our most lauded colleges will not tell their students is that the three-fifths rule was a carefully crafted strategy designed to deny the slave States governmental representation that included the full measure of the number of slaves they held. Even though the Northern States were populated with more citizens, slaves were few and far between. If it were not for the three-fifths rule, the Southern States would have enjoyed a sufficient majority within the House of Representatives to guarantee slavery in perpetuity simply by buying more slaves.

The young are also being taught that Capitalism has failed and the free market is only a tool used by the rich to retain their wealth. How the free market can be fairly judged when Progressive giants like Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt have instituted Federal programs and policies that have strangled the free market for nearly one hundred years is beyond me. Ask anyone educated in the public school system in the last fifty years and they will tell you that FDR ended the Great Depression through a myriad of government programs that stimulated employment and bolstered the economy. The truth is that after ten years of government intervention, there was no measurable improvement in either the unemployment rate or any of the leading economic indicators of the day. It was World War Two that ended the Great Depression, not FDR.

The other economic factor that has been totally eliminated from the realm of academic study is the Depression of 1920. Whenever I mention the Depression of 1920 most will immediately say “No, it was 1929.” The Depression of 1920 that followed the fiscal mismanagement of the Wilson administration has been nearly eradicated from all discussion because the facts surrounding that financial disaster are devastating to the neo-socialist beliefs of modern Progressives. While FDR struggled with funding one massive government program after another to stave off the effects of the Great Depression, President Warren Harding halved government spending and cut taxes by nearly 75%. The end result? Roosevelt’s depression lingered for over a decade until World War Two changed the balance of industrial power in the world while the economic policies of Warren Harding revitalized the American economy, ending his depression in a brief two years; giving us the halcyon days of the “Roaring Twenties”. As an interesting note, the depression of 1929 is considered to be a direct result of the damage wrought to the economy when Calvin Coolidge left much of the economic and regulatory policy decisions up to Progressive activist, Herbert Hoover; then, Coolidge’s secretary of Commerce. Hoover then drove the final nails in our economic coffin when he assumed the Presidency in 1929 and completed his work of undoing the Harding tax and spending cuts.

All of these facts and more are out there for anyone that will take off their blinders and dares to seek the information for themselves. The President is wrong about information. It is not distracting; it is liberating. So long as America is free, the truth remains a potent reminder of the incredible genius of the founding fathers and the best laid path to our future prosperity as a nation. If these future leaders let that liberty slip away; if they allow Socialist Professors to ignore history and Washington bureaucrats to erode the Constitution, then the light of truth will be extinguished forever. Orwell warned that he who controls the present controls the past and he who controls the past controls the future. Don’t take my word for any of this. These facts may no longer be taught in American schools but they are still available to those who seek the truth. However, if we allow this “fundamental transformation” of America to continue unabated, those truths may be lost for all time and with them, our place in the world as a free people.

Paul

Life is Change and Change is Inevitable

2010-06-22T06:00:00.001-07:00

Life is change and change is inevitable. No, I am not talking about the change that Barack Obama sold an unsuspecting public during his campaign, although his brand of change has much to do with the changes taking place in all of our lives.

Business is struggling with the uncertainty of how successful this President will be in achieving his radical goals. Business thrives with the ability to make and achieve short and long term goals. The plans those goals are based on are how companies create business plans to obtain bank financing, to determine employee compensation and even employee levels. The Federal government, under this administration, has cast a shadow of doubt over the nation and has forced American businesses to become dangerously reactionary instead of confidently focused.

My focus must now be sharpened on reacting appropriately in the face of so many dangers. If we cannot plan for the future, we must now create the dynamic infrastructure to allow us meet daily challenges quickly and effectively. I cannot serve two masters. The well being of friends and their families depend heavily upon on my ability to remain attentive to the demands of our business and I cannot devote the time and attention that demands and continue to write a daily blog.

As with any muscle, the Constitutional amendments that protect us all must be routinely exercised or fall prey to atrophy. I still believe in the need for the Vigilance Project, especially now that our most sacred first amendment rights are under assault, but I can no longer maintain the quality of my work here and in business without one or the other suffering. I had to make a choice.

Effectively immediately, The Vigilance Project will be a weekly publication with new posts being offered for review every Monday. I apologize for the absence of new materials over the past three weeks but other matters had to be dealt with.

Thank you for your patience.

Paul

Obama and More Orwell

2010-06-02T06:00:00.001-07:00

Originally published in 1949, George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984” described what life under a totalitarian oligarchy would look like. Through his many books, Orwell warned us about government controls that would seek out and punish those who were not in line with the edicts of that government. Many thought that “1984” was Orwell’s indictment of the British Labor Party and Oceania, the country profiled in this book, was meant to be the future of England if the socialist movements in Great Britain remained unchecked. Mr. Orwell dismissed that rumor and hinted that the book was in fact, reflective of his disdain and deep distrust of Stalinist Russia.

Oceania's four government ministries are in pyramids the façades of which display the Party's three slogans, the names of which are diametrically opposed to their true functions: "The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation. Through his work, he warned us about the heavy hand of unchecked government and the inherent corruption that is inevitable when government officials become a small core group of powerful elites.

The Ministry of Peace reported daily on the heroic advances in Oceania’s perpetual war. Of course there were periodic “mini crisis’s conjured up to keep the cause for war alive and well but Oceania would always prevail in the end, at least in the news. Oceania’s world was the remnant countries that survived the atomic war that Orwell largely believed was unavoidable. It is comprised of the three coalesced “superpowers” of Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia.

While the three powers remained in a constant state of war, the war was never fought within the borders of any one country but rather, only in a disputed area. Each superpower was strong enough that it could not be beaten by the combined strength of the other two “nations”. Alliances were made and broken constantly but the Ministry of Truth would simply revise history so that the Party could claim the “new alliance” always will and always had existed.

The Ministry of Truth, similar to Russia’s Pravda, was responsible for the news, entertainment, education and the arts. This Ministry of Truth was also charged with monitoring the statements of the Party and if needed, re-writing history to insure that whatever the Party said would be true.

The Ministry of Love would identify, monitor, arrest, and convert, real and imagined dissidents because the only valid and therefore, permissible love, was love of the Party.

The Ministry of Plenty rationed and controlled food, goods, and domestic production; every fiscal quarter, the Ministry published false claims of having raised the standard of living, when it has, in fact, reduced rations, availability, and production. Of course the “war” was always cited as the need for rationing and the need for Oceania to demand patriotic increases in productivity.

There seems to be an awful lot of parallels to “1984” in modern America, so much so, that I think that Orwell may have been more of a prophet than a novelist. Anyone that has read a newspaper or watched network news lately can only find it hard to ignore that the mains stream media has routinely disregarded anything that would detract from Obama’s image or impair his mission to “fundamentally transform America”.

When the Tea Parties converged on Washington to protest against healthcare reform the press, or should we say “The Ministry of Truth”, re-wrote History and underreported the numbers by a factor of ten. They scoured the crowd to find that one out of a thousand that held signs that were a bit bolder than the rest and crafted stories about the “angry mobs”, negating the peaceful nature of the gathering. Independent estimates placed the crowd size at between one and two million people and the National Park Service confirmed that not only were there no arrests for disorderly conduct, but that the crowd actually cleaned up after themselves as they left leaving nothing behind that would detract from their message.

In comparison, a group of only five thousand socialist activists gathered in Pittsburgh to protest against capitalism during last year’s G-20 summit. Trash bins were set ablaze and rolled through the streets at the line of police officers guarding the conference. In one night of protests, the police had to resort to firing tear gas grenades and “bean-bag” non-lethal bullets into the mob and reported over two hundred arrests. Of course, reports covering these protests were hard to find and where they appeared at all, were soft-peddled rather than risk showing that anyone would protest against President Obama.

I suppose the Ministry of Plenty would have to be the White House itself. Only the White House could claim victory for the Stimulus Bill as unemployment climbed from 7.6% before the bill’s passage in February of 2009, to over 10.2% in October of that year. The “Ministry” created a web site to extol the virtues of the Governments actions and that web site has been rife with misinformation and fictitious claims and exaggerations of created and saved jobs. Even a peripheral examination of the figures claimed on recovery.gov show a web of deceit with jobs created figures inflated up to ten times the actual amount and outright lies regarding jobs figures from Congressional districts that simply do not exist.

The White House cannot show any success in the economy in general so it has taken the next best step. People are still losing jobs in record numbers as the economy sags even deeper into recession so the numbers people within the White House are quick to point out that even though more than 450,000 people lost their jobs last week; the job loss figures were slightly lower than the previous month so the stimulus bill and the White House “in essence, saved thousands of jobs. Only government could be so bold. If the government was a corporation and the same people used this logic in reporting the profit and loss statement to the board of directors, they would all be at home working on their resume’s,

The Ministry of Love? Well, that is evenly divided between Congress and the White House. Promises to address gay rights issues such as same sex marriage and the exclusion of openly gay individuals from serving in the military are on the opposite end of the scale that Democrats used to craft the Healthcare bill. The healthcare bill, like many other provisions of the tax code contain a marriage penalty that levies higher taxes on married couples than it does on individuals. I suppose if there was any good reason to support gay marriage it would be to eliminate the marriage penalties from the tax code. After all, Democrats wouldn’t dare use the same antiquated tax structure that punishes married couples once those couples include such a vocal portion of their core constituency.

I believe the biggest travesty in this administration is the Ministry of Peace and that is Obama himself. Part of the responsibility of the Presidency is the role as Commander in Chief of the United States Military. Under this administration the effectiveness of the military has taken a back seat to the image of the President. American troops are still fighting and dying in Afghanistan as the President continues to provide only portions of what the field commander says he needs to guarantee victory. Ignoring the treat to the troops that are already in the field does not promote peace but only displays the vacuous policies of a weak an ineffective President. While I am sure he has a sincere desire for peace, the reality is that this poor showing bolsters the will of those that would do us harm and America now faces new threats from Iran and North Korea. It would do Obama well to recall the words of Benjamin Franklin who correctly said “If we act like sheep we will be eaten by wolves.”

Paul

What Would Orwell Write About Obama - Or Has He Already?

2010-06-01T06:00:00.000-07:00

The Roots of Socialism in America

2010-05-31T06:00:00.000-07:00

I listen to students and young people comment on politics or society and wonder “how could they possibly believe what they are saying?” It dawned on me that to be able to draw reasonable conclusions, these young minds would have to have been properly educated and have access to all of the facts and not just the select few that suit the political agenda of the educator. While frustrating, there are reasons for this apparent lack of common sense.

The roots of socialism in America are found much as they were in Europe; a revolt against the harsh working conditions of the industrial revolution. It was Karl Marx, a philosopher, political economist, historian, political theorist, sociologist, communist and revolutionary, whose ideas are credited as the foundation of modern communism. Marx summarized his approach in the first line of the first chapter of The Communist Manifesto, published in 1848: “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”

Marx argued that capitalism, like previous socioeconomic systems, will inevitably produce internal tensions which will lead to its destruction. Just as capitalism replaced feudalism, he believed socialism would, in turn, replace capitalism, and lead to a stateless, classless society called pure communism. This would emerge after a transitional period called the "dictatorship of the proletariat": a period sometimes referred to as the "workers state" or "workers' democracy".

While Marx remained a relatively obscure figure in his own lifetime, his ideas began to exert a major influence on workers' movements shortly after his death. This influence gained added impetus with the victory of the Marxist Bolsheviks in the Russian October Revolution in 1917, and few parts of the world remained significantly untouched by Marxian ideas in the course of the twentieth century.

Teddy Roosevelt would never be known as a Socialist but he did espouse many ideas that were Socialist in nature. He considered himself a progressive and while he did believe in American Imperialism and a strong world military presence, he also believed in heavy government regulation, government control of wages and the redistribution of wealth for the public good.

On the heels of the Russian Revolution, Communist and Socialist movements found an audience in the American Labor movement. The Socialist Party of America was a coalition of local parties based in industrial cities. Even though by 1912 they claimed more than a thousand locally elected officials in 33 states and 160 cities, the party was factionalized. The conservatives, led by Victor Berger, promoted progressive causes of efficiency and an end to corruption. The radicals wanted to overthrow capitalism, tried to infiltrate labor unions, and sought to cooperate with The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). With few exceptions the party had weak or nonexistent links to local labor unions.

Once the stock market collapsed in 1929 forcing enormous numbers of people into unemployment, the communists surged once again and began to organize rallies and marches in support of workers and workers rights. In March, 1930, hundreds of thousands of unemployed workers marched through New York City, Detroit, Washington, San Francisco and other cities in a mass protest organized by the Communist Party’s Unemployed Councils. In 1931, more than 400 relief protests erupted in Chicago and that number grew by 150 in 1932. The leadership behind these organizations often came from radical groups like Communists and Socialists, who wanted to organize “unfocused neighborhood militancy into organized popular defense organizations.” Workers turned to these radical groups until organized labor became more active in 1932, with the passage of the Norris-La Guardia Act.

While Communists and Socialists did gain a foothold in these turbulent years, Walter Philip Reuther the president of the United Auto Workers (UAW) would soon change that. As a prominent figure in the anti-Communist left, he was a founder of the Americans for Democratic Action in 1947. He had left the Socialist party in 1939, and throughout the 1950s and 1960s was a leading spokesman for liberal interests in the CIO and in the Democratic Party.

Labor unions eventually eliminated the public connections between the unions, Communism and Socialism. They traded those links for something less troubling in the public eye, the progressive arm of the Democratic Party which espoused many of the same ideals as Socialists without the negative connotations; what some would call “Communism light”. Now the real work to transform the nation could begin under the American flag and right under the noses of the American people.

Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet leader 1958 to 1964, had once made a statement is a speech saying that he would “bury” America. Some thought that meant that he meant military action or that he would launch a nuclear attack to bring about his prophecy. That raised even more fear among average Americans during the cold war even though war was hardly his intention.

Khrushchev was perfectly willing to let America move to the left incrementally; here a little, there a little. When speaking about FDR’s New Deal, Khrushchev said, "We can't expect the American people to jump from capitalism to communism, but we can assist their elected leaders in giving them small doses of socialism, until they awaken one day to find that they have communism.”

Changing terminology and calling socialist programs “compassionate conservativism” doesn’t change the nature of the beast itself. Redistributing the wealth to win votes will produce the same devastating end as redistributing the wealth because you are an outright socialist.

From 1959 until 1989, the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) received a substantial subsidy from the Soviet Union. Starting with $75,000 in 1959 this was increased gradually to $3 million in 1987. This substantial amount reflected the Party's subservience to the Moscow.

Yuri Alexandrovic Bezmenov, now known as Tomas David Schuman, was born in 1939 in the former Soviet Union and worked as a journalist for Pravda. In this capacity, he secretly answered to the KGB. His true job was to further the aims of communist Russia After being assigned to a station in India, Bezmenov eventually grew to love the people and culture of India, while, at the same time, he began to resent the KGB-sanctioned oppression of intellectuals who dissented from Moscow's policies. He decided to defect to the West.

Bezmenov/Schuman is best remembered for his Pro-American Anti-communist lectures and books from the 1980s. From his writings and speeches Mr. Bezmenov said: “Ideological subversion is the process which is legitimate and open. You can see it with your own eyes.... It has nothing to do with espionage. I know that intelligence gathering looks more romantic.... That's probably why your Hollywood producers are so crazy about James Bond types of films. But in reality the main emphasis of the KGB is NOT in the area of intelligence at all. According to my opinion, and the opinions of many defectors of my caliber, only about 15% of time, money, and manpower is spent on espionage as such. The other 85% is a slow process which we call either ideological subversion, active measures, or psychological warfare. What it basically means is: to change the perception of reality of every American that despite of the abundance of information no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interest of defending themselves, their families, their community, and their country.

It's a great brainwashing process which goes very slow and is divided into four basic stages. The first one being "demoralization". It takes from 15 to 20 years to demoralize a nation. Why that many years? Because this is the minimum number of years required to educate one generation of students in the country of your enemy exposed to the ideology of [their] enemy. In other words, Marxism-Leninism ideology is being pumped into the soft heads of at least three generation of American students without being challenged or counterbalanced by the basic values of Americanism; American patriotism.

The result? The result you can see ... the people who graduated in the 60's, dropouts or half-baked intellectuals, are now occupying the positions of power in the government, civil service, business, mass media, and educational systems. You are stuck with them. You can't get through to them. They are contaminated. They are programmed to think and react to certain stimuli in a certain pattern. You cannot change their mind even if you expose them to authentic information. Even if you prove that white is white and black is black, you still can not change the basic perception and the logic of behavior.”

Thanks to the soviet doctrine in “ideological subversion”, America now has over 10,000 avowed socialist professors teaching in our universities that continue the practice of indoctrination. We also have over 70 members of Congress that consider themselves socialists or progressive socialists. In fact, Henry Waxman and Ed Markey, the authors of the Climate Bill (cap and trade) are two of the Progressive Socialists in Congress which a great reason to oppose that Bill all by itself.

Paul

Joe Sestak and Occam's Razor

2010-05-28T12:00:00.002-07:00

It’s the Friday before a Holiday weekend so it must be time for the White House to clear up some troubling events with a minor press release. This is how the Obama Administration has always dealt with such issues. After all, the number of people available for comment is scarce and the stories that will be written will hit the papers and television news over the weekend when relatively few people are paying attention.

A brief press release issued this morning by White House Council and long time Obama associate, Bob Bauer, to answer the growing question about Congressman Joe Sestak’s claim that a White House official offered him a job if he would agree to abandon his primary challenge against Senator Arlen Specter. Bauer’s statement said that Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel used former President Bill Clinton as an intermediary to offer Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Pa.) an unpaid, executive branch advisory board position to “avoid a divisive Senate primary”. Bauer denied rumors that Sestak was offered a nomination as Navy secretary, and said all discussions were “consistent with the relevant law and ethical requirements.”

If this statement is correct and the White House acted in a manner “consistent with the relevant law and ethical requirements”, why did it take ten weeks and a media storm before the White House would respond to this controversy and why did the White House contact Congressman Sestak’s office as well as Sestak’s brother and campaign manager, Richard Sestak, before issuing this statement? According to Bob Bauer, the White House has “concluded that allegations of improper conduct rest on factual errors and lack a basis in the law". In other words…..we looked at the issue and everything is fine so just trust us. Really?

For the past ten weeks, Joe Sestak has held firm in his account of the exchange. He said not once, but a number of times that he had been contacted by a member of the Obama administration and he was offered a high-ranking administration job in exchange for dropping his primary bid. When asked about the rumors that he was offered the nomination for Secretary of the Navy, Sestak declined to elaborate, saying that doing so would be just getting into politics. Now that the White House has contacted Sestak and his campaign manager prior to today’s press release, Sestak’s account is now mysteriously saying something completely different.

Sestak released his own statement today saying "Last summer, I received a phone call from President Clinton. During the course of the conversation, he expressed concern over my prospects if I were to enter the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate and the value of having me stay in the House of Representatives because of my military background," Sestak added. "He (President Clinton) said that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel had spoken with him about my being on a Presidential Board while remaining in the House of Representatives. I said no."

"I told President Clinton that my only consideration in getting into the Senate race or not was whether it was the right thing to do for Pennsylvania working families and not any offer," he continued. "The former President said he knew I'd say that, and the conversation moved on to other subjects."

Was Sestak having a “Blumenthal moment”? If you recall, Democrat Dick Blumenthal who is running for the Connecticut Senate Seat has been accused of lying about his military service by hinting that he was a Viet Nam veteran. Blumenthal has since apologized and even though there are at least eight different occasions that this happened on film, he simply said he “misspoke” a few words that were taken out of context. The few words were silly things like “in Viet Nam” instead of “during Viet Nam” and “when we returned from Viet Nam” instead of “when my duty with a State-side reserve unit was over”. You know….easily mistaken comments. Could Sestak have simply misspoken a few words, confusing a “high ranking administration job” with a “non-paid appointment to an advisory board”? Perhaps he also confused Bill Clinton with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton when he said he was contacted by a member of the Obama administration? Let’s face it….those high pressure jobs add years to your looks so maybe it was an honest mistake now that Hillary has added a few more wrinkles and some gray hair.

I am a huge fan of Occam’s razor. Occam’s razor (or Ockham's razer) is a theoretical principle proposed by 14th-century English logician, theologian and Franciscan friar William of Ockham that "entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity" (entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem). In essence; that the simplest solution is usually the correct one. In this case, before we can arrive at the simplest solution we must identify the actual questions.

The obvious questions are:

1- Why did the White House refused to comment on this matter for ten weeks?

2- Why was Bill Clinton asked to “intercede” on behalf of the White House?

3- Why did Representative Sestak refuse to elaborate on the issue beyond his initial statement for the past ten weeks?

4- Why was Representative Sestak’s office and campaign manager contacted before the White House press release was issued?

5- Why has Representative Sestak’s account of the incident changed so drastically?

The simplest solution to all of these questions is that the press releases from both the White House and Joe Sestak are lies meant to cover up the true nature of the offer made to Joe Sestak and the identity of the person that made that offer. I’m sure the White House contacted Sestak after his initial statement and told him of the legal ramifications of his allegations. Sestak has nothing to gain by causing the White House embarrassment by further implicating them in what was obviously a criminal act. After all, Sestak is now the Democratic candidate for Specter’s Senate seat and will need the support of the White House and the DNC if he has any hopes of succeeding this November. That easily explains Sestak’s reluctance to elaborate on the offer that was made.

The dismissive non-response to the press’s questions issued by White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs tells me that they initially believed that this would all fade away after the primary, but to their surprise, it didn’t. Legal analysts were scouring US code looking for possible violations of law and the ramifications of those laws being violated meant someone was going to have to be sacrificed if there was any truth to Sestak’s story at all. Since this was fast becoming an issue that could affect the upcoming elections, fellow Democrats joined in the call for explanations and that could not be ignored. Some way had to be found to “help” Joe Sestak back away from his claims without damaging his race for the Senate but the real trick was that it had to be done in such a way that the White House was also clear of any wrong doing.

Ten weeks seems like a plausible amount of time for legal council to review the incident and issue recommendations. I'm sure those recommendations included the need to portray a series of events where someone that was not a member of the administration (Bill Clinton) would speak with Sestak only to suggest that his chances for success in the primary were limited so he should just drop out of that. “Oh by the way…Rahm Emmanuel would like to place you on a Presidential Advisory Board as a non-paid advisor while you retain your all important seat in the House of Representatives.” No government employee and no promise of power or money would skirt all of the problems. While that scenario certainly plays well with respect to the laws against using the power of a government office to interfere with a primary or general election, it does not sit well with the good Congressman’s previous and frequent statements.

As convoluted as this story is, it certainly does not play well with respect to Occam’s razor either. It makes no sense that the White House would risk the political damage of letting people believe that they were stone-walling the issue for ten weeks if Sestak’s original story of the attempted bribe were not true. It makes no sense that Joe Sestak would suddenly change his story so drastically on the day of the White House press release and risk his chances in the November election if he were not coached by the White House that this was the only acceptable way out of this for the both of them. It makes no sense that the White House would attempt to entice Sestak with a non-paid position on an advisory panel when the man was running for the United States Senate. Knowing that Sestak is not one of the wealthier members of Congress like Kerry or Kennedy, that wouldn’t fly at all so they further complicated the story by adding that he was told he could serve on that board and keep his seat in the House; something that Congressional rules currently prohibit. Curiously, Joe Sestak has been avoiding any direct interviews in the wake of the statement he released today that directly contradicts his previous assertions.

About the only part of the story that makes any sense is the Bill Clinton connection. Billy misses the limelight (not to mention access to female White House aides) so he doesn’t mind being drawn into something like this. Actually, Clinton was the perfect name to use in place of Rahm Emmanuel. He is not a member of the White House staff nor is he a paid employee of the Obama administration and if this ruse fails and an investigation is forced upon the White House, we all know that Bill Clinton has no problem lying to special prosecutors, Grand Juries or to the American People.

Paul

The First Press Conference in 308 Days!

2010-05-27T12:00:00.000-07:00

Today was a special event. Using the “top fill” method, the leaking blowout preventer in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill was reported to be finally closed off just hours before the President’s scheduled press conference. Well, almost. As it turns out the reports of success are extremely premature and while the flow appears to have slowed somewhat, the procedure is far from over and the results are even further from guaranteed.

The estimates of the oil gushing from the deep water well has steadily risen since the April 20th accident which claimed the lives of eleven BP employees and is now estimated to have leaked up to a million gallons of oil per day into the Gulf of Mexico. With the amount of oil released equaling anywhere from twenty to thirty times the oil spilled by the Exxon Valdez accident of 1989, this disaster represents the worst petroleum spill in US history and questions are now being raised as to whether it also represents the worst Federal disaster response in our history as well.

Even though this was President Obama’s first regular Press conference in three-hundred and eight days, the oil spill and the efforts to contain it sidelined many of the expected questions and consumed ninety-five percent of his one hour appearance. Continuing his administration’s favorite line, Obama maintained that while mistakes were made the Federal government was on top of the situation from day one. Unfortunately, for that to be true, one would have to count the Coast Guard team that rescued workers from the platform and performed the search for the eleven men that had lost their lives in the early hours of the disaster.

The first Oval Office meeting on the platform explosion occurred on April 22nd, two days after the first reports came in. While the Obama administration already knew about the deficiencies in the MMS (Federal Minerals Management Service) as well as the dangerously cozy relationships between MMS employees and the oil companies they were charged with overseeing, the government opted to rely heavily on surveys and reports assembled by BP to assess the scope of the damage and the potential for environmental impact. This reliance would prove disastrous as the estimates of the oil escaping the damage blowout preventer valve began to rise with each passing day.

MMS chief, Elizabeth Birnbaum, reportedly resigned this morning but insiders speaking under terms of anonymity claim she was ousted to satisfy critics of the MMS oversight of American oil producers. Of course Birnbaum couldn’t leave without taking a perfunctory swipe at the Bush administration by saying that she hopes the reforms that Interior Secretary Ken Salizar is implementing will resolve the flaws in the system she “inherited”. Inherit is one of those words that is curiously misused when it is applied to politics. You can inherit blonde hair and green eyes but can you inherit your grandfather’s fifth grade education? No; of course not. You have complete control over the course and direction of your life because you have personal command of all of those choices.

Ms. Birnbaum was the Director of the MMS, not a third level supervisor without discretion or autonomy. She assumed that position in July of 2009 with a report in hand that clearly described the scandalous behavior that had become part of the department’s culture over the years and it was her duty and responsibility to address those failings. The report detailing the improprieties and criminal acts rampant within the MMS was issued in September of 2008 leaving the former MMS director scant little time to address those issues before the election of Barack Obama. The lack of scrutiny given to the MMS was certainly a failure of the Bush administration but the tales of MMS mismanagement goes back beyond 1997 and well into the Clinton Administration as well. When she assumed control of the MMS, Birnbaum had the benefit of a report that gave her a clear map of those failings and she should have acted immediately on the information it contained; information that the Bush and Clinton administrations did not possess at the time. She did not act on that report so if she inherited anything, perhaps it was a case of congenital procrastination.

Then again, why should we expect Burnbaum to accept responsibility when the hallmark of the Obama administration is the pointing of fingers at the previous President? It doesn’t matter that this administration is eighteen months old now or that the problems that Obama claims to have inherited were the ones his campaign said he had a clear plan to correct. Today Barack Obama stood before the Press Corp and boldly accepted the responsibility for not moving fast enough to fix all the broken things that Bush left him. Yeah, that figures. We will probably be listening to the same old trash about the mess that Obama inherited as we approach the November 2012 election too.

What Obama didn’t inherit from Bush was the growing perception among Americans that he is focused on an ideological agenda and as long as the things he feels are important remain undone, the economy, the environment and the social, not to mention racial cohesiveness of the nation will be swept to the side and let for another day. Of course, our Campaigner in Chief feels that perception is a terrible mischaracterization of his efforts. After all, his administration was on this oil spill from day one! I saw it myself as he took to the golf course and basketball court to show how the hole in ocean floor could be easily plugged if the right size ball were only used. Then there was that stop for wings and beer that was all over television….maybe we could apply the same artery clogging fats used to fry the wings to clog the well shut too. Finally, he went on four trips to raise campaign funds for Barbara Boxer but while he was there, he did speak about the oil spill possibly in the hopes that one of those wealthy Democrats in attendance might have a good idea that BP hadn’t thought of.

The bare facts are that the national contingency plans that were automatically activated on the first day of the incident were required by existing law and were not the result of direct action from the Obama administration. Despite administration pledges for full support and available resources, it was a full nine days before Secretary of Homeland Security Napolitano announced the incident was a spill of national significance, ten days before Secretary of Defense Robert Gates activated the Louisiana National Guard and the Justice Department sent a team of lawyers to monitor the spill (yeah, that one confused me too) not to mention it was a full twelve days came and went after the initial explosion before President Obama made his first inspection of the area. Try as you may, you just can’t blame Bush for that, now can you?

Paul

The Consistency of Inconsistency

2010-05-26T06:00:00.005-07:00

Wow…where do I begin? The most transparent administration this nation has ever seen is about to hold it’s first press conference in more than three hundred days; Eric Holder announced that the Justice Department is beginning the process to challenge Arizona’s immigration law but refuses to investigate allegations that a member of the White House may have committed a felony in offering Representative Joe Sestak a Federal position in exchange for abandoning his primary challenge against Senator Arlen Specter or perhaps the wink and nod given to SEIU protestors by Maryland police when they amassed 500 people on the private property of a Bank or America attorney to protest housing foreclosures?

The news is abuzz with the announcement that President Obama will hold a general press conference before departing for another tour of the Gulf coast to review the steps taken to halt the major oil spill there. This would not ordinarily be news but the President’s last open press conference was more than three hundred days ago. Three hundred days ago, the healthcare bill had not passed, the Fort Hood massacre had not occurred, the failed terror attacks on a flight bound for Chicago and in New York’s Times Square were months in the future and Arizona had not passed its controversial Immigration Law.

Some would argue that the President is not the coach of a sports team or the spokesman for Gillette but consumed with the matters of State and has little time for such things. I think the responses issued for the President by the White House Press Secretary, Robert Gibbs, says more about this administration’s disdain for the media than it does about the President’s busy schedule. The Gibbs press appearances usually take one of three distinct tracks; he refuses to answer, blames the Republicans or accuses the Tea Party of distorting the truth. In fact, the President does not hold press conferences because he and his advisors believe the press is a distraction; that if the truth were printed it would represent a danger to his agenda.

This disdain for the press can be witnessed in the White House’s handling of Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagen. They have refused to allow the press access to Kagan for the usual round of interviews and instead, provided the press with a copy of an interview conducted by a White House staffer. Kagan was asked only the questions that she could answer without jeopardizing her nomination and her answers were as innocuous as the questions were. Is this free press? Of course not but this administration is not impressed with the Constitutional guarantee of a free press nor is it restrained in its obvious attempt to manipulate that fundamental guardian of freedom. Obama’s own appointee to the newly created position of Chief Diversity Officer within the FCC, Mark Lloyd, was not ashamed to comment that if Hugo Chavez had not restrained the free press in Venezuela that his “amazing” revolution could not have occurred; a lesson apparently not wasted on Obama and his thugs.

Lloyd is not the only member of the Obama administration that believes the First Amendment is a problem. Rahm Emmanuel, Obama’s Chief of Staff, was quoted as saying the First Amendment is “highly overrated” and Cass Sunstein, the Regulatory Czar, says the First Amendment needs to be “reformulated” to “reinvigorate processes of democratic deliberation, by ensuring greater attention to public issues and greater diversity of views.” In other words, if a majority of American’s are opposed to their Progressive views on governance then there should be legal methods available to them so as to silence a portion of that majority and provide the illusion that there are just as many supporters. In the end, all I really expect from the President during this press conference is more smoke in mirrors and a shameless attempt to use the oil spill to try and sell his cap and tax, energy bill. After all, Rahm Emmanuel said “never let a good crisis go to waste.”

