Wire Report

None Dare Call It Tyranny

(WIRE/FFF/SR) – If you want to know what tyranny is like, look around.

The national government — specifically the executive branch — can do pretty much what it wants. It could bomb Iran tomorrow without a declaration of war from Congress. It can — and does — conduct secret wars and covert operations against countries that have done nothing to us. Of course, they are secret only to the ignorant taxpayers who must finance them and perhaps suffer when the provoked retaliation occurs. It can have men behind PlayStation consoles in Nevada fire Hellfire missiles from aerial drones on people in Pakistan, Yemen, and elsewhere.

This tyrannical government can send any foreigner picked up anywhere in the world to third countries known for torturing prisoners. It can hold people accused of nothing indefinitely in prisons in Cuba and Afghanistan and torture them into making false confessions. It can conduct a war crimes trial in a military kangaroo court for a man, Omar Khadr, held captive for eight years after he was picked up at the age of 15 during a U.S. assault on villagers near Kabul. His torture-induced “confessions” will be admissible. All this is in violation of commitments under the Optional Protocol on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict not to treat children in war as though they were adults.

It can assassinate even American citizens abroad without a scent of due process.

It is a government that can write its own warrants without judicial review — and call them national security letters — in order to conduct fishing expeditions in anyone’s electronic records. But that isn’t enough power for the present Progressive administration, which wants the freedom to examine our browser histories and email correspondents’ names. The Bill of Rights, like the Geneva Convention, has become “quaint” and obsolete.

Like any self-respecting tyranny, it tries to keep the truth from its subjects. Comforting words camouflage the 50,000 armed and combat-ready troops that will remain in Iraq after “withdrawal.” Their “primary” mission is to train an army whose own general says won’t be ready for years. This gross deception follows on the heralded “surge,” which supposedly turned things around in Iraq. What “worked,” however, was not U.S. military prowess or Gen. David Petraeus’s brilliance, but the spreading of American taxpayers’ cash to buy off Sunni insurgents and the denouement of ethnic cleansing in Baghdad.

And, again, like any self-respecting tyranny, it bridles at leaks of classified documents that tell the people the truth. Solemn administration officials condemn Wikileaks and its sources for supposedly jeopardizing U.S. troops and Afghan collaborators, while adding that nothing new had been revealed. With no sense of irony, the same officials find blood on the hands of Wikileaks’ Julian Assange, ignoring the rivers of blood their policies and weapons have produced in the Middle East and South Central Asia. Without those policies, there would be nothing to leak. Some call for the assassination of Assange, and for all we know he is on President Obama’s kill list. Meanwhile a courageous young soldier, Bradley Manning, who apparently leaked video of American troops committing cold-blooded murder in Baghdad, faces 52 years in prison.

Now we are being softened up for the next war, against Iran. As in 2002 with Iraq’s phantom WMDs, the empire advance men tell us Iran is building nuclear weapons, and Obama and Secretary of State Clinton say “all options are on the table,” which phrase includes hydrogen bombs. Once again a Big Lie is repeated without proof. The reason is simple: all evidence runs the other way. The government’s own intelligence agencies say Iran has no nuclear-weapons program, and the International Atomic Energy Agency is on the scene. But no matter. If it suits the tyrannical administration or its partner in empire, Israel, bombs of some kind will fall. The consequences all around will be horrible.

Can it really be tyranny if we get to vote? Yes. Thomas Jefferson warned of “elective despotism.” How valuable is your one vote when the government manipulates and distorts the flow of information, when Congress capitulates, and when the “adversarial” mainstream media act like government press agents, if not adoring lapdogs. The ugly truth is out there, but you have to want to know it.

Sheldon Richman, Editor “The Freeman”

Sheldon Richman is editor of The Freeman, published by The Foundation for Economic Education in Irvington, New York, and serves as senior fellow at The Future of Freedom Foundation. He is the author of FFF’s award-winning book Separating School & State: How to Liberate America’s Families; Your Money or Your Life: Why We Must Abolish the Income Tax; and FFF’s newest book Tethered Citizens: Time to Repeal the Welfare State. Calling for the abolition, not the reform, of public schooling. Separating School & State has become a landmark book in both libertarian and educational circles. In his column in the Financial Times, Michael Prowse wrote: “I recommend a subversive tract, Separating School & State by Sheldon Richman of the Cato Institute, a Washington think tank… . I also think that Mr. Richman is right to fear that state education undermines personal responsibility…” Mr. Richman’s articles on population, federal disaster assistance, international trade, education, the environment, American history, foreign policy, privacy, computers, and the Middle East have appeared in the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, American Scholar, Chicago Tribune, USA Today, Washington Times, Insight, Cato Policy Report, Journal of Economic Development, The Freeman, The World & I, Reason, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Middle East Policy, Liberty magazine, and other publications. He is a contributor to the Fortune Encyclopedia of Economics. A former newspaper reporter and former senior editor at the Cato Institute, Mr. Richman is a graduate of Temple University in Philadelphia.

