NDAA: The Text of the Law (part 3)

I have already written about how the NDAA does seriously violate your due process rights and replaces them with something that is an elaborate but empty façade of such rights.   You can look at those articles here and here.    In this one, I want to show the actual text of the bill itself so that you can see that, yes, it is as bad as we feared it would be, and no, assurances from Congressman like Tim Griffin do not mitigate the awfulness of this bill.  Rather they are attempts to conceal its awfulness.   The bill is a far more serious violation of your constitutional rights than even the most offensive provisions of Obamacare.

Almost all the trouble with the NDAA rests in section 1021 of that abominable act.   Griffin and others have tried to use the fact that section 1022 does have an exemption for citizens of the United States as a reason that we should not be concerned about the act.   This is misleading in the extreme.   He and other defenders like Allen West go on and on about how section 1022 specifically exempts U.S. citizens in the United States from its provisions, but section 1021 has almost identical provisions and U.S. citizens are not exempted from it!    

The protections for U.S. citizens in section 1022 do nothing to protect us from the nearly identical provisions in section 1021, from which we are not exempted.    Imagine the level of duplicity involved in such a deception!   “Look over here at section 1022 folks!  See, we are not taking your rights away, we are just taking away the rights of those nasty old terrorists (or people we say are terrorists).”  Meanwhile, section 1021 authorizes almost identical treatment for you and your neighbor.

Since it is not that long, I would like to present section 1021 in its entirety, with some commentary to bring home the real meaning of the legalese with things I’d like to focus on highlighted…

SEC. 1021. AFFIRMATION OF AUTHORITY OF THE ARMED FORCES OF

THE UNITED STATES TO DETAIN COVERED PERSONS

PURSUANT TO THE AUTHORIZATION FOR USE OF MILITARY FORCE.

(a) IN GENERAL.—Congress affirms that the authority of the

President to use all necessary and appropriate force pursuant to

the Authorization for Use of Military Force (Public Law 107–40;

50 U.S.C. 1541 note) includes the authority for the Armed Forces

of the United States to detain covered persons (as defined in subsection (b)) pending disposition under the law of war.

“Pending disposition under the law of war” means that you will be treated as a POW rather than a U.S. citizen.     You would be handled under the same rules that we used on captured Nazis in WWII.  Remember though, that under the laws of war uniformed troops captured in battle are eligible for much better treatment than are “spies” and “saboteurs” or “terrorist supporters” as most people would be accused of under this act. 

Other things you don’t get: the right to face your accusers, protection against hearsay evidence, the right to your attorney, the burden of proof being placed on the government to prove you should be locked up, the ability to notify your kin what happened to you etc….

(b) COVERED PERSONS.—A covered person under this section

is any person as follows:

(1) A person who planned, authorized, committed, or aided

the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001,

or harbored those responsible for those attacks.

(2) A person who was a part of or substantially supported

al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged

in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners,

including any person who has committed a belligerent act or

has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy

forces.

Most of you probably don’t think like an evil lawyer, therefore you read the above paragraph and think “well this law only applies to al-Queda or the Taliban.”    But evil lawyers look at that and see loopholes a mile wide, and plenty of evil lawyers work for the system.   What does "substantial" support for forces "associated" with al-Quaeda or the Taliban mean?   How is it determined that this standard is met?  The answer can only be that the President alone determines who is "substantially" supporting a group that he alone can determine is "associated" with "al-Quaeda or the Taliban".   

Is blogging that America should get out of Afghanistan giving "substantial" support to the Taliban?  Is passing on Taliban claims about massacres committed by American forces providing such support?  Is organizing protests against the policies of "the Commander and Chief" a "belligerent act"?     If the President says so, it could be under this act.  That's the whole point.  The executive branch alone gets to decide which citizens might be detained indefinitely.

There are no checks and balances.  There is no judicial oversight.  You don't get your own lawyer and it does not matter if the government makes a mistake.   All the President has to do to make you go away is say that he decided you were giving substantial support to a group associated with the Taliban.  He does not have to present any evidence to that effect.  He does not need any evidence to that effect.  These powers are dictatorial in nature.

