HOW the NeoCons Stole Freedom

Truth: You need it to survive meltdown

2009-09-24T17:25:00.003-04:00

War is a Racket by Major General, Smedley Butler

This book is essential to your survival.

As the world melts down around us we look for answers. The media provides only spin. This book, by a man dead since 1940, provides to you the through line of action. Read it. It is free online. The first chapter delivers a message Americans need to understand. This message needs to sink in past the patriotic fervor and spin that sends our sons and daughters into ugly death and destroys other people, for the profit of corporations, around the world.

The real explanation for war and the devastation we face today here in America is written in the ugliness of greed and the ability of the greedy to persuade by the use of disinformation, stealth, and by using our own love of country against us.

War Is A Racket

WAR is a racket. It always has been.

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.

In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.

How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?

Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few -- the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.

And what is this bill?

This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.

For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now that I see the international war clouds gathering, as they are today, I must face it and speak out.”

Smedley Butler died in 1940. Many believe he was assassinated while in the hospital. Smedley Butler was the most popular military figure in America when he was asked to carry out a military junta on behalf of wealthy businessmen. The planned coup d’état failed because Butler exposed them. Variously known as the “Business Plot,” the “Plot Against FDR” and the “White House Putsch” took place in parallel with Hitler's move towards power in Germany.

Imagine a group of the corporate greedy, many of whom like the Bushes, have investments there, seized with the excitement of emulation. Greed begets more greed, as we have learned to our sorrow.

The corporates have not changed, but they have become more efficient, skilled and organized in planning their disinformation campaigns and in their abuse of power.

Today you see Newt Gingrich posturing . Standing with the woman he finally married, seeing their happy smiles remember the woman Newt abandoned to die of cancer, the mother of his children who made his career possible. They want to tell you how to be a Christian. Does this seem odd? Samuel Adams was not the last of the Puritans, those who saw the real vision of Christianity, the coming together as one people. Descendants of the Puritans brought you the Abolitionist Movement, the Suffrage Movement, and today continue to work for peace, justice and care of the Earth. I know, my family was there, not selling supplies to the British.

The list of those employed by the corporations to pull the wool over your eyes is long. How they spin the world into cotton candy by Monsanto to destroy your health, steal the power of the people, and convert our institutions into tools of oppression is both complex and simple. But once you see it, you are immunized against their lies.

Read this site before you consider having a vaccination. Think about the motives and methods of those who would force you to comply.

Read the book, visit the links, your survival depends on it.

Survival Values - And a cheer for Joe Wilson!

2009-09-10T20:00:00.004-04:00

Get the Tee shirt and show your own balls

Yesterday in the grocery store the checker commented on having sold her cell phone. She had to. She could not afford the monthly expense and the phone itself had cost her $250.00. She sold it for $210.00 to a friend with a better paying job, at least for now. The checker, Emily, had had it for 3 weeks.

Tightening the belt is the theme of a rising consciousness around our nation. It is not all bad. The clerk, and many others, are beginning to focus in on what really matters.

Yesterday my email box was filled with comments about the coming address by President Obama to Congress about health care. Driving past the County medical facility I saw the many people waiting there. All looked Hispanic. I sighed. I was born in the middle of the 20th Century and I've had my fill of wars and taxes and tickets that never end. I'm tired of feeling trapped by government. Everyone I know feels pretty much the same.

The 20th Century was heady but it was more like a drug than reality.

Sex and power were the aphrodisiacs of the 20th Century. We were seduced by greed, consumed by needs that were seemingly without end. The high is fading now, leaving us with withdrawal pains and increased awareness.

Today as we face the meltdown of the American Empire we have the opportunity to consider what really matters, I know I am. I have grandchildren who are excited about starting school. I want a future for them.

As we peer into the unknown future we should take time to consider the rich potentials that still await us as well as the dangers we must confront without the familiar placebo of government as we knew it in the 20th Century.

Big government, top down structuring, did not work. We will of necessity return to local governance, low in cost and allowing the people to choose.

Big government can't work. The final test was the 20th Century. Big government was the dumb idea that's time has gone.

The concept of beta testing, produced by edge technology in the 20th Century, is one we need to take seriously right now. If a policy has not been beta tested DO NOT INSTALL!

Now, we need to consider what once worked for America as we face what more big government and corporations have in store for us and determine how to resist.

