Tuesday, March 27, 2012

The Old Woods

Yesterday I decided to take my nephew on a hike and do a little recreational shooting.    I figured the woods behind my old boyhood home would be a good place for it.   I had some good times in my youth doing just that.  

I remembered it as a difficult and isolated hike, full of cliffs and empty of people.   More than once my brother and I remarked to each other that no one would ever build here.  It seemed so rugged and remote.  

Well my nephew and I parked at a friends house nearby.   He said we should shoot off of his porch down into his ravine.   But the space seemed too enclosed for us, and we wanted more adventure.    "Well the fellow who owns your old place is a nice guy, but watch out for the one across the way here.   I think they deal drugs, and we have had words."    He also remarked that there had been a spate of people shooting each others dogs.

I skirted the property of the potential drug dealer and walked the edge of our old family farm.    We had to cross about 80 yards of ground to get to the woods behind it.   The house was about as far away.   We must not have walked ten yards when the new owner came out the door and started toward us asking what we wanted.      In my head I knew it was his land and that we had not owned this property for 20 years, but I was surprised at how offended I felt.  And this was the good neighbor!    I shouted that we were merely passing through to the woods and he allowed as that would be OK, but I could tell from there he was not happy about it.

The woods were thick with bramble.  Movement was difficult.   I remembered the bramble spots, but that on the other side of the tangle was a more suitable wood near the cliffs.    Sure enough, we eventually cleared the brambles.  But every time we thought we were isolated in the woods, we would see another house through the trees.    The property we thought would always remain empty was dotted with houses.   And I never did find the spot with the big cliffs.

Not knowing for sure if there was a safe place to shoot in what was left of those old woods, we headed back to my friend's place.   By now we were so tired that we even crossed what might have been the place where the supposed druggie who had had words with my friend lived.   We shot a few rounds into the ravine at my friends place, and headed back home- our actual homes, not the one that existed only in my mind.

The moral of the story, my young friends, is that going back again is not possible, therefore choose carefully your steps going forward.

No Delegates are Better than Paul Delegates

I cannot keep up with all of the cheating that is being done by Republican officials to deny Congressman Ron Paul delegates to the national convention.   The documented accounts are too numerous and my time too limited.  Still, I try to make a brief note of some of the more outrageous stories and that's what I am doing here.

In Fayette County Kentucky (Lexington), officials running the county convention decided that they would leave delegate slots unfilled rather than appoint the two veterans who volunteered to fill them because those veterans, like most troops in the field, are Ron Paul supporters.    They did this over the protest of the Paul supporters in the room.   Bear in mind that Paul's son Rand is a Republican Senator from Kentucky.

Friday, March 23, 2012

Ruling Class Makes Protesting Ruling Class a Felony



Every one of "your" representatives and senators, R and D, voted for this atrocity.   Whether you are Tea Party, OWS, or anyone in between, you ought to be alarmed.  The ruling class has just granted their bodyguards the power to set up free speech exclusion zones around them, violations of which are a felony.  This can only serve to insulate them from the type of protest that the 1st amendment recognizes as legitimate.

Thursday, March 22, 2012

Immigration Records Missing in the Week Surrounding Obama's Birth

A Tea Party Begins to Act Like a Tea Party

The Ozark Tea Party, from Baxter County and surrounding areas, has issued a statement of disapproval of a policy proposal put forth by Republican Congressman Rick Crawford of the 1st district.      Crawford was originally elected with strong Tea Party support.   His proposal to raise income taxes on "the wealthy" as part of a balanced budget deal has met with strong objections from the OTP.

Since many so-called "Tea Parties" in the state have become mere pom-pom waivers for the GOP, I was pleasantly surprised by the news.  ( By no means are all Tea Parties in that group.  Washington County Tea Party has been particularly strong for example.)    My only question is what has taken them so long?   Crawford, and every other member of the Arkansas delegation from both DC-based parties, voted for the NDAA.    You would think a travesty like that would stir them up more than a mere proposal to raise taxes as part of a so-called "balanced budget."  The NDAA has the practical effect of throwing out four articles from the Bill of Rights and sets up America for a turn-key police state anytime the bosses decide its time to start rounding up "suspected terrorists" who are too loud about the obvious truth that our ruling class in DC is corrupt to the core.

Can Con Cons Be Contained?