Eric Holder has become just another caricature in the Obama circus as his Justice Department seems to have lost the meaning of justice. As Attorney General, Holder is supposed to be the highest law enforcement officer in the United States but his political and ideological prejudices have prevented him from effectively discharging those duties. He spoke out against Arizona’s immigration law and commented that he was contemplating legal action to block it weeks before he admitted that he had never read it. Justice?

Holder’s Justice Department refused to act against Black Panther Militants that positioned themselves outside polling places wielding clubs during the 2008 Presidential election. The official statement made by the department is that there was a “lack of evidence” that there was any attempt to interfere with the election. I’m not sure what evidence they need but I’m sure civilians in combat boots holding police style batons within five feet of the front door of a polling place is in that book somewhere. Justice?

Holder’s Justice Department also refuses to investigate charges that a member of the White House offered Representative Joe Sestak a position within the administration in exchange for dropping his primary challenge against Senator Arlen Specter; a challenge that Sestak won handily. This charge, if true, represents a fundamental violation of United States law and the person or person’s involved would have committed a felony if found guilty. The election process is one of America’s most prized rights and any attempt to tamper with that process must be met with the full weight of the law. Of course, if the Justice Department doesn’t recognize that loitering in front of a polling place armed with a weapon is tampering with the electoral process then why should their muted reaction to this surprise us?

Now we have the Washington DC police spotted escorting fourteen buses loaded with SEIU thugs on their mission to torment an attorney in the employ of the Bank of America. The official statement was that this was a lawful protest staged by union members outraged by the flurry of recent home foreclosures but is it? Five-hundred “protestors” exited the buses and congregated on the lawn and front porch of the Bank of America attorney with signs and bull horns. This was a private residence on a small suburban street so whose attention was this protest meant to gain? The only member of the media invited to the “protest” was a blogger that contributes to the liberal rag-sheet, The Huffington Post so it certainly wasn’t for the benefit of the press. It wasn’t a march down Main Street so it wasn’t for the benefit of the public. Was it an expression of the forces that SEIU could assemble meant to intimidate the opposition? That’s what it looks like to me.

While the DC police say that “trailing” assembling protestors are done in the interest of public safety, what the Maryland police did, or did not do, was far more disturbing. The protestors were in clear violation of Maryland law regarding disturbing the peace but Maryland police focused their attention solely on trespass laws. For someone to be in violation of the Maryland trespass law, the property owner would have to request that the trespasser leave the property and the trespasser would then have to refuse before the police can lawfully act. However, the ordinances preserving the peace prohibit any one or any group from entering private property and creating a disturbance through loud noises or threatening gestures. Other residents of the area say they overheard police telling the besieged attorney that they were concerned that police involvement would further incite the mob.

The official comment from the Maryland Police Chief was that the officers dispatched to the scene arrived as the protesters were dispersing and did not witness the activities that were alleged by the neighborhood residents. They categorically deny that the officers said anything about being fearful of inciting the mob and that the acts that the police witnessed were peaceful and within the bounds of the law. Really? Five hundred people carrying signs can walk across your lawn in Maryland, scream over a bull horn, frighten your neighbors and children and no violation of law has occurred?

DC police said they called Maryland police as the caravan of school buses crossed into Maryland and the Maryland police took over from there. Now we are supposed to believe that the mob found parking for fourteen school buses in a quiet suburban neighborhood, discharged their passengers, organized the group and concluded their protest all in the minutes between that call and the arrival of the responding officers? It sounds to me like the SEIU got a free pass by Maryland police. Could that be because of the pressures that unions are facing as Cities and States are asking for concessions as they wrestle with devastating budget shortfalls? Could it be that since SEIU represents thousands of municipal workers that some police organizations may see them as kindred spirits deserving of their respect and assistance? If so, where does that place the public in this new alliance of self-serving special interests?

This incident is also deserving of investigation by Federal authorities but I wouldn’t hold my breath. Former SEIU President, Andy Stern, is still a frequent visitor to the White House and an Obama advisor which pretty much guarantees the SEIU a pass from the so-called Justice Department too.

Paul

Obama - Eighteen Months and Counting

2010-05-25T06:00:00.000-07:00

We are approaching the eighteen month mark of the Obama Presidency and what a ride it has been. Despite Candidate Obama’s criticism of the deficit under the Bush administration, President Obama has presided over a quadrupling of deficit spending and has to date, added a whopping $2.36 trillion dollars to the national debt. The White House’s own calculations show that the spending levels outlined in the President’s budget will add another $9.7 trillion dollars to the national debt over the next ten years. That assumes of course, that we have a budget.

While the Federal government has been busy involving themselves in matters in which they have absolutely no constitutional authority such as healthcare, internet content and taking control of auto manufacturers, Congress has failed to focus on the things they are mandated by law to do such as securing the US borders, overseeing Federal agencies and adopting a budget. Of course, if you have no budget, you don’t have to make the hard choices of what to cut to keep it in balance. Instead, the Federal government continues to address spending by passing bill after bill that extend current spending levels and raising our debt ceiling to keep the cash flowing.

The Obama administration’s contribution to the national debt will shortly equal what Bush spent in the last four years of his presidency. Since his inauguration, Obama has raised the national debt 20% as a percentage of GDP (the entire national economy or Gross Domestic Product) and current calculations show that we will owe 100% of GDP by the year 2015. George Bush added $4.36 trillion to the debt during his entire eight years in office and even though Obama spoke harshly about the fiscal irresponsibility of the Bush administration, President Obama is now poised to far exceed that measure of irresponsibility within the next two years. Moody’s has already warned that America is on the verge of losing its triple A bond rating if we do not reign in our current spending craze. The loss of that rating would require us to pay higher interest on our existing debt and an increase of just a couple of points on a twelve trillion dollar debt would spell financial ruin for the nation but the spending continues unabated.

So what else has the last eighteen months brought us? The Obama administration has brought deep divisions between every race and economic strata in the country. The tactics used to promote their Socialist agenda has created an atmosphere of controversy that has pitted entire groups of people against each other. As the administration tries to gain support for its dangerous and short sighted energy bill, they have gone as far as suggesting it is a race issue; that minority communities are unfairly burdened with a disproportionate amount of industrial pollution. They have taken the seriousness of the civil rights movement of the 1960’s and are trying to frame every aspect of their agenda in terms of racial and economic justice. They are shamelessly using low income and minority communities to forward this agenda; an agenda that will drive those communities deeper into poverty as a very few of the Progressive elite sit back and watch their wealth and power multiply. Of course, since those elite Progressives are friends of the President and the Main Stream Press, those fat cats will be exempt from the same scrutiny used to examine the earnings of Wall Street executives.

Unions and former 1960’s radicals have been instrumental in writing the Stimulus bill, the Healthcare Bill and the Energy Bill. The language in those Bills has funneled billions of tax payer dollars into special projects that benefit the interests that helped write the bills. The President has already thumbed his nose at hard working Americans by issuing an executive order giving preference to Union contractors in government projects costing more than $25 million dollars. That order effectively blocks 80% of private contractors from those projects simply because their employees have not unionized. Under the Healthcare Bill, hospitals are only eligible for Federal funds for training programs if their staffs are unionized; clearly a gift to Andy Stern and the SEIU for their help during the election. Of course Union preferences won’t mean much if we continue on the path of national bankruptcy. After all, you need to have money to fund projects and training programs.

The Obama administration has adopted a policy of sheer luck where counter-terrorism is concerned. Catastrophe has only been avoided because the weapons training that our latest would-be assailants received was flawed and the devices they used failed to detonate. Still, Obama plans on only adding an additional 100 people to review and update the no-fly list but needs 17,000 new IRS agents to make sure you buy healthcare insurance. Our Attorney General, Eric Holder, has problems using the term Radical Islam in connection with these failed terrorists but Director of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano has no problem using far more troubling descriptors when it comes to defining the dangers posed by Tea Party protestors. In fact, the only danger the Tea Party represents is that they mean to block the President’s agenda and that is something the current administration will not tolerate.

Cass Sunstein, Obama’s “Regulatory Czar” has even suggested that our government use tactics once reserved for the Soviet KGB and discretely infiltrate Tea Parties and other groups that protest the administration’s plans. Sunstein would also like to see the government use its power to organize information campaigns to counter the Tea Party message and promote the President’s agenda. Excuse me, but isn’t that called propaganda? If you don’t believe this administration has no problem using propaganda to gain support and power, take the case of Obama’s latest Supreme Court nominee, Elena Kagan. The White House has impeded any attempt by the press to gain access to Kagan for an interview. They even contacted a school where Kagan’s brother teaches and “suggested” the school deny news access to Kagan’s brother. Instead, an unnamed White House staffer conducted a sanitary interview of Elena Kagan and that is the only material that has been given to the press. What are they hiding? Even Kagan’s thesis has been scrubbed from the internet; a thesis that clearly said she lamented the failure of Socialism to gain momentum in the United States.

The past eighteen months has brought America closer to financial ruin that at any other time in history. The programs and policies of this administration have depleted our ability to respond quickly to additional economic downturns and have placed us dangerously close to the point where we may not be able to afford to adequately defend ourselves. While the Feds corral militia groups in Michigan, North Korea has been acting with impunity against South Korea, apparently unafraid of a meaningful American response. While Congress launches a harsh campaign against Toyota because of safety concerns, Iran continues on the path to nuclear arms without a worry in the world. While the Mexican drug war continues to spill over the border into Arizona and Texas, the Obama administration is seeking to seize private property in Vermont to strengthen our border with Canada.

Obama refuses to answer questions about the radical past of his closest advisors. He refuses to answer questions about why his campaign spent nearly a million dollars to seal documents and information about his past. He refuses to answer questions about why his Social Security number was part of a group of numbers reserved for residents of Connecticut, a State in which he never resided and why that number was issued a full three years after his first known job at a Hawaiian ice cream shop. He refuses to answer questions about why his application for student aid was filed stating he was a foreign student of Indonesian patronage. He even refuses to answer the question about why the birth certificate he submitted to the Federal Elections Commission, a birth certificate issued in 1961, has no State seal and shows his father’s race as African when African is neither a race nor a nation; nor would it have been used as a description of race in 1961 America.

We have a long way to go before November 2012….I only hope the nation can survive that long.

Paul

Mythbusters

2010-05-24T06:00:00.000-07:00

The discussions we just had on the Constitution will be useful as we gauge what is happening now, against what should be happening within the framework of the Constitution but as we enter the 2010 campaign season, I also want to expose some myths surrounding modern “political speak” in that context to begin our next segment.

Myth one – FDR’s policies and programs ended the Great Depression.

False - Since President Obama’s proponents are touting him as the new FDR, this myth is the first that needs to be debunked. Nothing can be further from the truth. FDR’s programs were nothing more than keep busy government works projects that kept most at or below the poverty level; actually very similar to today’s Stimulus bill. World War Two sent millions of American men to war taking them off home relief and placing them on the front lines to defend the nation and during the war years, the country’s economy shifted to war production. Since general provisions were limited by the war, a combination of rationing and the tax structure were used to prevent runaway inflation. At the conclusion of the war, nearly every manufacturing center around the world had been destroyed in the fighting except for those located safely within the borders of the United States. From 1945 through the late 1050’s, if you wanted to buy anything, you had to buy it here and that is what ended the Great Depression.

Myth two – Reagan’s tax cuts and policies of “trickle down economics” failed and ultimately quadrupled the National Debt.

Partially true - First of all, to gain the tax cuts Reagan wanted to stimulate the economy, Reagan had to agree to the TEFRA act (Tax Equity and Reform Act) of 1986. Before the Reagan tax cuts, the tax on the wealthiest Americans were roughly 50% (already down from the top marginal tax rates of 80% to 95% during the world war two years). TEFRA eliminated many of the deductions that high earning American’s used to reduce their taxable income. You may want to note that even after the marginal tax rates for the top earners began to climb during the first Bush administration, none of the deductions eliminated under TEFRA had been restored. The only mistake Reagan made was in phasing in his tax cuts over a period of a few years. This stalled the economy for a further two years as business held back, waiting for the goodies that were coming.

Now to the bare facts: OMB figures indicate that the explosion of the economy directly related the Reagan tax cuts resulted in a tripling of revenues to the United States Treasury. Unfortunately, the Congress immediately wrote legislation that spent $1.34 for every new dollar they received. Admittedly, part of that was to fund the military expansion that Reagan insisted was necessary for the security of the nation; but a great deal were pork barrel projects injected into the legislation. Don’t forget, Reagan asked for the line item veto to be able to weed that reckless spending out of the legislation but Congress refused to offer him that power. If he were to move forward on the agenda he felt was vital to the nation, Reagan was given no alternative but to sign these pork laden bills into law. President Clinton was eventually given the power of the line item veto and never used it to weed out frivolous spending. In all fairness, neither did the second Bush administration.

Myth three - Deregulation created the mortgage crisis of 2007.

Partially true - Deregulation certainly allowed for the lapse in accountability that made this possible but to find the roots of the crisis, we need to travel back in time to the Clinton administration. During the Clinton administration there was a push to expand the “American Dream” of home ownership to a segment of the population where it had never existed before. That “push” was in the form of the Federal government fining banks that would not issue what were traditionally considered high risk loans to allow low income people access to home mortgages.

That practice drove the median prices of homes skyward since the law of supply and demand was now challenged by an artificially created marketplace. Those that already owned homes took advantage of the lenient lending terms and free flow of cash to refinance their mortgages based on the inflated value of the property, in essence turning their homes into an ATM machine with a garage and two and a half baths. Many took adjustable rate or interest only loans because they were cheaper thinking they would get into a conventional loan later. They took the difference in cash with some, purchasing additional properties with the idea that property values would continue to go nowhere but up.

Well, you knew it would happen sooner or later but an awful lot of those high risk loans started going sour. Banks that saw trouble on the horizon packaged these loans and sold them to investors. They sold them as securities thinking that the good paper would offset the bad paper, because property values always go up. Well that might have worked if property values weren’t artificially inflated and if property owners hadn’t already cashed in on that.

The net result was due to the high rate of loan failures (the high risk ones the government had forced on lenders) property values plummeted. When it came time for the ATM people to refinance, their home were worth substantially less that the principal they already owed. Unfortunately, the cash they withdrew from the “ATM” was already spent. You already know the story from there.

Myth four - The Stimulus plan (The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009) is responsible for the creation of millions of jobs.

False - Again, no; only a portion of the $800 billion allocated in the stimulus bill has actually been distributed. As opposed to The Economic Stimulus Act of 2008 which consisted of tax rebate checks put into the hands of tax payers, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 doled out money to the States and Cities. As a note, The Economic Stimulus Act of 2008 consisted of roughly $152 billion given back to the tax payers while The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 scripted over $800 billion to fund projects administrated through the States and Cities. They still haven’t figured out that we spend money far better than they do.

In my home town of Phoenix, the stimulus money they received was used to purchase additional traffic enforcement cameras; cameras that will likely be voted out of existence in the next few years as referendum ballots opposing them gain ground. Well that put a lot of people to work, now didn’t it? Much of the stimulus money in other areas was used to fund other previously committed spending like roads or transportation projects.

The facts: much of the stimulus money was used to fund projects that were already awarded to contractors (no new jobs) or was used for “make work” jobs, some of which lasted a total of 36 hours, less than a full work week, before these people were once again, unemployed. The “new jobs” were far less than temporary and the balance of what they claimed credit for, were jobs that had already existed.

As a note, The Economic Stimulus Act of 2008 only failed because people used the money they received to satisfy existing personal debt. In essence, the government had already taken too much and waited too long only to give too little back.

So where am I going with this and is there a common thread? Those of you that have read my work before already know there must be something that ties all of this together. That “thread” is the Federal government’s inability to affect positive change through the manipulation of the free market system. Every time they have tried they have failed and failed miserably. Partly, because they are following an ideology that mainstream America does not share and partly, because they have still been divided amongst themselves for years.

The nation’s capitol has become nothing more that a battlefield of the extreme right and the radical left with the bulk of the nation, meaning you and me, caught in the crossfire. Accusation is met with counter-accusation and whatever party is in control tries to force their agenda through while accusing the other of having no vision and no alternatives.

Since there is apparently a lack of common sense solutions in Congress, let’s see if we can’t frame the real issues and identify some reasonable solutions for them. I know, I know….we are just regular people. Truthfully, I can’t think of any better reason to try since the “professional” legislators have made such an unholy mess of things already. Besides, this is still our country….isn’t it?Paul

The World Apology Tour Continues

2010-05-20T06:00:00.001-07:00

No world apology tour would be complete until the Obama administration apologized to China for perceived human rights abuses right here at home. Assistant Secretary of State and left wing screwball, Michael Posner, spoke candidly about his meetings with Chinese officials. The meeting included Posner’s suggestion that Arizona’s new anti-illegal immigration law represents a disturbing trend within the United States and an illustration on how America must address its own human and civil rights issues. Posner also spoke about the U.S. treatment of Muslims implying that our post-9-11 policies amount to a procedural mistreatment of Muslims and that those policies are themselves, a human rights concern.

Arizona Senators Jon Kyle and John McCain drafted an open letter to Posner demanding an apology saying that "To compare in any way the lawful and democratic act of the government of the state of Arizona with the arbitrary abuses of the unelected Chinese Communist Party is inappropriate and offensive." Just the idea that we would apologize to China for exercising our right as a sovereign nation to secure our borders is ludicrous. Our laws are based on due process and Constitutional practices that protect human rights while China secures its own borders with iron bars and lead bullets. Add to that that China is one of the world’s worst violators of human rights even if we can’t come right out and say it. After all, you can’t anger your banker, now can you?

Of course, the Obama administration only apologizes for America and not to America so Kyle and McCain will undoubtedly have a long wait. The State Department immediately defended Posner's comments. Spokesman P.J. Crowley disputed the notion Posner was apologizing to China when he was actually "standing up" for America by demonstrating how debate works in a "civil society." Crowley did, however, support the Obama's administrations concern of the Arizona law, stating, "There is, as many have said, real concerns about -- that this Arizona law will inevitably devolve into racial profiling. That would be a fundamental challenge to human rights around the world.” Of course, when Crowley was questioned as to whether or not he had actually read the Arizona statute, Crowley had to admit he had not.

Crowley is in good company. Attorney General Eric Holder spoke forcefully about his concerns regarding the Arizona law and how the Justice Department was considering filing suit to block its implementation. Curiously, as he was being questioned about his concerns by Arizona Senator, John McCain, Holder sheepishly admitted that he had not actually read the bill and that his concerns were based on what he had seen about the law on television. Well, isn’t that refreshing! CNN and MSNBC are now the legal research arm of the United States Justice Department. We are going to save a fortune in tax payer dollars now that we can eliminate all those high-priced attorneys and legal aides in Holder’s Justice Department. Apparently, all we have to do now is install a bank of televisions in Holder’s office. In fact, why stop there? Why not let Judge Judy adulate Federal cases and close the Justice Department altogether.

Department of Homeland Security chief and former Arizona Governor, Janet Napolitano, was also questioned by John McCain after she voiced her concerns about Arizona’s illegal immigration law and again, admitted that she had not read the law either but “knows of it”. When a high government official takes a stance on something as delicate as immigration or involving State’s right, I expect that they should have more than a vague idea of what the issue is before they speak out for, or against it.

Arizona has been left to deal with what has become a full-fledged border town drug war. The police are outmanned and out-gunned by Mexican drug runners and American citizens are being accosted while their properties are routinely violated by roving gangs of Mexican nationals. Despite numerous calls for assistance to fight a growing and dangerous wave of illegal border crossings, the Federal government has been deaf to this plea for help prompting Arizona to act unilaterally. Instead of fulfilling their Constitutional obligation to combat an ongoing foreign incursion onto American soil, the Federal government is now in the process of invoking eminent domain to seize five acres of private farm land in Vermont to strengthen the border between the United States and Canada. While border security is a high priority, the Obama administration is, as with everything else they have done, taken America 180 degrees in the wrong direction.

Mexican President Calderon joined with Obama this week in denouncing Arizona because of the illegal immigration law which is laughable since Mexican law is far more punitive and unforgiving than anything Arizona is attempting. Mexican law prohibits any form of assistance until a person’s immigration status has been confirmed. According to Mexican law, even Mexican police, medical and emergency services can be withheld until you prove that you are in that country lawfully. Of course, I don’t hear a whimper from the Obama administration about the danger that policy represents to human rights but the administration’s outrage really isn’t about human rights or immigration now is it?

So why has the Obama administration spoke out so harshly against Arizona’s immigration law? The law is taken directly from Federal immigration policy and Arizona lawmakers have actually strengthened the safeguards that protect innocent people from being needlessly harassed. The law requires that the police must have already stopped, detained or arrested someone under suspicion of a crime and the officer must have a reasonable suspicion that the subject is in the country illegally before they can be questioned about their immigration status. The laws goes even further in providing protection against racial profiling by requiring that the officer’s suspicion must be based on something other than race. The corresponding Federal law offers no such protection against racial profiling.

The reason the administration is so dead set against this law is because it is based on the State’s right to self determination and affirms the Tenth Amendment protection of the sovereignty of the States. To allow the Arizona law to stand would pose serious agenda difficulties for an administration that is attempting to harness the States under the yoke of Federal control. This is only the first real challenge to Obama and his band of radical friends and Socialist advisors. The truth is the Constitutional authority for a State to enact immigration policy within that State’s own borders has already been tested in the Supreme Court, and our highest court recognized the State’s right to craft that policy.

Despite the precedent established by the Supreme Court, the Obama administration has made fighting Arizona’s immigration law a gilt edge priority because it is based on the State’s Tenth Amendment rights. A victory for Arizona in this will set the stage for additional State challenges against the Healthcare Bill, the UN gun control initiative and a national energy policy. This is about power and they have already lied about the intent and scope of the immigration law to broker as much opposition against it as possible. Fortunately, Arizona has the weight of law, the hammer of truth and the power of public support behind her as she enters the arena. This is still the United States and we still live under the rule of law. Obama may think that the Federal government has the authority to impose its will simply because they are the giant in this battle but they have obviously forgotten the story of David and Goliath. Well, Arizona is ready with the sling of truth and stone of the Constitution.

Paul

Reagan Was The Real President of Hope and Change

2010-05-19T06:00:00.000-07:00

There are so many assaults on one’s senses today, where can you reasonably begin without feeling that you’ve left something out? For a President that promised hope, I don’t think I have ever seen an atmosphere as thick with hopelessness as I see in America today. Even during the darkest days of the Carter administration when American hostages were being held in Iran and the economy was in turmoil, people still believed there was something that could be done with the right leader at the helm.

Maybe that is where Reagan really made his mark. People not only believed in his abilities, but because of his inspiration we could believe in our own abilities as a nation again. The hostages held in Iran for nearly four-hundred and fifty days were released as Reagan took the oath of office which we took as a clear indication that the world knew this President was not going to allow America to be disgraced by petty dictators and radical theocracies. The economy rebounded as Reagan released the restraints of regulation and the shackles of punitive taxation; the military took on the shine and precision of well oiled and meticulously cared for machine and our cities began to shed the decay after decades of neglect.

Critics would later criticize Reagan for quadrupling the National Debt but the numbers speak for themselves. Under Reagan’s policies, revenues to the Treasury had tripled. Not because of tax increases but because of the economic expansion brought on by tax relief that rewarded entrepreneurs for the risks they took reinvesting in America. The debt did quadruple but only because of congressional fiscal mismanagement which according to OMB records, spent $1.34 for every new dollar in revenue the treasury collected. Reagan continually asked for the line-item veto to enable him to eliminate the pork that bloated every spending bill but that was something Congress would not grant to Reagan. In the end, if Reagan wanted the appropriations he felt were critical to the nation’s well being, then he had to sign the bills and accept the additional spending Congress had irresponsibly sewn into them.

The line item veto was eventually granted to President Clinton in the Line Item Veto Act of 1996, which he signed into law and put to the test at least eighty-one times throughout eleven pieces of legislation. We will never know the full value of the line item veto as it was struck down by the United States District Court for the District of Columbia in February of 1998. That decision was upheld by the Supreme Court in June of that year. Similar legislation was requested by President George W. Bush in 2006 but failed to pass a vote in the Senate. A recent move to reinstate the line item veto was begun by Republican Senator John McCain and Democrat Senator Russ Feingold in 2009, but never gained the support it needed to move forward. So much for the conscience of Congress.

After Reagan’s second term, the National Debt had climbed to $3.2 trillion dollars which represented 55% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). However, inflation had dropped from 13.9% under Jimmy Carter, to 4.67% when Regan left office in 1989. When 1990 began, we had a six-hundred ship navy, an air force that guaranteed superiority in any theater it would be tested and the best equipped and trained military that the world had ever seen. The economy was vibrant with every indicator showing steady gains. The Soviet Union was straining under the weight of trying to compete with capitalism in an open arms competition and would fail only a year later. From every gauge I use to measure success, it appears that America got an awful lot in return for its three trillion dollar investment.

I truly believe that Ronald Reagan will go down in history as one of the greatest Presidents this country had ever had the good fortune to elect. That is, unless the same revisionists that have slandered Thomas Jefferson and Christopher Columbus have the opportunity to re-write his accomplishments as well. Beyond the economic and military legacy he left, I still insist that his greatest gift to this nation was the faith he instilled in us. He spoke from the heart and I can’t remember a time that I had cause to question his words. He was truly, the “Great Communicator”. Is there anyone under the age of forty that doesn’t recall the challenge he shouted out in Berlin? “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” echoed through the hearts and minds of the world. Is there anyone that doubted his sincerity as he eulogized the crew of the ill-fated Challenger spacecraft? For all his critics, was there anyone that has ever doubted his loyalty and love for the United States?

What has changed? I remember when I was a boy, we went to the World’s Fair and the biggest attraction was the “World of Tomorrow”. We clamored for a glimpse into an amazing future and the wonders that technology and innovation promised us. We saw the Space Program grow from a single man perched precariously atop what was in fact, a ballistic missile, to the towering Saturn V rocket that brought America to the moon and back. Movies like “2001 a Space Odyssey” took us to explore the outer planets and Carl Sagan’s documentary “Cosmos” introduced us to the wonders of the Universe. Technological advances had taken the cords off our phones and put the power of computers on our desk tops. To all appearances, the promises of the future were coming true. But what did we give our children?

It began with the television shows of the late 1980’s. As if Hollywood were revolting against Reagan for ruining their vision of utopia as capitalism rebounded and communism fell, the youth were targeted with one show after another. Father didn’t know best anymore, now parents were portrayed as witless idiots while their children kept the family on track. Actually, that began back in the ‘70s but those shows were directed at adults in an attempt to show them the evil of their bigoted and selfish ways. This was different. These were shows for kids, about kids. Then the disaster movies came; the post apocalyptic adventures of Mad Max and Robo-Cop. One film after another that told our young adults that their future would be a barren wasteland in which survival itself, was their only job. Now we have the “environment-gone-wild” movies where the adults have finally destroyed the planet and now mother earth was revolting against us.

No wonder our kids are disillusioned. No wonder they have no interest in school or responsibility. After all, why bother? The earth is doomed and according to the latest big screen calamity, we won’t make it past 2012 anyway. Now they are completing the picture by telling school children that the earth is in peril because of global warming. Oops! I meant Climate Change. Ever since the data has been showing a cooling trend they changed the name or people might actually question the science behind the claims. Why would anyone want to do this to our children?

The only reason I can think of is to complete the work of demoralization that began decades ago. Those misguided students of socialist doctrine that have now become the teachers, still believe that utopia lies just beyond the greed of capitalism. If the youth can be shaped early enough then it isn’t just a thought, it is a core belief; nearly a religion. The climate crisis is being presented to them in such a way that we don’t have the luxury of thinking about what to do. We must follow the only clear path and that is the complete reversal of our industrial society or we face certain doom. I intend to take that apart tomorrow piece by piece but first there is a more pressing need.

Despite everything we are being told, there is hope. Sane and reasonable actions can bring America out of financial crisis but it will take hard work, a lot more Reagan Republicans and solid capitalistic principals. We can ill afford more progressives in our government regardless of whether their names are suffixed with a “D”, an “R” or an “I”. Those principals have already given us a national debt that is about to top twelve-trillion dollars, which is 98% of the GDP. For perspective, the next largest debtor nation is China and their debt is at 23.5% of their GDP. Our greatest challenge is that the progressives in Congress coupled with the Marxists in the White House have placed America up for sale. It is critical that nothing passes this legislative session until the system of checks and balances are safely restored.

Most important is the time you invest with your children. Restore their sense of wonder for the future and encourage a courageous desire to explore the unknown. Give them the knowledge and hope that their future is not written for them but by them. Empower them with free thought and for God’s sake, break down the rote memorization of social doctrine that the left has been brainwashing them with. Be understanding; they have been using our children’s worst fears to obtain their devotion. You must be their “Reagan”. You must give them the hope and faith that Reagan gave you and your words must have the same weight of truth because above all else, that is really what made Reagan the great communicator.

Paul

Atlas Shrugged - The Next "Story of Us"?

2010-05-18T06:00:00.000-07:00

When Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” was published in 1957, it was considered a work of science fiction. The theme of “Atlas Shrugged”, as Rand described it, is "the role of man's mind in existence." The book explores a number of themes that Rand would subsequently develop into the philosophy of Objectivism. She was sharply criticized for her ideas and her philosophy of “Objectivism” was denigrated as selfish and regressive in the light of the needs of the general public.

Despite these charges, “Atlas Shrugged” achieved enduring popularity and has maintained consistent sales in the following decades. In the wake of the late 2000s recession, sales of Atlas Shrugged have sharply increased, according to The Economist magazine and The New York Times. The Economist reported that the fifty-two-year-old novel ranked #33 among Amazon's top-selling books on January 13, 2009.

What is the new-found interest in this book? “Atlas Shrugged”, originally called “The Strike” by its working title, portrays an America much like we see today. Overbearing government regulations, distributive policies and a generally accepted point of view held by public officials that radical progressive action must be taken for the good of all and anyone opposed to those policies are disgraced and openly chastised.

In the book, one by one, leaders of industry were disappearing, leaving their businesses deserted and their workers displaced. The book does take an odd turn when those business owners begin to reappear as Objectivist pirates seeking to topple the existing system to establish a new government that promotes the virtues self-reliance for the good of their progeny.

No one really believes that pirates will begin raiding the United States in retaliation for government intervention and oppressive taxation but Atlas is apparently beginning to shrug. New York and California have been seeing a trend of wealthy citizens fleeing the latest round of taxes that have been unfairly levied on them. The computer age no longer necessitates that these people congregate in major centers of commerce since the internet itself, has become the lifeline. The point is, there is no longer any status associated with a Park Avenue address, particularly if that address comes with a personal income tax rate of nearly 60%, now that Healthcare Reform has actually passed. Is it really that bad? Well, the latest figures show that out of eight and a half million people in New York City, a little over forty-three thousand pay more than forty percent of the City's tax revenues. That is obscene by anyone's standards.

The tax exodus not a new trend; in 2006, the rate at which college graduates were escaping New York had risen 127% and the same problems plague California as job prospects evaporate and taxes climb skyward. The real problem for these two bastions of liberal politics and “social responsibility” is that the vacuum created by those that are leaving is being filled by people that do not possess the same earning power so state and city tax revenues have been steadily falling as well. Heaven forbid these states would re-evaluate their commitment to redistributive policy. No, they would prefer to find new revenue sources to fill the void.

The next tax adding to the burden is the so-called “millionaires tax” to fund part of the healthcare reform bill. The truth is the millionaires tax kicks in at income levels well below a million dollars and when combined with the existing tax burden experienced by New York residents, the top marginal rate will effectively be 57%. Since the exodus has begun, New York Governor David Patterson has been insistent that New York must adopt a tax system that is at least competitive with neighboring states and in fact, should consider tax incentives that encourage businesses to relocate to New York, not flee in fear. These ideas have not met with much favor among the more liberal members of the elected elite in New York and in fact, have cost Patterson his position as Governor of New York as the power brokers in NY politics pushed him out of the race.