The CIA and the U. S. military itself provided substantial support (as in weapons and information) to both Al-Quaeda and the Taliban back in the 1990s when the Soviet Union occupied Afghanistan.   Since I was a member of the U.S. Military, I was a member of a group “associated” with the Taliban which gave “substantial support” to the Taliban.  Thus, even under an honest literal reading of the language of the act, I am already eligible for indefinite detention without trial, as would be the military personnel arresting me.

But there is no reason to believe that administration officials will limit themselves to an honest reading of the act.     The definition of “terrorism” is constantly being expanded by the government so that you don’t have to actually do violence, or even contemplate violence, to be labeled a terrorist.  For example, the founder of the Liberty Mint only tried to mint coins that were made of gold and silver.  This act alone got him imprisoned, his property confiscated, and his actions labeled “domestic terrorism" by a U.S. Attorney in the case.   

I find it very probable that in the near future any citizens who vigorously but peacefully protest the misrule of the two-party cabal currently looting the nation will be classified as “potential domestic terrorists.”   As such they will be subject to indefinite detention just for exercising their constitutional right to assemble and protest.  Indeed even before the NDAA became law, the military used a predator drone to assist a local sheriff arrest an anti-government family for the crime of failing to report that some cows had wandered onto their 3,000 acre ranch.

The bottom line is that the definition is filled with loopholes, and even if it were not, there are no checks and no balances against even the most trumped up of charges being used against political opponents.

(c) DISPOSITION UNDER LAW OF WAR.—The disposition of a

person under the law of war as described in subsection (a) may

include the following:

(1) Detention under the law of war without trial until

the end of the hostilities authorized by the Authorization for

Use of Military Force.

When will the “end of hostilities” be for the war on “terror”?  Will it be, as comedian Jon Stewart suggests, “when terror surrenders and is no longer available as a human emotion?”    Terror is a tactic, not a government.     You can’t defeat a tactic, you can only defeat enemies which use a tactic.  The war on terror is a forever-war, being used to justify the de-facto imposition of martial law on the people of the United States.     Until the trap is completely shut, they want to assure you that this is not being done, even as they do it right in front of you.  Detention until the end of “hostilities” is the same as detention for life, unless there is a revolution.

(2) Trial under chapter 47A of title 10, United States

Code (as amended by the Military Commissions Act of 2009

(title XVIII of Public Law 111–84)).

You can be given a trial under this military law or…

(3) Transfer for trial by an alternative court or competent

tribunal having lawful jurisdiction.

If an actual trial, even a military one, using fixed rules in advance is too inconvenient for them, they can throw up some ad hoc “tribunal” to decide your fate.   Needless to say, the rules we are used to being afforded as U.S. citizens will not apply.     They can make up the rules as they go along.

(4) Transfer to the custody or control of the person’s country

of origin, any other foreign country, or any other foreign entity.

Notice that the language allows U.S. citizens to be sent to foreign nations for detention, and presumably “interrogation.”   It’s not just foreigners being sent to their country of origin, but anyone can be sent to any country.

(d) CONSTRUCTION.—Nothing in this section is intended to limit

or expand the authority of the President or the scope of the

Authorization for Use of Military Force.

Is this supposed to reassure us?  Given that the President has already determined that he has the authority to conduct secret assassinations of American citizens without trial or outside review it is hard to see how any grant of authority could expand that which he currently exercises.   Therefore the only affect a clause which says the legislation does not “limit or expand” that authority is to confirm that it is not limited in anyway by the legislation. 

The law gives congressional cover to the current extra-constitutional actions and powers being exercised by this President against U.S. citizens.   Perhaps the first citizen assassinated using this power was a bad person who deserved it, but what about the next one hundred such assassinations?  Since there is no accountability, we just can’t know.

This provision was added at Obama’s insistence because he claimed he already had authority (from the Authorization for Use of Military Force) to do everything this bill says he can do.

(e) AUTHORITIES.—Nothing in this section shall be construed

to affect existing law or authorities relating to the detention of

United States citizens, lawful resident aliens of the United States,

or any other persons who are captured or arrested in the United

States.

At first you might be tempted to think “we are off the hook, this is not to be construed to affect our constitutional rights!”    Unfortunately, that is not what they are talking about here.    Those are not the “laws or authorities” they have in mind.    A quick look at the Bill of Rights, in particular amendments four through seven, shows practically everything in this section is violating those protections. 

