Reinke Faces Life

http://www.townhall.com/columnists
/ThomasSowell/2006/10/03/socialism_for_the_rich

***Begin Quote***

The rich have learned to adapt socialist policies to their own benefit. For example, the city of Riviera Beach, Florida, is planning to demolish a working class neighborhood under its power of eminent domain, in order to prepare the way for a marina for yachts, luxury condominiums and an upscale shopping district.

***End Quote***

Economist Sowell makes the interesting point that the gubamint’s decision to take property operates differently on the poor than on the rich. The rich can fight the “wrong” kind of eminent domain (i.e., that which takes what they want) and reward the politicians who propose “open space” (i.e., make my stuff worth more) or “redevelopment” (i.e., build me a marina or golf course at the expense of others). The poor have to just fold their tent and move along, unless they can interest a champion.

So much for the Fifth Amendment and its requirement for “just compensation” for “public use”.

Arghhh!

http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2006/10/liberty-and-habeas-corpus-i.html

A GREAT post on Habeas Corpus. A must read for every liberty lover!

http://freetalklive.com/wiki/index.php?title=Strategy_For_Smaller_Government

Strategy For Smaller Government

1. Political Party

Join the big L Libertarian party and work to get enough people elected. (Seen how well that has worked over the last 30 years!)

2. Issue Oriented Group

Join Advocates for Smaller Government and push an agenda. (Carla has had some modest success in MA.)

3. Free State Project

Move to NH and revolt. (Seems to be working. But, it’s definitely not easy. For me, probably won’t happen.)

4. Lauren C’s in their face activism

Just refuse to cooperate at all. Worked for Gandhi and MLK. (I’m not so sure I’m brave enough to pull that off!)

5. Dave’s individual silent signs

Seems to annoy them. Probably will wind up in arrests.

6. Get people to laugh at Big Gubamint foolishness.

Try to make fun of big gubamint. See Penn & Teller on HBO. See how fast the Spanish American War Telephone tax was repealed. (Big Gubamint can stand being laughed at!)

http://www.niagara-gazette.com/local/local_story_275204901.html

Published: October 02, 2006 08:49 pm

DAY 3: Stabilizing neighborhoods

Millions of public dollars will be spent in the next three years on Niagara Falls housing
By Denise Jewell
Niagara Gazette

***Begin Quote***

Public officials are also working on housing plans that would address the lack of private-sector investment into building new housing in Niagara Falls.

***AND***

While the HOPE VI project has been hailed by advocates as a key to revitalizing public housing, local landlords have expressed concerned that the proposal will negatively impact private rental units by pulling tenants into newer public housing.

“We’re putting up units at $200,000 for poor people and you wonder what’s wrong?” asked Ken Hamilton, a Niagara Falls citizen who has spoken out against the project. “If there’s a glut, why extend the glut?”

***End Quote***

Ahh, why isn’t there any private sector investment?

For the same reason that there aren’t any parochial schools being built, you can’t compete with he gubamint “giving away” free or below cost stuff!

There is a reason why the free market allocates resources so efficiently and that mechanism is prices. High prices signal entrepreneurs that there is a potential profit. That signal communicates that there is an unmet need that someone is willing to pay to have satisfied.

Milton Freedman did a great exposition on the pencil. No one had to be told to make it. The marketplace energized a whole bunch of greedy people to get together and work cooperatively to satisfy his basic human need for a pencil. It was not a committee. It was not the gubamint. And, it wasn’t funded using “public money”.

So here we have the gubamint manipulating its citizens.

When it puts its “proverbial thumb” on the marketplace scale, it makes everything worse. By depressing the value of a rental property, it signals the marketplace to produce less housing in that area. To invest less money. That there are fewer human needs in that area. Perversely, it makes the problem worse.

And, the media and the intellectuals just don’t get it.

In a marketplace, all needs are addressed. In a gubmint solution, only some needs are met and it’s at a fantastic cost. I bet if we had a forensic accountant look into it, we’d find that the ~200k per unit would translate into ~600k being stolen from taxpayers. And, what about the silent cost of this “housing project” to those silent victims of gubamint taxation? maybe they were ready to buy their first house, but the gubamint taxes took it away from them and gave it to those “poor people” over there.

See that’s what gubamint does, it makes losers of us all!

Note: It’s interesting that the news site bans certain ips from commenting. Oh well, not that they’d listen much.

http://digg.com/politics/Homeland_Security_and_Petition_for_Redress_of_Grievances

Homeland Security goes after Keene man for demonstrating at IRS office
By SON HOANG Union Leader Correspondent
9 hours, 30 minutes ago

***Begin Quote***

Nashua – A Keene man had a run-in with the United States Department of Homeland Security in the parking lot of Building 19 yesterday morning.