Guest Contributor

MANDEVILLE, LOUISIANA/Mike Church -  Much has been made about the “Tea Party” movement and other American’s calls to “return to the Constitution” and get “our government back” from the politicians and special interests that have stolen it from us and our posterity. There are many thoughtful plans being promoted that should the Republican Party regain control of the House of Representatives, people feel they should pursue. These plans offer various degrees of remodeling the federal system but do nothing to alter its inexorable course toward either an Oligarchy or acting national democratic legislature.

I offer as a counterpoint this brief list of actions that would merely begin the process of “returning to the Constitution”. The list could easily number in the hundreds of pages and resemble one of the current Congress’s legislative acts in both size and scope and even that wouldn’t completely “return us to the Constitution.”

With an open mind and with an even more hopeful heart I offer this brief set of actions that would only begin the “return” process and challenge my fellow citizens to consider the magnitude of what must be done to “secure the [former] blessing of liberty to ourselves AND our posterity.

Authors Disclaimer – I make no claim to the precise naming of all agencies, Acts and or laws cited herein.

1. Freeze all federal hiring, this includes funding requests from the executive branch to hire.

2. Repeal the Budget Act of 1974 and all it’s contingent COLA “mandates” no matter the agency or program they are applicable to.

3. Freeze under threat of rescinding funding any and all new regulations currently under review or consideration

4. Have an up or down vote on a Declaration of War with Iraq and with Afghanistan. if either fails then troop withdrawals must begin immediately.

5. Pass the Private Property Restoration Act which among other things shall forbid any federal magistrate from hearing any cases to restrict use of private property.

6. Repeal the AMT permanently by statute.

7. Repeal the capital gains tax.

8. Refuse to fund the Education Department and the Department of Energy, any programs, grants projects or construction begun under these agencies must cease. The EPA’s charter must be rewritten to make it clear that it only has jurisdiction over federal and or territorial waters and land.

9. Repeal ObamaCare and all contingent legislation. Congress must then use legitimate Commerce Clause powers to “make commerce regular” and remove from the tax code all subsidies, all claims of tax credit, any and all restrictions federal law imposes on the sale or use of major medical health insurance. This must include federal recognition of PPO, HMO or other plans created to satisfy Congress.

10. Repeal the FICA and sunset the program by Jan 1, 2030. Establish a cutoff date for continued payment eligibility such as born on or before December 31, 1959.

11. Repeal the Patriot Act of 2001, 2005 and sunset the Department of Homeland Security on or before December 31, 2012.

12. Repeal all mandates, taxes and law pertaining to the SCHIP program.

13. Announce the return of U.S. Gold and Silver bullion coins as legal tender and order the treasury to begin the purchase of bullion with the intent of eliminating paper currency in favor of gold and silver coin and gold and silver coin backed notes.

14. Pass the Debt Consolidation and Repayment Act. This Act will require the sale of all lands currently “owned” by the U.S. government which do not house “needful buildings, docks, arsenals, forts and magazines”. This is not limited to “Parks” and “National forests”. All proceeds are to be solely applicable to the repayment of the U.S. Governments outstanding debts both domestic and foreign.

15. End the federal tax designations enacted and known as 501 (c), (g), 503, 527 e.g. “non-profits”.

16. Repeal the “Income tax witholding act” and enact an immediate and deduction free, flat income tax law, payable once per year by each citizen.

17. Repeal all corporate and business interest, income and profit taxation.

18. Heed the call of 38 states that shall call an convention to amend the Constitution under Article V of the U.S. Constitution.

Mike Church, Sirius/XM Radio Talkshow Host “The Mike Church Show”, Singer/Songwriter, and Owner “Founding Father Films”

In the sea of nationally syndicated Straussian Neo-Conservative voices which dominate talk-radio, Mike Church is the lone champion of “little-r” Republicanism regardless of which “party” is in control. He speaks passionately about the necessity of returning to a humble foreign policy, abolishing the FEDERAL RESERVE, the insidious nature of Income Taxation, the false choice of Democrat or Republican, and advocates tirelessly for a full-restoration of the Constitution. As such, and as one of the only voices to have a nationally broadcast platform, Mike is quickly becoming a favorite amongst the burgeoning “Liberty Movement” which sprang up across the internet during Dr. Ron Paul’s 2008 Presidential Campaign. Further, Mike is also an author, filmmaker and singer/songwriter in addition to his duties as host of “The Mike Church Show” Mike uses facts and the actual writings produced by the Founding Generation to promote the singular notion that in order to save our future, we must look back to the principles our beloved union was founded upon. He is also known for writing and producing a bevy of parody songs that use humor as a vehicle to drive home serious political points. His rendition of the Simon & Garfunkel classic, “Mrs. Robinson,” aptly entitled “Mr. Jefferson” racked up nearly 200,000 views in its first few days on YouTube and was on its way to becoming viral before Google/YouTube stepped in and pulled the clip from the site for reasons the site has never been able to explain. (the clip was later re-uploaded and spread by others) Still, Mike’s message could not be silenced, as it became the theme song for hundreds of “Tax Day Tea Party” events across the country in 2009. Mike is also the author, producer, and a voice talent behind the heralded documentaries: “Road to Independence” (the story of the Declaration of Independence) and “The Fame of Our Fathers: How Immortality Inspired Our Constitution;” and “The Spirit of ’76”. The third in the series, “Spirit” is also the first feature-length film from Mike Church’s Founding Father Films. The company is currently in production to bring an animated-feature length film version to theaters in the fall of 2010. The Mike Church show can be heard daily Monday through Friday from 6:00am to 9:00am EST on SiriusXM PATRIOT