Anyone looking at the unemployment figures knows that the stimulus plan hasn’t produced the economic results the government had hoped for. The first mistake was the stimulus money was doled out to recipients that understand job creation as poorly as the Federal government does; the Cities and States. It was spent in the worst possible ways with New York again, leading the pack. When comparing the number of jobs that were claimed to have been created directly through stimulus expenditures against the amount of money that was spent, the national average was seventy-three thousand dollars per job with New York reportedly spending nine million per job. As with any short term infusion of capital, the results are bound to be short term as well so we can imagine that those extraordinarily expensive jobs will disappear when the money does.

So why has the stimulus plan failed to deliver? Once again, Atlas is shrugging. Business owners are cringing as they look at the antics and bribes used in Washington to pass healthcare that are now being dusted off to pass the climate bill. Back door meetings and massive spending bills with threats of more taxes, penalties and mandates do not encourage small business to expand, let alone re-hire those that were laid off in last year’s economic downturn. Additionally, if the mandate for private business participation under the current healthcare proposal is fifty employees, how many companies with forty-nine employees will resist expansion and stay right where they are? How many companies with fifty-two employees will downsize to escape the mandates and worse yet, how many will decide that the benefits of operating a business in America just don’t make sense anymore?

The stock market hasn’t rallied yet either. Not only have the threats of increased capital gains taxes dissuaded participation, with the Federal Reserve running the printing presses on overtime, not even Treasury Bills look safe anymore. We also have a new ominous specter; the threat of direct government interference in business. 60% of General Motors is now owned by the Federal government, which should make any advocate of capitalism nervous. There have been executive salary caps placed on banks that received Tarp money and while the legality of that was still under debate, the government announced its plan to cap the executive salaries of all financial institutions since they fall under the regulatory jurisdiction of the Federal government. Following that logic, who is safe? After all, don’t all corporations fall under the regulatory jurisdiction of the Federal government at one level or another?

So what happens if Atlas truly does shrug? What would happen if owning a business became a liability as the Federal government placed more of the burden of America’s social programs on their shoulders in the form of new mandates? What happens if the wealthy decide that leaving New York or California doesn’t offer enough protection against confiscatory taxes? Will they leave the country? The “top one percent” that the Obama regime keeps targeting certainly has the means to do just that. In fact, many have the resources to pull out of the game entirely and live quite comfortably for the rest of their lives on what they have already accumulated. What would happen to the great plans of progressive politics if the top one percent stopped earning a taxable income and just started living? What would happen if the “top one percent” suddenly became people with incomes of one-hundred thousand dollars, eighty-thousand dollars or maybe fifty-thousand dollars when the real wealth in America decides they are not playing anymore?

Some argue that Europe has had massive social programs and progressive taxes for years and business still thrives there. Really? Greece is now on fire because the bills have finally come due and the rest of Europe is now teetering on the brink of fiscal disaster since all of their economies are tied together. The only real advantages Europe has is that European trade agreements favor those at home as does their patent process. Also true is that much of the European infrastructure is fairly new when compared to America’s. Don’t forget that much of Europe was destroyed and rebuilt after World War II. We don’t have that luxury and our older industrial centers find it continually harder to compete with our modernized competitors. Most of Europe has never embarked on the self destructive path of paying its people to stay home that began with Johnson’s “Great Society”.

We have created a new class of subsidized dependents. These are people that have been subjugated by an unfair social services system that demands that you either collect all from the government or get nothing. Fear of losing housing, healthcare and a meager cash allowance keeps them neatly enrolled in the system and insures that they will continue to vote for the people that promise the money will keep coming. After all, when you rob Peter to pay Paul, you can always count on Paul’s support. As unemployment increases and the wealthy “shrug”, who will keep these programs in place? We cannot print much more money or the world financial institutions will lock American currency out of the global economy. What will we do if Atlas does shrug?

Paul

The Farce of the Climate Scare

2010-05-17T06:00:00.000-07:00

Even though it is painfully obvious that we are having difficulty determining if America can even afford the massive nine-hundred billion dollar healthcare that the administration recently forced through Congress, other factions in the Senate have already begun discussing the Climate bill, recently renamed “The American Power Act”, as well. The damage the healthcare bill will inflict on our economy will pale in significance compared to the harm that the American Power Act will mean for all Americans. Well, almost all Americans. It appears that Al Gore and his closest friends are prepared through their investments, to turn millions into billions once this bill has passed into law.

But why are we even considering this? The scientists and organizations that have demanded immediate action have been caught red handed falsifying data in order to support their global warming theories and Mr. Hanson of Nasa’s Goddard Space Center still refuses to release the data that he based his report on even though his peers have been unable to duplicate his findings. In fact, the data is so flawed that the proponents of the climate bill have changed the name of the crisis from “global warming” to “climate change” rather than have to answer for earth’s recent cooling trend.

I’ve stated in previous posts that the urgency of a global catastrophe fits very neatly into the general criteria laid out by neo-socialists; those that have already stated their strategy to use a crisis, man-made or otherwise, to destabilize the global economy. The enormous amount of resources that would be required to stave off certain doom in a global environmental crisis would devastate capitalism and bring about the collapse of the current geopolitical balance of power. This is nothing new; in fact, it is little more that a revision of the Cloward-Piven strategy that we have barely remained one step ahead of since it’s inception in 1966. Cloward-Piven was directed at the United States but the eco-socialists are attempting this now on a global scale.

If you don’t believe it, then why is it that democracies and republics of the western industrial nations are the only ones being pressured to join this circus? China and India have already stated they have no intention of damaging their economic growth with restrictions on industry even though their carbon emissions are far greater than that of the United States and there is no hue and cry from the global environmental movement demanding their participation. Much of the third world is not required to participate by the basic provisions of the latest U.N. sponsored climate accord and in fact, they would receive monetary assistance and technological support under these accords that would allow them to industrialize. With that in mind, what is this but a blatant attempt by the UN and eco-socialists to disassemble the United States and distribute our wealth and industrial might evenly around the globe.

Of course, environmentalists accuse those that dismiss the validity of global warming, climate change or whatever the next name will be, of being ignorant and standing in the way of saving countless millions from doom. I think it’s more than fair that we look at the claims these same people were making forty years ago and examine their track record for accuracy.

U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson (D-WI) founded “Earth Day” in 1970 to bring awareness to the impending global catastrophe that man’s ignorance had wrought upon the earth. Was Mr. Nelson a climatologist or an environmental expert? Uh, no; as you might have already guessed, he received a Bachelor of Arts from San Jose College but eventually completed law school in Wisconsin.

Environmentalists and sympathetic scientists from around the world gathered for Earth Day to make the public aware of what we had done to the planet and to convey the urgency with which we must act before our mistakes consume the planet and all life on it. Below are a series of quotes taken from the hysterical pleas being made all through this event; quotes that adequately display how wrong these people were then, and remain to be now. Quotes that show just how far they are willing to go to make you believe we must enact their radical agenda right now or face doom. Bear in mind when you read these quotes that they are forty years old and frame the core beliefs of the environmental movement in 1970.

“We have about five more years at the outside to do something."Kenneth Watt, ecologist.

“Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”George Wald, Harvard Biologist.
“We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation.”Barry Commoner, Washington University biologist.

“Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.”New York Times editorial, the day after the first Earth Day.

“Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist.

“By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.”Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist.

“It is already too late to avoid mass starvation.”Denis Hayes, chief organizer for Earth Day.

“Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.”Peter Gunter, professor, North Texas State University.

“Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….”Life Magazine, January 1970.

“At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.”Kenneth Watt, Ecologist.

“Air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.”Paul Ehrlich, Stanford University biologist.

“We are prospecting for the very last of our resources and using up the nonrenewable things many times faster than we are finding new ones.”Martin Litton, Sierra Club director.

“By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, `I am very sorry, there isn’t any."Kenneth Watt, Ecologist.

“Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.”Sen. Gaylord Nelson.

“The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”Kenneth Watt, Ecologist.

It’s time to stop fooling around with these people. The climate crisis is nothing more than a concocted event and the voices of the 30,000 scientists that can prove that it is false must be heard; not suppressed. What is clear is that the data used by environmentalists to stake their claim of climate change was not misinterpreted, it was deliberately crafted to yield those results and when tested, they are the only ones that have come up with the results they say are proof positive. The real question is what is the political machine driving this attempt to crush the free market and democracy?

Paul

The Green Movement - Eco Terror or Socialist Plot?

2010-05-14T06:00:00.000-07:00

Out of all the nooks and crannies that socialists have infiltrated in our society, the environmental movement has proven the most productive. It has everything they need. Armies of passionate followers that can be easily swayed by tainted studies laced with falsified data as well as the urgency of crisis they need to force entire nations headlong into self-destructive legislation and international pacts under the guise of saving the planet Neither of which are acts that are designed to save the planet. It wasn’t always that way. Many environmental groups began life to protect endangered species, prevent deforestation and to insure our air and water were free of dangerous chemicals and poisons. It was only in the last 30 years that the “green” movement added political activism into their repertoire.

The groups that were formed around the environmental movement are now funded in large part by the same people and organizations that fund socialist efforts as well as the extreme left of the Democrat party and other progressive movements. One of the more notable “contributors’ is our old friend, George Soros. It seems that wherever there is a movement to defeat Capitalism in general and American Capitalism in particular, you always seem to find George and his check book. Another familiar donor to anti-American / anti-Capitalist environmental organizations is the Tides Foundation.

Established in 1976 by California-based activist Drummond Pike, the Tides Foundation was set up as a public charity that receives money from donors and then funnels it to the recipients of their choice. Because many of these recipient groups are quite radical, the donors often prefer not to have their names publicly linked with the recipients. By letting the Tides Foundation, in effect, "launder" the money for them and pass it along to the intended beneficiaries, donors can avoid leaving a "paper trail." Such contributions are called "donor-advised," or donor-directed, funds.

In 1996 the Tides Foundation created, with a $9 million seed grant, a separate but closely related entity called the Tides Center, also headed by Drummond Pike. The Tides Center functions as a legal firewall insulating the Tides Foundation from potential lawsuits filed by people whose livelihoods or well-being may be harmed by Foundation-funded projects. (Such as farmers or loggers who are put out of business by Tides-backed environmentalist groups.) In theory the Foundation's activities are restricted to fundraising and grant-making, while the Center focuses on managing projects and organizations; in practice, however, both entities do essentially the same thing.

The Tides Center's Board Chairman is Wade Rathke. Wade is also a member of the Tides Foundation Board. If you recall, Wade Rathke was a protégé of the late George Wiley, founder of the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO) and a devout follower of Cloward and Piven. Maya Wiley, daughter of George Wiley, currently sits on the Tides Center's Board of Directors. In addition to his work with the Tides center, Rathke also serves as President of the New Orleans-based Local 100 of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and is also the founder and chief organizer of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). Isn’t funny how the same names keep popping up when the discussion is radical socialism?

One particularly notable donor to the Tides entities is Teresa Heinz Kerry, wife of Senator John Kerry. From 1994 to 2004, the Heinz Endowments, which Mrs. Kerry heads, gave the Tides Foundation and Center approximately $8.1 million in grants. Until February 2001, Mrs. Kerry also served as a trustee of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, which also gave Tides numerous six-figure grants. I case you haven’t guessed; George Soros also infuses money into the Tides Foundation. The Tides Foundation funnels money into hundreds of projects for the radical left including several dozen for the stated purpose of environmental sustainability. All of this draws Senator Kerry’s involvement with environmental legislation into serious question. With that kind of money changing hands, there must be a trade off. Has Kerry been promised a “soft landing” when the eco-activists finish tearing our Constitution and economy to shreds? Will these deals leave the Heinz-Kerry fortune one of the fortunate “untouchables” in a post-America, Socialist elite club with George Soros, Maurice Strong and Al Gore?

Getting into the groups themselves, Greenpeace must top the list. Founded in 1970 as a loose assortment of Canadian anti-nuclear agitators, American expatriates, and underground journalists calling themselves the "Don't Make a Wave Committee", Greenpeace, is today, the most influential group of the environmental Left. Its stated mission is to "use non-violent, creative confrontation to expose global environmental problems, and force solutions for a green and peaceful future." After a schism in the late 1970s, the various organizations originally comprising Greenpeace have today united into 41 affiliates and two main branches, Greenpeace USA and the Amsterdam-based Greenpeace International.

One of the founders of Greenpeace was Irving Stowe (1915-1974) who was also on the executive board of Canada’s New Democratic Party. The New Democratic Party are Democratic Socialists that advocate many radical ideals including the abolition of the Canadian Senate. While they have never attained power over the Canadian Federal Government, they have had sufficient success in several provinces to be able to exert considerable political pressure.

Another of Greenpeace’s founders, Patrick Moore, left Greenpeace in 1986 after what he saw was a shift to a radical political ideology. He said in a statement that “Greenpeace today is motivated by politics rather than science and that none of his "fellow directors had any formal science education". In the 2007 film “The Great Global Warming Swindle, Moore commented: "See, I don't even like to call it the environmental movement anymore, because really it is a political activist movement, and they have become hugely influential at a global level.”

A prime example of socialists that discovered the environmental movement as a vehicle for their agenda is the group “Socialist Action”. Socialist Action is a nation-wide group of revolutionary socialists. In their own words: “We fight for a society organized to satisfy human needs, rather than corporate greed. We seek to revitalize the anti-war, labor, student and other social movements, and to bring activists together from different backgrounds into a revolutionary party that can successfully challenge the wealthy elite. As socialists we seek to understand the theory of Marxism, but as an activist group, we also seek to put those ideas into practice. Join us in the struggle to make a better world!”

Christine Frank of Socialist Action says: “We need to build a powerful and uncompromising environmental movement led by working people in alliance with other oppressed groups in society. In addition, we must infuse this new movement with eco-socialist principles that go beyond the maintenance of capitalism and its suicidal and genocidal policies and advance toward a zero-waste, democratically planned socialist economy that is green and sustainable and puts planetary and human needs before profits.”

Elmar Altvater is another Marxist that discovered the environmental movement could be used to further socialist policies. Mr. Altvater gained fame as one of Germany's most important Marxist philosophers, who strongly influenced the political and economic theory of the 1968 generation of radicals and is a renowned critic of "political economy" and author of numerous writings on his desire for globalization and his disgust of the free market. He suggests that there is only one “realistic alternative to oil imperialism; a shift from dependence on renewable energy sources, on the radiation energy released by the sun (and its derivatives such as photovoltaic, water, wave and biotic energy etc.), or on volcanic and geothermal energy”. He argues that “A society based on renewable instead of fossil energy sources must develop adequate technologies and above all social forms beyond capitalism.”

The Bullitt Foundation was established in 1952 by Dorothy S. Bullitt, who also created the King Broadcasting Company in Seattle. Denis Hayes, who was the national coordinator for the first Earth Day in 1970, is currently the Foundation's President. Hayes is a strong supporter of leftist political candidates, groups, and causes.The Bullitt Foundation, whose stated mission is "to protect, restore, and maintain the natural physical environment of the Pacific Northwest for present and future generations", directs its grants almost exclusively to radical environmental organizations whose ultimate goal, as writer Michael Berliner explains, is "not clean air and clean water, rather . . . the demolition of technological/industrial civilization." This philosophy is certainly aimed at using the environmental movement to further the group’s advocacy of destroying capitalist industry in favor of the establishment of socialism in the western nations.

Take your pick. When you research environmental groups, 90% are considered political activists and obtain funding from the same “progressive” sources. All have left-wing policies and many believe that only socialism will give society the tools it needs to stave off environmental disaster. The fact is that the United States has meaningful tools in place to prevent the irresponsible release in pollutants coupled with crippling fines and criminal prosecution for violators. In a socialist society, these safeguards would disappear as productivity drops, industries are lost and revenues to fund enforcement and remediation dwindle.

You must remember that wherever environmentalists have won the day, economic disaster followed closely. The logging industry in the Pacific Northwest was decimated in the 1990’s by the environmental campaign to preserve the spotted owl. Even though logging was banned in vast areas of the Pacific Northwest because this was purported to be the spotted owls “critical habitat”, in February 2008, a federal judge reinforced a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decision to designate 8,600,000 acres in Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico as critical habitat for the owl as well. It just so happens that is prime cattle grazing area so is this just a move to cripple yet another U.S. industry to drive us deeper into financial crisis a la Cloward-Pivens?

Last summer, half a million acres of fertile California farmland in the San Joaquin Valley have turned to dust after the water used for irrigation was reduced by 90% to save the endangered “Delta Smelt”. The smelt was not being further endangered by falling water levels, but because they were being drawn into the pumps. All technical suggestions to alleviate that from happening were dismissed in favor of denying water to the farms. These are the same farms that provide 15% of all the produce consumed in the United States. These examples, as with so-called “global warming”, display that only one conclusion can be reached and that is, the “real inconvenient truth” is that this is not about the environment at all but about progressive socialism, political power and who will ultimately wield much of the power in the “New World Order".

Paul

No Climate Change? Rename the Climate Bill - The American Power Act

2010-05-13T06:00:00.001-07:00

I have often said that the environmental movement is the new home for socialists and radicals that seek to bring us to a one world, socialist government. It used to be that the environmentalists were concerned with preserving the environment and protecting wildlife. Now radical social engineers have seized the movement and have laced these efforts with programs designed to hack away at the structure of capitalism while funneling money and industry out of the US and into the third world. To make the case, I will begin with the familiar faces in all of this; the Obama administration Czars and Al Gore and eventually move on to the organizations that are being used to promote this on a grand scale. Yes, they are being used. Even Lenin called leftist journalists and Marxists in the Western nations “Useful Idiots” because they were so willing and yet, had no idea of what they would eventually be doing to themselves.

The argument for global warming has a number of critics that have apparently been shut out of the debates. No less than 30,000 scientists have claimed that their work has been summarily dismissed and their data and findings have been refused entry into discussions and debates on the subject. It seems that anything or anyone that does not support the race to enact sweeping climate legislation is being swept aside. This is not isolated to the work of independent researchers. Several scientists working directly for the EPA were driven out of the agency for insisting that this data be seriously reviewed.

The Data suggesting that global warming is not a man-made effect, but rather, a natural phenomenon is starting gain traction and in fact, the real data suggests that the trend in rising global temperatures already peaked in 1989 and is subsiding, lending even more credence to the natural phenomenon theories. But the race goes on. After the news broke about manipulated data and damaging e-mails surrounding the so-called “climate researchers”, the sinister powers behind this scam have simply renamed the Climate Bill “The American Power Act” to hide the connection between the people that will gain from this and the crippled global warming argument. The name change is being attempted to try and fool people into believing that this is about revitalizing our power systems instead of admitting it is about the power that will be stolen from the American people. This legislation will damage industry in the U.S., strain our already challenged economy and remove your basic freedom to decide how much power you will personally use by making it too expensive to purchase. It isn’t all bad though…some people are positioned to make enormous amounts of money because they are strategically invested to gain from the Climate Bill or the America Power Act, as it is now being called.

Al Gore received much notoriety over his film “An Inconvenient Truth” but the real inconvenience is that a number of his facts were improperly arrived at and there are some serious flaws with the claims this film has made and in the data used to formulate those claims. Even though the UK Supreme court decided that the flaws in the film are significant enough to require schools in Great Britain that wish to show the film pass out an accompanying list of corrections, Mr. Gore feels no compelling reason to answer questions about those inconsistencies. The sad fact is that Mr. Gore has already made millions from that film and has made technology investments that will net him billions if the U.S. Climate Bill passes into law. He is now making sizable investments with the money he earned through his film to fund activist groups that favor the American Power Act. Now isn’t that curious?

Then there is Carol Browner, the White House "Climate Czar". She headed the EPA during both terms of the Clinton presidency, making her the longest-serving Administrator in the agency's history. Carol Browner received her education in the University of Florida. Coincidentally, that is the same school that N. David Cook attended. You remember Dr. Cook. He is the man that started the hate rhetoric about Christopher Columbus and the evil European explorers the infected the new world.

On Browner’s final day as Clinton EPA chief in 2001, she ordered a computer technician to delete all her computer files, in direct violation of a federal judge's order requiring the agency to preserve those files. When questioned about her actions, Browner claimed that her computer had contained no work-related material, and that she had merely purged the hard drive of such innocuous items as computer games as a courtesy to incoming staffers of the Bush administration. It was later learned that three additional high-ranking EPA officials had also violated the court order and erased their hard drives as well. Because of this, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth held the EPA in contempt of court. Were all the high ranking officials of the Clinton era EPA playing games on their office computers or was there something that had to be deleted? Remember the Coward-Piven Strategy can only be successful if its use remains secret.

Of course an almost manic desire for secrecy is nothing new for Carol Browner or for that matter, the Obama administration. In recent meetings Browner had with U.S. Auto manufacturers regarding the CAFE (corporate average fuel economy) standards, it was disclosed by a participant in those meetings that Ms. Browner ordered that no notes were to be taken and none of the meeting issues were to be discussed outside of the meeting. This is a very troubling revelation when we are discussion an appointee that promised his administration would finally offer the American people transparency in their government. We thought he meant openness but apparently his interpretation of transparency has more to do with invisibility.

Browner is a member of the Commission for a Sustainable World Society (CSWS), which is a formal organ of Socialist International. Oddly enough, the group's web site was recently scrubbed to remove Browner's picture and biography, but her name is still listed next to the photo-biographies of her 14 colleagues on the commission. Socialist International (SI), the umbrella group for 170 "social democratic, socialist and labor parties" in 55 countries. SI's "organizing document" cites capitalism as the cause of "devastating crises," "mass unemployment," "imperialist expansion," and "colonial exploitation" worldwide. The Commission for a Sustainable World Society, with which Browner worked, contends that "the developed world must reduce consumption and commit to binding and punitive limits on greenhouse gas emissions.”

There’s another one of those curious little points. Only the “developed world” would be required by the U.N.’s climate initiatives to “reduce consumption and commit to binding and punitive limits on greenhouse gas emissions." Even though developing nation’s manufacturing and industrial centers use fuels and manufacturing processes that are far more damaging to the ecology than developed nations, they would be exempt. Instead of a comprehensive climate program to reduce harmful emissions, that sounds more like a social program designed to shift industrial growth from Western Democracies to the third world. It also sounds incredibly similar to the mission statement from Carol Browner’s Commission for a Sustainable World Society.

Well what do you know? Just when we needed proof that Ms. Browner’s agenda has more to do with changing the United States economic system than it does with changing the climate, along comes Cass Sunstein the White House “Regulatory Czar”. Mr. Sunstein penned a 2007 University of Chicago Law School paper with fellow attorney Eric A. Posner, in which he debated whether America should pay "justice" to the world by entering into a compensation agreement that would be a net financial loss for the U.S. He argues it is "desirable" to redistribute America's wealth to poorer nations.

Throughout Sunstein's paper, entitled "Climate Change Justice", he maintains U.S. wealth should be redistributed to poorer nations. The paper makes references to terms such as "distributive justice" several times throughout the 39 page document. In the paper Sunstein says: "It is even possible that desirable redistribution is more likely to occur through climate change policy than otherwise, or to be accomplished more effectively through climate policy than through direct foreign aid," He adds: "We agree that if the United States does spend a great deal on emissions reductions as part of an international agreement, and if the agreement does give particular help to disadvantaged people, considerations of distributive justice support its action, even if better redistributive mechanisms are imaginable.”

Sunstein also suggests "If the United States agrees to participate in a climate change agreement on terms that are not in the nation's interest, but that help the world as a whole, there would be no reason for complaint, certainly if such participation is more helpful to poor nations than conventional foreign-aid alternatives". He also maintains: "If we care about social welfare, we should approve of a situation in which a wealthy nation is willing to engage in a degree of self-sacrifice when the world benefits more than that nation loses.”

Of course, if I am going to post quotes from the Obama administration how could I possibly forget Obama’s former green jobs Czar, Van Jones. He may be gone, but he is definitely not forgotten. Mr. Jones is an invaluable addition to this collection because he cared so little about what he said out loud. His quotes and video statements can still be easily found on the internet, mostly because there is no longer a need to hide them. In the end, it was not his racist statements that white businesses were steering pollution into minority neighborhoods, nor his open admission that he was a communist that forced his resignation from the White House. It wasn’t even unceasing rhetoric about how they would use the farce of “green jobs” to steer billions of dollars to ease, what he considered, racial injustices. He was forced to resign because he was one of the radical fools that signed a petition demanding the Bush administration admit their guilt in concocting the 9/11 attacks so they could launch a war on Islam.

The only reason I feel compelled to mention his quotes now, is because after researching Carol Browner and Cass Sunstein, it is clear that he was not bubbling over with his own idea of what should be. His statements are directly in line with too many of Obama’s other special advisors not to be bullet points in their plan to reshape global politics. For instance, Van Jones said: “The green economy should not just be about reclaiming throw-away stuff. It should be about reclaiming thrown-away communities. It should not just be about recycling things to give them a second life. We should also be gathering up people and giving them a second chance.”

He also said: “All the big ideas for getting us onto a lower carbon trajectory involve a lot of people doing a lot of work, and that's been missing from the conversation. This is a great time to go to the next step and ask, well, who's going to do the work? Who's going to invest in the new technologies? What are ways to get communities wealth, improved health, and expanded job opportunities out of this improved transition?” Both of those quotes sound a lot like Sunstein’s proposals on redistribution and a plan to correct some of the ills that Browner blames on capitalism.

Some may say that wanting to put people to work and provide healthcare might be social programs, but is Mr. Jones really suggesting socialism? Well, read on because he also said "…But, inside that minimum demand was a very radical kernel that eventually meant that from 1964 to 1968 complete revolution was on the table for this country. And, I think that this green movement has to pursue those same steps and stages. Right now we say we want to move from suicidal gray capitalism to something eco-capitalism where at least we're not fast-tracking the destruction of the whole planet. Will that be enough? No, it won't be enough. We want to go beyond the systems of exploitation and oppression altogether. But, that's a process and I think that's what's great about the movement that is beginning to emerge is that the crisis is so severe in terms of joblessness, violence and now ecological threats that people are willing to be both pragmatic and visionary. So the green economy will start off as a small subset and we are going to push it and push it and push it until it becomes the engine for transforming the whole society.”

So there it is in his own words. A green movement should pursue the same steps and stages as the radical movement that nearly brought us to revolution in the mid ‘60s? A green movement that they will push and push, not to transform the energy economy as we were told, but to transform the “whole society”? The idea that this is all being brought about by a multitude of converging crisis’s to force us into drastic action also sounds way too much like Cloward and Piven to be a coincidence.

Neither the Climate Bill, Cap and Trade, the UN accords on Climate Change nor the “green movement” has anything to do with greenhouse gasses or global warming. They have everything to do with seeing America surrender its wealth and production capabilities to give some of those poor, struggling third world nations a chance to grow. This is simply a tool for the transfer of American power, money and industries abroad; to strengthen the UN and other “world governance organizations and prepare the US citizenry for a life securely bound in the Marxist yoke.

Paul

Cloward and Pivens - The Community Organizer's Play Book

2010-05-12T06:00:00.000-07:00

This is one of the most important pieces I have presented on the Vigilance Project. I must give credit to Glenn Beck for bringing Cloward and Pivens out of the shadows and to Discoverthenetworks.org for assembling so much information on groups and people that would prefer to remain hidden from view. This is long but please read it in its entirety. Trust me; you will understand why when you reach the end. This is where all the loose strings begin to merge and the fabric of what is happening starts to take shape.

First proposed in 1966 and named after Columbia University sociologists Richard Andrew Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, the "Cloward-Piven Strategy" is designed to create conditions that will lead to the fall of capitalism by overloading the government bureaucracy with a flood of impossible demands, eventually driving society into crisis and economic collapse.

Cloward and Piven published an article titled "The Weight of the Poor: A Strategy to End Poverty" in the May 2, 1966 issue of “The Nation”. Following its publication, The Nation sold an unprecedented 30,000 reprints. Activists clamored over the "crisis strategy" or "Cloward-Piven Strategy," as it is now called. Many saw this as an ultimate weapon for the radical’s arsenal.

In their 1966 article, Cloward and Piven claimed that the ruling classes used welfare to weaken the poor and that through providing a meager social safety net; the rich only sought to prevent rebellion. Poor people can advance only when "the rest of society is afraid of them," Cloward told The New York Times in 1970. Cloward and Pivens wrote: Rather than placating the poor with government hand-outs, activists should work to sabotage and destroy the welfare system; the collapse of the welfare state would ignite a political and financial crisis that would rock the nation; poor people would rise in revolt; only then would "the rest of society" accept their demands.

The key to this rebellion would be to expose the inadequacy of the welfare state. Cloward-Piven's early promoters named radical organizer Saul Alinsky as their inspiration; yes, the same Alinsky that Obama taught his students about in College. "Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules," Alinsky wrote in his 1972 book Rules for Radicals. When pressed to honor every word of every law and statute, every Judaeo-Christian moral tenet, and every implicit promise of the liberal social contract, human agencies inevitably fall short. The system's failure to "live up" to its rule book can then be used to discredit it altogether, and to replace the capitalist "rule book" with a socialist one.

Cloward and Piven noted that the number of Americans barely surviving on welfare probably represented less than half of those that were technically eligible for full benefits. They proposed a "massive drive to recruit the poor onto the welfare rolls." Cloward and Piven postulated that if even a fraction of the potential welfare recipients demanded their entitlements; it would bankrupt the system. The result would be "a profound financial and political crisis" that would create "powerful forces … for major economic reform at the national level.

The “Strategy” called for "cadres of aggressive organizers" to use "demonstrations to create a climate of militancy." Intimidated by threats of black violence, politicians would appeal to the federal government for help. Carefully orchestrated media campaigns, carried out by friendly, left wing journalists, would float the idea of "a federal program of income redistribution," in the form of a guaranteed living income for all; working and non-working people alike. Local officials would grasp at this idea for relief from the chaos and they would apply pressure on Washington to implement it. With every major city erupting into anarchy, Washington would have to act.

This “Trojan Horse” movement would seem to have the purpose of providing material help to the needy while concealing the real objective of drafting poor people into service as revolutionary soldiers in order to jam the bureaucratic machine and bring the system to a complete halt. Fear, chaos, violence and economic collapse would all be part of such a breakdown forcing society into radical change. That was the theory.

Cloward and Piven recruited a militant black organizer named George Wiley to lead their new movement. In the summer of 1967, Wiley founded the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO). His tactics closely followed the recommendations set out in the strategy. His followers invaded welfare offices across the United States, bullying social workers and loudly demanding every penny to which the law "entitled" them. By 1969, NWRO claimed a paid membership of 22,500 families, with 523 chapters across the nation. Curiously enough, Wade Rathke was an organizer for the NWRO before moving on to found ACORN and SEIU. What a coincidence!

The New York Times commented on Wiley’s efforts: “These methods proved effective”. "The flooding succeeded beyond Wiley's wildest dreams," wrote Sol Stern in the City Journal. "From 1965 to 1974, the number of single-parent households on welfare soared from 4.3 million to 10.8 million, despite moderate economic conditions. By the early 1970s, one person was on the welfare rolls in New York City for every two working in the city's private economy." As a direct result of its massive welfare spending, New York City was forced to declare bankruptcy in 1975 and the entire state of New York nearly went down with it. The Cloward-Piven strategy had proved its effectiveness.

The Cloward-Piven strategy depended on surprise. Once society recovered from the initial shock, the backlash began. New York's welfare crisis horrified America, giving rise to a reform movement which culminated in the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, which imposed time limits on federal welfare, along with strict eligibility and work requirements. Surprisingly, both Cloward and Piven attended the White House signing of the bill as guests of President Clinton.