Dave Ridley, 40, said he met with an official from the Department of Homeland Security in the parking lot, located at 420 Amherst St., who repeatedly tried to give him a $120 citation for handing out handbills at a federal office.

***End Quote***

Interesting about this is that the story is unavailable from the Union Leader (a traditional newspaper).

Now, if you’re a regular reader of NHFREE (http://www.nhfree.com/) or a regular listener of FTL (http://www.freetalklive.com), then you’ll already be aware of the revolution going on.

In this episode, the force of gubamint are made to look exceptionally stupid.

(It’s hard to be feared when you’re being laughed at!)

The story of Ridley’s protest, if you could call it that, as if standing silently with a sign in a federal office is much compared to the 60s civil rights demonstrations led by Martin Luther king, makes them look stupid.

And, what happened to the First Amendment? Certainly, this activity is well covered by that.

And, where did the news story go? Did DHS pressure the Union Leader to pull it?

It would seem that non-violent non-cooperation, in the tradition of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, is making waves.

Even over and above the value of protest, I think every time the gubamint is made to look stupid, stupid enough to make people laugh, that we become freer!

The Free State Project (http://www.freestateproject.org/) is making NH a very interesting place to be.

So those of us, who are “stuck” in the various Peeple’s Republiks around what used to be the United States of America, need to support our fellow revolutionaries in the battlefield that is NH.

So read the stories, digg the story up at the above link so others see it, blog about them, and send them to all the usual suspects!

Make them aware. Make people laugh. Make them mad!

http://www.freetalklive.com

Mark,

Here’s my notes from the FTL youngster’s rendition of my email:

“poddie” is my affectionate term for podcast listener.

“womyn” is how the women’s liberation movement wanted the word spelled; not a sexual joke.

“kill alternative” should have been better written “to kill all competing alternatives”.

“gubamint” is what the militia movement calls that gang in DC who has grown outside of its Constitutional bounds. The gubamint at Waco, Ruby Ridge, and the Japanese Internment camps are frequent uses of the word in militia literature. I think they are correct to assigned it a special name. Government is what the Constitution provides for; gubamint is what we have now.

We have to guard our words carefully. Orwell’s double speak is upon us. Let’s take back our language.

For example, the gubamint does NOT “invest”. So any time I read a news story where the write refers to “government investment”, I fire off an email or a letter. I don’t know if it makes a difference, but, I know, for example, none of my friends mention “government investing” around me. ;-)

affirmative action = initially applied to gubamint and all the contracted with or WERE REGULATED by gubamint AT ANY LEVEL! (In effect, de facto regulation of the entire economy. Note the Hooter’s sex discrimination case as a classic. The fellow actually got some Hooter’s boy “waitresses” just to make the EEOC look foolish. The EEOC caved.

Let’s go back a little further in history, the tyranny (English and French) Kings were counterbalanced by the Catholic Church. Run it forward to 60s America, the Churches were a counter weight to the tyranny of the Central Government. Note that the opposition to racism originated in the black Churches. MLK was minister before he became a Gandhi-like leader. Note that opposition to the undeclared VietNam war was originated in the convents and churches of the Catholic Church following its doctrine of “a just war”. Clearly, for gubamint to grow in power and influence it must destroy, marginalize, or it some way oppress competition for the spotlight. I think that the Churches were very powerful and influential. AND, they were the voluntary associations. (Tell Ian not let his personal atheism block the view that a church is a good alternative to a gubamint.) So, the gubamint, like their can only be one queen bee in hive, must NUKE the churches.

So to, it must NUKE the family so it can assume the role of child care provider. Remember the communists want the children so that they can mold them to worship the gubamint, see it as the solution to all their problems, and warp them to the needs of the state as cannon fodder, good little voters who select on of the two meaningless choices, and pay their taxes without question.

The family farm is a great metaphor for the American family. (We didn’t have farm, but the nuclear family I grew up in all lived in the same tenement.) Social Security Insurance gave the old folks the cash flow to leave the family, which they did. Leaving the gubamint to fill their shoes. The motivation might have been warmth but the SSI make it possible. The motivation might have been warmth, but the SSI make it possible. It put a check in their hands, with their name on it, and made it possible for them to kid themselves into thinking it would be OK! It may have started in the 30’s but I saw it happen in the late 50’s.

Don’t forget that insurance (i.e., life, accident, and disability) for the poor folks ORIGINATED with the Knights of Columbus (Catholic Church). It spread like wildfire to the Masons, the Italian clubs, the Unions, and all manner of fraternal organizations.
Here’s another threat to the power of the gubamint. Social Security was government’s response to another powerful (voluntary) force in people’s lives. I don’t need the gubamint to insure my life when I can get a better deal from my Local Order of Hibernians.

Catholic schools, Catholic Hospitals, Catholic Charities all led the way. And good for them, the Baptists didn’t want medical care from those vial Papists so they created their own like Baylor, the various things with Baptist in their name, and so on and so on.