Wire Report

(WIRE/Ind.Inst.) – The U.S. Justice Department is apparently considering prosecuting Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, which is a Web site that publishes classified documents from governments, under the rarely used Espionage Act of 1917. Such a prosecution would have adverse effects on the American people’s right to know what their government is doing in a republic that is supposed to be run by them.

Ironically, the U.S. government may have leaked the threat of prosecution to coerce Assange into giving back 76,000 classified documents on the war in Afghanistan and deleting them from his Web site, which the Pentagon has demanded. More important, this threat may be meant to intimidate Assange from making public another 15,000 documents that he says will be even juicier than the previous release.

The Espionage Act, originally passed during World War I, was designed to prosecute spies from foreign powers. Yet Assange, who is Australian and spends most of his time in Belgium, Iceland, and Sweden, is hardly a foreign spy. While spies operate in the shadows and try to help foreign governments against the United States, Assange gets documents employees of various governments willingly give him and publishes them widely so citizens can see what their governments are up to.

The threatened prosecution may be just a bluff, because the Justice Department recently was forced to drop a similar case against two American pro-Israel lobbyists for taking documents from Larry Franklin, a Department of Defense employee who was successfully prosecuted for violating his secrecy oath. It is probably kosher, although somewhat hypocritical, for the government to prosecute government employees, such as Franklin and Pfc. Bradley Manning, a U.S. intelligence analyst who allegedly leaked a video of U.S. helicopter gunships killing a Reuters journalist in Iraq and who is suspected of leaking the treasure trove of documents from Afghanistan. The hypocrisy comes in because the Justice Department leaked the threat of prosecuting Assange, intentions that are usually kept secret, and high-level government officials regularly leak highly classified information to further their own policy agendas during bureaucratic turf battles. However, prosecuting people who just publicize leaks threatens all journalists who regularly publish stories using leaks from government officials.

Such journalistic stories are valuable and necessary, because much hush-hush information is overclassified, is kept under wraps only because it is embarrassing to the U.S. government, or is classified to keep the public in the dark about questionable government policies or actions. During the Cold War and continuing to this day, the American public is often the last to know information that is common knowledge among intelligence agencies of adversarial nations. Excessive government secrecy is a serious and underrated problem in a republic and has been exacerbated by the spike in clandestine government actions in the Bush-Obama war on terror.

If the government of a republic is going to keep secrets from its own people for their own good (faith is required here), they should keep the restricted information to the minimum. If the government drastically reduced its vast storehouse of secrets to what was truly needed to protect intelligence agents and troops in the field, whistleblowers such as Manning would have much less reason to leak and would likely have more respect for the necessity not to disclose the remaining vital information.

Most important, if a republican government cannot keep its secrets secret, it should not prosecute third-party, non-governmental recipients of the material, but should concentrate on plugging the leaks in its security system.

© 2010 The Independent Institute

Ivan Eland, Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Peace and Liberty, The Independent Institute

Ivan Eland is Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at The Independent Institute. Dr. Eland is a graduate of Iowa State University and received an M.B.A. in applied economics and a Ph.D. in Public Policy from George Washington University. He has been Director of Defense Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, and he spent 15 years working for Congress on national security issues, including stints as an investigator for the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Principal Defense Analyst at the Congressional Budget Office. He also has served as Evaluator-in-Charge (national security and intelligence) for the U.S. General Accounting Office (now the Government Accountability Office), and has testified on the military and financial aspects of NATO expansion before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on CIA oversight before the House Government Reform Committee, and on the creation of the Department of Homeland Security before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Dr. Eland is the author of Partitioning for Peace: An Exit Strategy for Iraq, Recarving Rushmore: Ranking the Presidents on Peace, Prosperity, and Liberty, The Empire Has No Clothes: U.S. Foreign Policy Exposed and Putting “Defense” Back into U.S. Defense Policy, as well as The Efficacy of Economic Sanctions as a Foreign Policy Tool. He is a contributor to numerous volumes and the author of 45 in-depth studies on national security issues. His articles have appeared in American Prospect, Arms Control Today, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Emory Law Journal, The Independent Review, Issues in Science and Technology (National Academy of Sciences), Mediterranean Quarterly, Middle East and International Review, Middle East Policy, Nexus, Chronicle of Higher Education, American Conservative, International Journal of World Peace, and Northwestern Journal of International Affairs. Dr. Eland’s popular writings have appeared in such publications as the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, USA Today, Houston Chronicle, Dallas Morning News, New York Times, Chicago Sun-Times, San Diego Union-Tribune, Miami Herald, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Newsday, Sacramento Bee, Orange County Register, Washington Times, Providence Journal, The Hill, and Defense News. He has appeared on ABC’s World News Tonight,  NPR’s Talk of the Nation,  PBS, Fox News Channel, CNBC, Bloomberg TV, CNN, CNN Crossfire,  CNN-fn, C-SPAN, MSNBC, Canadian Broadcasting Corp. (CBC), Canadian TV (CTV), Radio Free Europe, Voice of America, BBC, and other local, national, and international TV and radio programs.