No, what they are talking about here, if it has any meaning at all other than fluff to pretend that the rest of the act is not doing what it is in fact doing, is to give a fig leaf of legal cover on prisoner treatment.  This should be understood in the context of Obama’s threat to veto the original bill because he claimed he already had the authority to indefinitely detain people.   He threatened to veto it, not because it gave him too much power, but rather because the original bill placed restrictions on him he did not wish to have. 

This was placed in there to reassure Obama that what he had already done was not going to be held against him later.   It is cover to the effect that they were only confirming he could do what he has already been doing so that he could not be sued for similar actions he took before the act was passed.

(f) REQUIREMENT FOR BRIEFINGS OF CONGRESS.—The Secretary

of Defense shall regularly brief Congress regarding the application

of the authority described in this section, including the organizations, entities, and individuals considered to be ‘‘covered persons’’

for purposes of subsection (b)(2).

Ah, so there is some accountability.   Congress gets briefed on who has been rounded up.  If you are generous enough in your donations to these public servants, perhaps they will condescend to tell you if your vanished love one is on the list.

The more sheepish among us will accept Griffin’s misinformation about this bill because the alternative would obligate them to do something beyond pull a lever for candidates from one of the two DC controlled political clubs which have imposed monstrosities like this upon us.  May God have mercy on our souls. 

Griffin Misleads on NDAA Part 2

Griffin: Telling it like it isn't on NDAA.

The NDAA is a grotesque and un-American piece of legislation which re-defines your rights into meaningless shadows of their former substance.     This abomination degrades your rights under the fourth, fifth, sixth, and possibly seventh amendments as well as rendering all but meaningless your former right to habeas corpus (the right to challenge your detention by the government).    NDAA is the foundation for the police state.   Democrats voted for it.  Republicans voted for it.   If you are against a police state, you now have no political party in Washington D.C. to represent your interests.

They don’t want you to realize that of course.   That’s why men like Republican Congressman Tim Griffin put out misinformation about the bill, all the while accusing those on the other side of doing so.  In my first analysis of his deceitful assurances, I focused on why his claim that the bill was OK because it only codified what the Supreme Court ruled in Hamdi vs. Rumsfeld was absurd.   Please read the article for more details, but in short the court gave mixed messages in Hamdi, the facts of the case were about a citizen caught on an actual foreign battlefield where the NDAA would apply similar standards over the entire United States, and Scalia was correct in his dissent.

  

Does “the right to petition for habeas corpus” still exist under the act as Griffin claims?  Only in name, not in substance.  In the new version, hearsay evidence is allowed and the government does not have the burden of proof, you do.  And you don’t get to stand in front of a real judge anymore, just an officer from a “military tribunal.”  Paid government informants could give false second hand information about your supposed involvement in an “anti-government plot” and based on that you could be indefinitely detained.  The government does not have to show that the hearsay evidence from the paid informants is true in order to keep you detained, rather you have to persuade whoever the executive branch picked to run your kangaroo court that it’s false.   

In his defense of the Police State Act (my name for the NDAA), Griffin tries to reassure readers with these words: “I would never support legislation that granted the government authority to indefinitely detain U.S. citizens in the U.S. without the right to challenge the legality of any such detention through a petition for habeas corpus. Nor would any judge, court, or attorney in this nation uphold such an infringement of our rights.”  

This man is so slippery it is scary.  He parses better than Bill Clinton. Everything he claims he would never do and no judge would ever do has already been done in Justice Thomas’ dissent in Hamdi- the very case he cites as the legal foundation for the NDAA.   In Hamdi, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that the government did not have to provide due process rights to persons it alleged were “enemy combatants” even when they were U.S. citizens. 

When Griffin inserts the words “in the U.S.” to his statement above he sneaks around the fact that a Supreme Court Justice has already agreed that the government can do everything that Griffin claims that neither he nor they would ever agree to.   The only difference is that the “battlefield” in that case was overseas.  But the NDAA makes no distinction in geography.  The entire United States is now treated as “the battlefield” in a never ending “war on terror.”  As Griffin himself says, the NDAA was codified Hamdi, and it applies the chaotic opinions in that case to the homeland.