Credit Unions also have to die.

Basically anything that obviates the need for gubamint has to be killed.

It does it through regulation! And offering a competing alternative or free!

Parochial schools killed by “free” gubamint skools! Sectarian hospitals by Medicare.
Fraternal Insurance by regulation. And, if there is any hint of wrong doing, they get right on that. Pedophile priests were (rightly) excoriated; pedophile politicians or any misconduct by a politician gets a free pass.

The leftist big-government media, which depends upon the gubamint, led the cheer leading.

You did correctly chastise me for not providing solutions. (In my defense, I was focused on defending the caller on his point that the gubamint needs to be the queen bee.)

I think that Free State Project is an idea. (I’m tied down by familial obligations, but I’d be there in a heartbeat if things were different.)

Here are the things I’m doing:

* prepare for the revolution.

Save your “money” (not those trashy worthless furbies aka FRBNs) Be debt free, so when the furbie goes to zero like all fiat currencies do, me and mine will be ok.

* educate

Make sure that everyone “knows” that gubamint isn’t the answer. For example, my nephews in law know that a dollar isn’t the same as an ounce of gold. But then they were easily impressed with a sleeve of american eagle bullion coins. Or is that medallions!

* laugh

Try to make the gubamint look silly. People can’t respect or be in awe when they are laughing at stupidity. The cell phone tax was repealed when everyone started talking about the Spanish American Was Phone Tax. The gubamint can afford to be laughed at!

* personalize

Find out what each person’s hot button is and point out how the government is screwing them on that point.

* sand in the machinery

Muck it up. Send in forms. Make calls. Bury the call centers. For example, when I get junk mail. I stuff it all in the business reply envelope, with the envelope they sent it in, and return it to them. I get a lot less junk mail. Some people send the empty envelope back. That’s too easy.

That’s my plan. A lot of jokes about jumbo shrimp and honest politicians. If we can get people laughing at the clown car we call gubamint, then we can shrink them down to size. Perception is reality! Let’s have more TSA horror stories — put more old nuns on the no fly list — molest more pregger moms dragging infants — make business men wait in the longest lines you have ever seen — and longer lines, much longer. Maybe I’ll go stand in one and move real slow. Nah, I have given up flying and tell everyone I know they should too. More people are beginning to agree with me on that one!

Thanks for reading my email,
REINKE

p.s., I’m impressed. You even pronounce my name right. How did you do that?

http://www.rightwingnews.com/archives/week_2006_09_24.PHP

Bloggers Select The Greatest Figures In American History (Version 2)

***Begin Quote***

Out of all the titans in American history — Presidents and generals, inventors and entrepreneurs, reformers and revolutionaries — have you ever wondered who the best of the best were? Well, RWN decided, for the first time in more than 3 years, to email more than 225 right-of-center bloggers to get their opinions. Representatives from the following 41 blogs responded…

Honorable Mentions:
(HM) John F. Kennedy (4)
(HM) Lewis And Clark (4)
(HM) William Tecumseh Sherman (5)
(HM) Jonas Salk (5)
(HM) John Marshall (5)
(HM) Milton Friedman (5)
(HM) George Washington Carver (5)
(HM) Susan B. Anthony (5)
(HM) Audie Murphy (6)
(HM) Douglas MacArthur (6)
(HM) Patrick Henry (6)
(HM) Andrew Carnegie (6)
(25) Alexander Graham Bell (7)
(23) Thomas Paine (8)
(23) Frederick Douglass (8)
(22) George W. Bush (9)
(18) Wright Brothers (10)
(18) Mark Twain (10)
(18) Harry Truman (10)
(18) Bill Gates (10)
(17) Dwight D. Eisenhower (12)
(15) George Patton (13)
(15) Albert Einstein (13)
(12) Teddy Roosevelt (14)
(12) Franklin D. Roosevelt (14)
(12) Ulysses S. Grant (14)
(11) Alexander Hamilton (15)
(10) Henry Ford (16)
(09) John Adams (17)
(08) Thomas Edison (21)
(07) James Madison (22)
(06) Thomas Jefferson (29)
(05) Martin Luther King Jr. (30)
(04) Ben Franklin (32)
(03) George Washington (35)
(02) Abraham Lincoln (37)
(01) Ronald Reagan (39)

***End Quote***

At first blush, I disagree. Washington clearly has to be #1. I wish I had a pair wise comparison tool to use.

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003188197

Louisville Paper Gets Disc With 232 Photos of Nude National Guard Women
By E&P Staff and The Associated Press
Published: September 28, 2006 1:55 PM ET updated 4:20 PM ET

***Begin Quote***

LOUISVILLE, KY. — U.S. Army officials are taking a close look at whether women in a Kentucky National Guard unit posed nude for pictures with their M-16s and other military equipment, authorities said.