Cloward and Piven never again revealed their intentions as openly as they had in their 1966 article. Even so, their activism in subsequent years continued the tactic of attempting to overload the system. When the public caught on to their welfare scheme, Cloward and Piven simply moved on, applying pressure to other areas of the bureaucracy that appeared to have had weaknesses.

In 1982, devoted followers of the Cloward-Piven strategy founded a new "voting rights movement," which claimed to take up the unfinished work of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Like ACORN, the organization that spear-headed this campaign, the new "voting rights" movement was led by veterans of George Wiley's welfare rights crusade. Its flagship organizations were Project Vote and Human SERVE, both founded in 1982. Project Vote is an ACORN front group, launched by former NWRO organizer and ACORN co-founder Zach Polett. Human SERVE was founded by Richard A. Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, along with another former NWRO organizer named Hulbert James.

ACORN, Project Vote and Human SERVE, lobbied energetically for the so-called Motor-Voter law, which Bill Clinton signed into law in 1993. The Motor-Voter bill is largely responsible for swamping the voter rolls with invalid voter registrations signed in the name of deceased, ineligible or non-existent people, opening the door to the unprecedented levels of voter fraud and "voter disenfranchisement" claims that followed in subsequent elections.

The new "voting rights" coalition combines mass voter registration drives, typically featuring high levels of fraud, with the intimidation of election officials through frivolous lawsuits, unfounded charges of "racism" and "disenfranchisement," and direct action street protests. Just as they swamped America's welfare offices in the 1960s, Cloward-Piven clones now seek to overwhelm the nation's understaffed and poorly policed electoral system. Their tactics set the stage for the Florida recount crisis of 2000, and have introduced a level of fear, tension and foreboding to U.S. elections as encountered mainly in Third World countries.

Both the Living Wage and Voting Rights movements depend heavily on financial support from George Soros's Open Society Institute and his "Shadow Party". Through Soros’s support, the Cloward-Piven strategy continues to provide a blueprint for some of the Left's most ambitious campaigns.

So what do we actually have here? A strategy concocted by two radial sociologists designed to cripple the U.S. economy and force their idea of social justice on an unwitting society. Cloward-Piven follower, George Wiley, forms NWRO to test the theory which ultimately bankrupts New York City. Former NWRO organizers Wade Rathke and Zach Polett form ACORN to continue the strategy on a national level. Zach Polett goes on to form ACORN front group “Project Vote” in an effort to use the same tactics on the electoral system in the United States to steer future elections and to insure that election results are so tainted that the electoral process in America is disrupted.

But wait! There’s more! The Cloward-Piven strategy worked so well that the next level of radicals, many of which work in or have direct access to the White House and seek a single, unified, one world socialist government, have latched onto these principals to sow the seeds of America’s final hours. In fact, at least part of the push to enact a universal healthcare system in this country is linked to efforts to further disrupt our financial security and to nudge America into an acceptance of more, and even larger, socialist programs to prepare them for “the plunge”.

George Soros is one of the major figures in this conspiracy and has billions behind him to put it in play. His direct funding supports groups that continue to chip away at our current social programs to further the successes of Cloward and Piven. His Open Society Institute leads a world wide effort to export this strategy abroad for all the same reasons. Among other projects, Cloward and Piven’s own group HumanServe, is very active in (get this) Lebanon and Israel. Nothing fishy about that…right?

George Soros supports groups that in turn, support the Congressional Progressive Caucus. The group “Shadow Party” was conceived and organized principally by George Soros, Hillary Clinton and Harold McEwan Ickes. It consists of more than five-dozen unions, activist groups, and think tanks. Their primary function is to insure the continued election of radicals to the United States government; the same radicals that were originally brought to power by Project Vote and other Soros funded voting rights groups. Do you still think this is all far fetched? An internet search can uncover most of these links and you can follow the strings from one to another to another until the web is visible.

Paul

Real Un-American Activities

2010-05-11T06:00:00.000-07:00

With Tea Parties and Conservative programming now being called seditious and un-American, I thought it would be a good time to discuss true un-American activity and its history. With roots established as far back as 1918, The House Un-American Activities Committee has provided the means for Congressional investigations of subversive activities conducted within or against, the United States. The direct precursors to The House Un-American Activities Committee can be found in the Overman Committee of 1918, the Fish Committee of 1930, the Special Committee on Un-American Activities of 1934-1937 and the Special Investigations Committee of 1938-1944.

The Overman Committee was a subcommittee of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary chaired by Senator Lee Slater Overman of North Carolina. The Overman Committee operated from September 1918 to June 1919 and investigated German as well as Bolshevik elements in the United States. Originally tasked with investigation pro-German sentiments in the American liquor industry, the priority shifted after the conclusion of World War One to focus on the affects of Communist Bolshevism in America after the Russian Revolution of 1917. This Committee had a decisive role in constructing an image of a radical threat to America during the First Red Scare.

Similarly, the Fish Committee of 1930 pursued the same interests. NY Congressman Hamilton Fish III, who was a fervent anti-communist, introduced on May 5, 1930, House Resolution 180, which proposed to establish a committee to investigate communist activities in the United States. The resulting committee, commonly known as the Fish Committee, investigated people and organizations suspected of being involved with or supporting communist activities in the United States. Among the committee's targets were the American Civil Liberties Union and communist presidential candidate William Z. Foster. The committee recommended granting the United States Department of Justice more authority to investigate communists, and strengthening of immigration and deportation laws to keep communists out of the United States.

In May 1938, the House Committee on Un-American Activities was established as a special investigating committee. It was chaired by Texas Representative Martin Dies Jr., and therefore known as the Dies Committee. Its work was aimed mostly at German American involvement in Nazi and Ku Klux Klan activity but the committee's chief counsel Ernest Adamson announced that "The committee has decided that it lacks sufficient data on which to base a probe." Instead of the Klan, HUAC concentrated on investigating the possibility that the American Communist Party had infiltrated the Works Progress Administration, including the Federal Theatre Project and the Federal Writers' Project.

Representative Dies, who was a supporter of the New Deal, eventually withdrew his support for FDR’s far reaching social programs in 1937. The Committee fell under attack by members of the Roosevelt administration after their investigations were found to involve child actress Shirley Temple, who was ten years old at the time. The attacks were an intentional misrepresentation of the Committees work since Miss Temple’s name was only mentioned as it had appeared on a list of Hollywood figures that sent greetings to the Communist-owned French newspaper, Ce Soir. Mr. Dies tried to appear before the public to address this deliberate attempt to discredit the Committee but was curiously refused air time by both CBS and NBC as they feared reprisal from the Roosevelt Administration through use of the FCC.

In 1945, The House Un-American Activities Committee became a standing or “permanent” committee. The Un-American Activities Committee has often been mistakenly identified with the anti-communist investigations of Senator Joseph McCarthy in 1953-1954. Although the goals were the same where subversive activities were concerned, Senator McCarthy chaired the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and had no direct involvement with The House Un-American Activities Committee.

After the House Un-American Activities Committee achieved status as a permanent committee, it became more focused on Communist subversive activities. Ironically, Democratic Congressman Samuel Dickstein, vice-chairman of the respective committees, would eventually be named in Soviet NKVD (precursor to the KGB) documents as a Soviet agent. Congressmen Dickstein, who had actually assisted in forming this committee to root out German fascists, apparently had not anticipated the change in the targets of committee’s investigations. The allegations remained unproven at that time and Dickstein later served as a Justice on the New York Supreme Court until his death in 1954.

In an interesting development, documents discovered in 1990s in the Moscow archives showed Dickstein was paid $1250 a month from 1937 to early 1940 by the NKVD, the Soviet spy agency, which hoped to get secret Congressional information on anti-Communist and pro-fascist forces. Whether Dickstein provided any intelligence is uncertain and when he left the Committee, the Soviets dropped him from their payroll.

Joseph McCarthy was a U.S. Senator from the state of Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957. Beginning in 1950, McCarthy became the most visible public face of a period in which Cold War tensions fueled fears of widespread Communist subversion. Through his position as Chairman of The Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Senator McCarthy made numerous claims that there were large numbers of Communists and Soviet spies and sympathizers inside the United States federal government and elsewhere.

His subcommittee held 169 hearings throughout 1953 and 1954. Of the 653 people called by the Committee during a 15 month period, 83 refused to answer questions about espionage and subversive activities on constitutional grounds and their names were made public. Nine additional witnesses invoked the Fifth Amendment in executive session, and their names were not made public. Some of the 83 were working or had worked for the U.S. Army, the U.S. Navy, the Government Printing Office, the Treasury Department, the Office of War Information, the Office of Strategic Services, and the Veterans Administration. Others were or had been employed at the Federal Telecommunications Laboratories in New Jersey, the secret radar laboratories of the Army Signal Corps in New Jersey, and General Electric defense plants in Massachusetts and New York.

Ultimately, McCarthy's tactics and his inability to substantiate his claims led him to be censured by the United States Senate. The term "McCarthyism," coined in 1950 in reference to McCarthy's practices, was soon applied to similar anti-communist pursuits. Today the term is used more generally to describe demagogic, reckless, and unsubstantiated accusations, as well as public attacks on the character or patriotism of political opponents. It is clear that Joe McCarthy faced the same opposition that the House Un-American Activities Committee did but was he wrong?

Recent disclosures point to a Soviet program of demoralization that infused money into key areas of our society to fund groups that would reduce the American resistance to socialist ideals. The Soviets funded labor movements in the 1920’s and ‘30s, which infiltrated the film industry and print news. They also established socialist professors in American universities and funded the anti-war movement against American involvement in Viet Nam.

Periodically, the news is still punctuated with names like Robert Hanson and Aldrich Ames, both if which were convicted of espionage and conspiracy, both of which are currently serving life sentences and both of which were in the employ of the Soviet Union and later, Russia, which serves to prove that this program of demoralization is still being practiced today.

The protests in Pittsburg that erupted into violence at the G20 conference were mostly anti-capitalist factions that acquired their left leaning tilt at the hands of radical professors that are still spreading the disease of socialism. You already know many of the colleges that are famous for this indoctrination by name, such as UCLA Berkeley, Columbia University, Bard College, etc, etc. Just the names invoke a response because the radical teachings in these schools are common knowledge.

Now we have new threats to our society. Since blatant socialism is still met with resistance the new communist social engineers have found a new host to infect; the environmental or “green” movement. Have you noticed that their message has recently changed from fighting pollution to “creating a green economy”? The new environmentalists (Marxist globalists) have presented their earth-saving agenda to the newest generation of indoctrinates with the added urgency that we must do this now or all is lost. What these clandestinely co-opted college students don’t realize is that these plans will do little to improve the environment since they are really crafted to destroy the U.S. economy and food supply; hence, destroying the American citizen’s resistance to socialism as it becomes their only hope for food and warmth.

No, Joe McCarthy isn’t rolling over in his grave and I doubt he would say “I told you so” even if he could. People like Joe McCarthy would have loved nothing more than to have been wrong and to know the nation he loved was safe and sound. If he were alive today he would probably be leading the charge to expose these threats just as he did then. He would be leading the charge to expel those that mean harm to our country not only from the schools, but from all facets of government as well.

Paul

Why Don't We Teach Civics Anymore?

2010-05-10T06:00:00.000-07:00

Today we are embarking on an entirely new path. Not that discussing current issues aren’t important, but what good is discussing politics when the nation is facing a crisis of far more serious consequence. When I went to school a million years ago, we not only learned about American History but we also took the required civics classes that taught us about our Constitution and how our government is supposed to work. Today, civics is no longer taught in grade schools and American History, in fact, all of history, seems to be under a constant state of revision with the passing of each successive year. As George Orwell said “He who controls the present controls the past and he who controls the past controls the future.” That lesson was not lost on the new generation of progressives.

Colleges focus on political science studies which for the most part, spend their days dissecting and interpreting the Constitution through the lens of societal change, or worse, social justice. Even though the Federalist papers tell us the exact intent of the founding fathers, weaving them into the studies would deny the social architects that teach these courses the ability to convince the students that the Constitution is dynamic and should be interpreted to meet modern political conditions. Let’s not forget that a good number of today’s college professors were the same people that “turned on, tuned in and dropped out” back in the 60’s; never having left their beliefs that America could in fact, become a social utopia if only the right people were in charge.

Considering today’s political climate I felt it was beneficial to revisit the documents that founded this country and the principals of the men who drafted them and that is why we did our series on the original Bill of Rights. Only through a complete understanding of the times in which they were written and the true intentions of the founders of this nation can we begin to steer the ship of state safely back to her intended course.

Why go so far back in time? After all, this is the twenty-first century. Because it was the genius of men like Thomas Jefferson, John Addams and Benjamin Franklin to name just a few, that created a completely new promise of a fair and just government. A nation, self-governed by its own citizens and not by a monarch or an emperor; a nation where free men wrote the laws that guaranteed the liberties of all and for the first time, imposed those laws on their own leaders so that no man would be exempt.

Agreeably, there were times in our history that were not quite so idealistic. The men that wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were aware that grave social issues such as slavery, had to be addressed for this nation to aspire to the goals they had set for themselves. They met fierce opposition from the Southern states who would kill the motion for independence if the document dared interfere with their sovereignty on such issues. Rather than lose the moment, they yielded to the Southern states so that the nation could be formed knowing that they could revisit the issue at a later date once the United States was actually united and the Bill of Rights already contained that language that would leave that door open for later discussion.

We must go back in time today, because those laws and principals are being tested by an administration that believes the Constitution is an inconvenience to the “work” they insist needs to be done and they have already taken steps to alter the understanding of that precious document until it resembles something that is convenient to their cause.

You know, I won’t apologize. I voted for McCain. Not because I thought he was some blazing example of what I wanted to see in a President, but honestly, I felt he was the lesser of two evils and none of the independent candidates were in a position to be considered serious contenders. When Obama won, I threw my hands up and said “Oh well, here comes another four years, or eight years of tax and spend policies, especially with the Democrats controlling both houses of Congress. At that moment, I had no idea what his election really meant.

This President has been engaged in the business of cultivating powers within the White House that have provided him the means to elude Congressional oversight. Of the dozens of “Special Advisors” (Czars) that he has appointed, to date very few have actually been vetted by Congress through the required Senate Confirmation Process. The Czars have been given powers to act without Congressional guidance and have even been accused of withholding information from Congress in what some critics have begun to call a “Shadow Government”.

There are wide and disturbing connections between the President, his advisors and people outside of the Federal Government that have a long history of affiliations with radical organizations and groups that can only be described as domestic terror cells. At least one of the President’s closest advisors is a self-avowed communist and many more are radical social engineers, some with ties to groups that in the past actively sought to cripple the government in favor of a Marxist regime.

One of those “affiliates” is Jeff Jones. Jeff Jones was one of the co-founders of the Weather Underground, a domestic terror group. Mr. Jones, having served his debt to society now sits as the NY Chairman of the Apollo Alliance. This is the group that has been credited for writing key portions of the stimulus bill that earmarked nearly eight-hundred billion dollars to revive the economy. $5.2 billion dollars of that money is scheduled to be distributed to non-profit community based organizations such as ACORN and The Apollo Alliance. Van Jones, the self proclaimed communist and former “green jobs” Czar is also a member of the board of the Apollo Alliance. That is quite a coincidence and one of those things that just makes you go Hmmmmm?

Jeff Immelt is the CEO of General Electric, a company that stands to make billions by providing smart grid technology that is a key infrastructure component of the climate bill. As it turns out, Mr. Immelt, who was recently appointed by President Obama to the board of the NY Federal Reserve, also wrote parts of both the healthcare and the climate bill.

Excuse me? Since when do we allow private citizens to take part in the writing of legislation, especially when they stand to profit from the provisions contained in that legislation? That used to be called a conflict of interest when I was growing up. When you look at the enormity of the bills and the trillions of dollars these will cost the American tax payer I have a far better name for it. It is nothing less than the wholesale looting of the United States Treasury.

Senator John Conyers (D-MI) was quoted talking about the people that are shouting "read the bill, read the bill" at the town hall meetings and said they make him laugh; then added "What good is reading the bill if it's a thousand pages and you don't have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you read the bill?" Well Senator, if Congress is not writing the bills, and Congress is not reading the bills then how can you claim to honor the oath you took to support and defend the Constitution when you blindly vote on the bills with little or no understanding of what is in them?

Fortunately, the Constitution is still intact at least for the time being, so the ship of state still has a rudder. However, the wrong hands are now holding the wheel. This is a rare opportunity that we have been given. If reasonable people shed the light of truth on this assault on our Republic, we can bring our nation together again. The factions that seek to dilute the Constitution and usurp power from the American people are a dangerous and focused group but they are still small in number. Our Constitution is still the supreme law of the land. Speak boldly and demand answers while we still have our authority as citizens of a nation that is of, by and for the people. Do it now, while the Congress is still required to answer to us and while the President is still required to answer to Congress.

The petty partisanship that has kept the political parties at each other’s throats needs to end if we are to face this crisis and endure. We must all realize that disagreements on policy are the discussions that take place in any democracy and those discussions are far different than the “change” these people are trying to slip in under the radar. This is an insidious and vile attack at the very core of our country and should be treated no differently than if it were a direct assault on our land by a belligerent nation. We must unify to possess the strength to defeat them. Our nation, like an oak tree, can withstand nearly any assault from the outside. It is when disease penetrates the bark and rot takes hold from within that the mighty oak falls.

Paul

The Tenth Amendment

2010-05-07T06:00:00.000-07:00

The Tenth Amendment
Powers of the States and People.
Ratified 12/15/1791.

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

We are addressing the Tenth Amendment on The Vigilance Project with the same alacrity that we did the First and Second Amendments. Not because of what it is, but rather, because of how badly it has been ignored. This amendment, more than any other, has been diluted and intentionally misinterpreted by many administrations and those administrations have, to date, found willing coconspirators in the nation’s courts.

Since President Obama has taken the oath of office it appears to anyone outside of his inner circle that they have embarked on the course of massively increasing the scope and power of the Federal Government. The new powers they seek are being highly contested and the speed at which they are attempting to force legislation through Congress suggests that those that are opposed to this “fattening of the Federal hog” do not have the luxury of waiting until the mid-term Congressional elections to seek reasonable restraints. They are seeking to move their agenda forward before the challenges to the Constitutionality of these power grabs can even be launched.

The Tenth Amendment has been looked at by many as the only hope we currently have to restore balance to the union. We created this lumbering giant through our own ignorance and complacency and we are fast approaching a point of no return. If several new and extremely large bills such as Financial Reform, Immigration Reform or the Climate Bill actually pass, the Federal government will be so big and their powers so all encompassing that the chains of the U.S. Constitution may no longer be strong enough to restrain this super agency.

Why did that just sound like I blamed the average American for this? It sounds like I did because I did. Thomas Jefferson warned that Democracy can only work with an informed and educated electorate. Most of the electorate in this nation are not only poorly informed but have been educated with Marxist ideals by Socialists hidden within the education system. We watched the evening news transform from the daily reporting of important events into a scripted endorsement of the political views of the editor at large and we did nothing. We watched as our schools systems began the teaching of revisionist history and promoted the ignorance of the civil legislative process and we did nothing. We watched as Congress passed one questionable law after another and still did nothing. We did nothing and for our efforts, we got what we paid for.

The Federal Government has been engaged in the practice of siphoning powers from the states through random acts of legislation that were ‘tweaked” into existence through a loose interpretation of the enumerated powers that the Federal Government was originally entrusted with. FDR continued Wilson’s legacy and had sweeping powers granted to the Federal government during the Great Depression to empower his attempts to stabilize the economy during a time of crisis. To gain those powers, FDR and the Supreme Court had to stretch reason and the Constitution to the breaking point.

According to the Tenth Amendment, the government of the United States has the power to regulate only those matters delegated to it by the Constitution. Other powers are reserved to the states or to the people (and even the states cannot alienate some of these). The Commerce Clause in Article 1 Section 8 is one of the powers specifically delegated to Congress and how it is interpreted is very important in determining the scope of federal legislative power.

In the twentieth century the complex economic challenges of the Great Depression triggered a reevaluation in both Congress and the Supreme Court. This reinterpretation of the Commerce Clause gave the Federal government the ability to act outside of the enumerated powers in an attempt to correct a faltering national economy. It was after all, a crisis of international proportion. Of course, once you allow a breach of the Constitution for one thing, it sets the stage for further transgressions in the name of precedence.

During the Second World War (1942), the Court ruled that in the case of Wickard v. Filburn, federal regulations of wheat production could constitutionally be applied to wheat grown for "home consumption" on a farm; that is, wheat grown to be fed to farm animals or otherwise consumed on the farm. The government’s argument was that a farmer growing "his own wheat" can have a substantial cumulative effect on interstate commerce, because if all farmers exceeded their production quotas, a significant amount of wheat would either not be sold on the market or would be bought from other producers. Hence, in the aggregate, if farmers were allowed to consume their own wheat, it would affect the interstate market of wheat which justified government regulation under the commerce clause.

After Wickard v. Filburn, many such cases were decided solely on the precedent established in this case. In 2009, the Federal government is confidently using this precedent to declare the constitutionality of its pursuit of regulatory control of the healthcare industry. To say that a man in Peoria visiting a doctor in Peoria to arrange for a medical treatment that will be administered in Peoria somehow falls under the auspices of interstate commerce requires the same stretch of the imagination that was used to regulate wheat grown for personal consumption; wheat that not only did not leave the state, but didn’t even leave the farm it was grown on. Worse yet is the individual mandate in the healthcare bill that would require all Americans to purchase health insurance. For the first time in the history of this country, the Federal government is attempting to force people to purchase a private good against their will; that the act of not buying something is being perverted into a description of commerce that can be regulated by the Federal government.

The school of thought that justifies these actions is to say the least, a gross misinterpretation of the commerce clause and to say the most, a criminal attempt on the part of the Federal government to harvest powers that were clearly denied to them in the Constitution. Now that many States are considering or have already passed legislation to reaffirm their status as sovereign States, the first logical step is to revisit the decisions that give precedence to the Federal government’s drive to obfuscate even more powers belonging to the States and the people under the guise of interstate commerce. That is now under way and cases like Wickard v. Filburn are being tested again to determine if the decisions in those cases were in fact, correct and appropriate.

Another method used extensively by the Federal government to garner State participation in Federal mandates is through the use of funding. This tactic is widely used to obtain compliance for federal mandates where there is no Constitutional authority to enact the legislation in question.

The Federal government had issued directives that would change the maximum allowable blood alcohol level to .08 in an effort to create a uniform legal statute for intoxicated driving nationwide. States that would not adhere to this statutory change would lose eligibility for part or all of the Federal highway funds for road maintenance and expansion as the adoption of this standard became a requirement of the application for funds.

The same tactic was used to enforce the national 55 mph speed limit in an effort to conserve fuel after the fuel crisis of the early 70’s. The National Maximum Speed Law was a provision of the 1974 Emergency Highway Energy Conservation Act signed into law by Richard Nixon. It was revised in 1987 to allow certain highway speeds to rise to 65 mph and was eventually repealed in 1995. During the period of time that it was in force, the maximum allowable speed limit set by the Federal government was written into the requirements for eligibility for any State seeking Federal highway funds.

Now that the Federal government has had such wide ranging success in forcing even unconstitutional legislation upon the States through these tactics they have become bolder through the years. The States are being increasingly burdened by partially funded and even totally unfunded mandates. The legislation may have funding allocated for only the first few years leaving the states to figure out how to pay for the projects after the allocated funds have been exhausted. Some mandates, the high risk pools the States would be required to form by the healthcare bill, do not even pay the total cost to enact the legislation let alone the operating budget to maintain them. The States, like the people living in them have reached a turning point and are now seeking relief from these unfair and unconstitutional practices.

Since August 2009, 37 states have introduced resolutions in support of "state sovereignty" under the 10th Amendment. In seven states the resolutions passed (Alaska, Idaho, North Dakota, South Dakota, Oklahoma, Louisiana, and Tennessee). Further, two states (Montana and Tennessee) have passed specific legislation exempting residents from certain federal firearms regulations, while Arizona has a proposed constitutional amendment (to be voted on in November of 2010) which would nullify a national health care system from operating in the state.

While the Federal ATF has issued a letter to State officials in Tennessee reminding them that Federal law supersedes State law and that has the net effect of rendering the Firearms Freedom act invalid, no court challenges have yet to occur. I am sure that once the Federal government carries through with their threat of enacting restrictive legislation of the retail sale of ammunition, Tennessee and the Federal government will be seeking their day in the Supreme Court to settle the matter.

I pray that Tennessee wins that case because that will be the first swing of the axe that will begin to whittle the Federal government back to an acceptable size. In the end, if we cannot deflate the Federal government until it fits back into the box it came in, the budgets will continue to climb, the deficits will continue to defy logic, and the national debt will eventually attain a weight that will crush this nation.

Paul

The Ninth Amendment

2010-05-06T06:00:00.000-07:00

The Ninth Amendment to the United States Constitution
Construction of Constitution.
Ratified 12/15/1791.

“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

“It is clear that the first eight amendments classify a list of clearly “enumerated rights”; rights that are identified and at least, basically described. The Ninth Amendment documents the recognition that man posses more rights and liberties than those contained in the eight preceding amendments. The Ninth Amendment provides a general protection of those unnamed rights by prohibiting the Federal government from enacting legislation that would deny any other rights simply because they were unnamed. It is important to note that the Federal government was denied the same statement of unnamed rights, limiting the government to hold only the rights and authorities specifically enumerated in the Constitution. That will be an important part of our discussion on the Tenth Amendment.

The Bill of Rights were crafted and added to the Constitution as a concession to the anti-Federalists that did not support the creation of a strong central authority without absolute constraints on its powers. Federalists argued that there was no need to add amendments to protect State and civilian rights since the Federal government would not be allowed to hold powers sufficient to impede those rights. Fortunately, the anti-Federalists won the day and judging by the number of challenges that the Supreme Court has faced over the years on the denial of Constitutional rights, the anti-Federalists have been vindicated in their fear of that power.

There were a number of unresolved issues during the forming of this nation, including slavery, which would nearly destroy the United States as we descended into a bloody Civil War to determine once and for all, the moral course of the country. As we discussed in earlier posts, the Declaration of Independence was nearly scrapped because of the allusions to the barbarous practice of slavery. The Southern States would have let it die then and there if the “offending” remarks were not stricken. The crafters of the Declaration withdrew what the Southern States considered “offensive remarks” knowing that a nation had to exist first and that the opportunity to correct this issue would present itself at a later date if they were diligent in the preparation of the Constitution that would govern this new nation.

The abolition of Slavery was really an eventuality because once the conscience of the nation recognized that the slaves were indeed men and women and not merely property, the Federal government would have to confer and guarantee the same protection of the enumerated rights upon them that the rest of the nation enjoyed. The Ninth Amendment will come into play almost exactly 100 years after the Civil War as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 clarified some of the rights there were not “enumerated” within the first eight Amendments. Again, it is important to note that the Civil Rights Act was not a broadening of Federal power but merely a refinement of the definitions associated with the existing Bill of Rights.

In our discussions of some of the previous Amendments we saw that the Supreme Court had been charged with deciding the specifics details of some of the provisions of the Bill of Rights. What is a speedy trial? What is cruel and unusual punishment? And so on. Those decisions also fall under the Ninth Amendment protection of non-enumerated rights. While those decisions were based primarily on definitions of existing rights, the legalists could have easily argued that those provisions were never written into the Amendments and therefore had no basis in law. It is only because the Constitution includes language that prohibits the government from denying unwritten rights that allows us the ability to argue in the cause of common sense, decency and justice. Without the Ninth Amendment there would be no basis for many of the challenges to the Constitution that have already taken place as those who were in control at the moment would have the discretion to adjust the criteria for things such as “cruel and unusual” and Speedy” to suit the prevailing winds of the social climate.

Prior to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, we saw situations where the justice system of an entire State endorsed and allowed all manner of illegal behaviors only because those acts were perpetrated against blacks. Segregation was the rule, reprisals were encouraged, investigations were thwarted and murderers, when finally apprehended, were released through mock trials. Not that the Civil Rights Act put an end to these practices overnight, but it did provide the Federal government the tools to place the full weight of the nation’s resources against those crimes, to prosecute the responsible under new Federal Statutes free from the interference of local politics in order to preserve the Constitutional rights of all Americans, regardless of race or creed.

The Ninth Amendment may become even more important as no less that 33 States have either proposed or passed legislation that reaffirms the sovereignty of the State as it appears in the Tenth Amendment. This is being done in the face of proposed Federal legislation that would place increasing financial burdens on States to fund mandatory programs that are only partially funded by the Federal government or in some cases, not funded at all. Also, since the healthcare bill has passed, there are Constitutional questions as to whether or not the Federal government has the authority to impose fines to force individuals to purchase healthcare insurance and if one or more of our un-enumerated rights are being violated as our choices for healthcare are impeded by Federal programs.

Then there is the Energy Bill (Cap and Trade) that is designed to force behavioral changes in the area of personal energy consumption through the use of punitive taxes. I would think that any government program designed to effect behavioral changes in the personal consumption of anything should be considered a violation of our un-enumerated rights. If passed, I am sure this will meet the criteria for a challenge based on those rights as well.

As though the insult of cap and trade was not enough, then let’s look at the proposals for a new tax on “sugary beverages”. In the effort to find more play money for Congress, they are considering placing a penny per ounce tax on any beverage that contains sugar. Of course this is cleverly disguised as a weapon in the war on obesity, but we can see the real intent when the proponents have dollars and cents figures in mind of what this tax will generate in revenue while they have a hard time establishing actuarial figures, what the expected health benefits will be over the same period of time. Again, a tax disguised as a tool to modify our behavior, the Constitutionality of which is in serious question.

Do you see the course this nation is taking? We used to fund public information programs so that people could make informed decisions about how they will live their own lives. Now we are using the tax structure to force behavioral changes simply because the think tanks in Washington believe you are incapable of making reasonable choices on your own. You know, when the punitive cigarette taxes came into play; the smoking opponents cheered. I agree it’s a nasty, filthy habit but provided smokers were courteous and businesses were willing to construct separate and filtered smoking areas, it should have remained a nasty, filthy personal choice.

I warned those that cheered that this was just the beginning. I recognized that when government was involved, that this was only about the revenue and not the cigarette. After all, then as now, the dollars were added up and spent before the heath risk benefits were still being debated. If it was not just about the money then why are the States crying that cigarette tax revenues are drying up as people quit and they may have to cut the programs that benefited from that tax money. No one believed me but now that they want to tax tanning salons and your kids “Hi C”, what do you think of me now? The tax will add roughly fifty-cents to a two liter bottle of soda and a dollar fifty to a 12 pack case of cans. Curiously diet soda will be exempt even though the heath impact of artificial sweeteners is still hotly debated. As these new sin taxes are being thrust on us through the healthcare bill, junk food taxes are already being discussed and aren’t far behind these latest assaults on freedom.

As our choices are slowly being steered by the heavy hand of government to implement additional Federal grabs for the few dollars we have left, I implore you to learn about your rights and fight fiercely to preserve them. Is it a stretch of the imagination to suggest that if Washington feels totally justified in taxing us into compliance with their idea of what a healthy American should be, that they may eventually use the same tactics to gain compliance for other more radical ideas? Maybe the things they believe American’s should “think” are important? Something to consider, huh? Big brother is watching and if you don’t squeal soon, the intrusions will get worse as your silence convinces them that they can do damned near anything.

Paul

The Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Amendments

2010-05-05T06:00:00.001-07:00

We have been exploring the Bill of Rights since last week. We have made some important statements about these protections, particularly the First and Second Amendments in conjunction with the apparent efforts of the current administration and its supporters to at the very least, weaken those rights. While I do not want to ignore any of these Amendments, I do want to accelerate the process slightly so that we can get to a timely discussion on the Ninth and Tenth Amendments. The importance of which will be readily recognizable to anyone once the discussion begins.