With all the recent debate about whether or not a Constitutional Convention can be contained to the subject matter originally authorized by one or more of the states sending delegates, I thought I would link to this article outlining the legalities and history of the procedure.   Bottom line- once started they cannot be contained.

Monday, March 19, 2012

Turmoil, Thievery, Arrests Mar Missou Caucus

It got so wild they called in a police helicopter for backup.   I have noticed that what mainstream coverage of the event there was left off very important details.  Check out this eyewitness account...

FEMA Hiring for Detention Camp Staff Raised Eyebrows

Sunday, March 18, 2012

"Conspiracy Theorists" Validated: CFR Openly Plans for "Global Governance"

The Council on Foreign Relations is an extremely well-connected group.   Since Eisenhower, every man who has won the Presidential nomination of either D.C- based party has been a member of the CFR, with the exceptions of Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan.   The highest positions in our national government have been filled with CFR members for decades.

For many years, organizations like the John Birch Society and the Eagle Forum tried to warn people that the goal of the CFR was global governance.    Our values, institutions, and constitution, would be replaced by those more amenable to a one world system.

They were mocked, ridiculed, impugned, and marginalized for raising such alarms.   It got to the point, especially with JBS, that many people considered them "nutty" but could not tell you exactly why.    Well friends, now that its plans are far enough along, the CFR no longer attempts to hide its efforts to promote global governance.   Take this quote from a recent article on it's own web site:
 "The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) has launched an international initiative to connect leading foreign policy institutes from around the world in a common conversation on issues of global governance and multilateral cooperation. " 
Those laughing at the JBS (and I am not a member) were wrong.    JBS was right.   It is a common tactic of the left to use a torrent of mockery and ridicule on people who raise alarms/ask inconvenient questions when they cannot defend their positions on the basis of fact and reason.   
The CFR is trying to facilitate global government.   They are open about it.   An Obama-Romney match-up would be one between an open CFR member and one whose name has recently been removed from the rolls. 

 Resistance against one world government begins with the recognition that there are powerful forces like the CFR that are working for it.  It's no longer a conspiracy theory, because they are not operating in secret.   They are operating in the open, but the mass media do not cover it as a problem to be overcome, or even as a choice you are supposed to make. They don't cover it at all.   Since we can not yet stop it nationally, our best bet is to join forces with groups which are trying to stop it locally.  Secure Arkansas is one such group, and one that I am a member of.

Saturday, March 17, 2012

The Consensus Wants You


Fantastic article.  Here is a sample.

Today we live in the age of consensus. The cultural elites no longer debate opposing points of view, they dismiss them as racist or ignorant, ridiculing not only the argument, but the arguer and the very premise that there can even be an argument.


Friday, March 16, 2012

The Connection Between Party Loyalty and Losing Touch with Voters


The frustration that so many voters feel towards their elected officials comes from their continuing to hold onto a mistaken belief-  despite all logical and observational evidence that this belief is not true.   That belief is that their Congressmen, Senators, and other high elected officials, represent them.

Of course, they are told this is true, and these individuals make claims to represent them, but if you look at the system which produces them there is no reason to trust these irrational claims.    These politicians mostly owe their election to the label that they carry.   It is to those forces which control these labels that the successful politician will by loyal, not the voters who virtually automatically elect persons who wear the label.   Those two lables, political parties, are headquartered in the Beltway and are largely funded by corporations with global interests.
Americans have outsourced the job of defending our liberty to two political entities headquartered in Washington D.C. and funded largely by corporations whose interests are global. Why is anyone surprised when that system produces politicians who represent their interests instead of ours? Indeed, in the long run no other outcome is possible.   
Politicians work for who empowers them, and as long as the masses entrust one or both of those labels to protect their interests then the politicians will work for the entities which control those labels.  "The people" don't control those labels.  County committees don't even control them.  Influence rather tends to go the other way from the central HQ to the counties.   No, the party apparatus serves the moneyed interests which fund them and their operations.

Once you let go of the irrational belief that a politician who is trying to work his way up a system headquartered in Washington D.C. and funded by global money is there to "represent you" then you can  be liberated from your frustration and also begin, possibly for the first time in your life, to engage in political activism that might actually be effective.  