(continued on jump)

Griffin Misleads on NDAA (Part 1 of 3 on NDAA)

Congressman Tim Griffin is a lawyer by trade, so he ought to know better than to make the claims he does about the NDAA.   This act is a far more serious violation of your rights than even the awful “Obamacare” requirement that you purchase health insurance.    Let me say this again, the NDAA of 2012, which was supported by most Democrats and almost all Republicans, including our entire Arkansas federal delegation, is a far greater infringement of your rights than Obamacare.    It represents a serious degradation of habeas corpus, and a violation of the fourth, fifth, and sixth amendments, as well as a defacto loss of the seventh.  

Our ruling class seems very nervous.   I suppose I would be too if I had allowed the Federal Reserve to create trillions of dollars out of thin air and essentially give it to multi-national banks and associated corporations while telling Joe Six-Pack that the new money is a debt he now owes and that he needs to sacrifice his Social Security, Medicare, Education, etc. to pay it back.   I suspect that is what is coming as the magnitude of the looting becomes manifest. 

Fraud is an interesting crime.  For a while, the perpetrators and the victims both think they have the money, and so everyone is happy.  Bernie Madoff’s “clients” were happy even for years after Madoff stole their money, because they did not realize it was gone.   Today’s political class has stolen our money, but like Madoff they are able to arrange things for a while to make it appear to us that the money is not gone.  Unlike Madoff, they are in position to make preparations so that once the fraud is discovered and people do become upset, they are not arrested for ripping us off, but rather we are to be arrested if we complain about it too strenuously.

But I digress.  I am going to give you the facts.  It is then up to you to determine which of us is more honest with you, me or Tim Griffin.    One of us has to be feeding you misinformation.   At the end of it, I invite you to decide whose credibility is lost, mine or his.

Griffin in his piece assures us that the law merely “codifies what the U.S. Supreme Court already said: The detainee provisions in the 2012 NDAA in no way undermine a U.S. citizen’s due process or habeas rights, as some have claimed.”     He is talking about the decision(s) in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld.

If the NDAA really did just “codify” “what the court already said” about habeas corpus in Hamdi, then among those “some” claiming it is an infringement would Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia (joined by liberal John Paul Stevens). 

Scalia is revered by many as the most brilliant legal mind in this nation.   According to the Wiki article in his powerful dissent on the case “Scalia asserted that based on historical precedent, the government had only two options to detain Hamdi: either Congress must suspend the right to habeas corpus, or Hamdi must be tried under normal criminal law. Scalia wrote that the plurality, though well-meaning, had no basis in law for trying to establish new procedures that would be applicable in a challenge to Hamdi's detention—it was only the job of the Court to declare it unconstitutional and order his release or proper arrest, rather than to invent an acceptable process for detention.” 

I’m with Scalia on this one.  They should not be in the business of crafting a “due-process lite” for these situations, which is exactly what they were trying to do. 


(continued on the jump)... 

Preachers Can't Seem to Pick 'Em

When I was a boy, before the term "Christian Right" was coined, my dad told me that when he saw a bunch of preachers get behind some guy with a business proposal, that I should run like the wind.    He said that most preachers did not know enough about business to avoid being taken in by scams and get rich quick schemes.     He said the guy doing the pitching would run rings around them.   His thought was that if the fellow running the pitch really had a good one, he could pitch it to ordinary investors.   He said that I should get out of there when the preachers start coming to you as a member of the congregation with such "investment" ideas.   As much credibility as they might have on theological matters, it did not carry over to good judgement about business.

Well, preachers have not tried to recruit me into a business proposal based on the fake promises of some huckster, but they have tried to do something very similar when it comes to politicians.    All my life I have considered myself a part of the "Christian Right."   Now at age 50, I realize that the leaders of the religious right have been "taken" by con artist politicians in the Republican Party, just as my dad warned me they would be by unscrupulous businessmen.  

The leaders of the Christian Right are men I greatly respect.   I am talking about men like James Dobson and Don Wildmon.  But I don't respect what they have done to our political system.   They have put us all in disrepute by helping Bush the Younger.   Not that the alternative was any better than him, but when they are so prominently in his corner, they "own" his record.     He did not give them anything they really wanted, but now much of America blames them and considers him an example of what a "Christian" President would govern like.

In their desire to remain relevant, to be "players" in the current system, they are now sifting through the grifters and corporate sellouts that are among the current GOP offerings in an attempt to find one who is willing to lie to them enough to garner their support.   It's sad.   Why not just say that none of these men are worthy?  Why not just say "here are the issues that are important to us and we will leave it to our congregants to decide who will really be best to work for these issues?"