This is not to imply that the following three amendments are not as equally critical to the existence of a free nation, but these amendments, which are for the most part, self explanatory and with the exception of the Eighth Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment, are rarely challenged.

I will say that the discussions we are to have on the Ninth and Tenth Amendments will overshadow these three only in their immediate connection to current flow of politics and to the efforts many States are now pursuing to reinforce these rights in the face of increasing pressure and interference by the Federal Government.

The Sixth Amendment
Right to Speedy Trial, Confrontation of Witnesses.
Ratified 12/15/1791.

“In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.”

It is a safe assumption that all Americans agree that the innocent should be free and the guilty should be punished. To insure justice to that end, the Sixth Amendment requires that all persons facing criminal prosecution do so in a fair and impartial way and that the trial that will determine a person’s guilt or innocence be held within a reasonable period of time.

In 1966 Sheppard v. Maxwell, 384 U.S. 333, determined that a public trial was not absolute and could be denied if the publicity associated with the trial would impact or prevent a fair and impartial verdict. While important, this case was related only to the right to a public trial and not a speedy one.

In many other justice systems innocence was not presumed and those facing charges also faced the reality that they were considered guilty until such time as their innocence could be established. The incarceration was harsh and the trials to establish guilt or innocence happened expressly at the convenience of the government, which could be years.

A measure to establish what is considered “speedy” had to be defined if this amendment were to have any meaning at all. Incredibly, it wasn’t until 1972 that a reasonable challenge had been made to the Supreme Court requiring that they rule on what measure should be used to determine if a person’s right to speedy trial had been violated. That case, Barker v. Wingo, 407 U.S. 514 alleged that the defendants right to a speedy trial had been violated and required a judgment from the court as to the exact definition of what would constitute a violation of law.

The court rendered a decision that the speed at which a trial should proceed must be determined by the facts in each individual case and did write four criteria with which the courts could base that determination on. Those four points are:

Delay:
1- Length of Delay: A delay of a year or more from the date on which the speedy trial right "attaches" (the date of arrest or indictment, whichever first occurs) was termed "presumptively prejudicial" (but the Court has never explicitly ruled that any absolute time limit applies.)

Reason for delay:

2- The prosecution may not excessively delay the trial for its own advantage, but a trial may be delayed to secure the presence of an absent witness or other practical considerations.

3- Time and manner in which the defendant has asserted his right: If a defendant acquiesces to the delay when it works to his own benefit, he cannot later claim that he has been unduly delayed.

4- Degree of prejudice to the defendant which the delay has caused.

The Supreme Court ruled against the petitioner, Willie Barker, in that he had previously waived his right to a speedy trial by agreeing to the continuances, and that the verdict was not prejudiced by the delays. However, the importance of this case is evident in the crafting of the four points that would determine the viability of future challenges to this Amendment.

The following year (1973), the Supreme Court heard the case of Strunk v. United States, 412 U.S. 434 in which these criteria were put to the test. The Supreme Court found in favor on the petitioner based on the four points established in Barker v. Wingo, and overturned a conviction obtained in his trial after it was determined that Strunk’s rights to a speedy trial had in fact been violated.

The Seventh Amendment
Trial by Jury in Civil Cases.
Ratified 12/15/1791.

“In Suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law.”

Even where a legal, rather than an monetary , issue is in question, the judge has a role in the determination of the verdict. The Supreme Court has held that judges may render an opinion on the facts in dispute provided that the jury actually determines the dispute after deliberation. A judge may also direct the jury to pay special attention to certain evidence and require the jury to answer certain questions relating to the case in addition to giving a verdict. If the judge deems the plaintiff's evidence insufficient, he may direct the jury to find in the defendant's favor. The jury may, however, return a verdict contrary to the judge's direction.

As common law provided, the judge has the power to set aside (or nullify) a jury verdict that he deemed was reached contrary to the evidence or the law but common law precluded the judge from himself entering a verdict. Where a judge has nullified a verdict on these grounds, only a new trial with a new jury would be the only permissible course.

The Eighth Amendment
Cruel and Unusual Punishment.
Ratified 12/15/1791.

“Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.:

The Eighth Amendment is almost identical to a provision in the English Bill of Rights of 1689, in which Parliament declared, "as their ancestors in like case have usually done...that excessive bail ought not to be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.”
In 1947 the Supreme Court ruled that the Eighth Amendment protection against cruel and unusual punishment did, in fact apply to the individual States as well as to the Federal government.
While the 1878 Supreme Court did issue general prohibitions against a number of punishments including drawing and quartering, public dissecting, burning alive, or disemboweling, it would not be until 1972 (apparently a very busy year for the Supreme Court) that the court finally rendered a decision that spelled out, yet another four points that could be used to determine whether a punishment could be construed as cruel or unusual.

Those points are:

1- The "essential predicate" is "that a punishment must not by its severity be degrading to human dignity," especially torture.
2-"A severe punishment that is obviously inflicted in wholly arbitrary fashion.”
3- "A severe punishment that is clearly and totally rejected throughout society.”
4- "A severe punishment that is patently unnecessary.”

As far as the death penalty is concerned, the Supreme Court has had a mixed bag of decisions over the years. Some cases centered on the method used for execution and others in the actual imposition of a death penalty where the victim of the crime had not been killed such as in cases of rape.

The argument on the death penalty is a morally charged subject that is deeply contested where ever it is used. Instead of outlawing the practice entirely, The Supreme Court has instead, prohibited the use of language that would require a mandatory death sentence for certain crimes and has also required that special legal procedures be used to guarantee that capital crimes are pursued with great care and are scrupulously prosecuted. To meet this requirement, some States have opted to remove the duty of imposing the death sentence from the judge altogether and have instead, opted to hold two separate jury trials; one to determine guilt or innocence and upon conviction a second trial to determine the severity of the punishment ranging from imprisonment to execution.

I myself do not oppose the death penalty for certain crimes but we have all seen overzealous prosecutors that are more interested in a conviction than the truth. Case in point was the rape case involving the 2006 Duke University Lacrosse team. North Carolina District Attorney Mike Nifong ignored exculpatory evidence that would have cleared the Duke students of any wrongdoing and had continued to shape the actions of police and other persons involved in the case. Mr. Difong then aggressively pursued a false trial for what some have said was his goal to gain the notoriety that comes with winning a conviction in a highly publicized trial.

I would submit that some dangerous men just like Mike Nifong, still exist within the criminal justice system. With that in mind, only irrefutable physical evidence should allow us, a reasonable and civilized society, the certainty required to escort convicted criminals towards the death penalty regardless of the alleged crime. If we are to deprive one of their life as the supreme form of punishment, we must be deadly sure that there is no mistake in how that conviction was obtained. We must be sure that we are right by a factor of 200% or more or answer for our lack of diligence in a far higher court.

Paul

The Fifth Amendment

2010-05-04T06:00:00.000-07:00

The Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Trial and Punishment, Compensation for Takings. Ratified 12/15/1791.

“No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

Many of the constraints placed upon the government by the bill of rights stem from English Common Law which itself, can be traced back to the Magna Carta of 1215. In fact, the phrases “Due Process of Law” and “Grand Jury” both have their origin in the Magna Carta. Part of those legal protections were discussed yesterday in the Fourth Amendment that prohibits unlawful search and seizure.

To arrive at matters covered by the Fifth Amendment, we can hope that law enforcement has fulfilled their obligation under the Fourth Amendment and enough evidence has been lawfully gathered to proceed to trial. Minor offenses of the law are tried at the local level, or at the State level for more serious charges. While the provisions of double jeopardy, due process of law and self incrimination apply to all criminal proceedings, the requirement for a Grand Jury only applies to special circumstances involving capital crimes or other Federal offences. Curiously, the rules of evidence gathering are not a factor in a Grand Jury hearing which may hear all evidence before determining if is there is cause to recommend indictment. It is only during the trial phase where the admissibility of evidence is actually determined.

Only the most grievous crimes and capital offences are tried at the Federal level and the Fifth Amendment requires a special process because of the severity of the punishments associated with crimes of that nature. Except in cases of military tribunals during a time of war, the Fifth Amendment requires that a Grand Jury be convened to determine cause to bring charges in a capital offence. The common thread that binds all of the amendments together is once again, a deep distrust of a strong central government. Since it was natural in early law to use the legal system to dispose of one’s political enemies, the founding fathers felt it was critical that the charges leading to a capital trial were well founded and appropriate. The use of a Grand Jury would then place a jury of peers into the process of determining if sufficient cause existed to pursue charges, thus preventing the abuse of governmental power from corrupting the process.

Double Jeopardy is probably the most confusing of the stipulations in the Fifth Amendment. “…nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb…” You may in fact, be tried multiple times for the same crime but not under the same charge. For instance, a person that has been acquitted of first degree murder may not be tried a second time for first degree murder. In rare instances however, if sufficient evidence of guilt exists, he can be subsequently tried for second degree murder or any lesser associated charge. This provision was evidenced in the trials of the officers accused in the Rodney King case. The officers were charged with use of excessive force with one of the officers, Sergeant Koon, also charged with willfully permitting and failing to take action to stop the unlawful assault because he was the supervisory officer on the scene. The 1992 acquittal of the officers resulted in the Los Angeles riots of the same year. After the riots, the Department of Justice reinstated investigation and obtained an indictment of violations of federal civil rights against the four officers.

The federal trial focused more on the evidence as to the training of officers instead of just relying on the videotape of the incident. As a result of the 1993 Federal trial, the jury found Officer Laurence Powell and Sergeant Stacey Koon guilty, and they were eventually sentenced to 30 months in prison. The remaining two officers were acquitted of all charges.

An acquittal by jury is final and may not be appealed by the prosecution. Also, acquittal by a judge is generally final and prosecution is normally barred from seeking an appeal in that case as well. However, in cases where a conviction by jury has been overturned by a judge, the prosecution may appeal that reversal if they feel strongly that the judge is in error. Double Jeopardy also does not apply in cases where a mistrial has occurred.

The Fifth Amendment also bars the Federal government from taking private property for public use without adequate compensation.

The most famous provision of the Fifth Amendment is of course, that a defendant in a criminal trial cannot be compelled or forced to testify against himself. Out of all the protections in the bill of rights I am sure this will survive as long as Congress does regardless of the political winds. After all, Congress has probably used this provision of law far more often than we have. At last count there were:

29 members of Congress accused of spousal abuse7 members of Congress arrested for fraud19 members of Congress accused of writing bad checks117 members of Congress either directly or indirectly bankrupted 2 businesses3 members of Congress have served time for assault71 members of Congress cannot obtain a credit card due to bad credit14 members of Congress have been arrested on drug-related charges8 members of Congress have been arrested for shoplifting21 members of Congress are currently defendants in lawsuits and84 members of Congress have been arrested for drunk driving.

No, I am not going to claim that I am “holier than thou”. We are human and we all have our bumps, bruises and warts. I probably wouldn’t taken the time to point out these human frailties if Congress had not taken to acting as though they are the elite of society and have begun to blatantly ignored the laws they have written for the rest of us to follow. When Bill Clinton lied to a Grand Jury, did it really matter what question he lied about? The point is that he lied under oath and if he were not the President he would have suffered greatly for that. Wait, let me rephrase that...If he were the President and was not a member of the controlling party of Congress, he would have suffered greatly for that. But no, once again they invoked their elitist mantra that the ruling class is exempt from such frivolous exercises as obeying a law that was obviously meant for the peasants alone.

Some argue that his marital fidelity was not a matter for the Grand Jury and I could agree with that to a point. However, the laws regarding perjury are not followed by an asterisk that point to an exclusion for questions about personal relationships, or for that matter, sitting Presidents. If there is cause to believe that the alleged relationship may have been at least partly funded with public money or was the result of the abuse of power, then it certainly becomes a question that needs to be asked. The fact is Mr. Clinton not only lied, but he lied under oath and to a Grand Jury; that is inexcusable. He could have followed the lawful path and invoked his rights under the Fifth Amendment to avoid self incrimination. I just don’t think he could have used his country charm and boyish giggle with that one and that would not have appealed to a man like him at all.

Paul

The Third and Fourth Amendments to the Constitution

2010-05-03T06:00:00.000-07:00

Before we get started, I feel it is important to restate the reasons I am taking this trip through history and the Constitution. The Federal government has set its sights on passing massive legislation packages that grossly exceed the powers granted to it under the Constitution. If we were to really understand the scope of these violations, we would need to revisit not only the Constitution, but the intent of the people that crafted it and the reasons behind the key provisions that were written into this incredible document so very long ago.

The Constitution has been carefully preserved and readily accessible for all to read but the tendencies of the modern courts are to interpret the inferences behind the articles and amendments to the Constitution rather than read the words that are written upon it. Unfortunately, when interpretations are actually needed, they are not based on the documentary evidence available in the Federalist papers but rather, using the criteria that a modern lawyer would use to interpret any law. “What is permissible without actually breaking the law” and “How can the lines that define this law be blurred to make the impermissible actually possible.”

The Federalist papers are a collection of writings penned by the same men that had written the Constitution. Within those documents are the points that each made as they formed the agreements needed to obtain the legislative consent of the draft of the Constitution. These arguments were not trifle and not without good reason. To ignore the Federalist papers is to ignore the very heart and soul of the Constitution. To ignore the Federalist papers while attempting to interpret the meaning of the laws written into the Constitution is nothing less than dishonest.

The Third Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Quartering of Soldiers. Ratified 12/15/1791.

“No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.”

In 1765, Parliament enacted the Quartering Act. This Act stated that British troops stationed in the colonies would be housed in barracks and public houses. If the number of troops stationed in a particular area outnumbered the available military accommodation, the act permitted that the troops would be housed in a variety of structures including inns, stables, outbuildings, taverns, etc. and that the owners of those establishments would be required to provide food, bedding and other necessities without compensation. New York refused to cooperate with this act and the troops that arrived there had to remain quartered on board their ships. For their insolence, Parliament suspended the Province of New York's Governor and legislature in both 1767 and 1769. In 1771, the New York Assembly acquiesced and finally allocated local funds for the quartering of the British troops.

Since there was already a precedent established under Parliamentary rule whereby the King’s soldiers were quartered at the expense of the citizenry, a protection against future abuses of this sort were demanded as the new Constitution was in the process of ratification. While that was fresh in the minds of the people of the newly formed United States, it is hard to imagine that such abuses could occur in modern times. Even though there is only one notable court case on record that challenged the Third Amendment, the foresight of the founding fathers proved invaluable. Ironically, that challenge was brought by striking corrections officers against the State of New York; the very same state that had refused to cooperate with the Quartering Act of 1765.

Engblom v. Carey (677 F.2d 957), was a 1982 court case decided by the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. The case was centered on a 1979 strike by New York State correction officers. The National Guard had been activated to perform some of duties of the striking officers. At certain prison facilities, including, Mid-Orange Correctional Facility, striking employees were evicted from employee housing which was then used to house some of the National Guard.

Two of the evicted officers at Mid-Orange Correctional Facility, Marianne E. Engblom and Charles E. Palmer, subsequently filed suit against the state of New York and its governor, Hugh L. Carey. The decision, rendered on May 3, 1982, established that the National Guardsmen legally qualify as soldiers under the Third Amendment, that the amendment applies to state as well as federal authorities, and that the protection of this amendment extends beyond home owners. The majority stated that the officer’s occupancy in the rooms was covered under the legal rules of "tenancy" and therefore, was protected under the Third Amendment.

The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Amendment 4 - Search and Seizure. Ratified 12/15/1791.

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

This amendment is the cornerstone of our rights under the justice system. Since the premise is that all persons in the United States are considered innocent until proven guilty, there was a need to provide security against the unreasonable search or the confiscation of property without the due process of law. Barring circumstances where appropriate authorities actually witnessed the commission of a crime or have reason to believe that life and limb are in immediate peril, the involved authorities are required to bring evidence before a judge for the purpose of obtaining a warrant before a search can be lawfully executed without consent.

Failure of law enforcement to meet the requirements of the Fourth Amendment has resulted in numerous examples whereby evidence that was unlawfully obtained had been deemed inadmissible in court. While it seems ludicrous to allow someone that is in the possession of damning evidence to go free if that evidence was improperly obtained, to allow the unlawful collection of that evidence without consequence poses a greater danger.

Without lawful restrictions on illegal search and seizure or measureable consequences for violating the process of law, law enforcement agencies would have quickly descended into systematic violations of these principals as it became clear that the ends justified the means. Freeing the obviously guilty if their Constitutional rights have been violated is the only reliable method to insure that the rights of the general public will not be ignored.

We were faced with this question not all that long ago. After the terrorist attacks that leveled the World Trade Center and severely damaged the Pentagon, the natural instinct was to allow the government to pursue anyone that was considered a threat. While I do believe that President Bush had the security and best interest of the nation at heart, I considered the Patriot Act to be as much of a danger as the terrorists themselves.

The Patriot Act gave unprecedented power to the Federal authorities that in fact, truncated our rights under the Fourth Amendment for the purpose of uncovering possible additional terrorist activities within the United States. The law already provides for the pursuit of those individuals but the authorities would have to appear before a judge and produce evidence of just cause to obtain a warrant before they could search and detain any suspects. I wanted those “gentlemen” rounded up and brought to justice as badly as any other American did, but I also remembered the words and warnings of Benjamin Franklin. “Those that would surrender liberty for security deserve neither.”

Paul

Arizona's New Immigration Law

2010-04-30T06:00:00.002-07:00

Arizona recently passed, and signed into law, “strict new” immigration legislation which has brought the State under fire and thrust it into the national spotlight this week. The truth behind this legislation is that it is hardly new and considerably less strict that the opponents would have you believe. Open border advocates are incensed that Arizona would have the nerve to pass a law that basically says that something that is illegal is, well, illegal. The armies of the left are shouting accusations that Arizona has adopted Nazi tactics and will be asking people walking down the street for their “papers”. Cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles are calling for boycotts against Arizona as if California still has enough industry left after their experiment with Progressivism to make all that much of a difference to Arizona. In fact, I think that if Arizona continues down the path of Conservatism and adopts some “business smart” tax policies, they could easily capture what business California has managed to hold on to while that State imposes more ridiculous regulations, falls deeper in debt and taxes climb even higher. Hey, in Arizona you can still get a McDonald's Happy Meal with a toy!

The law Arizona passed is nearly an identical copy of existing Federal law but unlike “Big Brother’s” edition, the Arizona law specifically prohibits race as a consideration. Those subjected to scrutiny under this new law must have been stopped by the police for an obvious infraction of existing law or must be displaying suspicious behavior. Once contact with law enforcement has been made, the police must also have a reasonable suspicion that the subject is in this country illegally before asking for identification, excluding race as a cause for suspicion. Of course, that is the part of the story that the main stream press and open border proponents have intentionally left out of their description of what Arizona has done.

There will be no swarms of police harassing Latinos on the streets of Phoenix; there will be no door to door searches of private property and there will be no traffic stops to check citizenship. Arguably, there are some police officers that have engaged in behavior that is prohibited under department rules and in some cases, race was clearly the motivation. That is a sad state of affairs wherever it happens and it has happened all over America at one time or another. While the media would have you believe that this is standard procedure for most police departments the truth is that this is not representative of the vast majority of police and the explosion of camera phones and digital video recorders have been very effective at exposing those individuals and removing them from duty.

The safeguards against racial profiling present in the Arizona law will actually serve to spotlight police officers that believe they can act with impunity and abuse the power they have been given. With every civil rights organization focused on finding those abuses, is there any doubt that the slightest infraction will not be met with a torrent of legal challenges and in the prosecution of the offending officer? In fact, Arizona may well turn out to be the best place in the country for lawful immigrants as police abuses in other cities are dismissed as meaningless because of their enlightened laws where immigration status is concerned. Let’s face it, burglars don’t break into a house across the street from a police station; they go where no one is looking and all eyes are on Arizona right now.

The President has called Arizona’s new law “misguided” and that it only illustrates the need for the Federal government to enact comprehensive immigration reform before other States follow suit. Attorney General Eric Holder is exploring the possibility of challenging the law in court and Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has said that he believes the Arizona law is unconstitutional. This only displays their lack of understanding of the law that Arizona has passed. Since it is based on existing Federal law, if the Arizona law is unconstitutional and violates civic rights, so does the Federal law. This is little more than political posturing. Lindsey Graham, a Progressive Republican, has long pushed for an amnesty program that would grant legal status to the hoards of people that have already broken American law to be in the United States but we’ve tried amnesty before; haven’t we? The purpose of the last amnesty program was to prevent the hardships that illegal immigrants would face after they had already established a life in this country if they were sought out by new immigration laws and repatriated.

We granted amnesty to those illegal immigrants that had maintained residence in the United States for at least five years with the understanding that we would improve border security and provide for effective enforcement of immigration law in the future. So far, the Federal government failed miserably in its responsibility to secure our borders and that is the reason for Arizona’s new law. Isn’t it funny that one of the things that Congress is clearly responsible for, the defense of the nation, has taken a back seat to healthcare reform, Cap and Trade and the takeover of General Motors; none of which can be found in the Constitution. Clearly, if you want actual examples of misguided legislation, you must look to Washington, not Arizona.

In recent years, Arizona and other Border States have been inundated with a virtual tidal wave of violent criminal activity because of the drug wars in Mexico. In the absence of any meaningful act by the Federal government to prevent this flood of drugs, criminals and yes, innocent Mexican citizens seeking asylum from the brutality of lawless drug gangs in their home land, Arizona was forced into action to preserve law, order and quality of life. Those that are opposed to the law either do not understand its limitations or are located a comfortable distance from the war zone brewing at the Arizona border and just don’t give a damn. The Mexican government is, and always has been, a bad partner in eliminating these problems and has actually encouraged illegal immigration into the United States rather than take the next logical step towards their own legitimacy. When Arizona police have found illegal immigrants, they have never been able to count on the Mexican government to provide accurate information about criminal history and that is what has cast a cloud of suspicion over all illegal immigrants.

Arizona has long been tolerant where immigration is concerned and aside from the questionable activities of the Maricopa Sherriff’s department, has provided a safe and beneficial environment for people seeking a better life. Most of the residents of Arizona go about their lives with out race as a consideration and we have been able to build a pretty decent life here with a level of diversity that most of the country would find baffling. Truth is; we don’t care. What we do care about is crime and how that affects our families. The drug gangs waging war in Mexico are particularly brutal and have no consideration for human life and the Federal government has offered no help against their intrusion into Arizona.

Did it help that Attorney General Eric Holder intruded to make sure that three members of the infamous MS13 (Mara Salvatrucha) gang would not receive the death penalty? The three were in the United States illegally, were arrested in Virginia and charged with murder and conspiracy. As Federal prosecutors were preparing their case, Holder stepped in and instructed them not to seek the death penalty. Holder refused to comment on what prompted his involvement in this case but apparently he believes that Michigan militia men and Arizonans are far more dangerous than your run of the mill, murder for hire foreign drug gangs or international terrorists for that matter.

It is this insane posture assumed by the Federal government that forced Arizona to take unilateral action. If we are to be left to protect ourselves by a disinterested Washington, then they should not be surprised when the people on the front lines actually take action. Los Angeles’s reaction is a little surprising since they have had some of the same issues with their shared border with Mexico. San Francisco had previously announced that they are a “sanctuary city” and would not cooperate with Federal immigration law so who cares what kind of immigration problems San Francisco has. Sanctuary was really only a fun little political ploy but seriously, considering where they are located, who could they possibly be getting flooded with; Oregonians?

Maybe that is where the real racism is in all this? Los Angeles was very quick to denounce Arizona and has called for a boycott of Arizona businesses even though the law was carefully crafted to avoid any possibility of racial profiling. Is it because they believe Arizona’s new law is that outrageous or is there a real fear among Los Angeles politicians that illegal immigrants residing in Arizona may leave the State to avoid deportation and show up in L.A.; posing an additional burden to their local services? Why hasn’t the “sanctuary city” of San Francisco extended their hand to welcome this wave of refugees they have claimed will be driven from Arizona?

Well, to anyone that is in Arizona illegally all you need do is obey the law, respect your neighbors and you have nothing to fear. In fact, I’ll probably see you at the next county fair. If obeying the law is something that is a problem for you, then I would suggest you head to the sanctuary city of San Francisco. They have already said they would not cooperate with Federal immigration enforcement so that is your best chance to avoid capture and deportation.

Paul

The Second Amendment

2010-04-29T06:00:00.001-07:00

The Second Amendment to the United States Constitution.

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

The men that drafted the Constitution of The United States added the Amendments in the order of their moral priority. If one looks at the Constitution and the Amendments with an eye on practicality, the Second Amendment then becomes at least, par with the First Amendment in importance. The Second Amendment is the guardian and guarantor of the Bill of Rights, preventing the Federal Government from writing any law that would deny the citizens of this nation the arms they would need to defend the nation, their State and to defend the rights that were secured under the new government.

Without the Second Amendment, the Bill of Rights and the Constitution would have little meaning and no defense against a corrupt government. Let us not forget that the men who drafted the Constitution had also written into the Declaration of Independence “…whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it.” It is clear that they possessed a deep and abiding distrust of governments in general and while they labored to create a nation founded in freedom, they recognized that this Republic was a supreme experiment and the outcome was yet to be proven.

Many opponents of the private ownership of firearms use the first few words of this amendment to say that this was strictly to provide for the arming of a State Militia; that it was never intended as a right for the common citizen to possess firearms. Well, once again we will delve into the Federalist Papers. That is where you will always find the clear intent of the men that wrote the Constitution and the Amendments. An excerpt taken from a document written by Alexander Hamilton on January 10, 1788 says:

"The project of disciplining all the militia of the United States is as futile as it would be injurious, if it were capable of being carried into execution. A tolerable expertness in military movements is a business that requires time and practice. It is not a day, or even a week, that will suffice for the attainment of it. To oblige the great body of the yeomanry, and of the other classes of the citizens, to be under arms for the purpose of going through military exercises and evolutions, as often as might be necessary to acquire the degree of perfection which would entitle them to the character of a well-regulated militia, would be a real grievance to the people, and a serious public inconvenience and loss. It would form an annual deduction from the productive labor of the country, to an amount which, calculating upon the present numbers of the people, would not fall far short of the whole expense of the civil establishments of all the States. To attempt a thing which would abridge the mass of labor and industry to so considerable an extent, would be unwise: and the experiment, if made, could not succeed, because it would not long be endured. Little more can reasonably be aimed at, with respect to the people at large, than to have them properly armed and equipped; and in order to see that this be not neglected, it will be necessary to assemble them once or twice in the course of a year."

It was the intent of this Amendment to insure that the citizens are armed to defend this fledgling nation and it is clear by this passage alone, that the entire populace was expected to be armed. The “Militia only” interpretation the detractors of the Second Amendment say is implied in the Constitution clearly does not exist. The “regulation” that is implied in the Constitution was directed at insuring the Citizens were properly armed and is not meant to say that those that may bear arms can only exist as part of a National Guard or regular Army and in fact, this passage indicates that was not to be expected of the people.

Bear in mind that Congress had already created an army that had just secured our independence from Great Britain and there were provisions written into the draft of the Constitution that provided Congress with the means and the authority to raise an army, a navy and to secure the funds to provide for them both. If a militia was the sole intent of the Second Amendment, it would be the one and only redundant provision that appeared in the whole of the Constitution.

I find it mildly interesting that those that claim the intuitive insight to interpret the Constitution on our behalf tend to ignore the very store of documents that are the road map through the minds of the men that wrote it. To ignore the Federalist papers is a gross injustice to the American people and an insult to the honor of the founding fathers of this nation.

So why do I feel that the right to bear arms is so important? I could point to the article I posted here yesterday as one good reason. Pravda has all but written off the United States and quite honestly, if we do not put a stop to the insanity of 3.6 trillion dollar budgets, trillion dollar deficits and the wholesale looting of the treasury by “community organizers”, I agree with them. Rather than spell out a scenario of doom and gloom I will name my second reason, or rather Thomas Jefferson will...

"…whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it."

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) is quoted as saying: "If someone is so fearful that they are going to start using their weapons to protect their rights, it makes me very nervous that these people have weapons at all." Let’s face it; only someone that intends to deny or destroy our rights and freedoms would be fearful of the people that would stand to defend them. It further tells me that if he could find a way around the Second Amendment, they would have already started collecting guns.

Henry Waxman is one of the authors of the Waxman-Markey or Climate Bill. This bill is supposed to protect the environment by reducing the carbon output of the United States. To do so, this bill will severely cripple the manufacturing industries in this nation and place draconian restrictions on personal power consumption by raising the price of energy to a point that will be unsustainable for the average American household.

The truly criminal part of that legislation is that it will have no effect on the environment whatsoever. China and India are the largest producers of carbon emissions and refuse to hamper their economic growth by enacting similar measures. The bill will certainly reduce carbon emissions in our country but not because we are cleaner. The emissions will be reduced as manufacturing industries relocate to other nations that do not possess costly restrictions on manufacturing and are truly happy for the opportunity to put their citizens to work doing the jobs we once had. Is this why Henry Waxman is nervous?

Gun opponents would cite crime statistics involving the use of firearms. The statistics they ignore is that the vast majority of those crimes are committed with unlawfully obtained firearms and in many cases, by people that are already prohibited from owning firearms because of a felony criminal record. You see, criminals by definition, do not obey the law so weapon legislation does not stop them. They also ignore the statistics that say that gun violence is predominately highest in the cities where they already possess stringent gun ownership laws. That is because the criminals aren’t quite so brave when there is an even chance that you might have a weapon too.

The text written by Alexander Hamilton that was posted above is a clear indication that the nation’s founders looked at the citizens very differently than Congress does now. We were the nation then, equal in status and rights. Now we are treated as the subjects of this massive government, nearly as much as we were under King George and that alone is sufficient to reinforce the need for the Second Amendment.

To make things worse, the Federal government continues to expand its powers beyond those granted to it under the Enumerated Powers Act, which is highly dangerous in a government that is full of people that think they are the new aristocracy. Remember, criminals by definition, do not obey the law and that includes the elected ones.

Paul

The First Amendment - Part Three

2010-04-28T06:00:00.004-07:00

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

The third and final part of the First Amendment is the freedom to assemble.

"Congress shall make no law… prohibiting the… right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

The freedom to peaceably assemble has been openly exercised throughout the history of this nation. Since Labor Day is one of the left's favorite holidays, is it worthy to note that most legislation that offered protection for unions and for striking workers has been inextricably tied to the First Amendment. It was recognized by the courts that the union busting tactics used by employers and local law enforcement during the height of the industrial revolution denied striking workers their constitutional right to assemble; therefore it was the obligation of government to enact legislation that would prevent these violent reprisals against striking workers.

Prior to the inception of the United States, people still gathered to air grievances, usually with catastrophic consequences. Without the right to assemble most would grumble quietly to themselves until things had become so unbearable that the consequences for public dissent were all but meaningless. We have all seen the images in old movies that show the town folk marching through the night carrying pitch forks and burning torches to protest one thing or another. We also saw that those protests were usually met with armed reprisal by whatever authority existed in that time period. The clash resulted in the deaths of the protestors and within a short period of time, the protests would turn to open and violent insurrection with towns and cities burned to the ground by enraged citizens.

The Boston Massacre was another instance of a protest quelled by the Kings soldiers. That massacre was still fresh in the memories of the colonists when the Constitution was drafted. Since the United States was a government formed by free people, they naturally held their God given rights as paramount over the authority of government. I’m sure people are tired if hearing this from me at this point but it is a critical philosophy if one is to understand the Constitution. The founding fathers recognized that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. The States and the people wanted a Federal government that would unite the States and would govern maters of commerce and law between the States; a government that would insure that all would provide for the common defense of the Union in the event that any one of the sister States were assaulted by an outside force. What they did not want was to give unbridled power to that same Federal government or allow it the ability to seize power from the States or the people.