Usually persons trying to gain personal benefit from this system will repeat the lie that they represent you, but I noticed the other day a quote that comes about as close as one can come to admitting the truth.  It was from this article on The Daily trying to run down former Penn. Senator Rick Santorum.   Here is the first part....
Former Rep. Phil English, a Santorum friend who’s backing Romney, gave voice to many in the party establishment who remember Santorum fondly but think his time has passed. 
Some friend eh?  Perhaps his next act of "friendship" will be to shoot the Santorum's family dog.  No wonder its said that "in politics, you can't take friendship personally." But the next part really brought it home for me....
“I think Rick Santorum is credited with being a hard-working senator who was loyal to the party,” English said. “Having said that, I think his catastrophic loss in 2006 with unified party support and an enormous amount of money demonstrated to most Republicans that he had lost touch with the voters of Pennsylvania and had really lost his appeal.” 
Could it be said any plainer that loyalty to the party means losing touch with the voters?   Is it not clear that those two groups have different interests and that office holders must choose which they will serve?  Santorum choose to serve the party, and in so doing lost touch with the voters.  

You might say that this proves that politicians must serve the voters and not just the party.   I would answer that one must always appear to serve the voters and actually serve the party and that this is what we have right now.   Santorum was just a little too obvious with what he was doing- subtlety is not his strong suite. The voters caught on, and so he was replaced with someone more discreet while being financially rewarded for his willingness to, as he put it,  "take one for the team" (i.e. vote against the interests of your constituents in order to further the goals of your party).  

Note that this issue, "no child left behind" was pushed by both parties, because on all issues they are both ultimately globalist.   The funding for both of them is global, therefore it makes perfect sense that they are in agreement in imposing global solutions for all areas of government whether it is trade, immigration, education, foreign policy, money and banking, or just about anything else.   They do squabble a bit about whose friends get the most loot first.

Let the truth of these words sink into your brain.  Become a mentally liberated citizen who understands what the true problem with our political system is (2nd to a lack of virtue in the population for which there is no system fix).  Once you correctly understand the problem, it not only relieves you of frustration but allows you a chance to find correct solutions.

Painful Admission: Brummett Right On McDaniel and More

The reason a guilty pleasure induces guilt is because you know that on some level that its wrong.   Such is the case with my "loving to hate" the past writing of columnist John Brummett.   Oh, I don't say that he didn't have it coming, and I still think that virtue demands that we hate the more objectionable aspects of his past writing.   I'm just saying its wrong to love to hate it, and that's where I was going.

Well, lately even that guilty pleasure has been taken away.   For example his recent column on Attorney General Dustin McDaniel was spot on.    I don't just mean on substance, but even on style.   Nasty personal insult have nearly vanished, replaced by dry wit as he writes that McDaniel is making the case for a "demotion" when moving from Attorney General to Governor.   In a way, it is a demotion, because not even the Governor is all three branches of government all rolled into one as McDaniel is doing when he keeps the winnings from his lawsuits and spends them however he pleases rather than giving the money to the State Treasury for the Legislature to appropriate.

But then for some reason Brummett has always been different when it comes to McDaniel.   If that was as far as our agreement went then at least I had the warning of precedent.  But he takes this problem to its root and logical conclusion......


We have entirely too many independent cash funds throughout state government, meaning money coming into agencies, perhaps through licensing, that the agencies are simply permitted to spend as they wish.
The Legislature could appoint a special study committee to identify and count up all this money and figure out if it might be more efficient and fiscally accountable to the people to bring all of it into the general appropriation process, which, after all, the state constitution designates as a legislative function.

Amen.  Am I writing "Amen" to a policy suggestion from John Brummett?  Look, when they are right they are right, I don't care who they are.   The same as when they are wrong.    On this one, he's right.

The state government is increasingly composed of a bunch of fiefdoms with their own funding mechanisms.  For all practical purposes, they are unaccountable to the people.   Think of the Highway Department and the State Game and Fish Commission.   Those are large examples that have direct access to your pockets through state tax revenues which they control.  More subtly, there are plenty of boards and commissions which have the power to levy professional license fees.   That's a cost of doing business which is indirectly passed onto the consumer.

Our system of government where these boards run things with quasi-autonomy work great as fund-raising mechanisms for politicians.  Board appointment is often given to big-contributing industry insiders that want to capture their regulating body.    This manifests not as government regulation but as insider regulation that has the backing of the government.   Think about Monsanto controlling all farm regulations and making it increasingly harder for their small competitors to stay in business.   Not only is this over-reliance on self-funded boards bad for competition, its bad for consumers and taxpayers.