Allison Bricker

SPRINGFIELD, VIRGINIA – Representative Ron Paul’s Campaign for Liberty (C4L), formed after his 2008 Presidential Campaign so as to continue advocating the message of limited Constitutional government, has launched a new push to stop H.R. 2454: American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009. Hoping to build on the successful effort to secure an Audit of the FEDERAL RESERVE, albeit the FOMC and international transactions are still protected from view, C4L now focuses on creating a groundswell to stop the insidious scheme by Corporatists in government to create a ”cap and trade” framework.

If passed and signed into law, the system will solely benefit the largest of companies thus further consolidating their power while simultaneously stifling competition, which of course is the number one sin in the mind of the Corporatist.

Austrian Market analysts estimate that should the bill pass the Senate, we as individuals could see approximately six-hundred and fifty billion in new taxes and caution that such a boondoggle will also prevent the creation of new jobs from upstart companies on Main Street while further insulating Wall Street’s corporation from bearing any form of pressure by the market whatsoever.

Thus, the Corporatists know that such a system should it be proposed voluntarily would suffer a complete failure before it even began due the enormous barriers raised for new and small business, and therefore must rely on the FORCE of government in order to corner the energy market.

As such, C4L has launched an email blitz of its existing members and has created a website, where individuals can consent to sending a letter to both of their Federal Senators. The draft letter goes on to formally request that their Senators vote against both HR 2454 as well as any future efforts at a Cap and Trade scheme, and even goes so far as to urge the Senators to wage a filibuster if needed so as to kill the bill prior to a final vote.

Source(s): Campaign for Liberty, Stop Cap and Tax • Mises Institute, “The Costs of Carbon Legislation” by Robert P. Murphy Published June 01, 2009 • Government Printing Office Online Document Depository, H.R. 2454 • The Washinton Post, “Tilting at Green Windmills” By George F. Will, Published Thursday, June 25, 2009

Allison Bricker

NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA – The Republican faithful gathered at the Riverside Hilton hotel in New Orleans for their quadrennial conference SRLC 2010, to discuss election strategies, attend workshops and listen to the Republican party’s s most public figures. Further, the conference’s most highly covered event the straw poll, featured a tie for first place this year between former governor of Massachusetts, Mitt Romney and Texas Congressional Representative, Ron Paul both receiving 24% of the vote.

Representative Paul who failed to place whatsoever in the previous conference in 2006 and who was widely mocked by the Republican status-quo during the 2008 Presidential campaign is finding an ever-growing audience due to his consistent promotion of Constitutionally limited government as well as his dedication to a humble foreign policy more in line with that of the Founding Generation.

This is Representative Paul’s second straw poll victory having placed first by a wide margin during the CPAC conference held this past February. He credits the growing acceptance of the message to both the explosion in information via the internet and the energetic youth who see that their economic liberty is on the hook thanks to promises made by the federal government regarding Social Security, Medicare, continuing imperial wars, and the new massive health care bill signed into law by President Obama.

Nevertheless, even as Representative Paul and the message of Liberty continue to gain momentum, the old-media as the LibertyMaven points out⁽¹⁾ is none to thrilled and spare no chance to minimize the statesman or the prospect of greater Liberty in our lifetime.

Source(s):⁽¹⁾Liberty Maven ^“Straw Poll Media Bias: Ron Paul vs. Mitt Romney” by: Marc Gallagher, published April 10th, 2010 • MinnesotaChris YouTube Channel

Wire Report

(WIRE/II) – On March 31, 2010, the New York Times wrote an editorial that briefly expressed horror in response to the Moscow subway terror bombings, then warned that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin might yet again use terrorist attacks to further consolidate his power, and finally lectured Russia that the only way to defeat such extremism was to deal with the underlying causes. Such a sermonizing editorial by any Russian publication after the 9/11 attacks would have engendered outrage in America. Yet the same conclusions and advice that the Times gave to Russia in the wake of its tragedy could equally be applied to post-9/11 U.S. policy.

In the wake of the Moscow subway attacks, the Times opined,

“We are concerned . . . that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin will use Monday’s horror as another excuse to further consolidate his authoritarian control of the country.”

“After extremists from Chechnya executed a series of bloody attacks in 2004, then-President Putin pushed through ‘reforms’ supposedly intended to improve Russians’ security. Their effect was to hand the Kremlin, Mr. Putin, and the state security services, from which he came, far too much power to silence a free press and undercut nearly all political challengers.”