The colonies had just fought a bloody war against the British Crown to obtain their liberty and they were not about to surrender that liberty to a centralized government. With that in mind they established strong constraints over the power the Federal government would be allowed to wield. The bill of rights are the chains that prevent the Federal government from becoming oppressive. After freedom of religion and freedom of speech, the freedom to peacefully assemble is the logical next step to secure the ideals of a democratic republic. After all, if Congress is pledged to represent the will of the people then there had better be a mechanism in place for the people to make themselves heard when they feel their representatives are not adequately addressing their concerns.

Every major event in American history is punctuated by the marches and protests that shook government into action. Unfortunately, the history of this nation says that our government doesn’t act until the protests are large enough and loud enough so that the voice of the people can be heard through the thick walls of the Capitol building not to mention the equally thick skulls of the occupants of that building.

We don’t like to be ignored, especially by our government. We recently saw proof of this at the recent town hall meetings. Once again, the Congress wants to pass legislation that will explode the National Debt and eventually, implode our economy. The American people are already frustrated that the Federal government has accrued a national debt of 12 trillion dollars. Americans want that debt paid and the spending deficits turned into a surplus before we will even consider establishing more spending to grease the so-called social consciousness of the liberal arm of Congress. We are angry and we are obviously not being heard. Since they are not reaching out to us, we are once again using our guaranteed right under the first amendment to bring the message to them.

The people that shouted out their concerns at the town hall meetings were denigrated by the press and by the Congressmen they met with. The protestors were called manufactured and fraudulent and the concerns they brought with them were swept away as these Representatives, Senators and journalists turned the discussion away from the message and instead made it about the people that brought the message to them. How foolish.

Unlike the left that uses bricks, bottles and fire to make their point, teabags were being used to punctuate these protests and the “tea parties” that took place on September 12, 2009, with the largest happening in Washington DC. Even though the protests were peaceful, Congress, Democratic organizations and special interests started up their machines to drown out the voice of these people by calling them “tea baggers” and Nazis” in an attempt to make them seem vile and dangerous. Have they forgotten the lessons that for every person that actually makes the time to protest that there are a hundred more that believe the same thing?

The message is clear and sensible. No more massive spending bills, no government control of healthcare and we do not want a climate bill that will decimate what is left of our economy. This nation is in a recession with more that 200,000 additional jobs being lost every month. Thanks to the spending practices of Congress we are 12 trillion dollars in debt and that equals over $80,000 for every man, woman and child in the United States. The bailout programs and stimulus plan will add another $80,000 a piece to that and the unfunded liabilities of the social programs given to us by Roosevelt and Johnson mean that we are all pledged to cover the future debt associated with those programs to the tune of an additional $190,000 a piece. To put it simply, the reckless spending of Congress has seen to it that every child born into this nation already owes more than $350,000 in nationally accrued debt before the umbilical cord is even cut.

I hope Congress stops this foolish practice of dismissing the American people. Let’s face it, the colonists revolted and engaged the British in a bloody war because Parliament placed a 2% tax on their breakfast drink. We are the descendents of those brave men and women and we possess the same intolerance of government abuse. We have already passed the point where taxation has become oppressive and burdensome. We were told that there is a healthcare crisis and something had to be done. Once again, the only portion of the healthcare system that is in crisis was the portion that the Federal government already controlled before this disasterous healthcare bill passed.

The climate bill is nothing more than a cleverly disguised energy tax that will yield no benefit to the environment and most Americans know that the Federal government is simply incapable of managing the healthcare system without turning it into an unholy mess. The proof lies in their gross mismanagement of the government social programs that are already bankrupting this nation. Congress must not ignore the cries of the American people. If history has taught us anything it should be that once the words of the governed fail to persuade the leaders of government, it won’t be long before the pitchforks and torches are taken out of storage again.

Join me tomorrow for the guardian of the First Amendment: The Second Amendment.

Paul

The First Amendment - Part Two

2010-04-27T06:00:00.003-07:00

The First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

Yesterday we covered the freedom of religion, or at least what it has become after the reinterpretation of it by the courts after atheist and leftist tinkerers had finished their work. Today we will address the second clause of the first amendment.“Congress shall make no law ……. abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press….”

Some would argue that logical restrictions of free speech are warranted in some cases because the content of that speech is abrasive, intolerant or even violent. We’ve all heard that recently charged in the world of talk radio or political television where a statement made by a commentator is offensive or even hateful. Almost immediately, those claiming to be offended by those statements send out the rally cry to eliminate this voice from the airwaves. I’m sorry, but people will always be offended by one thing or another and that is not a compelling reason to restrict the first amendment. There is however, an effective protection already available to those that are easily offended by these views. It’s called personal responsibility. The last time I looked none of these personalities had a captive audience that is forcibly subjected to their programs. If you don’t like what is being said…don’t listen to it, don’t watch it and for heaven’s sake, don’t buy it. Whew! That was easy!

I will be the first to admit that some of those voices are harsh and intolerant; some are ignorant and some are just plain vicious. Then there are others that are being targeted and ridiculed not because they were overtly cruel in the expression of their ideas but rather because the ideas themselves fundamentally differ from those that would seek to silence them. No matter how conscious I am of keeping my writings centered on the truth and how much I strive to invite rational discussion on these issues to promote a healthy understanding between opposing views, there are some that are so disinterested in the word, that they resort to personal attacks and display a sincere and passionate desire to silence me as well. Believe it or not, I support their right to speak freely too…I simply choose to ignore it.

The founding fathers were well aware of the intricacies of free speech and knew that some would promote dissent and even hatred. Even still, they recognized that the freedom to express ones thoughts and ideas in both spoken and printed form was essential to the well being of the Republic. On November 23, 1787, James Madison addressed these concerns in a letter written to the people of New York, which was then the seat of the U.S. Government. This letter is part of a collection of writings know as the Federalist Papers. The Federalist papers provide clear insight as to the thought and intentions of the men that created our Constitution and the Federal Government as we know it. Mr. Madison said…“It could never be more truly said than of the first remedy, that it was worse than the disease. Liberty is to faction what air is to fire, an aliment without which it instantly expires. But it could not be less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency.”

I know that eighteenth century English is a bit hard to follow at times but the essence of his argument was that to eliminate liberty, including the freedom of speech, because it may feed anger would be similar to eliminating air because it may feed fire. The former would suffocate the Republic to prevent anger while the latter would suffocate life to prevent fire. And yet, we still have people that see fit to advocate just that; the suffocation of the Republic to quell dissent. Mark Lloyd, appointed by Mr. Obama as the Chief Diversity Officer, a newly created position in the FCC says that “…freedom of speech and of the press has become a distraction…”

Mr. Lloyd is currently driving a program that will, if allowed to be enacted, effectively shut down privately owned radio and television stations that do not pass his “diversity equation” by requiring fees (let’s just call it what it is, a conservative talk tax) equal to 100% of their operating budget. In the interest of fairness and diversity, those fees will be used to fund public broadcasting. Public broadcasting, whose programming incidentally, supports the Obama administration’s agenda.

Stations that cannot pay the fee will have their broadcast license withdrawn and sold to minority interests that better reflect his idea of diversity. My fear is that his idea of diversity is actually code for programming that is ironically, identical to that of public broadcasting.

Well if that is the new direction of the FCC, then of course the Constitutional protections of free speech and a free press would be a distraction. Unfortunately for you, Mr. Lloyd, they may be a distraction but they are also protected under the word of law and would pose a constitutional quagmire for this Presidency if people in his administration openly sought to erode that protection.

Freedom of the press possesses the same protections under the Constitution and for the same reasons. Fortunately for the press, there is no government equivalent to the FCC so they don’t suffer the same degree of interference that the broadcast media does. Besides, the majority of main stream newspapers overwhelmingly support the Obama administration and therefore, the content in these publications is effectively sterilized before it is printed. I would submit that if the press were actually hostile to this administration that there would be plans to bring the printed press under the guidance of Mr. Lloyd as well.

It is exceedingly hard to find a print paper that contains views that contain a diverse and broad spectrum of views which is why I posted that quote by Abbott Joseph Liebling on the picture that adorns the top of this page. “Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one”. If you want diversity in the press, don’t shut them down, get your own press and compete for the hearts and soul of the American people. That is the fair way; the American way; the Constitutional way.

Film falls under this as well as a medium of expression. We know that a major portion of the Hollywood elite also support the President. The overwhelming majority of documentary and political films are highly critical of conservative ideals and label libertarians as lunatics however, they are vocally supportive of the progressive movement. Why is it that the demands for a fair and diverse representation of opposing views is not being thrust upon film and entertainment industry as fervently as it is in the broadcast media? After all, there is an agency for that. Once again, the majority of Hollywood and their works merge nicely with the agenda of this administration so that is obviously diverse enough to gain a pass from the watchful eye of government. Besides, Hollywood guards themselves far more carefully that government ever could.

Ron Silver was a well known film actor as well as a progressive and liberal activist. He starred in many films and television programs and had a bright future awaiting him in the industry. That was until he was so enraged by the terror attacks on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 that he became a very vocal supporter of President Bush and of the war to bring those responsible to justice. That did not fit the Hollywood mold and the powers that be saw to it that he rarely, if ever worked again. His exclusion from film continued right up to the time of his death.

The internet is now under assault because of the wide spread use of this forum for those who wish to be heard. Most would not take the time if the news reported actual news instead of airing hour long editorial pieces. No one would waste their time on blogs, web pages and web news if the press would fulfill their obligation to accurately and fairly report the unfiltered truth. Since the profusion of people that believe this nation is in danger have taken to the internet to spread the word, that has become a threat similar to that on broadcast networks. New legislation is being drafted that would give the President the authority to deny internet traffic, even private and business internet traffic, in the event of a national crisis.

Well since this administration has assumed the reigns of government how many crisis’s have already been announced in an attempt to fast track legislation in keeping with the President’s agenda? Let’s see….there was the subprime mortgage crisis, the climate crisis, the healthcare crisis, the credit crisis, the banking crisis…on and on. Is it far fetched to assume that if internet journalists and bloggers are impeding the President’s progress in healthcare or the climate by causing doubt in the minds of Americans, could that not be viewed as a “national crisis” all by itself?

No, the founding fathers recognized that freedom of speech and freedom of the press were of paramount importance to the Republic and are part of the natural right that all men possessed with or without government consent. We do not need government control of free speech because we have already insured that hand in hand with the freedom of speech there is a responsibility that has tangible and effective enforcements.

If the misuse of your free speech rights has denied a person any one of their basic civil rights then there are legal and civil consequences for that. If you yell “FIRE” in a crowded movie theater there are legal and civil consequences for that as well, especially if there are injuries. If you slander someone with false accusations there are legal and civil consequences for that too. It seems like the people and the States themselves have done a pretty good job in making sure people use this freedom wisely without the heavy handed oversight of the Federal Government which once again, proves the genius and foresight of those amazing crafters of the Constitution.

Please come back tomorrow for part three of the First Amendment…Freedom of Assembly

Paul

The First Amendment, Part One

2010-04-26T06:00:00.000-07:00

Target 2010 - Barbara Boxer (D-CA)

2010-04-23T06:00:00.000-07:00

Barbara Boxer was born Barbara Levy in Brooklyn, New York where she attended public schools, graduating from Wingate High School in 1958. In 1962, she married Stewart Boxer and graduated from Brooklyn College with a Bachelor's Degree in Economics. For the next three years, Boxer worked as a stockbroker while her husband attended law school. The couple later moved to Greenbrae in Marin County, California, and had two children, Doug and Nicole. Boxer's husband, Stewart, is an attorney in Oakland who specializes in worker's compensation cases and is known for keeping a low profile when it comes to politics. Many cases are referred to him by labor unions, including the Teamsters. The Boxers’ son, Douglas, who is also a lawyer, now practices law with Stewart Boxer and is a member of the Oakland Planning Commission, having been appointed to that office by then-mayor Edmund Brown, Jr.

Barbara Boxer has been in politics since 1976 when she was elected to the Marin County California Board of Supervisors. She first ran for the position in 1972 but was defeated in a close election. It was Barbara’s husband, Stewart, that had originally planned to run for the Board of Supervisors, but decided the campaign would interfere with his law practice, so Barbara ran instead. In 1976, she had the support of Marin Alternative, a Progressive (American Socialist) group that Boxer had helped form a few years earlier. Marin Alternative eventually dissolved in the late 1970’s but since Boxer was already elected to public office, they had apparently served their purpose.

Boxer was elected to the House of Representatives in 1982. Serving California’s 6th Congressional District, Boxer represented Marin and Sonoma Counties for the next ten years. During this time she focused on human rights, environmental protection, military procurement reform, and abortion issues from a pro-choice stance. In her first big setback, Boxer was one of the 450 Congressmen and House staffers implicated in the House Banking Scandal of 1992, personally writing eighty-seven overdraft checks while serving in Congress. The degreed economist and former stock broker issued a statement on her part in the scandal saying; “in painful retrospect, I clearly should have paid more attention to my account." To quiet public dissent over her behavior, Boxer wrote a $15 check to the Federal Deficit Reduction Fund for each of her eighty-seven overdraft checks. Well, at least she wasn’t appointed to head the Treasury Department or the House Ways and Means Committee but I think those positions are only offered to tax cheats and not people that merely pass bad checks.

As if to draw attention away from her own fiscal misdealing; Boxer, as a member of the House Armed Services Committee championed the fight for fiscal reform in Military Procurement. I’m sure everyone remembers the stories that came out of those hearings about $400 screwdriver and $10,000 toilet seats, but much of the truth behind those stories were never made as public as the price tags were. Many of the military purchases that were brought under scrutiny were made for special purposes and in very limited numbers, with those few items bearing the entire cost of design and manufacture that would normally amount to pennies per item if they ever went into mass production. Case in point is that $400 screwdriver.

The premier American spy plane of the day was the SR-71 “Blackbird”. The SR-71 has a top speed of no less than Mach 3.3 and to travel at those speeds, nearly the entire surface of the aircraft was made from titanium. Titanium is an exceptionally light weight and strong material but had an adverse and corrosive reaction if scratched by the usual chromium-steel tools used everywhere else in the aerospace industry. Special cadmium plated tools were required for the project but tool manufacturers didn’t make cadmium plated tools for any purpose. Only 32 of these cutting edge aircraft were ever manufactured limiting the number of special tools and equipment the military needed to support them. The few hundred screwdrivers that were needed had to be ordered as a special item so those few tools bore the entire cost of design, tooling costs and manufacture which was added to the material cost of each of the screwdrivers produced, making the price seem absurd to anyone that didn’t know the whole story.

By the way; the $10,000 toilet seat Boxer railed on about was for the Space Shuttle and aside from the few smaller shuttles built for testing, only five full-size, space-worthy shuttles were ever built. Because it is used in zero gravity, I doubt anyone would argue that a toilet seat for the space shuttle is not something you can readily pick up at Home Depot so the end result was a special order for five custom designed and manufactured seats that had to meet strict criteria.

Despite the political setbacks after the House Banking Scandal, otherwise known as “Rubber-gate” because of all the bounced checks, the Liberals in California still elected Boxer to the United States Senate in 1993 where she currently sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Curiously enough, after seventeen years in the Senate, Boxer is still considered a “junior Senator” which only serves to illustrate the need for Congressional term limits as many of the “Senior Senators” have been there for decades; having lost all touch with their States, their constituents and in some cases, their bodily functions.

While Boxer had made some sound choices during her career, many of her votes reflect her Progressive ideology and that ideology has often clouded her judgment in votes that have adversely affected her State and the people she represents. The organizations that focus on taxpayer rights, business opportunities and personal liberties grade Boxer extremely low; in some cases, receiving an absolute zero. Being a Progressive, I’m sure Boxer stands proud that she has received extremely high grades from America’s most notoriously Liberal groups such as the ACLU (87%), the Socialist front Group, Americans for Democratic Action (95%), the AFL-CIO (100%) and the Campaign for America's Future (100%), just to name a few. Incidentally, the Campaign for America's Future is another one of those George Soros funded anti-American groups with links to ACORN, MoveOn.org, Rock the Vote and National Council of La Raza. If that is her support, then we really have to question what they have been getting in return.

Boxer now faces a tough race in California now that many of her policies and beliefs have made their way into the California political spectrum and have done irreversible damage to the State economy. The added taxes imposed by the massive Federal programs she supports promises to bankrupt California altogether and her constituents are facing an uncertain future with State and local services at risk of severe cuts added to dwindling prospects for meaningful work as employers threaten to leave the State or are struggling to remain in business.

Barbara Boxer had some harsh words for the Tea Parties during the Healthcare Debates but is now asking her own supporters to become as energized and involved as the Tea Parties are. Apparently, Boxer hasn’t learned that massive new government programs and the taxes that come with them don’t excite anyone but other Progressives or her Democratic colleagues in Washington. The mask has been stripped away from the Progressive movement and now that many of them have actually dared to speak openly about their agenda, the face that was revealed is not that of a kind and gentle benefactor; but is rather, the harsh and craggy faces of Marxist demagogues that have disgraced the pages of History where ever they came to power.

If America is to ever recover her former glory, the Progressive movement must be exposed, expunged and voted from office where ever they exist. Barbara Boxer is not the whole movement but she is certainly one of the diseased sores left by its infection of the body politic. Her State may never fully recover from their experiment with Progressive politics but unless Californians would prefer that America go down with them, they must act decisively this November to replace Boxer and let her live as a private citizen, burdened with the same load that she expected the mere peasants of California to carry as she enjoyed her life as an elite member of the Progressive ruling class.

Paul

The Obama Plan: Plenty of Change But Little Hope

2010-04-22T06:00:00.000-07:00

As if the Obama administration wanted to help me make the point I was illustrating in yesterday’s article, a new flurry of regulatory threats are now emanating from the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency. Apparently the government is taking its stance on healthcare very seriously now that they have made themselves a fixture in your health insurance and by virtue of that, a fixture in your health care decisions. In addition to everything we have already heard in the healthcare bill, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is now posturing itself to regulate the amount of salt in your foods. This is changing the focus of the agency from protecting you against tainted or diseased foods and assuming the role of deciding what you should eat because a bureaucrat can now decide it is not good for you.

Food without salt through government edict? Somehow I just don’t think that Washington is listening to us. We want government out of our lives; not taking control of our most basic choices. The people that should not have added salt in their foods because of a medical condition already know what they can and cannot have and have been making those decisions for themselves ever since doctors made the link between food and health. Necessarily, the regulation of salt would put some foods normally high in this once crucial condiment on the chopping block. I’m not sure you can even make bacon without salt and even if you could, would it be worth eating? Can you imagine a pretzel that didn’t have a healthy sprinkling of course salt or the summertime favorite, margaritas by the pool without salt encrusting the rim of the glass? New York is already going down this road and it is driving chefs crazy in the Big Apple. Professional cooks know there is nothing more basic to great tasting foods than the salt that enhances the natural flavor of nearly everything it touches.

Unfortunately, we now have a slew of radical advisors in positions of power within the White House and administrative agencies. Some, like Cass Sunstein, Obama’s regulatory Czar that also has a keen interest in animal rights, would prefer to see America abstain from eating meats as well. If we allow the FDA to pick our seasonings; can a government selection of our main course be that far behind? Sunstein’s beliefs are centered on government control of the masses, he also recognizes that direct regulatory actions can at times, be counter productive. Rather than risking confrontation with the people, Sunstein prefers a clandestine approach that would guide the actions of Americans while giving people the illusion of free choice. This would be accomplished by broadening government regulatory authority to limit the range of options people would be offered. Of course, those regulations would be imposed on manufacturers and industries so the resulting limits placed on American citizens would not be such an obvious intrusion of government.

In a 2008 book he co-authored with Richard Thaler titled: “Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness”, Sunstein speculates that we should maintain an illusion of liberty where personal decisions are concerned by having the government “nudge” people to make better decisions. Obviously Mr. Sunstein believes that the learned scholars of his alma mater, Harvard, or the Washington agencies chock full of “deep thinkers” are in a far better position to make those critical choices for you. Sunstein’s book is not ashamed to mention that the regulatory power of government and a liberal application of the tax structure could easily be used to nudge people to make “correct” decisions based on the government definition of correct. Just the idea that he thinks that this coercion process is acceptable in a free society protected by unalienable rights deeply concerns me. Our freedoms and rights would have to be, at the very least, “trimmed” before any nudging could lawfully take place. Of course, if the nudge was gentle and hidden under the guise of the “regulation of commerce”, the question of government interference with personal liberties may never actually make headlines.

Even more insidious are the recent actions of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). EPA chief Lisa Jackson, recently declared an endangerment finding against Carbon Dioxide and several other so-called “greenhouse gases”. The finding allows the agency broad powers to regulate these gases under the existing authority granted to the agency under the Clean Air Act; avoiding the need for Congressional action all together. The purpose is clear. The President wants his Energy Bill (Cap and Trade) passed because of the enormous tax revenues that will be collected under the false premise of protecting the environment. Many in Congress recognize the dangers of this bill and the damage it will do to our economy so the passage of this bill is in question. Much of the resistance is due to the fact that the President’s Energy Bill offers absolutely no benefit to the environment. The general knowledge that the science behind global warming and climate change has been tainted with news of corrupt data and a concerted effort to silence dissent and debate has further complicated passage of the bill.

In the face of the uncertain future of the Energy Bill, the EPA has threatened to use their endangerment finding to impose regulatory sanctions on Carbon emissions in an attempt to blackmail Congress. Jackson argues that regulatory sanctions would be far more damaging to the US economy than the Cap and Trade Bill; in essence, telling Congress they must now pick the lesser of two evils but is climate change what this is really about? China, the world’s largest producer of CO2 and India, another mass producer of the questionable gas, have already said they will not sign an agreement to reduce their Carbon emissions. Best estimates say that the Carbon reduction proposed in the US energy bill will reduce global temperatures by a mere one tenth of one degree Celsius by the year 2050 and the cost factors to achieve this inconsequential reduction stagger the mind.

The implementation of the President’s Energy Bill may show a net decrease in the Carbon emission produced by US industries but the reality is that these Carbon emissions will only have been transferred to foreign nations that have not burdened themselves with self destructive legislative agreements to reduce their Carbon output. This will place the US at a disadvantage as business weighs the cost of these new regulations and that cost difference will drive manufacturers to nations where profitability is still possible. Curiously, this crucial Energy Bill does not place punitive taxes on goods coming from nations that have not agreed to reduce their Carbon output so how serious are we about actually reducing Carbon emissions to “save” the planet? This bill will only allow foreign nations to steal our few remaining industries, forcing millions more into unemployment while facing exponentially rising costs for electricity and fuels right here at home.

Lisa Jackson said something else in a recent speech that is crucial to deciphering the President’s interest in Cap and Trade. Radical Communist Van Jones, former Green Jobs Czar for the Obama administration, had once accused “white polluters” of intentionally steering poisons into minority communities; leaving many of us scratching our heads and wondering what the hell he was talking about. Now Lisa Jackson says that instances of pollution and environmental degradation are disproportionately higher in low income and minority communities across America and to combat this, the EPA is building up their “environmental justice” team. The United States Congress had passed the Clean Air Act in 1963 with major amendments added to strengthen it in 1970 and again, in 1990. Congress followed that with the Clean Water Act in 1972 which was also amended and strengthened in 1977 and 1987. Since we have already entrusted the government with monitoring pollution and gave them the teeth to aggressively fine violators of these comprehensive environmental laws how can there be such an alarming pollution problem in America, let alone a disparity in the distribution of that pollution if the EPA and other Federal agencies were actually doing their jobs?

If the legislation was impotent after two or more amendments or the EPA was disinterested or incapable of performing their duties with the strength of the legislation already at their disposal, then why should we believe that a multi-trillion dollar energy bill will make them any better at what they do? Secondly, if there is irrefutable evidence that there is a disproportionate amount of pollution being steered into low income and minority communities, then a hate crime has been committed and the Justice Department has also fallen down on the job as well. Since Lisa Jackson has been with the EPA for twenty years now….what is her part in this conspiracy? Carol Browner, Obama’s Climate Czar, was the head of the EPA under Bill Clinton so what did she know; when did she know it and does that mean indictments are on the way?

The truth is there is no conspiracy; there is no alarming disparity in the level of pollution by community and there is no climate change that isn’t a natural process of a dynamic earth. This is another attempt at the enactment of this administration’s redistributive wish list because, as Barack Obama said, “I don’t believe in reparations (for slavery) because reparations don’t go far enough.” This is not a redistribution of wealth to level some imaginary Progressive playing field. This is a massive redistribution scheme designed to overturn the entire wealth structure of the United States and any policy instituted by government that seeks to pit one segment of the populace against another, must be by its intent, unconstitutional.

Paul

America: Are We Still The Land of The Free?

2010-04-21T06:00:00.000-07:00

One of the biggest questions that needs to be asked today is “Who are we?” I was raised to believe that America is the land of the free and the home of the brave. That freedom has become harder to find these days mostly because we, as a people, weren’t brave enough to stand up and protect our freedom. There is also a certain degree of selfishness. As long as the latest assault didn’t affect you personally…did you stand up and say “No, this is wrong”? Did you vote for people that proposed raising taxes on “millionaires” simply because you were not a millionaire or did you ask your government “what have you done with the trillions you have already spent?” Does it bother you to know that the millionaire’s tax you voted for kicks in at an annual income of $250,000 or is that still high enough that it doesn’t affect you? Better yet…do you really believe that as the revenue stream from these “quarter-of-a-millionaires” dries up that, eventually, the government won’t have to redefine a “millionaire” again as someone whose income is a little closer to your own?

I warned years ago when a slew of sin taxes were proposed on tobacco products that no matter where you stand on the habit of smoking, that this was a bad idea. The tobacco taxes weren’t really about forcing people to quit, they were about a new source of revenue. As more people realized the hazards associated with smoking, many quit and smoker’s numbers were steadily falling when these new sin taxes were proposed. When it came time to pass the tax, the smokers opposing the tax were in the minority and the tax passed easily. That really wasn’t a surprise because by then, government had already learned how to create support by labeling the target group. This time it wasn’t the greedy rich people we were going to tax but those inconsiderate smokers. In fact, this wasn’t about saving their lives anymore. The theory of second hand smoke had turned the issue away from using sin taxes to encourage healthy choices, into punishing smokers for engaging in a habit that could affect your heath, not to mention raise your health insurance costs because of their increased medical demands.

I said then that this was just the trial balloon. If we would authorize the government to use the tax system to force lifestyle changes where smoking was concerned, then we had just given them the authority to control any personal choice that government deemed unhealthy or dangerous. People thought I was being ridiculous then and some even said I was bordering on becoming a conspiracy theorist. Unfortunately, my vindication can be found in the pages of the healthcare bill and in local newspapers. The new healthcare bill adds a tax for sugary beverages and tanning salons because they are bad for you. California is now proposing a new “junk food” tax; and if you think that won’t become popular enough to be considered by every cash-strapped State and City government, then think again. I will bet you anything right now that it will even be considered as a new revenue source for the healthcare bill before the plan is fully implemented in 2014. After all, the healthcare bill has already changed the definition of a millionaire to be any individual that makes more that two-hundred thousand dollars or any married couple making more than two-hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Ink can be very powerful in Washington.

Now that we have vilified smokers, some would like to take that even further. Brooksville, Florida has just announced that it is looking at plans to crack down on smokers in the most egregious display of an abuse of power ever perpetrated by a municipality. During Monday's 5:30 p.m. meeting at City Hall, council members will consider a tobacco policy that forbids smoking or chewing the substance on city property, in city-owned vehicles and personal vehicles that are on city property or are being used for a city function. The policy would apply to city employees and the public alike.

City employees would have one year to quit smoking or chewing tobacco or face disciplinary action that includes termination "Depending on the facts and circumstances of each infraction." Employees could also pay to participate in a smoking cessation program on their own time. Applicants that admit to using tobacco would be denied employment altogether. This is an outrage and people that believe that America is still a free nation and that government has no business interfering in our personal choices should speak out loudly and without reservation. Just as the sin taxes are now being expanded to junk foods and sugary beverages; this is not as much about smoking as it is a direct assault on personal liberty that will more than likely be expanded as well.

The overweight contribute as mightily to the cost of healthcare as smokers do and in fact, as the high taxes on tobacco products reduce the number of people that smoke in this country, some have already claimed that obesity now exceeds smoking as the number one cause of preventable death in America. Those sources also state that obesity related illnesses have already reached parity with smoking in the amount of healthcare dollars used to treat the affects of bad personal choices. Is it a really absurd that one day Brooksville might decide the cost of providing health insurance for the obese had become too prohibitive? Does the American’s with Disabilities Act cover Americans that have “chosen” to become disabled because of their eating habits? Before anyone gets confused, I am not advocating that the obese should become the new target for government oppression but I have more than a sneaky feeling that your Federal government is about to open that door and the States will follow suit.

Don’t forget that after the healthcare bill was signed Nancy Pelosi said that “this is more about diet than diabetes.” Well, that isn’t possible unless Nancy knows that the new law intends to write your diet for you somewhere in the thousands of regulations and directives that have yet to be written by the healthcare advisory board created by the legislation. Michelle Obama has publicly made her cause the fight against childhood obesity and surely, the government will now reflect that battle in their new guidelines for school lunch and fitness programs. The healthcare bill already includes a hefty sum for play yard equipment designed specifically to promote healthy activities.

Again, health is something that should not be taken for granted. A healthy lifestyle can spell the difference between a long and productive life and a long and debilitating illness. The information is out there already and people, so far, have made choices based on their personal beliefs. If we allow government to make those choices for us, or if you believe government should have the power to exclude smokers from even earning a living, then where will it end? Will we have to surrender contact sports and motorcycles? Will high-heels and roller blades be banned? What about the potential for the spread of disease? Since the policy being considered by Brooksville reaches into people’s homes by saying if you use tobacco in any form, at any time and in any place, you cannot work for the City then is stands to reason that allowing this to stand invites the government into our homes to control even more behavior. The worst part about this is that the City and not society, would then establish what in safe and what is not. They would determine your health and welfare choices based on their criteria, not yours.

Suppose they determine that speech could be dangerous because of the anger it could possibly incite? There goes the First Amendment. Guns can be very dangerous depending on whose finger is on the trigger…should we ban guns because of the health implications….goodbye Second Amendment. Ridiculous? With this ban on smoking and the City of Brooksville already planning on testing people to make sure they aren’t smoking at home…where is your Fourth Amendment protection against illegal search and seizure? Where is the sovereignty of your person and property? Where the hell is the Constitution?

So the question again is “Who are we?” What is the America you believe in? Have we surrendered so many of our rights already that the government is already poised to take more based on the precedent set by our silence with sin taxes. After all if you can tax it, you can control it and if you control it, you can ban it and if you ban it….America just isn’t America anymore, now is it?

Paul

More Tax and Spend But Where Are The Jobs?

2010-04-20T06:00:00.000-07:00

So the news these days is that the stock market is rallying after the passage of healthcare and the stimulus bill is finally bringing us out of the recession. Newsweek (or is it News Weak? I never can remember) ran a story recently that America is back; claiming the recession is over. Well, if we are actually recovering from the recession, where are the jobs? The increase we see in the Dow has nothing to do with the stimulus bill and while it is on the rise, it is not because companies are hopeful about healthcare savings but because they are trying to mitigate the negative effects the tax increases will bring in the future.

There are massive new taxes on the way because of the healthcare bill in addition to the increases business will see after the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of 2010. Corporations operate under different tax rules than private citizens and are able to shift their losses around to offset earnings where it will provide the most benefit. In fact, corporations can amend previous returns and move losses back three years or use them as far as twenty years into the future to offset future income. That is what we are seeing this year in the Dow. Companies know their taxes will be substantially higher in 2011 and are posting their income in 2010 when the taxes aren’t great, but they aren’t as insane as they will be next year. Once the tax cuts disappear and the new tax impositions from the healthcare bill are in place, the losses and expenses from this year will be used to offset the tax liabilities in 2011 and that will have a drastic effect on the Dow Jones.