I think they have some idea that as the priests and prophets of our day that they are supposed to "anoint" the king.   Maybe the priesthood is supposed to anoint the king, but the scripture teaches that all believers are now the priesthood.    There is no intermediary group of men between God and man other than Christ, and a bunch of Protestant ministers ought to know that.    It is the people as a whole that will "anoint" the king, not a select priestly caste.

I used to think that these fine men just needed to be replaced by others, but maybe the problem is deeper than that.   God may not want any select group of men to be the leader of the "Christian Right".    Certainly, He has not blessed their efforts in that realm as he has in many of the other ministries they have been involved in.   It is sad to see Don Wildmon stand shoulder to shoulder with globalist Newt Gingrich.    If they only endorsed issues and not men, they would not feel constrained to compromise their integrity when the men crossed the line and betrayed them on the issues.  Jesus said that we should not call any among us "leader" because we had but one leader- the Christ.   The efforts of these men to position themselves as "leaders" of the Christian right has brought discredit to the faith when their selected politicians turned out to be duds.

Martin Luther said that he would rather be ruled by a wise Turk than a foolish Christian.     That's pretty far to go, but I get the feeling that he would not be taken in by these politicians who have used Christians.  Today's Christian "leaders" have bought on the cheap with a little rhetoric and symbolic action while the nation slips further into fascism and globalism.

The Marginal Utility of Government Pump-Priming

What has happened over the last generation is the unraveling of the Keynesian economic model.   Sadly, the political class will be among the last to accept that it doesn't work anymore because it preached "the truth they wanted to hear."     I want to briefly describe here why it seemed to work for a time and why it increasingly will not work anymore.

The key feature of the system was government "pump priming."   That is, when the private sector was in an economic slowdown, the government would take up the slack by increasing spending in order to get the economy going again.   Off course, if they taxed this money and paid as they went, it would subtract money from the private economy and cancel out their efforts.   Under Keynesian ideals, you used debt to prime the pump during these lean times.

So the government borrows money and spends it to get the economy growing again.   And under the classical Keynesian view, it almost didn't matter what you spent it on:  Digging holes and re-filling them.  Building tanks only to see them blown up in war or sit in a depot to rust.  The end results were all the same.  The important thing is that money was injected into the economy.   Even if the government did not spend it efficiently, once that dollar was injected it was in the hands of the private sector and they would spend it effectively as it cycled through the economy.

To be fair to Keynes, politicians abused his actual concept.   The idea was that the government should borrow in bad times to prime the pump, and repay it in good times, thus smoothing out the business cycle.  What a charming naivety people must have had back then to think that politicians would use their term in office to insist people take a tax hike or cut down on services to pay down debt run up by their generational predecessors!   Instead, they borrowed in bad times and failed to repay in good times.

At first, it worked like a charm.   Eventually, the debt became a constant overhang on the economy.  This is because government spending does not actually "create jobs."   In the long run, it costs jobs because government spends less effectively than the private sector.   Of course those rascals pretend that they are "investing" in these government projects, and assume that their interventions in the economy somehow improve its efficiency rather than distort it.    

But the bottom line is that government spending via debt does not "create" jobs, it only borrows them from the future, minus the cost of interest and resource miss-allocations.   Politicians point to the jobs their spending brought, but we never see the future jobs lost as a result of the politicians over-riding the market and forcing dollars to be spent in one place when the free choices of the population would, if allowed to, spend them in other places.

So the politicians found a way to put off consequences into the future and they pursued that way with reckless abandon.   As each down turn in the business cycle was short circuited by a new infusion of government largess, the government's share of the total economy ballooned.   We are now at a point where increased Keynesian injections will not stop a fiscal catastrophe, they will only make deeper the hole in which we now find ourselves.  

Consider that when government spending was only one 50th of the economy, it did not matter so much that the money was mis-allocated compared to how it would be spent in the private sector, because the private sector was the one spending those injected dollars 49 times out of 50.   The drag on the economy from the government allocating that spending less effectively than the private sector would was dwarfed by the number of times those dollars would move through the private sector.

Even if the government wasted half the money over-building highways or purchased $100 hammers for the military, that represented only a 1% loss to the total economy (one 50th of all spending half wasted), and that loss was put off into the future.  Pump priming in those circumstances seems worth it at the time.