Yet similarly, in the aftermath of 9/11, the George W. Bush administration moved swiftly to expand American executive power past the already potent capabilities of the imperial presidency into the realm of a “presidency on steroids.” For example, Bush claimed that during wartime, the president could disregard congressionally passed laws, especially statutes requiring court-approved warrants for surveillance of Americans. Such rule by executive fiat is usually what petty dictators do. Bush also unconstitutionally detained terrorism suspects, including U.S. citizens, indefinitely without trial and then approved torture, which was prohibited by U.S. and international law, on them. So politicians in the United States can also use terrorist attacks to grab more power in the name of enhancing security.

Even more blindly, the Times condescendingly preached to Putin that,

“If Russia is to have any hope of defeating extremism, Mr. Putin is going to have to focus less on promoting his own power and more on the root causes of the conflicts in the Caucuses. He can start by heeding his protégé, Dmitri Medvedev, the current president who has urged that the Kremlin address the underlying inequities that feed militancy, including poverty, joblessness, and official corruption. Brute force alone will not work this time either.”

And this from the flagship newspaper in a country that for many years has refused to examine the root causes of the 9/11 attacks and, in fact, has allowed its politicians to do more of the same. Had the American media and members of Congress actually examined Osama bin Laden’s writings to attempt to honestly determine his motives for attacking the United States, the unnecessary long-term occupation of Afghanistan and the feckless invasion and occupation of Iraq might have been prevented before they made the problem of blowback anti-U.S. terrorism worse. Bin Laden has been clear that he attacks the United States because of its intervention in and military occupation of Islamic lands.

Although it is easy to pick on the Times, the newspaper’s view merely reflects the lack of introspection by the U.S. political elite and American society about the ill effects of a U.S. foreign policy of overseas interventionism and hostile foreign reactions to it. But then the pot should not call the kettle black, but rather try to clean up its own act first.

© 2010 The Independent Institute

Ivan Eland, Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Peace and Liberty, The Independent Institute

Ivan Eland is Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on Peace & Liberty at The Independent Institute. Dr. Eland is a graduate of Iowa State University and received an M.B.A. in applied economics and a Ph.D. in Public Policy from George Washington University. He has been Director of Defense Policy Studies at the Cato Institute, and he spent 15 years working for Congress on national security issues, including stints as an investigator for the House Foreign Affairs Committee and Principal Defense Analyst at the Congressional Budget Office. He also has served as Evaluator-in-Charge (national security and intelligence) for the U.S. General Accounting Office (now the Government Accountability Office), and has testified on the military and financial aspects of NATO expansion before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on CIA oversight before the House Government Reform Committee, and on the creation of the Department of Homeland Security before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Dr. Eland is the author of Partitioning for Peace: An Exit Strategy for Iraq, Recarving Rushmore: Ranking the Presidents on Peace, Prosperity, and Liberty, The Empire Has No Clothes: U.S. Foreign Policy Exposed and Putting “Defense” Back into U.S. Defense Policy, as well as The Efficacy of Economic Sanctions as a Foreign Policy Tool. He is a contributor to numerous volumes and the author of 45 in-depth studies on national security issues. His articles have appeared in American Prospect, Arms Control Today, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Emory Law Journal, The Independent Review, Issues in Science and Technology (National Academy of Sciences), Mediterranean Quarterly, Middle East and International Review, Middle East Policy, Nexus, Chronicle of Higher Education, American Conservative, International Journal of World Peace, and Northwestern Journal of International Affairs. Dr. Eland’s popular writings have appeared in such publications as the Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, USA Today, Houston Chronicle, Dallas Morning News, New York Times, Chicago Sun-Times, San Diego Union-Tribune, Miami Herald, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Newsday, Sacramento Bee, Orange County Register, Washington Times, Providence Journal, The Hill, and Defense News. He has appeared on ABC’s World News Tonight,  NPR’s Talk of the Nation,  PBS, Fox News Channel, CNBC, Bloomberg TV, CNN, CNN Crossfire,  CNN-fn, C-SPAN, MSNBC, Canadian Broadcasting Corp. (CBC), Canadian TV (CTV), Radio Free Europe, Voice of America, BBC, and other local, national, and international TV and radio programs.

Allison Bricker

It may not be televised but its participants will indeed be educated.

THE REGION, INDIANA – The desire which compels me to write and speak in strong opposition towards the oppressive expansion of the American government, whether under Democrats or Republicans, owes its genesis to the firm imploration by my mom that education does not end upon graduation, and instead must be a continual process throughout the course of one’s life. As it is often said, knowledge is power.

The illuminated truth, motivated by my infatuation with the founding of this Republic, came to me through the worn and sometimes crumbling pages of books, not the endless memorization and standardized testing advocated in government schools.

Unencumbered by whitewashed lesson plans and the sometimes-evident pro-statist bias of my teachers and administrators, the ability for me to sit and soak up the words of those dusty essays, journals, letters, and notes is in my opinion, one of humanity’s greatest accomplishments, id est. the Gutenberg Press.