Reagan made the same mistake when he took office. He promised tax cuts to rouse the economy but rather than make them immediate, he phased the cuts in, which allowed companies to post losses during the years of higher taxes; biding their time until the tax cuts took affect. Once the tax cuts were in place, the economy soared, ushering in one of the largest peace-time expansions of the GDP in history but before those cuts were actually made, the economy lagged and jobs suffered. Conversely, businesses are now taking advantage of the temporarily lower tax rates knowing that those rates are guaranteed to rise sharply in 2011. Furthermore, business is counting on the November 2010 elections to restore some sanity to government. While the Republicans cannot secure enough seats to repeal healthcare, they can certainly block the funding needed to implement it; stalling the healthcare legislation until 2012 can bring in a new Congress and a new President.

The President can try to put a happy face on the prospects Democrats are facing this election but he knows that a vote for the healthcare bill was a vote for their own retirement. Going into the healthcare vote, Republicans were no more liked than Democrats were but the scandalous way this legislation was forced through Congress against the will of the people has severely damaged the Democrats. While people are not quite sure they can trust Republicans right now, Republicans do have the distinct advantage in not being Democrats. The President has been trying to label Republicans as “the Party of no” but the Democrats have labeled themselves “the Party of sit down and be quiet you silly people”. In the whole grand scheme of things there is an awful lot you can do to Americans before they get truly angry but ignoring them just isn’t an option.

The frightening part about the President’s predicament is that it has fostered another sense of urgency in the White House and now every program and policy the President really wants is going to be desperately rushed in much the same way that TARP, the Stimulus and Healthcare was. Don’t forget that TARP had to be done right then and there or banks were going to fail, throwing America into a new depression. Well, TARP passed and Tim Geithner, Ben Bernanke and the President claimed credit for averting financial disaster but isn’t it funny that as soon as executive salaries were capped in the companies that accepted TARP money, those silly companies discovered that they actually did have liquidity and paid the TARP money back as fast as humanly possible. Well, most of them did. Curiously, the only ones that couldn’t pay the taxpayers back, and in fact, still needed more money, were the government’s own Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Imagine that!

Then there was the Stimulus Bill. We had to pass that one without thinking about it because joblessness was on the rise and without this critical infusion of money, the unemployment rate would get as high as 8%. Well, we passed that without thinking about it and unemployment climbed above 10% before stagnating at a miserable 9.7%. Recovery.gov still has no idea how much of your money was wasted on frivolous projects like amphibian underpasses so that frogs and salamanders can safely cross the road or funding studies about the drinking habits of Indonesian transgender prostitutes. Billions are listed as being given to Congressional districts that do not exist and since the government cannot say with any accuracy how many (if any) jobs were actually created, the White House has had to claim that the Stimulus Bill saved two million jobs knowing full well there is no way to substantiate a “saved job”.

With the Healthcare Bill we all watched in horror as the legislative process was subverted into a corrupt and underhanded push to pass something nobody wanted. Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama all blamed the Republicans for trying to stonewall the legislation when the bare fact is that the resistance that nearly derailed the bill was entirely on the other side of the aisle. Reluctant Democrats had to be bullied, threatened and bought off just to get the votes they needed to push this through. Once Scott Brown had been elected to the Senate, it was thought that the bill would finally die the death it deserved but the Senate Bill was taken behind closed doors once more where Pelosi and Obama abused House Democrats. They would use the same tactics Harry Reid used, forcing them to vote for the Senate Bill so they could ram it through under reconciliation; requiring only a simple majority in the Senate, effectively negating Scott Brown’s vote.

Now that the healthcare bill has passed all the nasty little details are emerging. The Medicare cuts, the tax increases and the admission by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, that the healthcare bill is designed to “correct a mal-distribution” of wealth in America. For those of us that warned about the redistributive goals of the bill, a healthy “told you so” might certainly be warranted but what good would that do now? Then there are the unintended consequences to deal with. America’s largest corporations are reporting that they will loose hundreds of millions in profits because of the healthcare bill; something that Henry Waxman fumed over, demanding that these companies appear before his committee and explain themselves. Waxman claimed that a report prepared prior to the passage of the bill said these companies would see a decrease in healthcare costs amounting to roughly three-thousand dollars per employee and he insisted upon knowing why they were not taking those savings into consideration. As it turns out, the report to which Henry Waxman was referring had nothing to do with the Senate healthcare bill and was based on a limited and incremental approach to healthcare reform similar to what the Republicans had proposed.

I suppose the funniest story came out last week when the Congress found out that the healthcare bill they all told us they read contained a little secret none of them knew about. Unless they act to correct the bill, Congress and their staff members are all going to lose their health insurance and will be forced into the exchange market. The only problem for them is that the way the law is written, they must lose the insurance now and the market they have to purchase from won’t even exist until 2014.

Despite the President’s promise that jobs are going to be his priority in the coming year his next race to get something past the Senate is on the financial reform bill. This bill places drastic and dangerous limits on American financial institutions placing them at a severe disadvantage when competing against foreign banks that are curiously not mentioned in this “much needed” reform bill. Even though Harry Reid said it may not be possible in an election year, the President insists that immigration reform is right behind his Financial Reform Bill. Also tucking into the White House fast track to destroy the country is the infamous Cap and Trade massive energy tax. The Senate is threatening to unveil their copy of that scam as early as the end of next week. So I have to ask the same question I started this article with….Where are the jobs?

Paul

The Left Tries Tinkering with the Tea Party

2010-04-19T06:00:00.000-07:00

During the course of the last year we have seen a definite change in the perception that Progressives have towards the Tea Party. New Tea Party groups began springing up all over the country as soon as the country recognized that despite his centrist campaign, the newly elected Barack Obama had steered his administration hard to the left. Established Tea Party groups saw an exponential increase in membership as soon as the eight-hundred plus billion dollar stimulus bill passed and the focus in Congress turned to healthcare. At first, the organized opposition to the Tea Party was basically to ignore them and the main stream media did their level best; burying stories about Tea Party activists where no one but hard core, cover-to-cover readers would find them. The thought was that without coverage or recognition that they would fizzle out and disappear.

Well, they didn’t fizzle out and they certainly haven’t disappeared. They showed up at town hall meetings during the August recess and while those that got in aired their opinions, the ones that didn’t stood outside with signs and slogans. After the Tea Party launched a massive protest at the nation’s Capitol, the press could no longer ignore the intensity and passion of the people that, until then, were showing up at Congressional offices and town halls all over the nation. Another means of dealing with this threat to the Progressive agenda had to be found. Nancy Pelosi led the charge with accusations that the Tea Parties were nothing more than an annoyance campaign organized by the Republican Party, health insurance corporations and special interest groups. Pelosi claimed they were not an actual grass roots movement; calling them “Astroturf” and manufactured anger. Ironically, while Nancy labeled the Tea Party manufactured anger, MoveOn.org, Americans for Democratic Action, SEIU, AFL-CIO, Organizing for America and more, were orchestrating counter protests and were in some cases, actually paying people to attend; a move which would prove disastrous later.

When Tea Party members began appearing on news programs, mostly on Fox, the main stream media went on an information search to discredit the people that were speaking for the movement. If Nancy Pelosi said they were paid for by the Republicans, surely they should be able to find those links and bring this manufactured hoax to a grinding halt. Looking in every dark corner and alley; under each rock and behind every tree the media found nothing but retirees, small business owners and private citizens that had never even been part of a political protest in their lives. Rather than change her tune when confronted with the total absence of Republican influence in the Tea Party movement, Nancy Pelosi shifted gears and began speaking about the rage that had permeated the town hall meetings and protests. If we can’t prove they are Astroturf, then maybe we can prove they are nothing but an ugly, racist and irrational mob. Pelosi spoke tearfully about how much this hateful discourse reminded her of the anger that had been part of the political scene in San Francisco during the 1970’s and how that anger had quickly descended into violence.

What Ms. Pelosi failed to mention was that the San Francisco mobs inciting violence in the 1970’s were overwhelmingly people on the left; Progressives like herself that did not have a legitimate voice in politics and had taken the radical activist route to force their issues on an unwilling public. The left had always taken to the streets and those marches nearly always became a violent clash between radical mobs and the authorities. Despite the inaccuracies, the main stream media had their new marching orders and began to dig through the Tea Party protests looking for signs that could be interpreted as hateful or racist and started reporting about people shouting out vile comments or wearing Swastikas. Curiously, the photographs that were taken showed plenty of American flags and signs reading “Hands off my healthcare” but none of the pictures were hateful, racist or even vulgar. There were no images of people wearing Swastikas or raising their arms in Nazi salutes. There were miles of footage showing people chanting “Kill the Bill” or speaking about the outrage they felt because Congress had been ignoring them but I still haven’t heard any racial slurs or provocative language. One would think that if any of those things were evident at Tea Party rallies, that the media would have led their national coverage with that. They did not.

Then in August it happened. The Democratic headquarters in Denver Colorado was vandalized. The media storm was immediate and centered on the anger that the Tea Party was fomenting against the supporters of healthcare reform. Every window that had been shattered contained a poster supporting the President’s healthcare initiative illustrating how dangerous these protests were becoming. Within days, the police apprehended 24 year old Maurice Schwenkler for the attack. In a curious twist of fate, Schwenkler was neither a right wing zealot nor was he a member of the Tea Party. Schwenkler was in fact, a Democrat activist and a supporter of the Healthcare Bill. He had previously been arrested for misdemeanor unlawful assembly at the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, MN and had actually worked for the Democratic Party in the past. Schwenkler had also been paid five-hundred dollars by the Colorado Citizens Coalition, a non profit group that supports Democratic candidates, for his work in a door to door campaign to drum up last minute support for Barack Obama in the 2008 election.

There was very little coverage of Schwenkler’s arrest and no retractions of the damning rhetoric the press used as they attempted to link the attack with Tea Party activists. No indications were ever made as to Schwenkler’s motive for the vandalism leaving us to wonder “why?” It could simply be that he had an argument with people at the office and had an axe to grind with them but it may very well be that Schwenkler assumed that an attack of vandalism launched against Democratic offices would automatically be attributed to the Tea Party providing Nancy Pelosi with new speaking points about Tea Party violence.

Similarly, the charges of Tea Party hate and bigotry hoisted on the news networks after the House healthcare vote have failed to be substantiated with a single video clip or sound bite. Stenny Hoyer is now saying that anyone that doesn’t believe that racial slurs were lobbed at black Congressmen or that they weren’t spat upon are no different than the kooks that believe the Holocaust never happened during World War II. Sadly, there are miles of records and films to substantiate the brutal slaughter of more than six million Jews during World War II. Those films were taken in a nation that was ruled by a totalitarian military regime that had complete control over the media and yet, these films survived and exist to this day. However, here in the United States none of the hundreds of news cameras and microphones that accompanied those Congressmen as they walked through the Tea Party crowds to take their historic vote captured one scrap of evidence…..not one! If I were a member of the Jewish leadership I would be furious at Stenny Hoyer for even suggesting this charade could possibly be compared to the Holocaust.

The main stream news still hasn’t covered the brutal beating of Kenneth Gladney, a black Tea Party activist that was assaulted by counter protesters wearing SEIU shirts and jackets. The Missouri man was knocked to the ground and kicked for handing out literature during a Tea Party rally. A video taken of the incident clearly shows racial epithets were used as the assailants pummeled this man yet, the gang of thugs were basically charged with a misdemeanor when a civil rights violation and hate crime, had obviously taken place. A similar incident happened in Thousand Oaks, California where a 65 year old bystander that stopped to see what was happening at a Tea Party gathering was attacked and had part of his finger bitten off by a paid counter-protester bused in by MoveOn.org, a civilian activist group organized by the Democratic Party. Local police pursued that crime as vigorously as they did the incident in Missouri, with the charges against the attacker being little more than the equivalent of a ticket of littering. If the press really wants to see protest violence, they are obviously following the wrong groups because there is tons of video they can air if they follow the President’s supporters.

Now we have a new name and face to add to the list of Democrats manufacturing anger at Tea Party protests. Obviously the press can’t find the violence that Nancy Pelosi has accused the Tea Party of so he is going to help her by organizing people to infiltrate the Tea Party protests to create the disturbances the press couldn’t legitimately find. Jason Levin, a media lab school teacher at Beaverton, Oregon’s Conestoga Middle School says they want to “exaggerate the group's least appealing qualities, further distance the tea party from mainstream America and damage the public's opinion of them”.

He adds “We’re going to attend their rally, but plan to have a bunch of truly ludicrous signs. Things that say “Obama drinks Christian Baby Blood” or “Jesus wrote the constitution”. The more misspelled words the better…You could also dress in overalls with no shirt, or a stained “wifebeater” t-shirt, But you get the general idea. Some other thoughts are to ask people at the rally to sign a petition renouncing socialism. See just how much info you can get from these folks. The more data we can mine from the Tea Partiers, the more mayhem we can cause with it!!!!”

All Levin has done was to provide the smoking gun the Tea Party needed all along. The main stream media has yet to uncover these crazy signs and acts of violence in previous Tea Party protests so the assumption will now be that any violent or rude behavior at future Tea Party events must be the work of one of “Levin’s Losers”. Like that name? I made it up myself! Levin may have created more problems for himself than simply undermining the effectiveness of his own cause. He has apparently been working on his blog and website while he was supposed to be teaching his Oregon students and has drawn some unexpected and unpleasant attention from the school district. Hopefully his lack of involvement with the students actually spared them from the usual radical indoctrination routinely perpetrated by Socialist teachers and they are now better prepared for the realities of life than Mr. Levin is.

Paul

Target 2010 - Phil Hare (D-IL)

2010-04-16T06:00:00.000-07:00

Phil Hare was elected to Congress as part of the 2006 Democratic sweep brought on by America’s general dissatisfaction with George Bush’s policies. The anti-war movement aided by liberals in the main stream media had certainly strived to make Bush toxic by linking him with the rising number of American soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan and the allegations of US mistreatment of terror suspects. While that certainly didn’t help Bush, his downfall, like his father, had more to do with fiscal policies and the perception that he was disconnected from the true concerns of the American people.

Phil Hare came from a blue-collar family which is a plus to anyone running for public office in Illinois. He worked at the Seaford Clothing Factory in Rock Island where he spent thirteen years. During the time he worked at the Seaford Clothing Factory, Phil served as a union leader and as President of the Unite Here Local 617, an offshoot of the AFL-CIO. He also served six years as an Army reservist.

Proving that Illinois really doesn’t ask much of their elected officials, Mr. Hare is a product of Alleman High School in Rock Island and had earned an Associates Degree from Black Hawk College in Moline. An Associates Degree is an undergraduate academic degree awarded by community colleges, junior colleges and some four year colleges after completion of a course of study usually lasting two years. Since Hare doesn’t expand on the studies he completed to earn his degree, I can only assume it was Liberal Arts, P.E. or perhaps underwater basket weaving; the favored subject of limited achievers.

Hare began dabbling in politics when he ran as an Alternate Delegate to the Democratic Presidential Convention in support of Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts in 1980. One of the three delegates for Kennedy, Hare and his fellow Kennedy supporters were defeated by the delegates running in support of Jimmy Carter. In 1982 Phil left his union position to help Lane Evans, who was running for the US Congress against Republican incumbent, Tom Railsback. Hare and Evans had been close friends since 1976 when they worked together as volunteers for Senator Fred R. Harris' campaign for President. Surprisingly, Tom Railsback was defeated in the Republican primary by conservative challenger, State Senator Kenneth McMillan forcing Evans and Hare to shift gears and turn their attention to McMillan. Evans would defeat McMillan in November, and in appreciation, appointed Hare as district director.

For the next twenty-four years, Hare worked as an aide to Evans and assisted him mostly in the areas of constituent issues and labor problems. As an aide to Evans, Phil Hare oversaw the closings of Case International Harvestor plant in East Moline and the Maytag plant in Galesburg. The closings of these major businesses and many others resulted in a loss of more than 2,200 jobs in the 17th district as US companies began to flee over-regulation and high taxes in the US for countries that were a little more appreciative of the role successful corporations play in the health of an economy.

After Evans announced his retirement in March of 2006, Hare announced his candidacy to succeed Evans. Hare received the endorsement of Lane Evans and in a special Democratic caucus of precinct committee members from the 17th Congressional District, Hare defeated the four other candidates and became the district’s Democratic candidate for the 2006 Congressional race where Hare focused much of his campaign on labor issues. Since Illinois is not a right to work State, many people of the 17th district are union members (whether they like it or not) and let’s face it, labor issues in a State that loves to drive business away with union interference is an important issue for the people left looking for work. Apparently his promises worked and Hare defeated Republican Andrea Zinga in the general election of 2006 and ran unopposed in 2008 counting on America’s dissatisfaction with Bush and an easy ride on Obama’s coat tails.

Hare has followed Evans’s lead and his voting record is not just Liberal, it is very Liberal. That shouldn’t surprise anyone; especially since the mask came off shortly after the election and people found that Hare was not merely a Democrat, a Liberal or a union man….he was a Progressive and would become one of the founding members of the of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Caucus, a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and an ardent supporter of the Progressive Caucus’s Socialist agenda.

Hare is an unapologetic supporter of Labor Unions and unfortunately, Labor Unions are for the most part, unapologetic supporters of Socialist ideology. Curiously, Hare doesn’t appear to be an unapologetic supporter of the actual union members and has openly supported Card Check, a provision in a recently proposed bill that would strip union members of the right to cast a secret ballot in union elections. The secret ballot was the membership’s only protection against intimidation and scare tactics used by corrupt and violent union leaders and while this maybe something a former union President would love to offer his “friends” as a gift, it is certainly something the rank and file is overwhelmingly opposed to.

Hare also voted for the recent healthcare bill even though he had previously stated that he would never support healthcare legislation that did not include, in his words, “a robust public option”. In a recent interview, Hare was asked about the Constitutionality of the healthcare legislation to which he replied: “I don't worry about the Constitution on this to be honest…I worry about the thousands of people that are dying because they don’t have health insurance." As video clips of his dismissive comments about our Constitution made their way across the internet and onto the news, Hare responded saying that his statement was taken out of context and what he really meant was that he was not concerned about the constitutional challenge to the legislation. I’m not so sure about his explanation because as the questioning continued, the interview started to ask what part of the Constitution gives Congress the authority to require people to purchase health insurance but Hare interrupted him and blurted out "I don't know! I don't know!... But at the end of the day I want to bring insurance to every person that lives in this country."

Hare mistakenly added that the Constitution guarantees everyone the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. An unidentified voice on the tape reminded Congressman Hare that the line he just quoted was from the Declaration of Independence and not the Constitution but that didn’t matter much either. He waved his hand and said “either one.” Either one? This may come as a shock to the Black Hawk doctor of underwater basket weaving but he swore an oath to support and defend one of those documents when he became a Congressman and most of us think it would be a really good idea if he knew which one it was and what it actually says.

Why would we expect Mr. Hare would have actually read the Constitution when he obviously hasn’t read the bill he had just voted for? When asked if he had read the bill he told the interviewer that he had read the bill three times. Really? To have read the 8100 pages of the bill and the corresponding documents that would have to be read for the bill to make sense in the time the House leadership allowed before the vote, one would have to read one page each minute and then comprehend what it means in totality. That, my friends, would be a feat for a bona fide speed reader let alone a union boss with a two year degree in arts and crafts (or whatever it was).

Clearly Mr. Hare has no respect for the Constitution; no respect for union members and even less respect for his constituents if he can vote for a bill that he could not possibly have read. In fact, to vote for a bill that he openly opposed on principal simply because Nancy Pelosi told him to, Phil Hare must have very little respect for his own convictions and that is something that worries me most of all.

Paul

Tax Day 2010 - Getting Ready for the Next Depression

2010-04-15T06:00:00.000-07:00

Tax Day is here and while protests are taking place all over the country, we would do well to realize that April 15, 2010 may be something to celebrate only because these will be the lowest tax rates you will see for the foreseeable future. The spending spree brought on by the election of Barack Obama has accelerated the American free-fall into debt and the lending machine we have been using to finance our deficits has finally warned us that they are about to pull the emergency brake handle; bringing it all to a screeching halt. Think of it…our nation has spent so much money that we have not only exhausted our own ability to finance it, but the ability for an entire pool of foreign nation’s to lend us the difference. That is quite a feat and certainly qualifies as the primary definition of Obama’s proclamation that he would “fundamentally transform” America.

What has happened here? In the timeline of human events it wasn’t all that long ago when we were a nation that innovated self-reliance; which was the catalyst that sparked the solutions to every one of our difficulties. There is a long history of financial cycles where business and employment waxed and waned but the free market responded with dynamic solutions; not under the watchful eye of government, but because government was not involved at all. Today, that dynamic structure is shackled by the heavy hand of government regulatory control.

As the Twentieth Century approached, America found itself allured by the false promises of European thinkers. Progressives had entered the scene armed with the teachings of Marx, Engels and Nietzsche hoping to create an America that could coalesce power under a strong central government with the authority to pool the nation’s resources together to provide a base standard of living for all. Our first truly Progressive President was Theodore Roosevelt and while he didn’t have the power to bring about the change that he wanted to see, he certainly planted the seeds of Marxism thinly veiled behind the uniquely American label of Progressivism. What Roosevelt did do was to create the precedent of creating administrative agencies under a loose interpretation of the Commerce Clause. After all, if you could tweak America’s understanding of the constitutional authority for Congress to “regulate” commerce, then nearly anything could be brought under Federal control.

Woodrow Wilson would be the next Progressive President to assault the Constitution and is in fact, the most damaging. As a man who considered himself a “Progressive intellectual”, Wilson began the process of radicalizing America and using the precedent established by Theodore Roosevelt, created the Federal Reserve, the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Farm Loan Act and of course, the Progressive Income Tax to pay for it all. Curiously, there was no constitutional authority to create any of those programs but since Roosevelt had already started the vilification of the Corporation; it was an easy sale to convince America that it just needed to be done. Of course, since these programs added to the Federal budget that gave Wilson the ability to institute the Progressive Income Tax because the Constitution allows Congress to collect taxes to pay for the debts of government. Incidentally, when the Progressive Income Tax became law, it was promised that the top marginal rate would never exceed 10% and most Americans would accept a minor tax to provide for such important programs.

Wilson narrowly won his second term in 1916 by promising America that he would keep us out of the unpopular war that was raging in Europe; a promise that he would break less than a year later. The war expenditures created the economic conditions that would have Wilson break another promise in short order, when he raised the top marginal income tax rate to 77% to pay for America’s war debt. Wilson’s actions crippled business and investment and led directly to the unknown depression of 1920. The reason it is called the unknown depression is that while there is plenty of data available about this calamity; none of the facts are particularly flattering to Wilson or the Progressive movement so it is simply not discussed in schools, the press or academia. Worse news for our Progressive friends is that the facts surrounding our recovery from that depression soundly refute Progressive policy. President Warren Harding recognized the damage done by Wilson’s wild tax increases and responded by halving Federal spending and eventually reducing the top marginal tax rate to 25%. Within two years, the nation’s economy rebounded and the “Roaring Twenties” had been born.

Progressive Herbert Hoover became President in 1929 and as though he had no recollection of the damages wrought by Woodrow Wilson, immediately sought to use his Presidency to bring about more transformative change. Hoover began by closing what he called “tax loopholes” for the rich and could probably be credited for creating the open war against wealth that modern Progressives use to sway the general population’s support for any program or policy that will punish evil wealth and better the lives of average Americans with the proceeds. Hoover also raised tariffs and farm subsidies while increasing Federal expenditures for public projects such as veteran’s hospitals that for the first time thrust our medical system into a direct an unfair competition with the Federal government. Hoover also cancelled oil leases on government lands (does that sound familiar?); chaired White House conferences on child health, protection, homebuilding and homeownership; created an anti-trust division within the department of justice and generally saw the presidency as a vehicle for improving the conditions of all Americans by regulation and by encouraging volunteerism.

It wasn’t a year before the nation slipped back into fiscal chaos as the bottom fell out of the stock market in 1929. Failing to learn the lessons set by Warren Harding in the early 1920’s, Hoover implemented huge public spending projects and raised the top marginal tax rate to 63% in 1932 throwing the nation into a full fledged depression. The Depression allowed the next great Progressive President his shot at transformative change; Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Although Roosevelt had accused Hoover of spending and taxing the nation into depression, FDR immediately began his bid to tax and spend the nation out of depression. Yeah, that didn’t make sense to me either but that is what happens when Progressives control what you read, hear and learn. The lessons of history become lost in the fog of “intellectual rhetoric”.

In the midst of a crippling depression, FDR created a huge new Federal entitlement program (Social Security) and saddled us with a labor relations act that would legitimize collective bargaining. He is also the first President that advocated the establishment of a second “bill of rights” that would enumerate certain economic rights that were unnervingly similar to the rights listed in the Constitution adopted by the Communist regime of the Soviet Union. Fortunate, we dodged that bullet or we may be a very different nation today. In a slight of hand, FDR balanced the regular budget but the “emergency budget” created to combat the depression had increased Federal spending from 8% of GDP under Hoover to 10.2% under Roosevelt. As a result, the National Debt increased more than 100% and was 40% of GDP by 1936. To pay for all this spending FDR raised the top tax rate to an insane 79% in 1936 and Truman would continue this ultimately topping out at 94% after World War II.

While FDR’s programs caused a brief drop in unemployment from 25% when he assumed office to 14% in 1937, the tax hikes and new government programs would take their toll and create a new depression within a depression, throwing more people out of work. FDR’s programs are widely credited for ending the depression, which is the white-washed and revised history offered by Progressive historians that again, want to conceal that Progressivism, like its Socialist sister; does not work. The Depression would not end until World War II when the American industrial base was the only untouched manufacturing center left standing and if you wanted to buy anything, you had to buy it here. Of course modern Progressive’s use the artificial manufacturing boom of the ‘50’s to justify higher income tax rates. After all, if the nation had economic expansion with a top marginal tax rate of 94%; doesn’t that negate the validity of the cuts imposed by Harding? Well, since the economic expansion was based on an artificial and temporary demand, those Progressive assumptions must be equally artificial.

So now it’s 2010 and we have another Progressive in the White House and this Progressive is as corrupt, evil and devious as Woodrow Wilson was. While Barack Obama is seemingly ignorant of the historic solutions that are proven to relieve financial problems on a national scale, this Progressive has a willing band of co-conspirators holding absolute control over the Congress making his regime particularly dangerous. Ronald Reagan understood what needed to be done but by then, the Federal agencies created by the Progressives of the early and mid- twentieth century had become so powerful, and the misinformation fed to the general population was so complete that not even the charismatic “great communicator” could restore the Federal government to its basic and most successful roots.

While 2010 may be the lowest taxes we will see in a long time history has taught us that we must now brace for a new “Great Depression” as Obama continues to make the same mistakes that all of his Progressive predecessors made. In his case, I sincerely question whether his actions are actually mistakes. We may be witnessing the only Progressive President that truly understands the history of his actions and is intent on using them to complete the work started by Theodore Roosevelt to create an America based on the principals of Marx, Engels and Nietzsche. God help us all.

Paul

Obama Care Is On Display in Massachusetts

2010-04-14T06:00:00.000-07:00

Since 2006, Massachusetts has had a State managed healthcare system nearly identical to the healthcare bill that just passed into law. During the debates I had suggested that people take a long hard look at existing State health systems because every State that has meddled in healthcare has experienced crippling difficulties. While several States have attempted this, Massachusetts was the one that had nearly everything the Senate bill featured. The exchange; the subsidies and most importantly, it had an individual mandate requiring all residents to purchase an acceptable insurance plan or face a penalty.

The first effect Massachusetts felt was that individuals that had the money, desire and an idea to create a business began slipping across the borders into neighboring States to avoid the increased taxes and regulations imposed after the implementation of “Commonwealth Care”, the Massachusetts healthcare plan. As the plan began to mature and more of the uninsured obtained insurance either purchased to satisfy the mandate or provided through subsidies for the impoverished, the number of uninsured dropped to the lowest in the nation at just around 4%. Unfortunately, Massachusetts did nothing to make the prospect of practicing medicine in the Bay State any more palatable than it was before everyone had insurance so there was a measurable doctor shortage almost immediately. Wait times to see doctors have become frustratingly long and the extra burden placed on primary care physicians has taken a toll on the quality of care which were two things that voters had been assured would never happen.

The other thing that the people of Massachusetts were assured was that the cost of obtaining health insurance would finally be reigned in but that too, would turn out to be just another broken promise. The fact is that the cost of insurance in Massachusetts that was already the highest in the nation continued to climb at a staggering 10% per year, well ahead of inflation. By early 2008, the “safety net” hospitals that provided care for low income people in urban areas were experiencing serious budget shortfalls due to the combination of reduced "free-care" payments from the state and low enrollment in the exchange or “Commonwealth Care”. The State had reduced payments to hospitals expecting a reduced need for hospital charity as more people enrolled in Commonwealth Care but the enrollment that took place made little difference. What the social engineers in Massachusetts did not anticipate was that the fine for not having insurance was so low that people would learn to “game” the system. You could avoid thousands in insurance premiums and pay a minimal fine of a few hundred dollars and then get insurance through the exchange later when you absolutely needed it.

Some had argued for meaningful fines associated with the refusal to purchase health insurance but the bill would never have passed with the higher fines in place. As it was, the State spent years in court defending the mandates and fines and still has legal challenges waiting in the wings. One would think that the shortages to the hospitals would be an easy fix to address and all that would be required was to have the legislature reinstitute the reimbursements for indigent care but by then, the State was facing a short term funding gap of one-hundred million dollars and needed a new three year commitment from the Federal government for an additional one and a half billion dollars or the system would be in serious trouble.

Since the referendum ballot adopted by Massachusetts severely limited the States ability to increase taxes, the State floated several ideas to increase revenues such as an additional one dollar tax on a pack of cigarettes, but none of these measures were capable of stopping the arterial bleeding endemic in Commonwealth Care. The one-hundred million dollar short term funding gap would be the good news for 2008 as the State disclosed they had a one point three billion dollar deficit, much of which was attributed to the failings of Commonwealth Care. In 2010, the portion of the Massachusetts budget consumed by health and human services is a staggering fifty percent (50%) of all State spending. In response to the growing cost to the State, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick has instructed the State Division of Insurance to reject any request for health insurance rate increases that exceed the rate of medical inflation. Guess what? All of the available plans requested rate increases that exceeded the rate of medical inflation and 235 of the 274 requests were denied setting the stage for a showdown between the authority of government and the independence of business in Massachusetts.

The Governor’s instruction to the State Division of Insurance amounts to a unilateral imposition of price controls on an industry already hampered by State regulations and reduced reimbursements from the State. Four of the six companies that provide insurance through the Massachusetts exchange have posted substantial losses for all of 2009, which is what prompted the requests for rate increases. The insurers responded to the Governors edict by refusing to write any new policies until the matter was addressed and immediately filed suit against the State.

On Monday, a judge in the Suffolk County Superior Court ruled against the insurers stating that the insurers must exhaust the appeals process with the Division of Insurance before seeking a ruling from the courts. Four of the insurers have already filed appeals in accordance with the judge’s decision, vowing to take the matter to the Superior Court if necessary. Facing what is in essence, a health insurance blackout, Massachusetts Insurance Commissioner Joseph Murphy ordered the protesting insurers to return to the market with acceptable price quotes by 3pm Thursday, April 15th or face fines of five-thousand dollars a day per carrier plus one-thousand dollars for every consumer that is unable to buy coverage because of the action. So far, only one carrier, Health New England, has provided the new quotes demanded by the Commissioner.

Hopefully, they can resolve this for the benefit of those that rely on their health insurance because of long term illness or emergency needs but this may turn into our first real case of “Atlas Shrugged”. Let’s face it, the Federal government may have prohibited health insurers from competing across state lines but they are national companies. The only thing the Federal prohibition does is force the largest insurers to create 50 separate companies with the administrative costs that go with them. Blue Cross-Blue Shield in Massachusetts can thumb their nose at the Governor and Commissioner and close up shop completely in that State and do all the better for it. When a train has a car with a bad wheel, they separate it from the train and keep on going and for government to attempt to force a private company to sell a product at a loss is not just foolish, but un-American.