Local government, controlled directly by the people, works because the surveillance is built in and costs nothing. The eyes of the people should be enough, if government is local. When you have to sell your ideas to people who know you can't keep your own grass cut with your own lawn mower it cuts wanna be politicians down to size.

Ideas, especially ideas which reorient ownership of what once belonged to all of us, are dangerous. Someone should have put a warning label on Big Government.

Allowing anyone to patent DNA was dumb idea. Buying and selling water, the oceans, the air we breathe and the land which received our dead. These were dumb ideas. The Inventor made the Earth a Commons, thus negating anyone owning what is needed for us, and all life, to survive.

The number of Seniors now identifying as Democrat is dropping like lead balloons. All of us are worried. Last night a guy from South Carolina spoke out. It resonated. He was rude, rude, rude, and personally I loved it.

Last night no one could get on Joe Wilson's website. It was jammed. No one wants to be vaccinated so Big Pharm can improve its bottom line.

A big cheer for Joe, the rude guy with the balls. But the issue is larger than any one person – and smaller.

People, not profits, come first. It isn't 'stuff' that matters. It is the things that do not become obsolete. Ever.

The future will be about reinstalling values. Coming generations will refocus. As they do so individuals will connect with each other and the Earth of which we are a part. Not that it will be easy. We all know the months and years to come will be tough. But we shall overcome and we shall survive.

Thanks to Joe for a moment of spontaneous sanity. Go local and stay there.

The New Economy - A Modest Proposal for Building Community

2009-08-21T00:13:00.002-04:00

America is shifting. Most view the present trends in the market as destructive and with good cause. Banks are closing, sometimes several in a single day. Businesses going bankrupt are leaving the main streets of many American cities and towns mottled with boarded up store fronts. Families and individuals are canceling vacations, reusing items that formerly they would have replaced, shopping in department stores is down, replaced by shopping used stores and garage sales.

Refocusing gives you the opportunity to consider what really matters. Are you doing that now?

Concerns over police violence are increasing even while the actual incidence is dropping. Officers live in the areas where they work. Many are appalled at the violations of rights they have witnessed and are questioning what they have been taught. “The County Sheriff, America's Last Hope,” by Sheriff Richard Mack, is experiencing a steady rise in sales. Mack, the first of several sheriffs to file against the Brady Bill in the early 90's is constantly on tours. Quietly people gather to listen, both local law enforcement and ordinary people

Concern over forced vaccinations is rising. New Jersey passed an injunction to be followed by Washington State. California is expected to weigh in within the week. Across the country people are raising their voices in objection to the present trends.

Gardens are popping up in the inner city of Detroit on vacant lots where before only trash blossomed. Interest in bartering and trading, garden grown food for services and other necessities, is working its way through neighborhoods as families look for ways to survive the loss of jobs. Instead of viewing this as a short term survival issue see a transition taking place. We are moving from the Corporate Economy to the New Economy in small, incremental steps.

The Corporate Economy sucked us dry. Money and all we created was funneled through huge, impersonal corporations, banking, oil, pharma, big food etc, to accumulate in the coffers of a few individuals. They knew exactly what they were doing. It was fraud on a massive, global scale.

In ten years this period will be recognized as 'the shift,' the time when Americans began to change focus, seeing themselves differently. More families every day confront the need to make the mortgage payment, keep the lights on, put gas in the car, and exchange with those around then without that paper folding stuff PFS pronounced, “peefs”) or credit cards. Seeing yourself differently reveals unexpected strengths, as our ancestors could have told us.

Currency comes in many forms. The original idea for money as 'currency' was to facilitate the flow of exchange, a form of mutually beneficial cooperation. Many barter – trade and script alternatives are now springing into existence. What once was was can be so again.

One of the bills you get every month you must pay in the Corporate World (CW, pronounced ceeew) is your bill for electric power. The technology has long been available to move from centralized (on the CW model for money) to the decentralized local generation for power. It could have always been decentralized. That did not happen because corporations saw the opportunity for continuous income with little effort. Most people think decentralized power is too expensive. They are wrong and their wrong belief causes them to ignore a way to put people back to work, reduce the sucking of corporations, and at the same time make all of us more secure.

Centralized generation of electricity was promoted by government and corporations to provide regular income to them. Ignoring the decentralized model came with costs paid by ordinary people above and beyond that monthly electric bill, which is steadily rising.

Today many are out of work, small factories are closed We need jobs. All of us need to lower costs to ensure our own survival and choke off the flow of our lives to the corporations who continue to suck us dry.