The proliferation of movable-type in the colonies spurred forth the “Challenge of Ideas”, giving rise to the radical Questioning of the absurd notion that rule over mankind came from divinely appointed kings, queens or parliamentary superiority, the “central planners” of their day. Further, its unique place in our history whereby it aided the distribution of both Thomas Paine’s Common Sense and the Declaration of Independence, cements a fondness in my soul for both it and the enlightened distribution of information.

Unfortunately, the business of news, information, and debate had become increasingly consolidated during the course of the last 100 years. As government intervened into the market via absurd licensure schemes under the guise of promoting “fairness”, “public” ownership of the airwaves et cetera, its endless volumes of regulations succeeded only in raising barriers to entry and creating media oligarchies to the benefit of the state. Government sanctioned soap-boxes have proved mightily their efficient processing and packaging of news and information into simplified talking points, but at what cost?

The result of this corporate protectionist media racket; is to have given rise to the sound bite intellect, thereby imbuing legions of collectives charged with half the facts and all the passionate rhetoric once reserved for a Finney tent revival.

Yet we see throughout history that humanity’s yearning for information is as perpetual as a sunrise. Undiscouraged by the darkness, she eternally dawns over the horizon pushing back the shadows and nefarious K-Street deals that go bump in the night, providing her warmth and illumination to the dual pillars known as the trees of Liberty and Knowledge, which to the utter dismay of the D.C. pull-peddlers shan’t be felled.

Indeed the central authority’s arrogance will lead to its own most necessary undoing. Nevertheless fellow readers, windows do not remain in perpetuum. However, our patient suffering at the hands of the old-media spoon-feeders has in large part been relieved via the propagation of citizen journalists and institutions dedicated to the pursuit of Reason and human Liberty.

How many amongst us gave pause just a decade prior to entertain a contrary view on economics outside the Keynesian philosophy, which dominates the airwaves and halls of academia? Further, what is the rise in percentage of Americans who now know that the FEDERAL RESERVE is a private for-profit bank who charges interest to the government in exchange for loans collateralized by our and our posterity’s wages as opposed to just five years previous?

Whereby even just a decade past many swam in a sea of noise almost exclusively dominated by the 24-hour cable news cycle, perhaps unaware of what questions to even ask, let alone where to look, our present station finds us on the familiar yet long undisturbed grounds of our forbearers.

Americans today are questioning the answers like no time in recent memory. The floodgates of knowledge have burst open providing us the gift of distributed learning via wonderful institutions such as the Mises Foundation, which has its entire catalog available for the taking on iTunes university, free of charge. We the People are gathering under varied banners unified solely by dissatisfaction of government intrusion into all spheres of our lives.

The airwaves are humming with talks of finding Constitutional solutions to the present Crisis, such as the symposium being held by Mike Church in Washington tomorrow to discuss the possibility of a remedy at the hands of an Article V convention.

It makes me smile to know that despite the Central Authority’s best efforts to squeeze out dissent, the tighter they grasp, the more we awaken.

Long Live Liberty and let us raise a glass in celebration of the coming Second Age of Reason.

Allison Bricker

QUINCY, ILLINOIS – Representative Phil Hare of the 17th Illinois Congressional District provided keen insight to his and most likely many of his colleagues’ feelings towards the U.S.  Constitution when asked about the authorization for the Federal government’s intervention into health care whereby he stated:

“I don’t worry about the Constitution on this to be honest with you.”

Representative Phil Hare
17th Congressional District of Illinois

 

He then quickly returned to his “appeal to pity” as a justification for the takeover of health insurance by the Central Authority. He spewed forth heartbreaking stump-story after stump-story that would even make Glenn Beck weep crocodile tears in support of involuntary charity. In the comedy of errors that followed, Representative Hare proceeded to confuse the preamble to the Constitution with that of the Declaration of Independence, and squirmed his pull-peddling self straight out of the door after being confronted unto his laughable assertion that he read the health care bill three separate times prior to casting his vote.

Representative Hare like many in Congress, was hand-picked by his fellow Democrat precinct committeemen¹ in 2006 to replace Lane Evans who in the rich Illinois tradition of public-official corruption, announced his retirement after pleading nolo contendere and coughing up $185,000 in Civil fines to the FEC². The penalties were levied by the Federal Election Commission for collusion and misuse of political funds after uncovering a coordinated effort to bypass contribution limitations by then Representative Lane’s campaign fund, the 17th District Victory Fund, and Rock Island Democratic Central Committee.

As a reaction to his sudden YouTube infamy, Representative Hare decided to issue a response video in order to reassure his constituents that the Constitution is “near and dear to his heart”. So much so that it even says so on the  notes he reads from throughout his heart-felt plea to be able to “disagree but not be disagreeable.” Hopefully the voters of Illinois will send this ignorant excuse for a representative packing in November, replacing him with someone who understands and fully appreciates their oath of office to uphold and defend the U.S. Constitution.