This isn’t the only challenge Commonwealth Care has. They still haven’t been able to attract doctors that want to work under those conditions so the State is now relaxing the restrictions on nurse practitioners and allowing them to perform health services formerly reserved for licensed doctors opening the door for yet another lowering of the quality of care. Before anyone goes into a rage over my comments, I know that nurse practitioners are hard working and dedicated people worthy of praise but they are simply not doctors. If there were no distinction between the two, there would be no need to bear the expense to complete additional education and go through the rigors of licensing to become a doctor. The fact is that just the suggestion that a change in State regulations would lower the quality care to fill the shortage of doctors leaves the State open to massive new law suits. It won’t take long for savvy personal injury attorneys in Massachusetts to provide a costly link between the State’s expansion in the role of nurse practitioners and the perception that suddenly, every medical procedure that doesn’t meet the recipients expectation could have had a different outcome if a bona fide doctor performed the services.

With the similarities between Commonwealth Care and our newly passed healthcare bill I seriously doubt there can be a substantially different outcome. Since the healthcare insurers will not be able to avoid the draconian price controls that will undoubtedly be imposed within a year or two after implementation by simply moving their business to another State, the insurers will most likely be driven out of business when the money runs out. You can bet we will have the same doctor shortages, the same wait times and the same willingness on the part of the public to pay the fines until they actually need insurance; insurance that will no longer be able to exclude pre-existing conditions. It’s a little late for the hard look the media is giving Commonwealth Care and I doubt they would even be doing these stories now if Mitt Romney, the former Governor of Massachusetts wasn’t a possible Republican contender in the 2012 Presidential election. What Obama Care may eventually bring us is a resurgence of questionable home remedies as doctor services become a game to see who can survive the wait, but this is the kind of progress that Progressives bring to everything.

Paul

Obama, Alinsky, Cloward Pivens and Progressives - The Next Crisis

2010-04-13T06:00:00.001-07:00

There is nothing more fearful than a radical college professor that has been given the chance to experiment with his social theories outside of the controlled environment of the laboratory. Every policy of the Obama administration can be traced back to the development of his Progressive roots when he was rubbing elbows with Marxist professors and fellow student activists at Columbia and Harvard. That only helped to complete his indoctrination since both of his parents were already avowed Socialists and by the time he finished school, Young Barack couldn’t wait to take what he had learned and find a practical application for it.

Barack Obama began teaching Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago Law School in 1992 but curiously enough, the only photograph I have seen of Mr. Obama standing before his class clearly shows him drawing a chart on the blackboard that is taken right from Saul Alinsky’s book “Rules for Radicals”. The chart he was drawing had nothing at all to do with the Constitution or law but was intended to display the evils of Capitalism and how Marxist principals could be applied to correct the problems. This lesson in Alinsky would do nothing to further the education needs of law students other than show them the social methods that could be used to subvert the Constitution in the name of social justice, economic justice or sociological jurisprudence; a lesson that Mr. Obama would put into practice throughout his life.

His efforts as a community organizer weren’t a display of some overwhelming urge to help the poor of Chicago but were taken directly from the pages of Cloward and Piven. Their strategy to overwhelm and disrupt the existing social network in order to bring about the collapse of the Capitalist system is something that has been attempted by radical Progressives since the mid 1960’s. This strategy was what nearly caused the total collapse of New York State’s economy in the 1970’s as another one of Obama’s heroes, George Wiley, embarked on a mission to enroll as many people on welfare as possible, eventually throwing New York into financial ruin when by the mid ‘70’s, there was one person collecting welfare for every two people paying taxes.

Cloward and Piven’s theories suggest that the status quo will remain in place unless it is totally overwhelmed and the threat of social upheaval that will necessarily follow frightens people into accept anything that would restore order and provide security. They postulated that the only system that could restore that order now that so many people were dependent on government programs would be a Socialist State that could finally redistribute wealth on a grand scale. Of course the limited successes that they had only proved the theory but they would have to move beyond local meddling and be able to create that kind of havoc on a national scale needed to realize their goals. Motor voter laws, community organizing, radical upheaval and union activism are all part of that nationalization of the Cloward Piven Strategy but to have a national effect, they need willing accomplices holding national office.

The Progressive movement has been cultivating power in Washington for just about 100 years and the proof is there. Our first truly Progressive President was Theodore Roosevelt and wouldn’t you know it; he also attended Columbia University and Harvard. Those places must be a breeding ground for anti-capitalist Marxists because that is what they overwhelmingly produce. Theodore Roosevelt came from a staunchly Democratic family but somehow, he ended up as a Republican by the time his political career took shape. There is a good reason for that. The Democratic Party, at that time, was very different than it is today and they had no room for pseudo-Socialists that dreamed of the European ideas that threatened to restrain the freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution. In fact, you can call Theodore Roosevelt the first RINO (Republican in name only) too as Roosevelt went on to form the Bull Moose Party when the Republicans began to reject his Progressive ideas. He left the convention calling his people to follow him and formed his Progressive Party under the banner that the Federal government must intervene to protect the people from selfish interests. Hmmm? That sounds awfully familiar doesn’t it?

I looked but most historians just don’t speak about his insatiable desire to reign in power from the States to transform our limited Federal government into the seat of national control. He was the first President to give us a massive new Federal agency; The Food and Drug Administration. The FDA would begin the process of redefining the limits of Federal power; extended that power beyond interstate commerce and into the activities of the sovereign States. Roosevelt also created the National Park system seizing more that two-hundred and thirty million acres of land; ostensibly to preserve it for America’s posterity but while some of that land contained spectacular vistas and rich wilderness deserving of protection, there were also enormous tracts of land that were of value only because of their natural resources.

Much like Franklin Roosevelt spoke of the “New Deal”; Johnson promoted the “Great Society” and Obama speaks of “Social Justice” and redistributive policy, Theodore Roosevelt enjoyed talking about his “Square Deal”. While Roosevelt never really got his square deal off the ground, it clearly was the first attempt by an American President to bring the ideas of Marx, Engels and Nietzsche to America. While Roosevelt was born too early to have heard the phrase “redistribution”, his square deal was based entirely on those principals. He also firmly believed in Federal regulatory control over corporations and corporate special interests.

So here we are in 2010 and we have a Progressive President that not only attended the Marxist breeding grounds of Columbia and Harvard but has taught those principals as a professor. He learned Alinsky very well and the most important of Alinsky’s rules; to walk, talk and look like a middle class American to gain trust before you attempt to tear the rug out from under the unsuspecting masses. He claims that he is not a Socialist; that his programs are not Bolshevik plots and he is right. He’s not a Socialist or a Bolshevik….he is a Progressive. Socialists bring about change through violent revolution and Bolsheviks were deemed out of existence by Joseph Stalin. Progressives believe in the same ideals as Socialists but they are masters of illusion that will lull us to sleep as they bring about transformative change; slowly shifting us towards a Socialist society piece by piece using our own economic system and laws against us.

Obama’s fiscal policies run counter to every known principal of economic law for dealing with a recession. He has quadrupled a deficit that he called reckless during his campaign and his own estimates say that the national debt will now double in ten years. Instead of cutting spending and taxes he has spent more than three-quarters of a trillion dollars on economic stimulus spending that has added another three points to the unemployment index while raising taxes by more than two trillion dollars. He has been an unqualified failure in National Security and nearly every trip and meeting he has had has either emboldened our enemies or insulted our allies. His anti-terrorism policies have granted constitutional rights to foreign combatants and while he plans to add 100 agents to review the no-fly list, ironically his healthcare bill will add nearly 17,000 IRS agents just to make sure you buy health insurance. Call me silly but don’t you think his hiring practices should go the other way around?

Now we are entering phase two. The millions that will be added to Medicaid under the healthcare bill aren’t enough yet to bankrupt the States so we are about to add immigration reform to his list of priorities. That will make those twenty million illegal immigrants eligible for public assistance programs once they are all amnestied. Add that to the massive tax increases we will see under the President’s Cap and Tax Energy Bill and we should be just about ready for the final Cloward and Pivens implosion of our society.

Remember Obama’s Chief of Staff, Rahm Emmanuel said, “never let a good crisis go to waste”. They are well aware that during the depth of the Great Depression FDR’s advisers had told him to be prepared to assume dictatorial powers to face the crisis at hand. Obama and his band of Marxist and Maoist advisers skulking around the White House have already planned the next great crisis; a crisis that they most assuredly will not let go to waste.

Paul

Obama Breaks the Record for Broken Promises - The VAT Tax

2010-04-12T06:00:00.000-07:00

It must be Monday because here comes another broken promise from our fearless leader. Does anyone recall when Barack Obama was campaigning for President as a moderate? I know it’s hard to remember those days; especially since he has taken such a hard left since his inauguration but for those that know where to find the quotes, they are still out there. Try these on for size:

“You will not see any of your taxes increase one single dime.”
Barack Obama

“I will cut taxes - cut taxes - for 95 percent of all working families, because, in an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on the middle class.”
Barack Obama

Since late last week, a lot of focus has been placed on suggestions made by Obama’s economic advisors that the Federal government should consider a value added tax or “VAT” tax. The VAT tax was popularized in Europe as a means to raise revenues to fund a plethora of social programs such as nationalized healthcare and other redistributive policies developed in European nations lead by Socialist political Parties. It allowed those nations to raise vast amounts of cash without the complication of having a direct tax on the public; which makes it all the more appealing to sneaky politicians.

The VAT tax levies a tax on each stage of manufacture. For instance, if you consider a book, most people can not imagine how many stages actually go into the manufacture of a simple book. To make paper you must harvest pulp trees. That step adds value to the wood simply because it has been harvested and delivered to a processor so therefore, it would be taxed. Then the paper manufacturer grinds the wood into a pulp to make paper, but first, chemicals are added to bleach the pulp and stabilize it and each of those chemicals began life as a raw material that had to be processed and refined adding value (and a tax) to each stage of development. Of course the energy used to operate the equipment runs on electricity which is generated using fuels. Those fuels are not ready for consumption until they have been processed, adding a value and the corresponding tax to that as well so the energy they produce is more costly to the paper manufacturer.

Now that the finished paper has been delivered to the printer, the actual work of creating a book can begin. The paper must be cut to a size that is usable for the book that will be produced, an added value. Then the ink that is used is another chemical that was delivered to the printer with all the taxes that were applied at each step of manufacture. The act of applying ink to the paper is another step that adds value and let’s not forget that a book bound for reading is more valuable than one that is not, so that adds another tax. There are glues that must be made to bind the book; a tax. There is card material that must be made to form the cover; another tax. There is the lithograph and cover material that is applied to the card-stock cover for yet another tax. In the end, a simple $15.00 book now costs $20.95 because of all the taxes added at each stage of production and for each of the materials involved.

Most areas of the country have a sales tax of roughly 8% and that would net about $1.20 on the sale of a $15.00 book. That is why the government would love to sell you on the idea of a VAT tax. If they had to come directly to you for a national sales tax, what could they possibly get away with? 1% or maybe 2% would be the most they could start with and not enrage a nation already drowning in taxes. Governments that have a VAT tax love tell everyone that this is a tax on those evil corporations and that they are finally paying their fair share but they leave out one tiny little detail. Corporations never pay taxes. Did I say never? Yes, I said NEVER. All taxes assessed on corporations, manufacturers and retailers are immediately passed on to the consumer (you) through higher prices so the government gets to tax you indirectly using the corporations as the tax collector. Neat trick huh? Through this practice that $15.00 book will have to go up by about $6, the price of a Kindle would increase by roughly $100 and an automobile; roughly $3,000. Oh yes, then you still have the honor of paying your local sales tax of about 8% on the new, higher price.

A VAT tax is not the tax on the wealthiest 1% that Obama campaigned on; it is a tax on anyone that buys anything regardless of income. Of course you can avoid that tax provided you have property with trees that you can cut down and the mineral resources to create ink, glue and paper with. Then of course you would have to know how to make those products yourself and find the time after all of that to have written something worth putting in the blank pages of the book you just made. No, I’m not being silly. I am trying to illustrate the fact that this type of tax is insidious, hidden and unavoidable. Even the poor need food, shelter and clothing and they will be burdened by the price increases on all of that just as much as the wealthiest 1% is. The hardest hit will be new families and the young that are just trying to make it on their own. They are the largest consumers of manufactured goods and none of them even come close to being in that “top 1%”.

A recent report stated that a full 47% of the nation currently pays no Federal income tax because of the Progressive Tax system we use in the United States. I doubt anyone is short sighted enough to imagine that we can have a $3.8 trillion dollar Federal budget, avoid collecting taxes from nearly half the nation and still be able to afford it. Of course if Obama was an honest man, which he isn’t, he would have to tell America that the freebies are over; that we must end the earned income credits and reduce the current amount to be eligible for a tax exemption or begin shutting down essential government services and programs. Unfortunately, the Democrats and Progressives have quite a few people trained to believe that these programs are not government charities but entitlements that they have a right to collect. Since they can’t eliminate the programs without riots springing up all over the country they have moved on to considering a VAT tax that would allow them to give with one hand while taking it back with the other hand hidden safely behind the companies that will have to collect the tax for them.

The institution of a VAT tax would be more than just another broken promise; it would be an outright lie. The tax would be collected from manufacturers that would, in turn, get the money from you while the President would still claim that he has not raised taxes on the middle class. Obama will still try to sell this to his base group of supporters as another tax on the rich and on those evil corporations knowing full well, by every example set in Europe, that the people that actually pay that tax are the ones that buy those products. To be able to claim that he is concerned about the deficit and debt, Obama has commissioned a debt reduction panel to investigate the problem and develop strategies for dealing with it. Every expert in the nation says that no plan will be effective without a meaningful reduction in government spending but that is where the agreement ends. The Progressive economists say those reductions must be coupled with massive new taxes dedicated to debt reduction while the ones that truly understand the power of a free market economy say we must slash taxes to attract foreign investment and to put money back into the hands of the consumer where it belongs. By the way, the report from Obama’s debt reduction panel is not due until December, well after the November election which is another neat little trick.

I know to those that have been raised in the era of class warfare, this idea seems ridiculous. You have been told since birth that the rich are too rich and the poor are getting poorer; that the rich must give more so that the playing field can be leveled to help the poor through these difficult times. I will be blunt. I have never sought out a poor man to apply for a job. While we all have different measures of what “filthy rich” actually is; the fact is that it is the wealthy that create jobs and I can think of no better way to help the poor out of poverty that to nurture a thriving economy that can support meaningful jobs for all of the people that are stuck in government projects now. The government has never created jobs. The best they can do is to steal from those that have to give to those that don’t. The only problem with that is the money they just stole was the money that would have been used to create businesses and new jobs.

Europe is about to implode under their mountainous debt and the wealthy in those countries are looking for a safe place to invest. They would much rather invest in the United States because we have the most stable society and government on the globe. Instead, they are seeking investments in China and others like China because America has gone wild with ideas of Socialism lately. If we can reign in our spending and slash taxes, money will pour into this country as never before. We can prosper and reemerge as a world leader if we have the strength to bite the bullet in the short term and grow our economy instead of sapping the last few drops of blood out of it. Of course we need leaders that understand the free market and wealth instead of those that despise it. This November will determine the course of America and if we don’t elect a roadblock to stop these runaway Progressive Socialists in Congress and in the Presidency, we may not get another chance to return America to prosperity and peace.

Paul

Target 2010 - Charles B. Rangel (D-NY)

2010-04-09T06:00:00.000-07:00

I suppose no list of Congressmen that need to be fired would be complete without Charlie Rangel. Charlie began life in Harlem, New York in 1930 as the second of three children. Rangel’s father was frequently unemployed and absent from the home until he finally left his family in 1936. At first, this didn’t seem to affect Charlie and he appeared to do well in elementary and intermediate school; even holding a job at a neighborhood drug store at the age of eight. By high school, Rangel began losing interest in school, was frequently truant and often driven home by police. Rangel’s maternal grandfather worked for the courts and knew many of the local judges and lawyers. He managed to keep Charlie out of serious trouble while he struggled with life in his early teens trying to come to grips with his own identity. Rangel would eventually drop out of Dewitt Clinton H.S. at the age of 16 and began working at a number of menial and low paying jobs.

Charles Rangel would eventually enlist in the Army and served from 1948 through 1952. During the Korean War, Rangel was part of the all-black 503rd Field Artillery Battalion in the 2nd Infantry Division. Rangel distinguished himself during the battle of Kunu-ri in North Korea. Despite heavy fighting and relentless air strikes, Chinese forces flanked the U.S. 24th Division and the U.S. 35th regiment forcing them into retreat. During the retreat, Rangel was part of a vehicle column that became trapped and fell under attack by Chinese forces. Wounded by shrapnel from Chinese shell and facing sub-zero cold, Rangel found himself fighting the elements as well as the Chinese. As U.S. soldiers were being cornered and captured, a number of men from Rangel’s unit looked to him and his reputation for leadership. It took three days but Rangel managed to extricate roughly 40 men out of a battle that would kill nearly half the battalion. They manage to escape the Chinese encirclement and return to American held territory. For his wounds and bravery, Rangel would receive the Purple Heart, the Bronze Star for Valor, a Presidential Unit Citation, The Republic of Korea Presidential Unit Citation and three Battle Stars.

Rangel considered his time in the military as a formative period in his life and made himself a promise that he would not return home to the same life he left behind. Rangel left the military with an honorable discharge at the rank of Staff Sergeant. Rangel returned home and immediately finished high school completing two years of study in a single year. Rangel went on to earn a B.S. from the New York University School of Commerce in 1957, where he made the dean's list, and on full scholarship, obtained a Juris Doctor from St. John's University School of Law in 1960. His college experience also moved him into the realm of racial and social activist Rangel is a member of Alpha Phi Alpha, the first intercollegiate Greek-letter fraternity established for African-Americans. He is a member of the fraternity's World Policy Council, a think tank whose purpose is to expand Alpha Phi Alpha's involvement in politics, social and current policy regarding international concerns.

After passing the Bar Exam, Rangel began work with Weaver, Evans & Wingate, New York’s most prominent black law firm where Rangel earned a reputation for providing legal representation for black civil rights activists. In 1961, Rangel was appointed as an assistant U.S. Attorney for New York’s Southern District by then, U.S. Attorney General, Robert Kennedy. With a number of new positions in and around the Democratic political scene, Rangel developed a greater interest in politics and with Percy Sutton, formed the John F. Kennedy Democratic Club in Harlem which over time would be re-named the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. Democratic Club. After several unsuccessful bids for elected office, Rangel would get his big break when his friend and mentor, Percy Sutton, was appointed as Manhattan Borough President leaving a vacancy in the New York State Assembly. With Sutton’s help and endorsement, Rangel won that seat in 1966, serving two terms during which; he became friends with New York Governor, Nelson Rockefeller.

Emerging as a leader among black legislators in the Assembly, Rangel supported many ideas that were not widely viewed as popular or in the best interest of the City. He proposed the legalization of gambling, specifically the “numbers” game; saying that for the average Harlemite, playing the numbers was “moral and a way of life.” Rangel opposed harsher penalties for prostitution stating it was ineffective. Curiously, Rangel proposed holding drug pushers criminally accountable for the actions of drug users. While he claimed illegal drug use was a national security issue he also believed that Harlem drug users were principally victims and wanted to move the criminality of drug related crime a little further up the ladder. This way he could claim to be tough on crime while sparing his constituents from harsher penalties. His reputation and friendship with Nelson Rockefeller paid off in 1970 when he defeated long term NY Congressman Adam Clayton Powell for NY’s 18th Congressional District’s seat.

Rangel is a skilled speaker and an adept politician but like his predecessor, has remained in Congress long enough to develop an air of elite entitlement. Powell found himself deeply embroiled in scandal and by the mid-1960s, Powell was being increasingly criticized for mismanagement of the Education and Labor Committee budget, taking trips abroad at public expense which included travel to his retreat on the Bahamian isle of Bimini. He was also under attack in his district, where his refusal to pay a slander judgment made him subject to arrest. He spent increasing amounts of time in Florida and gained a reputation for absenteeism during the meetings of his own committee. In 1967, the House Democratic Caucus stripped Powell of his Committee Chair and the entire Congress eventually voted 307-116 to exclude him from Congress; a move that the Supreme Court would later call improper. Powell would eventually win reelection and was seated with the 91st Congress but was also fined $25,000 and denied seniority.

The budget scandal, Powell’s absenteeism and a personal scandal where it was found that Powell’s mother was on the payroll of his staff from 1961 until 1967 even though she left the U.S in 1961 to reside in Puerto Rico made him an easy target in the 1969 election. Rangel used the accusations against Powell to forward his campaign for Congress. While Rangel only defeated Powell by a mere 150 votes in the Democratic Primary, he won the Congressional seat with 88% percent of the vote over his Republican challenger.

One would think the fall of Adam Clayton Powell would have served as a notice to other presumptuous demagogues but I suppose those lessons are only apparent if you haven’t enjoyed overwhelming reelections for nearly forty years. Now, Charles Rangel has just had to resign his position as Chairman of the House Ways and Means committee because of allegations of scandal that are curiously similar to Powell’s committee budget fiasco. Additionally, Rangel has failed to pay taxes on rental properties that he owns abroad and has misused New York’s rent control assistance by joining three rent controlled apartments together for an office and an additional rent controlled apartment as a residence; all while listing his permanent address as a home in Washington. I suppose what makes the allegations against Rangel even worse is that he was the Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee; the Committee that writes the tax regulations the rest of us have to live with or else.

Charlie counted on his Parties dominance in Washington to protect him and they tried their best until public opinion demanded that he be removed from the chairman position and fully investigated. Charlie was so secure about his Parties protection that when an independent video journalist saw Rangel in the Capitol building and asked about the allegations, Charlie laughed at him and said “Why don’t you mind your own God damned business” before boarding an elevator. Apparently Charlie forgot that the Congress is our business. That tax cheat Congressman should expect serious questions from tax payers when there are questions of wrong-doing. That the reasons he is being questioned by the ethics committee is because even after 39 years in Congress, we still expect that the people that write the rules actually follow them too.

Today is shopping day and I have already checked the expiration date of the perishables in my refrigerator. I think it’s about time we put an expiration day on our Congressmen too. It only took 15 years for Adam Clayton Powell to take advantage of his position but Rangel has been there more than twice that time and is apparently, twice as corrupt. His answer to that video journalist only proves that he believes Congressmen, especially senior Congressman, are the elite and no longer need to address the questions posed by mere peasants. Charlie’s expiration date came and passed decades ago and it’s time to dump out the stale and bring in someone new (and honest). Sorry Charlie…it’s time to go.

Paul

Iran Builds Nuclear Capability and the US Disarms?

2010-04-08T06:00:00.000-07:00

I am confused. We have Iran actively seeking nuclear weapons, North Korea saying not only that they possess these horrible devices but are willing to use them against South Korea and the US troops stationed there and the Obama administration not only says we will cut our stocks in half, but actually seeks to eliminate our nuclear weapons all together. He has already made a statement modifying the circumstances under which nuclear retaliation is possible, but apparently even that isn’t enough for our radical President.

He claims this will make the world safe but one would have to assume that the United States is nothing more than a renegade aggressor in need of restraint for that to be true. Mr. Obama may be swept up in the Progressive drivel he learned at Harvard, the anti-American sentiments he used as a community organizer or perhaps he actually bought into the lies spoken by Reverend Jeremiah “God Damn America” Wright, but America is not the problem. We are not an aggressor nation and we do not engage in wars of militaristic expansion. While we reserve the right to defend ourselves, we do not hold the threat of nuclear arms out as just another weapon in that struggle. After World War II, we have maintained the posture that our nuclear forces were strictly a deterrent against nuclear attack and have never seriously considered their use for any other purpose.

I do agree that we live in a different world where massive stock piles of nuclear weapons are not actually needed but to come to the conclusion that America can totally dismantle her nuclear capabilities as rogue nations hostile to the United States are actively seeking to obtain nuclear capabilities is not only foolish, but dangerously short sighted. Mr. Obama obviously hasn’t learned the lessons of the Cold War; lessons that clearly show if it were not for our preparedness, we most certainly would have had to counter a Soviet invasion of Western Europe in another long and bloody conventional war. It was the threat posed by our massive stocks of high grade nuclear weapons that kept the Soviet Union at bay.

Today, our potential enemies have no fear of America because we are currently bridled with a Commander in Chief that has no stomach for war and refuses to take decisive action to prevent these nations from obtaining a nuclear capability. Benjamin Franklin once said that “if we act like sheep, we will be eaten by wolves” displaying a keen understanding that we can only preserve peace by making it abundantly clear to threatening nations that we are prepared, capable and willing to defend ourselves against attack. The United States will invite aggressive challenges to our interests if we assume a posture that shows any weakness at all.

World opinion sees United States foreign policy as unclear at best and even friendly nations have begun to question our abilities. Yes, we are committed to winning the war against terrorist factions in Afghanistan but the actions we have recently taken treat foreign combatants and terrorists as third rate burglars for the court system to deal with and has undermined the efforts our brave soldiers have made in the field. The idea that we actually have three Navy SEALs on trial for giving a terrorist a bloody nose after he was captured for kidnapped several Americans, hanging them from a bridge and setting them on fire is not just a travesty but an embarrassment in the court of world opinion.

Our allies and enemies look at these actions and realize that President Obama is transforming our military by turning soldiers in battle into policemen on the beat. This is a war and our men and women under arms have gotten more than a bloody nose because we have rules of engagement and the enemy doesn’t. The idea that we could even consider trying our elite soldiers for the performance of their job is ludicrous. What is the message we are sending? Will our soldiers simply refuse to search for these terrorists out of fear that they too will be prosecuted or has the President just set the stage for military assassinations? After all, the message they hear is that a bullet eradicates the problem but an arrest will bring more false charges of abuse and result in more court martial’s of U.S. military personnel. Either way it serves the terrorists and will steel their efforts against us.

Now the President has made their mission even more hazardous by announcing to our enemies that they needn’t worry about nuclear retaliation if they employ the use of chemical or biological weapon of mass destruction, setting the stage for precisely that kind of assault against our soldiers. While the President piddles around with healthcare, cap and trade, card check, bank bailouts and corporate take-over’s, he has abdicated the only clear cut mission of the Federal government; the defense and security of the United States.

No, I don’t believe that he is intentionally weakening our military and nuclear capability in order to make America vulnerable to attack. I do believe that the man is a hopeless and confused ideologue that actually thinks that if we disarm, that other nations will cheer and follow suit.

Paul

The Commerce Clause Hoax

2010-04-07T06:00:00.000-07:00

The other day I hinted that the President and Progressive members of Congress secretly fear the constitutional challenge to the healthcare bill. It has nothing to do with actually negating that healthcare bill per se, but rather the spill over affects of challenging the liberal use of the Commerce Clause that has given, or rather, that has allowed the Federal government to seize powers that were reserved for the States and the People when the Constitution was enacted.

Much of what the Federal government has done over the past one-hundred years has been justified through an interpretation of the Constitution and not what is actually written in the law. Since the Congress and President see fit to invoke the Commerce Clause as their justification lets take a look at that clause.

The United States Constitution
Article One
Section Eight
The Powers of Congress (third paragraph)

“To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes”

While seemingly innocuous, the Commerce Clause has been intentionally manipulated ever since the days of Theodore Roosevelt. To derive the power needed to create massive agencies and oppressive regulations using this simple statement one must first ignore or conceal the words and intentions of the founding fathers. “To Regulate”, at the time the Constitution was written, simply meant “to make regular” and the authority to regulate was never meant to imply that the Federal government would have any powers beyond those that were enumerated in Article one, Section Eight. There are numerous examples that prove this interpretation in both the Constitution and in the Federalist Papers and it doesn’t take very long to find them.

The Merriam-Webster dictionary offers three definitions for “regulate” which are”:
1- To govern or direct according to rule: to bring under the control of law or constituted authority: to make regulations for or concerning (regulate the industries of a country)2- To bring order, method, or uniformity (to regulate one's habits)3- To fix or adjust the time, amount, degree, or rate of (regulate the pressure of a tire)

Congress loves to use the first definition of “regulate” to justify their actions through the use of the Commerce Clause but is that really appropriate? The Commerce Clause gives Congress to regulate Commerce with foreign nations but we all know that foreign nations are sovereign and will only recognize the rule and authority of law within the framework of their own governmental processes. Can Congress claim the Commerce Clause gives them the authority to negate the lawful structure of government in a foreign nation and burden that nation with laws and controlling regulations simply because we have trade with that nation? Of course not! As much as Congress may love that definition of regulate, it is clear that since the Commerce Clause also uses the word regulate in conjunction with commerce between the US and foreign nations; the definition that best applies would be the second “To bring order, method, or uniformity.”

In Article one, Section Eight, Congress also has the authority “to coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures”. Money is an object, so clearly one cannot control the actions of money through legislative regulation. The regulation of the value of currency can only make sense in the context of insuring that the value of money was uniform throughout the United States and that the exchange rate with foreign currency was equally uniform; that a dollar in Massachusetts was worth the same as a dollar in Georgia and both of those dollars could be exchanged for an equal amount in British Pounds.

In the Madison debates staged during the August meetings of the Federal Convention of 1787, Representative John Mason of Maryland argued the point of regulating the militia. In fact, his motion was for the “…power to make laws regulating and disciplining the militia...” Since discipline is a rule or system of rules governing conduct or activity using regulation to imply control through legislative regulation would be redundant and redundancy was not something our founders were famous for. Therefore, the word regulate in that case also referred to insuring a basic uniformity of standards for the militia. Many examples exist within the Federalist papers and each time the word “regulate” appeared, it could only have meant to guarantee a degree of uniformity.

Since the inception of the Federal government and most especially, over the last hundred years, Congress has routinely overstepped its authority and in doing so, has slowly diluted the rights of the States that were clearly denied to the Federal government by the Tenth Amendment. The Federal legislation resulting from this seizure of power is now challenging the rights of all American citizens. For the Federal government to assume a power that is not clearly enunciated as one of the enumerated powers, they must first take that power away from the States, the people or both and the Commerce Clause is what has been most often used to achieve that. The President and the Congressional Democrats will fight tooth and nail in the defense of their new healthcare legislation but much of that fight will be waged to prevent the toppling of the healthcare bill from being used as a springboard by a coalition of States intent on restoring their Tenth Amendment rights and the Constitutional balance of power.

In addition to the actions taken by the States to block the individual mandate in the healthcare bill, a number of States have already enacted legislation or have legislation pending, designed to bolster the rights of gun owners in response to the threat of new Federal legislation that would restrict our Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. These same States are considering measures to protect the rights of those that hunt and fish now that there are threats of Federal interference with those activities as well. As the Federal government attempts to cultivate more power in Washington, the States have finally realized the danger and are taking action themselves. Eventually the cases questioning the constitutionality of the Healthcare Bill will find their way to the Supreme Court and a defeat for Obama there may open the door for the States to question the authority of the Federal government in other areas where the definition of commerce is in question or where the interstate activity of that commerce has not been firmly established.

This reigning in of the Federal government is long overdue and if these measures fail, there may be no way to restrain the Washington leviathan the States created through their own complacency. If however, the individual mandate to purchase insurance fails to pass muster for constitutionality, the healthcare bill will fall with it and that failure will set the stage for a reevaluation of other, equally intrusive Federal agencies, programs and regulations. Federal law may supersede State law as the law of the land but not if the Federal laws, are themselves, unconstitutional. The Constitution grants the Federal government authority to enact any and all laws needed to fulfill their lawful obligations under the Constitution but those obligations are few and limited. I have a feeling they are about to find out how few and how limited their powers will be and they aren’t going to like it very much.

Paul