A local newspaper reported that it had a disc containing 232 of the photos, which they did not publish, and do not plan to publish, E&P has learned.

***End Quote***

Could this be another reason that woman don’t belong in the military?

I have pontificated before that women are too valuable to waste in war. It’s not that they are the “weaker sex”; I know lots of capable strong dangerous women. It’s the survival of the species. In Israel, where these is no safe “rear”, women in the military is a common sense necessity. In the USA, it makes no sense to me.

This particular incident is just embarrassing (i’m bare ass) stupidity. It exemplifies the coarsening of our civil society. And, it just takes private beauty and makes it into public porn.

Sadly shaking my head and wondering what is this world coming to?

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=52158

WorldNetDaily: People power, not police power
between the lines Joseph Farah WND Exclusive Commentary
Posted: September 27, 2006 1:00 a.m. Eastern

***Begin Quote***

The biggest manhunt I ever saw – the one for “Night Stalker” Richard Ramirez in California in 1985 – quickly came to an end, too, when police allowed those of us in the press to publish a sketch. The mass murderer was nearly lynched by civilians the morning the paper came out. The police had to rescue the killer of 13 who had terrorized the entire state for more than a year.

It’s people power – and we need more of it in the U.S. today. We don’t need a Department of Homeland Security – we need an army of responsible, motivated, vigilant, self-governing people entrusted by their government officials with their inalienable right to bear arms. And we need a government that recognizes it is not all-knowing and all-powerful and stops treating its citizens like helpless children.

***End Quote***

We learned in Katrina, that when the good citizens of NOLA left, law and order left with them.

So why do we credit the police with an orderly law-abiding society?

It is the people, using:

(a) their willingness to follow a law;

(b) their moral authority of a group agreement,

(c) their willingness to police themselves, and others,

(d) their willingness to support the police (remember how many people will help their police when the situation warrants),

(e) their willingness to convict the guilty (remember that juries have had, since the pre-Revolutionary War Zenger trial, the right to judge the Constitutionality of any law under which the government seeks to use to gain a conviction), AND

(f) their willingness not to protest over an issue thru their elected representatives.

The people ARE the police. (Remember the old westerns when the sheriff swears in deputies for a posse?)

Peace, law, and order are due to us!

Downsize DC: Big government harms you, hurts your family, and injures your neighbors

http://action.downsizedc.org/wyc.php?cid=53

2006-Jul-21
No Warrant? No Search.

Seems real simple. If you beleive in the Fifth Amendment, then you should tell these politicians.

http://answers.firstgov.gov/

***Begin Quote***

Who is required to register for the Selective Service?

Federal law states that all men between the ages of 18 to 25 who are living inside the United States, or its Territories, must register with the Selective Service.

This includes young men who have already signed up for military duty, both legal and illegal alien males, dual nationals, and certain classes of disabled, hospitalized, or incarcerated males. Women are not required by federal law to register with the Selective Service.

There are some exceptions and exemptions from this law. We recommend speaking directly with the Selective Service for further information.
***End Quote***

Since there’s no way that the american people will stand for another draft, why not nuke the Selective Service. We have laws against slavery. Why is this any different?

Schneier on Security: Expensive Cameras in Checked Luggage

http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/09/expensive_camer.html

September 22, 2006
Expensive Cameras in Checked Luggage

***Begin Quote***

This is a blog post about the problems of being forced to check expensive camera equipment on airplanes:
***End Quote***

I really like the suggestion about packing a starter’s pistol with your expensive camera and declaring it as a firearm!

Typical American solution! Use the “rules” to your benefit! I LUV it.

What Government Is Doing to Our Money by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/govt-doing-to-money.html

***Begin Quote***

People talk of restraining government, but there will be no restraining government so long as the monetary system permits government to expand and spend without limit. So long as their debt is not traded with a default premium, so long as the government and all its connected institutions are considered to be too big to fail, we are going to have a problem with the expansion of power and the loss of freedom.

***End Quote***

So basically we have no way to constrain the growth of government. Boy, the dead old white guys should see this mess!

MiamiHerald.com | 09/20/2006 | Artificial reef made of tires becomes ecological disaster

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/15560115.htm
Posted on Wed, Sep. 20, 2006

***Begin Quote***

A plan in the early 1970s to create a massive artificial reef off Fort Lauderdale has turned into an environmental mess with the U.S. Navy, Broward County and others trying to figure out how to remove about two million tires covering 36 acres of ocean floor.
***End Quote***

Ahhh, yes do gooders, but their intentions were pure. It takes government to really screw up, to damage the environment, and all the time we are paying for this stupidity. Arghhh!

Let’s leave decisions to the free market place. It would NOT throw away some “very good” tires  (They were not good for driving on, but a bright inventor might be able to find a good use for them.)  bit represent an opportunity for some one to turn a profit.