Source(s): ¹Who Runs Government, a Washington Post Company “Phil Hare (D-17IL)” • ²FEC Press Office: THE FRIENDS OF LANE EVANS COMMITTEE AGREES TO PAY $185,000 CIVIL PENALTY June 28th, 2005

Allison Bricker

THE REGION, INDIANA – The term neoconservative may have come into more common use during the eight nightmarish years of the Bush Administration, but let us be candid, its core ideology has existed since the founding of the Republic. For there have always been those amongst us who felt that security and obedience is achieved only by pummeling into submission any slight towards the state’s fragile ego executed by the hands of its unsophisticated warmongering political administrators. Whilst Alexander Hamilton might be the pious genesis of the American embodiment towards this philosophy, whereby he was sent to meet his Creator unto the hyper-masculine ritual of pistol dueling, its renaissance began in earnest with the Wilson Administration.

President Woodrow Wilson enabled by the creation of the limitless purse provided by the then newly formed Federal Reserve, collateralized by the confiscation of current and future wages decreed under the 16th Amendment, and unchecked federal authority promulgated by tying Senators to popular knee-jerk sentiment all achieved in 1913, now began a course of “Making the World Safe for Democracy”¹. So fell the first domino in a sustained effort to forever alter American foreign policy into that of a new tradition, one of a perpetual war-footing and imperial expansion.

At the dawn of the Twentieth Century, the American people were very much opposed to intervening in the growing conflict in Europe. However, Woodrow Wilson’s personal ambition wholly contrary to his public rhetoric, was to see American entry into World War I. He saw this as an opportunity to propose his machination for global governance, i.e. The League of Nations. So much was Wilson’s desire towards achieving that end, his Secretary of State, William Jennings Bryan resigned in protest², citing Wilson’s Warmongering Diplomacy.

Further, President Wilson so decidedly intolerable of any form of dissent pushed for and achieved a legislative muzzle to stifle Anti-War sentiment in the form of the “Sedition³ and Espionage Acts”. Now with statutory authority, Wilson could jail and silence outspoken opponents of the war, claiming the now tired phraseology of “National Security”. The most famous of theses un-American incarcerations was Eugene Debs, the Cindy Sheehan of his day.

By the middle of the century, the American consciousness was becoming successfully manipulated into lockstep with an interventionist foreign policy. With the Central Authority spewing endless propaganda capitalizing upon the rapid growth of technology, i.e. nuclear annihilation and philosophical boogie-men, ergo “The Communist Red Scare” the state seized upon the manufactured fear to begin its chess game in earnest, funded of course by the private Central Bank. Few things fellow readers make a Central Banker’s eyes gloss over quicker than the thought of mountainous interest payments received on loans required to rebuild a war ravaged nation, continent, et al. As it is said, War is the Health of the State and a secure retirement for the Central Banker.

Fully intoxicated with the rise to superpower status, the Central Authority flexed its muscle under “The Marshall Plan” and thus now began to truly resemble the British tyrants cast off by the Founding Generation not even 200 years earlier.

It remains my conviction that through understanding history in its full prism, We the People can more fully understand the continued saber rattling on Iran and return the neoconservative philosophy to the plane of Hell especially reserved for warmongering tyrants and their Central banker puppet-masters.

While the glorious struggle to reclaim our foreign policy to that of commerce with all, tangling alliances with none will indeed be a difficult task, let us take proper stock of the situation and know that we are making progress. Last week former Vice-President Cheney became so deluged unto his hawkish tendencies that he felt it necessary to reach out to former Democrat and Rand Paul’s Senate primary opponent, Trey Grayson to try and extol the vice that is the Whig neoconservative philosophy.

For while Mr. Cheney is indeed a most tormented soul full of rage, he is no fool; a win for Ron Paul’s son in the Kentucky Senate race will be a referendum on his legacy, the Bush Doctrine. Moreover, it will further solidify that the election of Scott Brown in Massachusetts was not merely dissatisfaction with President Obama, but a wider more raucous, growing dissatisfaction with Statist political philosophy in general. That it will illustrate an awakening and realization that regardless of whether a ‘D’ or an ‘R’ follows a politicians name, government continues to grow exponentially, its vacuous nature devouring our Liberty and the posterity’s financial security.

Further, it is time once and for all to refuse to accept the terms offered by the neoconservatives that those of us who prefer the wisdom of the Founder’s foreign policy, “Blame America”, as it is utter logical fallacy to the first degree.

We do not blame America; we blame the small pricked political looters who seek to enrich themselves whilst standing upon the bloodied corpses of American Soldiers killed in senseless wars upon sovereign nations of which are no threat to us outside of the contrived commotions at the behest of the CIA⁴, i.e. Iran:

Source(s): 1Making the World “Safe for Democracy”: Woodrow Wilson Asks for War – George Mason University, “History Matters” • ²The Resignation of Secretary of State William J. Bryan, 1915 JSTOR • ³Sedition Act of 1918, Brigham Young University Archives • ⁴ “Iranian scientist defects: US covert ops hurt Iran nuclear program” – Christian Science Monitor By Scott Peterson, Staff writer / March 31, 2010

Guest Contributor

A Warning to Freedom Lovers.

A friend of mine told me he went to his storage unit yesterday to stash away some items for safe-keeping. While he was there, an employee of the facility told him agents of the state, in this case, employees of Ontario, Inc. had visited him.