Fast forward to now.  The government is now one third of the economy, and they are driving much of the spending that occurs in the rest of it.     When one third of the dollars in your economy are not allocated on a free market basis you are going to have enormous miss allocation of resources.  The government spending will result in a massive destruction of wealth which will be all out of proportion to any good it does getting the remainder of the economy to create wealth.  One of every three dollars is miss-spent, not one out of fifty dollars.   This gigantic miss allocation of resources,  along with the debt required from past government pump-priming, have ruined the private economy.

The Keynesian experiment was always doomed to fail as long as it is true that dollars spent by government will be spent less productively than dollars spent by individual free choice (which is to say, the market).   Those politicians who refused to pay down the debt in the good times actually did us a favor in that they compressed the time it took for the failure of Keynesian-ism to become obvious.   They reduced the number of iterations of pump priming required for it to become clear that every time government primed the pump, it wasted water and thus increase the amount of water needed for the next priming.

We have some tough times ahead of us, due to the gross mismanagement and criminal corruption of our current ruling political class.   Their blindness is not restricted to moral blindness, but is total.  They are so immersed in the Keynesian view that they will be among the last to see that it has failed.   We must liquidate our bad debt and return to a free market economy with very little government overhead in order to return to prosperity.  

It is too bad that our current ruling class holds much of that bad debt and has gotten rich through their connections to a large interventionist government.    This will make reform difficult, because the old ruling class will have to suffer the consequences for their poor decisions both politically and financially.  In a worst case scenario, they are sociopathic and self-entitled enough that rather than accept these consequences, they will clamp down on the rest of us and double-down on their poor bets.



 

Duggars to Iowa for Santorum

Read all about it.

The Bar is Set Too High, in Virginia, and Arkansas

 Trouble with Numbers: Perry falls short in Virginia

Texas Governor Rick Perry and Former Speaker Newt Gingrich have failed to qualify for the ballot in the GOP Presidential Primary in the state of Virginia.  GOP voters in that state will be limited to Former Mass. Governor Mitt Romney or Congressman Dr. Ron Paul.

Requirements for ballot access were pretty stiff in the Old Dominion.   The primary requirement was 10,000 authentic voter signatures.    Incidentally, that is also where the bar is set in Arkansas for a new political party to get ballot access, or an independent running for statewide office to get ballot access.

Many Republican members of the state legislature signed a letter supporting Perry in his Presidential run.  That included Kim Hammer, who sponsored a bill making it even harder for new parties to get ballot access than it was previously.

So I have to ask them, if your own Presidential candidate, who has raised about $20 million and is Governor of a gigantic state, can't meet the 10K bar in a huge state like Virginia, then how is it fair that you guys are for imposing that hurdle on independents running for state wide office or third parties seeking ballot access in Arkansas?   Please spare us any complaints about how the requirements in Virgina are too burdensome until you ease those same requirements on the folks here at home.  More and more of us are not satisfied with the representation we are getting from either of the DC-run political clubs that have jointly led this nation to impending ruin.

There are no problems with more voter choice that can't be solved with instant run off voting.  In fact, the alleged "problems" with more voter choice are really just artifacts of the flawed "first past the post" method of determining election winners.    Funny how the parties don't use first past the post in their own party primaries, nor when electing their own officers, but impose it on the rest of us for all offices above the county level.

Details on Republican Cave

 Republican Congressmen: Cave men on the run.

Thanks to the Kellers for finding this report on the Republican cave on the payroll tax.  This thing has been incorrectly reported by a complicit state-controlled media as a conflict between a two month tax cut and a year-long tax cut.   That is a part of it, but the Obama plan raises taxes in other areas to offset the "cut".  Here are the lurid details of how the GOP has failed America again.

Highway Commission Fails to Meet Commitment

It is not often I link to an Arkansas Times story without editorializing against it.   I think you ought to see this one though.

Controversy Erupted After AR Teacher Ordered to Remove Nativity Scene

Actual picture of nativity scene ordered removed

Nativity Scene in NE Arkansas School Was Put Back Up

"After receiving several phone calls regarding a bulletin board at Greene County Tech Primary School that had been decorated with a nativity scene, school district superintendent Jerry Noble decided to allow the board to once again be decorated with the nativity scene. School counselor Kay Williams had originally displayed the nativity scene on Nov. 29 but was ordered to remove the decoration after the school received a complaint from a citizen. However, Noble said after receiving numerous phone calls supporting the nativity scene, he decided to allow Williams to return it to the bulletin board."