Hi Guys,

Loyal amp podie here with feedback on Tuesday’s 12 Sept hour#2 show specifically the caller form Montana (I think):

(1) LBJ took office after Kennedy’s assassination. SO he was in office in 1964, then elected on his own in 64 taking office in 65. Don’t be so quick to denigrate the caller’s take on historical events.

(2) The caller the tried to talk about how the Civil Rights Act of 64 broke the family.

May I elaborate, because I think I understood his comment and there is some basis in fact for what he is saying. (I too lived in this era. And you youngsters may not appreciate the nuances)

Let’s remember the “Law of Unintended Consequences”. Especially where government is concerned, there are ALWAYS those unintended consequences.

Let me set the stage for the caller’s point.

(A) The Social Security Insurance, a giant Ponzi scheme (but that is another matter for another day), had the unintended consequence of weakening the multi-generational family. (I charitably say “unintended”. A strong family, like strong churches, fraternal organizations, and a strong civil society can obviate the need for government to take power over the people. For the government to grow out of its Constitutional bounds, it needs crises and kill alternatives.) By giving welfare to old folks, it took them out of the multi-generational family. Grandma and Grandpa retire and move to Florida. In the old days, they would live on the family farm or, in my family’s case, in the same apartment building, where they could provide help and support to the family unit. Old folks “need” their children’s help for certain tasks (i.e., things that require strength and agility) and the children need the old folk’s help for certain tasks (i.e., watch the kids while Mom runs to the store). Have a problem, you can always borrow a few bucks from Grandma or Mom. No need for gubamint, if you can get all the help from the family living in close proximity. Social Security Insurance welfare gave the old folks the financial freedom to abdicate this essential familial responsibility. It doesn’t take a village to raise a child; it does take a family to raise everyone’s standard of living. SSI allows the old folks to abscond with the SSI money and who takes their place? The gubamint is empowered to do all sorts of things — “public” “education” (that’s neither public; nor educational), Welfare, AFDIC, Food stamps, rent control, yada yada.

(B) The War on Poverty further broke the family by UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES of its “requirements”. A woman with children could draw welfare if there was no man living in the home. Men were then thus freed of their familial responsibilities. Another consequence was that women became farmers of children. More kids; more welfare. Young girls could get more “stuff” by getting pregnant. It spawned an “immoral” generation. “Immoral” not in the church sense, but in the sense that the family unit served no further purpose. The gubamint would do it all for you. Men could fornicate with abandon. Women were encouraged to be “liberated”. That broke the backs of the churches.

(C) LBJ’s GUNS AND BUTTER tried to spend for welfare to win the war on poverty and the Viet Nam “ersatz war”. Gubamint spending went thru the roof, taxes went thru the roof, and wealth plummeted. This increased taxation and lowering the standard of living thru inflation, induced women to leave the home in droves to maintain a standard of living.

(D) Affirmative Action was passed as remedial for the discrimination against black. The woman’s lib, which wanted to be womyn’s lib, “horned in” on Affirmative Action. That diluted the effectiveness of the government’s program for blacks and institutionalize the “ima victim” mentality. Womyn became prized in the corporate world where one had to deliver numbers. This drove up the wages paid women and allowed them to leave the home and earn, in some cases, far better money than their spouse. There goes another nail in the coffin containing the notion of a nuclear family.

SOOOOOOO

What the caller was TRYING to say was the gubamint, either deliberately or unintendedly, destroyed the american family by:

(1) stripping the old folks away by social security thus empowering the gubamint to solve people’s problems;

(2) nuked the church as source of support and moral authority by the war on poverty and the liberalization of morality thus empowering the government by removing the church as an alternative and counter weight to gubamint;

(3) broke the economics of the family unit by throwing men out, making them worthless, and demeaning them in the eyes of their women thus empowering the gubamint to become the ersatz father to these women and children;

(4) put everyone, by inflation and higher taxes, on a gerbil wheel to try to maintain the same standard of living thus empowering the gubamint with more money to spend;

(5) using affirmative action to increase artificially increase the value of women in the marketplace thus empowering the gubamint to “protect” women from “discrimination” and putting gubamint in the role of “child care”;

(6) using affirmative action to create a permanent culture of race sex “discrimination” empowering the gubamint to be the arbiter of “fairness”.

I think that is what the caller was trying to get out.