The raw materials and components for wind turbines and other energy systems are surprisingly inexpensive. Parts could be produced locally, the designs are available on the internet. By cooperating locally we can ease our jobs problem and at the same time lower our costs for electric energy. Nearly every community in America has the resources to carry out this project.

Americans have taken on larger projects before, fighting wars far from home. This project refocuses our attention to the source of American greatness, caring for each other in absolute alignment with the mission laid out by one man who died for us 2,000 years ago. We begin and end in our own communities, growing to know each other better.

Existing organizations, the Elks, Veterans of Foreign Wars, the PTA, churches of all kinds, anyone could participate. They can machine, construct, take orders, schedule. There will be much to be done.

There are many designs for wind turbines that are highly cost effective. We can share designs, again through the internet.

Those out of work can earn their own installations through sweat equity. Those who have the money can pay, ensuring their energy needs are met. And we can make sure the needy, the elderly, never want for energy, staying warm in winter and comfortable through the summer. Central Valley of California lost 130 elderly to heat two years ago. It must have been a horrible dying for each of them.

Power lines are all too fragile, starting fires for which the corporations deny accountability and costing all of us while destroying billions in property. There are reasons going beyond the shut off notice so common today. The notice should be enough if we care about each other as that one man intended.

Count up your own reasons for change, practical or spiritual.

The Barn Raising, the Turbine or Solar Party. I can smell the big, steaming pots of chili and soup, almost taste the home-made garlic bread and salads fresh from the garden. When you walk away from illusions, like the corporate reality now receding into history, we may well find unexpected moments of grace in a new America.

Springtime in America

2009-04-07T19:34:00.000-04:00

We came so close to losing it all. Day to day we have been hearing the stark predictions of famine, want, civil unrest. We see the Google maps of FEMA camps and the 1984 redux of control, reflected in the simple minded fascist edicts, for instance the Missouri Directive, issued by the of small minded bureaucrats of that state. These still have the power to shock us.

But if you really watch you will see the unfurling of freedom happening like the springtime, blossoming out from every tree. Across America something profoundly wonderful is happening. People at the most local level are taking action to return the power of governance directly to the people. Without noise or the flurries of big fundraising and from both right and left people are coming together to say NO to a government and corporate presence that is out of control.

The Feds do not want to believe it. It has put a crimp in the plans of such figures as Arnold Schwarzenegger, who still wants to be president. But it is happening.

America is returning to its roots.

Progressives and leftists are teaching classes on the Constitution, Home Rule. The Community Environmental Defense Fund offers classes on these and more. In North Carolina the Citizens College provides seminars that put county officials together with citizens so that the reasons for their decisions can be explained and questioned. Coming at the issues from very different points each step on the way is changing how Americans view the tool we know as government.

It has been a long time coming and, as Thomas Jefferson put it in the Declaration of Independence,

But Americans have had enough suffering. As Americans wake up things will change fast. Today we understand how close we have come to losing what matters most.

Left and Right, the consciousness that corporations are fictitious constructions of government and greed is now moving into the mainstream with a revulsion that will eventually cause them to fold their tents and retreat to places unnamed. The rules and law are about to change as the Constitution is restored to use as originally intended. That will include the cessation of the fiction of corporate personhood and accompany a slap down for wrongdoings over the last two centuries of greed.

Standard Oil. Look out. Southern California Edison, your time is coming.

As the battles to fight off the confiscatory practices of corporations gain ground and the people take back control those responsible will learn what accountability means.

Over the last years corporations have moved to buy up everything we need to live, water, power, food, transportation, and health care. Americans are taking them back and will not take no for an answer.

Government got the idea it could sell off everything we own. You see that if you study your electric bill.

Most of the power generation facilities built were financed by government and then given to corporations who then charged us, arguably the real owners, for our power. Tax payers pay, the government turns the potential for profit over to their friends, and we pay again every month. This is why the fact there is no Statute of Limitation on fraud is a good thing.

Roads, water, your phone, your television, your automobile, the schooling your child receives that is actually propaganda, the health care that kills you but costs every cent you have. The list is seemingly endless. Add to that laws that stopped the growing of such robust and versatile crops as industrial hemp to make cotton growers happy. Government and corporations believed that absolute control was within their grasp. They were wrong.

“...when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. ”

Springtime is renewal. Let this one take us back to community as we find the freedom for which our spirits truly hunger.