These state employees were handing out a paper with the following content:

Illegal Tobacco – Know the Signs

1. Observe tobacco products.
2. Smell associated with tobacco products.
3. Renters who pay cash.
4. Rental of numerous storage units.
5. Delivery of sea container to a newly rented storage unit.
6. Use of rental vehicles. (i.e. 20′ one-ton truck)
7. Visits by many individuals to the storage unit.
8. Numerous visits to the storage unit.

If you suspect that a unit rented from you is being used to store tobacco products, please contact the ministry of Revenue’s confidential tip line at:

(905) 440-4227 – “We want the information not your name.”

ONTARIO MINISTRY OF REVENUE

Ontario Incorporated (or whichever government you wish to use as an example) is a very large business entity. Unlike most legal business entities, like Wal-Mart or McDonald’s etc., many of the employees of Ontario Inc. are allowed to carry guns. You might wonder why Ontario Inc.’s employees carry guns while those of Wal-Mart and McDonald’s Inc. arm themselves with smiles.

Well, the short answer is that while McDonalds and Wal-Mart are evil, profit seeking companies who must compete for your dollars in what is commonly known as the “private sector,” Ontario Inc. is a loving, caring company who knows it’s goods and services are so superior to anything offered by the private sector that it exempts itself from the restrictions that apply to greedy, privately owned concerns.

It’s “products”, and “services”, are so essential that it need not rely upon your voluntary financial support. It “knows,” how valuable it’s offerings are, sets the price independent of any market forces, and demands that you become it’s customer; or else!

Unlike Wal-Mart or McDonald’s, which must use advertising, smiles and competitive prices to persuade you to part with your dollars, Ontario Inc. has something far more effective, men with guns.

Oh! If only McDonald’s Inc. could have the same privileges and powers as Ontario Inc, it could legislate Wendy’s, Harvey’s, and Burger King Etc. out of existence. It would then become the sole supplier of burgers and fries.

After a few years, once the public had forgotten that they used to have a choice of suppliers, McDonald’s could declare itself essential. It could require that all of the citizens within its jurisdiction pay for its burger making services, whether they used them or not. It would have finally discovered the perfect business model; guaranteed profits, guaranteed success.

Citizens would receive an annual bill from McDonald’s. It might be based upon how many burgers the citizen *should have* purchased the previous year (Note: *should have* – based upon the recommendations of highly paid consultants and McDonald’s funded universities etc.) Payment would be mandatory.

Perhaps, McDonald’s management would have been elected by an ignorant mass of easily manipulated voter/sheep (See the current government of the United States of America.) In addition, the majority of them would have voted for the aspiring CEO because he was a “progressive”, who sincerely believed that the price one paid for burgers ought to be based on the ability to pay. Those with higher incomes would be forced to pay a higher price for their burgers. Those with no income would get their burgers subsidized.

The receivables department of McDonald’s would be staffed by a bunch of Happy Cops dressed up as smiling clowns…. with guns… and the legal power to peer into your financial records…. to make sure you had not made any false statements on your burger returns. And as a BONUS… no need to worry too much about the quality of their product since they are immune from any competitive market forces. They could sell you ground rat if they wanted. (See the recent U.S. Health Care Bill.)

Eventually, organized labor would see the wonderful opportunities available to its members in “representing”, all McDonalds employees. The govern…. excuse me, I meant McDonald’s worker at the drive-thru window asking if you would like fries with your burger would now be making $60, 000 a year. (Irate customers with cell phone cameras might take the occasional snapshot of the McDonald’s order taker snoozing away as the cars sat lined up. People at house parties would proudly proclaim that their son or daughter had just passed the exam and landed themselves a job (for life) at McDonalds.

Clip Courtesy: WGA/Dreamworks/JamesKlanto © 2002 Warner Bros. Pictures

If the above seems far-fetched, I have two words for you … Post Office.

So… back to the tobacco Gestapo… and the company for which they work. It has come to my attention, though I will not say how… that the true market price of a carton of cigarettes is in the neighborhood of $25. However, under Ontario’s monopoly, the price of a carton of cigarettes purchased “legally”, is about $75.00, give or take a few dollars. Government Inc., therefore, is losing about $50 “profit”, on every carton sold outside of its greedy and tenacious authority.

And if one of its gun-toting clowns happens to barge into your storage locker, confiscate your stash and slap you with a nasty and spiteful fine, don’t be confused when he smiles at you and says, “Have a Nice Day.”

Ontario Inc. We will ram it up your butt whether you like it or not. And if you don’t like it, go fuck yourself. Smiles might be free somewhere else, but here; you pay a 5% tax.

Guest Contributor: Freelance Writer and Taxicab Driver

Mr. Weinhold graduated from Mohawk College located in Hamilton, Ontario in 1981 with a degree in Chemical Technology. Passionate about politics and outspoken about the ever-growing largess of government Hans describes himself as a lifelong libertarian. Currently self-employed as a taxicab driver Hans currently spends most of his time loitering, smoking cigarettes, shooting the breeze with his fellow cab-drivers waiting for their next customer from the Hamilton International Airport.