Fiefdoms are not "separation of powers" in the sense that the three branches of government are.   They are rather a series of petty tyrannies.   The legislature ought to be the strongest branch of government, because it is closest to the people.  Instead, in Arkansas it has become the weakest.    One reason is the rise of fiefdom government.



TSA Infographic Really Breaks it Down

"Cost Per Gun Found: $6 million dollars.  None belonged to terrorists."

For more astounding TSA facts, consult this quality infographic....

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Was the SecDef Afraid of Getting Fragged?

Most of the headlines surrounding the surprise visit of bi-political (he has served in both sides of the two-party farce) Defense Secretary Leon Panetta have to do with the failed car-bombing.   A closer look at the report shows that Panetta or those close to him had another fear- that American troops in Afghanistan would take the opportunity of his visit to turn their own guns on the Secretary and shoot him where he stood.

We have soldiers on their fourth deployment.  They are going mad.   The U.S. Army is the #1 source of campaign contributions for Ron Paul, the only candidate for President who would immediately end the Afghan nation-building mission.


In a sign of the nervousness surrounding Mr. Panetta’s trip, the Marines and other troops who were waiting in a tent for the defense secretary to speak were abruptly asked by their commander to get up, place their weapons — M-16 and M-4 automatic rifles and 9-mm pistols — outside the tent and then return unarmed. The commander, Sgt. Maj. Brandon Hall, told reporters he was acting on orders from superiors.
“All I know is, I was told to get the weapons out,” he said. Asked why, he replied, “Somebody got itchy, that’s all I’ve got to say. Somebody got itchy; we just adjust.”
Normally, American forces in Afghanistan keep their weapons with them when the defense secretary visits and speaks to them. The Afghans in the tent waiting for Mr. Panetta were not armed to begin with, as is typical.
Later, American officials said that the top commander in Helmand, Maj. Gen. Mark Gurganus, had decided on Tuesday that no one would be armed while Mr. Panetta spoke to them,

David Stockman on Crony Capitalism

Former Reagan budget office director David Stockman gives a clinical breakdown of our increasingly non-free market society.       It goes back further of course, but he starts with our boy Bill Clinton, does not spare W. Bush, and notes that Mr. Hope and Change has not changed a thing.
    

Saturday, March 10, 2012

Obama Admin Stops Funding Over Abortion

Though they make a pretense about caring for poor women's health, the ugly truth is that the Obama administration cares more about continuing the flow of innocent blood than it does poor women.   That's the only conclusion I can come to after reading about their decision to yank funding for women's health clinics in Texas because of a Texas law which prevents public funds from going to health clinics affiliated with abortion providers.

Pravda Chides "Tame" U.S. Media on Obama Birth

I never thought I would live to see Pravda chide the U.S. media for their refusal to report legitimate news that threatens the political system, and have them be right.   Sheriff Joe Arpaio has had a criminal task force review the issue of Obama's birth/eligibility for the Presidency.   I have not seen the report myself (it's linked to in my link) but the story ought to at least be reported.  Apparently, that won't be done by our "captured" media.   They are allowed to, within limits, speak ill of one side or the other, but not challenge the legitimacy of the system itself.

Expense Reimbursement Settlement

Amendment 70 of the Arkansas Constitution is clear.  Legislators are not supposed to get any money besides their pitiful salary (about $16,000 per year), along with per diem and mileage allowances.   They are also permitted office expenses, and that's where the abuse comes in.   Legislators have been doing things like starting a shell corporation and billing the state for "office expenses" that are otherwise undocumented.

People who have objected to this practice run the entire political spectrum, from the grassroots group Conservative Arkansas to uber liberal journalist Max Brantley.      Some of these folks took some of the offenders to court, and the settlement results are in.   I am optimistic about some of the terms, particularly the CPA audits in the legislature, but I also notice that the settlement includes a provision which basically says "what happened in the past won't be re-visited."

Water Fluoridation Facts Undermine Rosy Promises

I recommend this article as a good synopsis of some of the practical drawbacks to implementing a water fluoridation program.   Not mentioned in the article is that fluoride has no significant affect on tooth decay once someone gets their adult teeth.   It's the addition of the chemical to tooth structure which retards decay.   This means that administering fluoride through drinking water is even more inefficient that the article indicates.