Gubamint bad! And, while there may be no going back without a bloody revolution, these problems need to be addressed.

http://www.erowid.org/psychoactives/policy/policy_writing1.shtml

FIFTEEN REASONS TO LEGALIZE DRUGS

1. Legalizing drugs would make our streets and homes safer.
2. It would put an end to prison overcrowding.
3. Drug legalization would free up police resources to fight crimes
against people and property.
4. It would unclog the court system.
5. It would reduce official corruption.
6. Legalization would save tax money.
7. It would cripple organized crime.
8. Legal drugs would be safer. Legalization is a consumer protection
issue.
9. Legalization would help stem the spread of AIDS and other diseases.
10. Legalization would halt the erosion of other personal liberties.
11. It would stabilize foreign countries and make them safer to live in
and travel to.
12. Legalization would repair U.S. relations with other countries and
curtail anti-American sentiment around the world.
13. Legalization would prevent children from consuming drugs.
14. Legalization would encourage pharmaceutical companies the research
of safer and healthier drugs.
15. Legalization could teach people to live safe with drugs.

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/09/18/D8K7ECP03.html

Businesses Adapt to Airport Restrictions
Sep 18 2:32 PM US/Eastern
By ANNA JO BRATTON Associated Press Writer
OMAHA, Neb.

***Begin Quote***

Fifteen live lobsters? Those you can take on a plane. But the ice or gel packs to keep the lobsters cold are not allowed under the recent ban on liquids and gels in carryon luggage

***End Quote***

I like their solution frozen vegetables. I don’t like that we allow the gubamint to “run” security at the airports. What we have is what Bruce Schneier calls “security theater” http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/09/more_than_10_wa.html Nothing of what we are seeing would make an iotas difference. What it does do is to put the gubamint firmly in control of the population. Real Id, sneak ‘n’ peek, imprisonment without trial, and even more restrictions on our liberties are all steps on the way to the next genocide. It can happen here. Think the Civil War, the Indian Wars, and the Japanese Internment. We need to object. I don’t consent.

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/09/18/D8K7F8580.html

Report: N.J. Senator Had No-Work Job
Sep 18 3:31 PM US/Eastern
***Begin Quote***

A powerful southern New Jersey politician was paid for a no-work job at a scandal-ridden state university while helping the school garner millions of dollars in new state funding, according to a report released Monday.
The University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey paid state Sen. Wayne Bryant, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, $35,000 a year “to lobby himself in his capacity of state senator,” according to the report of a federal monitor who had investigated the school’s finances.

***End Quote***

Ahh, only in the Peeple’s Repulik of Nu Jerzee, does a politican not get rebuked by the voters. But, it’s business as usual. His party doesn’t roast him like the sacrificial pig that he should be. And, the voters just reward all the incumbent by returning them to power. We condemn the Soviet Union for one party Communism. What’s the difference here? Hey, with McSleezzey hitting Oprah. Christie being nailed for lying about WTC air. It’s just a joke. On the voters and taxpayers. There’s just no hope here.

http://www.freemarketnews.com/Analysis/39/5993/time.asp?wid=39&nid=5993

TIME FOR A LITTLE CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE
Monday, September 18, 2006

***Begin Quote***

Wallace, Idaho – Perversely just in time for Silver Summit 2006, the United States Mint Thursday threw a wrench at Bernard von NotHaus’ Liberty Dollar program with secretion of a Sept. 14 press release, declaring: “Prosecutors with the Department of Justice have determined that the use of these gold and silver NORFED “Liberty Dollar” medallions as circulating money is a Federal crime.”

***AND***

Merchants participating in the Liberty Dollar program simply accept Liberty dollars in either coin (silver) or paper form in exchange for goods and services. The difference between Liberty paper dollars and the (now, apparently compulsory) fiat fednotes is that Liberty paper dollars are backed in full by physical silver, whereas fiat paper dollars are backed by, um, snicker, the full faith and credit of the United States government, which broke that same faith with its own subjects in 1964 when it took silver out of the money and later declined even to redeem its Silver Certificates in silver. Such was the lesson of our adolescence: This is a government that cannot be trusted or believed.

***End Quote***

And, I don’t like the idea of civil disobedience, because it implies that the gang in power has some right to demand obedience. They get obedience because they’ll kill you if you don’t obey. I’d prefer the phrase non-violent self-determination.
Interesting timing for the “illegal” declaration?

This story is note worthy in that its an economics and history lesson rolled up into one. I don’t know about you, but the “full faith and credit” guarantee isn’t worth a lot when you look at: (1) the Federal debt; (2) the Federal deficit; (3) the unfunded Social Security Insurance (which is NOT insurance; it’s a Ponzi scheme); (4) the unfunded Federal promises, guarantees, and “insurances”; and (5) the unfunded Federal pension obligations due to its retirees and to others thru the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation. One has to wonder how much air can be blown into this balloon before it pops?

Perhaps, the NORFED folks are striking too close the root of this illusion. Who’s behind the curtain? The grim reaper called reality.

Now I think that NORFED should have not used the word “dollar”. You can’t take a word that is already owned by another in the mind.

I’d have made a new word — silver ounce => sil-nce — gold ounce => go-nce. Or, call a gold ounce, a Ludwid for Ludwig von Mises. A silver ounce, a Rothfarb.

Anything, but a dollar.