“I think it’s due to the fact that most of us are Christians and this is a Christian community,” Noble said “We just decided if we are going to offend someone, we would rather not offend those who have Christian beliefs. The majority of people wanted us to take a stand and that’s what we’re doing.” See entire article at this link. The article noted that the superintendent had no contact information for those complaining about the bulletin board. In other words they were anonymous.

Information in the article also says the newspaper, the Daily Press, was provided "with several memos from the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF), a legal alliance that defends religious liberty, that cited several legal precedents where courts had ruled the display of nativity scenes in public schools did not violate the Establishment Clause." The superintendent had originally acted on the school attorney's advice.

I seriously doubt that this issue is over. With all the publicity, ACLU may still file a suit. If you have not already, please contact the superintendent, the principal and Kay Williams to help in this controversy. As far as I know, the superintendent was courteous to Kay. For those who don't like to send negative messages, this is your chance to send a Thank you message to the superintendent for allowing Kay to put the nativity scene back up - and still serve the same purpose - that the community wants the nativity scene up. These emails were obtained online.

Jerry.Noble@gctsd.k12.ar.us Superintendent Jerry Noble (If you ever need other superintendent or principal emails you can find them at this http://arkansased.org/about/pdf/directory/directory_10-11_020411.pdf Ms Sherry Vance who was very ugly when commanding Kay to take down the nativity scene bulletin board and sent her home from school even without the proper discipline procedures.
kay.williams@gctsd.k12.ar.us Kay Williams, the counselor who had the courage to put up the nativity scene bulletin board and risk her job by being honest with the reporter to get this information out.

Following is the link to the original story I sent out on this controversy. http://www.wpaag.org/Kay%20Williams%20forced%20to%20take%20down%20nativity%20scene.htm

Economic Recovery Cannot Begin Without Ending the Present Financial System

The giant vampire squid, a coin termed by Matt Taibbi for the worst of the parasites

At the recent debate I was amused to hear most of the Republican candidates talk about their plans for turning the economy around and "creating jobs."   Government of course can't really create jobs, it can only produce an environment where those who can are rewarded for their risk-taking.   In that environment, more such individuals decide to take the risk, and if they are good enough, wealth is created.   

But their answers involved things like lower marginal tax rates and reducing regulation and start up costs.  Those are all good things, and in the absence of our larger problem would probably help.    But every proposal I heard failed to address the real problem, except of course Dr. Paul comments which hinted at the truth.

America's economy may have some health problems, but its bigger problem is that the large financial sector has become a parasite sucking the economic life from this nation and its people.   Taking measures at the margins to  make sure the patient is otherwise as healthy as possible considering that they have a giant parasite sucking the life blood out of them won't solve the underlying problem.   All it will do is provide maximized sustenance to the parasite for a bit longer before the host succumbs.

Put another way, suppose we worked hard and earned money but could not get ahead because the bank would steal a bit from our paycheck each week when we deposited it.   It was small amounts at first, but each paycheck the amount pilfered grew. At first we cut back on luxuries.   Finally, we were having trouble paying our bills and making ends meet.  All of our neighbors were too, because they were also losing money.  It caused a general business slowdown that cost some people their jobs.  At that point, these politicians come along and suggest that if only we could work more efficiently and have lower taxes (while they spend the same) then our troubles would be solved.  

But they would not be solved, because our problem was not mostly the efficiency of our work.  It wasn't even that taxes were too high, though they are.   Rather, it was that the bank was taking more and more of our earnings each week.   Getting our hands on more money won't help, because it will just give them more to steal.   The issue is the behavior of the banks, but the politicians won't go there.

When Paul said we needed to "liquidate the bad debt" he is referring to the trillions in bad bets that the big banks have on their books- or at least had.  By slight of hand they have loaded much of the bad debt onto our books in exchange for loans against their "collateral" of toxic "assets".    Its all this debt overhanging the economy that is holding us down.   It's the banks taking an ever larger slice of our economy and tying it up in these bad debts that keeps us from getting up.  