Thursday, March 01, 2012

Changing the Law to Favor Out of State Bank Foreclosures


Since the feds bailed out the big banks over the strident opposition of 90% plus of the American people, it has been obvious that both political parties have been captured by international financiers. For a brief instant the curtain was rent, and we got a chance to see just how irrelevant the “bad kabuki theater” we endearingly continue to call “elections” have become.  

The rise of the Tea Party was largely a response to this realization that both parties had been captured.  Over time though, through well-funded intermediaries and a faux-right media, the Republicans have mostly been able to co-opt the Tea Party into becoming pom-pom wavers for one head of the two-headed political monster that is turning their children into debt slaves.  This monster is rapidly transferring the accumulated wealth of the middle class to the global banking elites in a process that continues to this day through, to name one example, crooked Discount Window operations.

The Tea Party, forged in response to a two-party betrayal on the bailouts, has been largely conned into believing that our nation’s problems are the result of the current White House Resident.   He is but a symptom of the real problem.  This is that the political process itself in this nation has been captured.   It no longer answers to its citizens.

That the federal government no longer works for us is plain.   It takes no vision to see it, only courage.    While the state governments are closer to the people than their cocooned national counterparts, it now becomes clear that they too are answering more to their party than to the people.

One example is Democrat Attorney General Dustin McDaniel joining with the AGs of the other states to give the banksters only a mild penalty for their titanic scheme to defraud homeowners and local governments.    When you or I buy a house, we are required to pay title transfer fees, such as a tax stamp.   The banks bought and sold mortgages on an epic scale, selling and reselling the same property multiple times, but did not pay the transfer taxes.    Now they want to grab the houses anyway, even when it is far from clear they actually have the right to claim it.

The banks only bought the income from the mortgages, not the titles to the houses.   Now they want to waive that detail away and take people’s houses even though it is entirely possible that the homeowner could work out a deal with the actual title holder, or even the pretend the title holder, if they had the leverage of the actual legal situation rather than a bankster-orchestrated reboot of the rules.   Homeowners are cheated, and so are local governments who by rights could otherwise sue for the lost revenue.   The state AG’s at the behest of the bankers, want to agree on a “penalty” which consists of the bankers repaying a portion of what they stole in exchange for escaping all chance of prosecution for their crimes.

Now comes Senator Michael Lamoureux and SB1147, just to demonstrate that State Republicans are in the banker’s pockets, just like the national Republicans and the state and national Democrats.   Current Arkansas law requires banks to register with the state before they can take someone’s home.  The bill would end that requirement.   Now fly-by night “financial institutions” can come in and seize people’s homes without any check or scrutiny from the state to see if they are legitimate operators or simply using the cloudy legal situation surrounding this whole fiasco to grab everything they can get.

Heck, in this environment I don’t know if there are any “legitimate operators” in finance outside of the local banks in this state whose owners and officers have to live with the rest of us.   If a New Jersey bank coming in here and throwing people out of their homes despite what the law was when the deal was signed is not bad enough, consider that the national communist bank of China could do the same thing.   More likely, the “bank” will be a shell corporation established by the big players for the specific purpose of suing as many people as they can and grabbing as many homes as possible.

How about that Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Citibank, et al?    They got the feds to rescue them by creating money out of thin air to buy their bad bets.   The debt attached to that new money is now somehow a debt of the people that we owe.   The banksters can now use the money to form predator corporations that vacuum up at a bargain the homes of the very people who will be paying for their bailout.

Everybody talks about the responsibility of the borrower to know what he or she is getting into.   What about the responsibility of the lender?   At the top, they knew that the housing market was going to tank, but they kept extending the zero down loans, pushing them even, anyway.  And why not push them?   If the government rescues you and throws all the costs of your risky bets onto the other party, why not risk it?

The situation is so pathetic down there in Little Rock, they are so far from the interests of the citizens of this state, that the argument is over whether or not the lost registration fees will cost the state government money.  Lamoureux argues that increases in home foreclosures, which also have a fee attached, will make up for the lost revenue.      Counting on more home foreclosures to increase revenue to the government- these people are all heart.

Should we be angry at the banksters for what they are doing?  Of course, but that’s not where most of our anger should lie.   It should lie with those pretending to be our representatives who are really representing their party.   A party that is funded by outside interests and therefore represents them.