So, Americans should begin using Ludwigs and Rothfarbs in everyday commerce.

http://www.ybw.com/ibinews/newsdesk/20060814154923ibinews.html

US federal judge declares boating illegal in all US navigable waters
By IBI Magazine

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In a rather bizarre ruling that has marine industry officials worried, Judge Robert G. James of the United States District Court, Western Division of Louisiana, has said that it is criminal trespass for the American boating public to boat, fish, or hunt on the Mississippi River and other navigable waters in the US.

In the case of Normal Parm v. Sheriff Mark Shumate, James ruled that federal law grants exclusive and private control over the waters of the river, outside the main shipping channel, to riparian landowners. The shallows of the navigable waters are no longer open to the public. That, in effect, makes boating illegal across most of the country.

***End Quote***

File this under “Ya Gotta Be Kiddin”! Why do we tolerate this gang of armed thugs to tell us what to do? this is just more central big gubamint non-sense.

http://www.usmint.gov/pressroom/index.cfm?flash=yes&action=press_release&ID=710

(So I wrote to an expert to sort it out!)

Lew, [of http://lewrockwell.com/ (anti-state, anti-war, pro-market), the Mises Institute, and famous Libertarian]

(1) Perhaps you’d care to comment about the nonsense spewing out of the gubamint about money. There’s no doubt that the NORFED has struck a nerve. NORFED ain’t fooling anyone, but it’s a good cover story. If the mint has exclusive, then why do we have the Federal Reserve in the process?

(2) Note that the gubamint has added the word “exclusive” in their rendition of the Constitution.

(3) Now that the Barbara Streisand is out of the way, here’s my tough ramble. Somebody’s Law (Say, Shea, or something with S) “bad money drives good out of circulation” would say that if I have a FRB and Liberty Dollar, that I’ll spend the FRBie as fast as I can because it’s intrinsically worthless. Is there ever a time when good money can drive bad out. If there is no case, then there is no way for NORFED’s money to push out the FRBie. Comment?

(4) My take on NORFED is NOT that they were fooling anyone, but that they were trying to retake the word dollar (i.e., thaller). And, charge a commission for it.

(Marketing 101 teaches you can’t take a word that someone already owns in the marketplace of the mind. It’s like Ford trying to take QUALITY from Mercedes, or SAFETY from Volvo. Ain’t gonna happen!)

Now everyone is entitled to earn the sweat of their brow, but the escalating value of their “dollar” was confusing at best. The NORFED MLM quality turned people off. Me too.

Wouldn’t we be better off with a new unit of currency. Let’s call it the dinar (that should get everyone’s shorts in a knot!). And define it as an ounce of gold. The golden dinar. Same thing for silver. The silver dinar is one ounce of silver. Maybe it should be in metric units?

OK, I’ll make it metric! The golden Ludwig will be 0.0283495 of a kilogram of gold. Similarly our Rothfarb will be 0.0283495 of a kilogram of silver.

Wouldn’t “we” be better served by using straight bullion coins as money? Makes the accounting easier in the sense that the hidden tax of inflation can’t bite us. Instead of financial reports in dollars, they be in Ludwigs or Rothfarbs.

Comment?

(5) Can you ever envision us getting out the fiat currency mess we are in? Short of a reichmark style inflation, an overthrow of the Federal Reserve System or some version of a French Revolution, how will could might it happen?

Just a dumb injineer that got two Ds in two college economics courses. And, was smart enough to keep my mouth shut in my post grad mba courses!
Fjohn

http://www.epic.org/alert/EPIC_Alert_13.18.html

E P I C  A l e r t — Volume 13.18 —  September 6, 2006
Published by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) Washington, D.C.

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[4] EPIC Argues in Appeal of DNA Dragnet Case ========================================================================

On September 7, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, Louisiana will hear arguments in an appeal challenging the use of DNA dragnets in finding suspects. EPIC has filed a “friend of the court” brief in the case, and Executive Director Marc Rotenberg will argue EPIC’s position before the court. In 2002, police investigating a series of rapes and murders near Baton Rouge, Louisiana, conducted a DNA dragnet, collecting DNA samples from more than 1,200 men in an attempt to match someone’s DNA with that found at the crime scenes. Shannon Kohler was one of the men approached by police. When he refused to provide one, he was served with a seizure warrant, forcing him to provide a sample. Kohler was later identified by police and news media as a suspect in the search for the serial killer. After Kohler was cleared of wrongdoing in the investigation, he filed a suit against the Baton Rouge police, claiming that they lacked probable cause to obtain the warrant and that his DNA sample should be destroyed. In February 2005, a federal district court ruled against him, saying that police had probable cause based on two anonymous tips and the fact that Mr. Kohler met “certain elements of an FBI profile,” which the court itself characterized as “so broad and vague that it cast a net of suspicion over thousands of citizens.”