They want to gamble on various financial instruments, and when they win they keep the money.   When they lose, they want their buddies at the fed to give them a loan against the losing bet just as if it were a bet that could still win.   Then they take that money and go gamble again.  Rinse and repeat.     And as long as they have all this financial paper to bet on, why bother with the traditional business of consumer or business loans?   The no-lose casino is a lot more profitable.  

Meanwhile, the rest of the economy is overloaded with debt and traditional credit is shrinking.  The vast sums being created by the fed to loan to their friends is staying in a tight little circle out of the Main Street Economy.   When they have made enough churning their paper, and we are hungry enough, the banksters will take all the money they made and buy us out for pennies on the dollar.

The problem will never be solved, and the recovery will never come, by fiddling with deregulation or tax incentives.   Our economy has a giant parasite sucking the life out of us.  Until we deal with it, as painful as dealing with it may be, it will be impossible to get out of this morass.   Any increase in real wealth we manage to generate will be quickly vacuumed up by the vampire squid.   

Paul is right.  We have to close down the bank's casino.   We have to quit loaning them money on these assets and let the market find their true value.   That may mean some of these "assets" sell for big losses compared to their book value.       That's what Paul means when he says "we have to liquidate the bad debt."  If that happens big enough, yes the banks will be insolvent.   And yes, that will be painful, like the pain one feels when ripping a well-entrenched parasite off your body.   But its the only solution, and every day we wait will only make it worse.

9/11 Was the Excuse to Implement Already Laid Plains

Re-posted by request from ZeroHedge.

Everything Happening Now Was Planned Before 9/11

Special preface to my friends in the military, law enforcement and intelligence and other government servants: You are sworn to defend and uphold the Constitution, and the facts below may help you do so.

We’ve been told that "9/11 changed everything" and that we're living in "a post-911 world".

We've been told that what our government is doing now has been rendered necessary by the urgent post-9/11 threat from terrorists.

In reality, however, virtually everything happening now was planned before 9/11. Please see for yourself:

• The government’s spying on Americans began before 9/11 (confirmed here and here. And see this)

• The Patriot Act was planned before 9/11 (and see this). Indeed, former Counter Terrorism Czar Richard Clarke told Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig:

After 9/11 the government drew up the Patriot Act within 20 days and it was passed.

The Patriot Act is huge and I remember someone asking a Justice Department official how did they write such a large statute so quickly, and of course the answer was that it has been sitting in the drawers of the Justice Department for the last 20 years waiting for the event where they would pull it out.

(4:30 into this video).

• Government plans, exercises or drills to detain American citizens who opposed war were also drawn up before 9/11, as was a bill allowing the permanent detention by the Attorney General of aliens convicted of no crimes, with no judicial review

• The Afghanistan war was planned before 9/11 (see this and this)

• The decision to launch the Iraq war was made before 9/11. Indeed, former CIA director George Tenet said that the White House wanted to invade Iraq long before 9/11, and inserted “crap” in its justifications for invading Iraq. Former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill – who sat on the National Security Council – also saysthat Bush planned the Iraq war before 9/11. Top British officials say that the U.S. discussed Iraq regime change even before Bush took office. And in 2000, Cheney said a Bush administration might “have to take military action to forcibly remove Saddam from power.” And see this.

• Cheney made Iraqi’s oil fields a national security priority before 9/11. And the Sunday Herald reported: “Five months before September 11, the US advocated using force against Iraq … to secure control of its oil.” (remember that Alan Greenspan, John McCain, George W. Bush, Sarah Palin, a high-level National Security Council officer and others all say that the Iraq war was really about oil.)

• The decision to threaten to bomb Iran was made before 9/11, and the Christian Science Monitor notes that the U.S. has been claiming for more than 30 years that Iran was on the verge of nuclear capability

• Wars throughout the Middle East and North Africa to effect regime were planned before 9/11

• Cheney dreamed of giving the White House the powers of a monarchy long before 9/11
  

• Cheney and Rumsfeld actively generated fake intelligence which exaggerated the threat from an enemy in order to justify huge amounts of military spending long before 9/11. And see this

• The government knew that terrorists could use planes as weapons — and had even run its own drills of planes being used as weapons against the World Trade Center and other U.S. high-profile buildings, using REAL airplanes — all before 9/11

• America played dirty games to justify wars before 9/11