Earth Day 2009 – Be The Change

2009-03-12T13:05:00.002-04:00

The Earth Society Foundation
cordially invites you to participate in the celebration of the

39TH ANNUAL UN PEACE BELL
CEREMONY ON EARTH DAY

on Friday, March 20, 2009 at 7:44 a.m. EDT (Equinox)

I first met Helen in 2000. The friend who introduced us warned me we would agree on nothing. I am a Republican and then was very active in the National Federation of Republican Women. Helen Garland is a Democrat and very liberal. She personally put together the people who founded Earth Day, introduced Margaret Mead to environmentalism, and has spent her life working tirelessly for peace, justice, and care of the Earth. That is the motto of the organization founded in 1968 that is the real originator of Earth Day, the Earth Society

Helen and I agreed about everything, including how the freedom movement and the environmental movement had been taken over by big corporations. Helen watched it happen in the 50s. I, in the 70's. I've written about my own movement and how it was rendered incapable of enacting change, instead becoming a money machine for such as Cato. But next week the world will tip towards what we know as the Spring Equinox in the Northern Hemisphere as the Southern Hemisphere moves towards winter.

Celebrate Earth Day March 20^th at 7:44 am.

That Friday a figure will step up to the Peace Bell at the United Nations and a sweet chime will ring out into the early morning, lingering for all gathered to hear. At the same moment across the world other bells will ring, a symphony of sounds that speak a long and patient dedication to “Peace, Justice, and Care of the Earth.”

It was not political when Helen began putting it together. Everyone wanted clean air and water. There was not a controversy in sight.

You were had if you celebrate Earth Day in April.. That is Oil Day, surrounded by far more noise but dedicated to the motto of, “Profit, Power, and Exploitation of Earth.”

Lose your illusions because, now, today, they can kill you. A year ago I wrote urging you to get off the grids. I have been doing that for years now. (2008) (2007) (2006) I urged you to begin a garden, start a barter trade group, get active in your community, and lost your illusions.

Today Congress is preparing to vote to end the local growing of food. Co-ops. Private clubs for buying organic local food are being targeted by sting operations. You are looking at a world where the paraphernalia for growing marijuana out of the sight of authorities may be necessary to feed your family.

Today, getting off the grids is more important than hoarding gold or politics at either the State or Federal level. Go local now and lose your illusions about partisan politics.

Along with getting off the grids we must come together across the artificial lines that have been used to isolate us, Right, Left, Man, Woman, age, ethnicity, spiritual path. If you are a Conservative, hug a Liberal. Together we can get the needed traction to stop the manipulation that is killing our economy. Our illusions will have killed the future for all of us.

If you drop your illusions you can see who is profiting from the direction of all administrations for the last several generations. Each of us needs to take immediate action to get off the grids. It is the grids, installed by that ugly concatenation of government and corporations, that caused the problems and divided us. The people of greed need our lives and money to survive; you can stop them by climbing off the grids.

Take this simple yes – no test to find out just how entrenched you are in the grids.

• Do you pay a mortgage every month?

• Do you pay an electric bill every month?

• Do you pay to put gas in your automobile?

• Do you have car payments to make every month?

• Do you pay every month for cable television?

• Do you pay for your Internet access?

• Do you pay for your phone service?

• Do you pay taxes, not fees for essential services?

• Do you pay every month for the water you drink? Use to wash?

• Have you ever paid a traffic ticket?

• Do you pay for tags on your car?

• Do you believe politicians are telling you the truth?

• Do you believe that the media is unbiased and reports honestly and completely?

• Do you think that elections accurately reflect the votes cast?

• Do you know where the food in your refrigerator was grown?

• Was your food grown within just a few miles of your home?

• Do you know, for sure, that Monsanto had nothing to do with producing the food you eat?

• Do you take dietary supplements in hopes of being healthier?

• When you become ill, do you go to a physician?

• Do you take prescription drugs?

• Do you have investments in the stock market that you depend on for income?

• Are you dependent on a pension that is invested in the stock market?

• Do you have a credit card with an unpaid balance?

Count up your “YES” answers. If you answered 1 - 4 questions in the affirmative, you are on a grid, but you are close to being free; good for you. With 5--11, you are Grid Challenged; time to exit. If you scored 12--18, you are Grid Entrenched: you need serious help to extract yourself. Anywhere above 18, you are totally Grid Locked.