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Our rights are consistently under attack. And, when you stand up for them you get smeared. Do you really trust the gubamint with your DNA? They are lazy, sloppy, and not above suspicion. The right to be secure in one’s effect certainly includes your DNA.

If you’ve never read the EPIC newsletter, the I recommend you sign up for their free email. It’ll give you a real education in Liberty.

You can’t listen to the roll call of the dead and not feel the pain of the people reading names. If I was the King, then I’d make the politicians listen to this often. Politically, this was a failure of epic proportions. And, what’s worse, I don’t think we’ve learned a thing from it. (a) They are spending us into poverty. (b) They’ve been failing to innovate new methods to protect the country. Does anyone think that shaking down air travelers for nail clippers is doing squat? (c) They have failed to make us energy independent. France gets between a third and half of its electricity from nuclear reactors, why don’t we? (d) Are we more free than we were before? So we are not safer (i.e., ship cargo screening) and we’re not free-er (i.e., warrent-less wire tapping), what are they doing?

A friend of ine sent me this:

***Begin Quote***

Sent: Wednesday, September 06, 2006 1:02 PM
To: John Reinke
Subject: Keeping NY Medicaid Fraud under control

http://www.nypost.com/business/when_nerds_attack_business_richard_wilner.htm

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To which I said:

Nice … BUT …

As we know, I have a “cheaper solution”. User pays.

Why am I paying taxes (I’m being robbed) to pay other people’s medical bills. After several layers of government take a swipe at the pile? If everyone had to pay for their own medical bills, (a) taxes lower; (b) medical costs lower; and (c) everyone would be a lot freer.

So for example, if you were paying for your Dad’s Rxes for him, how likely would it be that a doc or pharmacy would get money from you after his passing?

Or even better example, the psych who visited FKW in the hospital for 7 months every day 3 questions and billed 220$ per DAY! Got 201 from Medicare, 18.50 from hbcbsnj, and had the {expletive deleted} to bill him (me) for the other 50 cents. (.5 * 7 * 30) or 105$. My answer was “sue me”!

Arghhhhh.

Great that they are trying.

Lousy that we have such a crapy system to start with.

Argh!

http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/alerts/105

Submitted by BuzzFlash on Thu, 09/07/2006 – 5:15am. Alerts

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ALERT
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Though the Bush Administration’s official budget lists the national debt and deficit as being incredibly high, they are actually far worse than reported, according to Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN). But don’t just take his word for it, even if Cooper is a Rhodes Scholar and Harvard Law graduate. The following figures appear in the official U.S. Financial Report, released by the Treasury Department:

* The true national debt is $49 trillion, not the $8.3 trillion Bush reported
o That’s $156,000 for every citizen, or $375,000 for every working American
o This figure has more than doubled in the past five years
o We paid $327 billion last year on interest alone
* The true 2005 deficit was $760 billion, not the $318.5 billion Bush reported
o This is 6.2% of the GDP, not 2.6%
* It’s all getting worse

What accounts for the huge discrepancy? Unlike businesses, the government uses “cash” instead of “accrual” accounting. This means that the government does not report future spending promises like Medicare and Social Security, or even future spending guarantees like veterans’ benefits and federal employee pensions.

“Cash accounting tells you what’s in your bank account. Accrual accounting tells you what’s in your bank account and what’s on your credit card statement,” Cooper told BuzzFlash in an interview. “Whether you’re promising to buy a road or something at Target, you need to know what you promised to buy. That should be a binding obligation of the government. We’ve made a world of promises to folks that we need to keep.”

But wait, there’s more! The U.S. Financial Report does not mention that if Medicare and Social Security are factored into the equation (which the Treasury Department did not), the true deficit was actually a whopping $3.3 trillion last year, over ten times more than Bush claims. And when Social Security projections are adjusted to reflect current life expectancies instead of the old 75-year mark, Cooper said the true national debt is “probably closer to $65 trillion.”
***End Quote***

All I can see is Claude Reins in Casablanca being “shocked” to find gambling going on at Rick’s!

Here’s a Democrat “shocked” to find that the Republicans are using cash accounting as opposed to accrual accounting.

Err, Representative Jim, what did Bill, or any of the other Democratic Presidents, use?

While I think its a valid criticism, it’s a criticism of big gubamint in general.

And our posterity will get stuck with the bill.

Free Talk Live
http://www.freetalklive.com

They are energetic and smart. I download the podcast each week and listen to it while I drive. They challenge my thinking and at the same time are entertaining. I’ve listened to some really deadly podcasts and they were snoozers. The fact that ftl gives away their podcast and takes on all callers SHOULD set the standard for all the talk radio genre. RushL charges for his podcast and carefully filters his calls. FTL is brave enough to talk to anyone, and even encourages people who disagree with them to call. Their challenge to name a government program that works has NEVER been met. I think they are great.