Unlock your life. The means are there. All you need do is reach out and pick them up.

You can change your situation, for yourself and for your children. At the same time, you can build a life that is filled with the things that bring solid community, real happiness, and the leisure to enjoy them. You can get off the Grids and be free to enjoy your life, to find those things you never had time for and which, on your current path, will never be yours.

Most of us work ceaselessly to have the time to do what we love. If you reduce the cost of just surviving, your life is effectively longer because you are spending it in ways that make you happy.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness...”

Happiness is getting off the Grids. Happiness is greeting your neighbors with delight and knowing you matter to them, that you are respected. Happiness is knowing you and your family are safe. Happiness is caring for others and feeling your own life extended through strengthened relationships. Happiness is having the time to make each moment worth remembering.

This can be your future.

You can wake up in a home that you know will be there for your great-grandchildren. It keeps you cool in the summer, warm in the winter, without effort or cost: it is designed right. All energy is generated right there. You never worry about losing your electricity. This technology is available today.

You get up and go out to your garden to pick berries for breakfast. They are natural anti-oxidants, the kind of food your ancestors took for granted, that kept your great-grandparents healthy. Much of your food you grow yourself or get from local sources. You can see it growing, so you know it is being done right. The food is delicious, it makes your mouth water and satisfies you: you do not hunger for sweets.

Once, you worked in an office building. Now, you own your own business, which you run out of your own home. You could have chosen any of a dozen things to do, but you picked the one that you find most satisfying. You earn less in money, and much more in satisfaction. Your kids are doing the same; the whole world is their school now. They mastered physics by the time they were 14 or so, and now they are taking time to decide what they want to do. No one you know is worried about money.

All the money is local. Your local ‘bank’ is something you can visit online, but you don’t have to give it much thought. You know who runs it, the woman who used to be your son’s 4th grade teacher. She handles that part time, when she is not teaching weaving. The Board meets occasionally, and you were on it for a while before you cycled off. It is simple, transparent, and therefore impossible to steal.

There is little theft now. Honesty is reinforced by practices, all common law, that make stealing unprofitable. There are no big concentrations of money, no easy way to use power to steal. Those who thought otherwise have found out that it would not work and that trying was not a good idea.

There are not many elections: your community handles matters in your local town meetings. There are no standing armies: the rest of the world has followed the example of the Second American Revolution. Everyone you know can explain the principles contained in the Constitution. Your county went local early and you were right there speaking out and helping others to make their own transition to real freedom.

You are healthy; you stopped taking supplements years ago, after the Change. You have discovered the ways of healing that the Grids had worked to keep from you. Physicians earn less, but they now feel better about their craft because they are now assisting people to actually become healthy.

For you, the moment of change might have been when you discovered that the cancer that was killing your wife, could be cured. Or it may have been when they turned off your electricity. Or when your 19-year-old daughter came home from Iraq, the victim of rape that was ignored. She hanged herself from the tree where you had built her tree house back when she was 7. We all had that moment, one when we saw what was really happening.

None of us looked back.

Today, you love your life; you love waking up every morning because life today is exactly what nourishes your spirit and brings joy.

You are looking forward to being a grandfather. Your automobile uses no gasoline, and you know you can replace any needed parts yourself at low cost yourself. You have come to expect these qualities in all things. The furniture in your home will last for generations. The former attorney down the street built that furniture in the shop you helped him set up. We all changed, and it was a good thing.

Welcome to the real America – Celebrate Earth Day. Be the Change.

Melinda is now working on her new book. “Real Freedom.” Visit America Goes Home and Partnering for Peace & Prosperity

April's Future – Renewing America

2009-02-26T16:33:00.002-05:00

This last January a baby girl was born. Her parents named her April and hope mightily that the world she grows to know will be one of hope and prosperity. We can make it so for her and all our children.

That matters to me very personally because little April is my first grand daughter. Her mother looked just like her and worrying about April's future causes fractures in my heart. The world today is growing very personal, we are all frightened. As the meltdown continues we look into the eyes of our children and cannot help be that. And yet along with we are losing come gifts of enormous potential. Take a deep breath and keep reading.

America faces a challenge, one that has been rolling in like a tsunami for generations, unremarked because we accepted and trusted too easily.

The election of Barack Obama to the office of president provided momentary hope that is now fading as a night mist when sunlight breaks through to Earth. The integrity, good intentions, and decency of the new president have nothing to do with what is now hitting America. The flawed foundations on which we built our lives can no longer be supported by illusion. We believed a vision for America that disconnected us from our own substance and power. We believed tate power was elsewhere when it is in our own hands.

That illusion of America turned us from the values that made America truly great. We possess a heritage unique in human history. Our founding documents were written so that we could govern ourselves, not be governed. Small towns, communities of people who accept and embrace their power, learning how to use cooperation and persuasion instead of politics are the foundation on which America stood in 1775.

The vision of a mighty America striding across the world bringing peace and justice was fantasy. The reality is not flags waving in the breeze and hands on hearts pledging fealty to a piece of cloth but something far more profound. Americans must come together, doing what is necessary for ourselves, using the skills, values and knowledge that makes effective action possible.

We face problems. But this one is the most important. We must do it ourselves while understanding the heritage of individual power that made America possible.

Russia faced this in the 80s without the wealth of tools we have to draw from here in America. It is not military might that made America great. It was its people, communities that came together as those colonials who fought for their freedom with their own hands, hearts and will. What was so can be again. Coming together in community across the lines that divide is itself a healing. Our ability to trust in our values has been destroyed, kicked out from under us. We forgot about honesty, quietly doing right, the integrity of work done well. We accepted instead the excitement of greed and possessions. We allowed the values that matter to be disparaged and refuted by those who govern and the corporations for which they work. We accepted lies for truth and greed as good. In so doing we passively allowed the theft of all that matters.

Because of this we face what seem to be insuperable problems but those problems are also a gift. We were lost, wandering in a world without knowing the risks we faced. Now we do. Our challenge is to come together, heal ourselves, and demonstrate the God given power of love and community. A Man who lived two thousands years ago would tell you this is true. If you listen you can hear Him speak to you today. When you do the right thing security and prosperity will follow.

Know the truth and the truth will set you free.

Americans who trusted went to Iraq for freedom and were ordered to take actions that violated their core values. Most were young and vulnerable. Girls went clutching their teddy bears. Young men went who barely needed to shave. They are returning to us traumatized, and unable to function normally. The rate of suicide is increasing with many becoming rapidly homeless. They are our children and they need us.

We trusted too far. We were told to have faith in people who were picking our pockets and canceling the Constitution. By their actions we can identify them, ensuring that accountability is exacted. We must relearn discernment as the essential precondition to action and values. Returning to community means caring for each other, beginning with those treated as disposable.

The only effective treatment for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder begins with community and with the values that stand as a firm foundation for right and wrong, honor and decency. After idling and wasting money on drugs the authorities now admit this.

Over the last 200 years Americans have not been idle. We have built an infrastructure that can take action in every community and the tools needed to enact the needed changes. From every point on the political and spiritual spectrum the answers have come. Marshall Rosenberg originated Non-Violent Communication. In the fifties a group of individuals wrote the 12 step programs. These have enabled hundreds of thousands to reestablish themselves as happy and productive people. The effective tools are there to be used, the gift of those whose creativity was focused on providing them for all of us.

We add to this the thousands of ways now entirely available, by which we can live sustainably, lowering our need for money and leaving more time for those things that nourish our spirits. These things are the basis of the America we will leave our children.

For me, when I think about that future I see a young woman named April growing up fulfilling the full range of her potential. That future will have healed the wrongs done to all of us, women and men together. She will understand physics, see the glories of nature in all of their complexities, find a future that brings her joy. I hope she also knows the deep happiness of holding a child in her arms to love and mother. She will do that from a neighborhood that is secure, part of a community that understands real freedom.

From our churches, from organizations that work locally the healing can flow like a cleansing balm, bringing renewal. Let this be the beginning. Doing it ourselves, from the heart and from community is our salvation. If you want to help go to Partnering for Peace and Prosperity.

Karl Rove and Bill Postmus, Soul Mates?

2009-01-30T01:40:00.001-05:00

Why we must demand accountability, objective standards, and absolute transparency

From Revolt in 2100 by Robert Heinlein

“When any government or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, “This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know,”the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrawise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fusion bombs, not anything – you can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.”

Revolt in 2100 is about a revolution against an evangelical religious state that using disinformation, coercion, and deceit took over America. The good guys are pro-freedom and in the book you see them carry out the restoration of real American government. The bad guys use torture, absolute monitoring, and the force of a state that has rewritten history to control the American people.

Written in 1939 the book was read widely by those in now in the freedom movement, that movement from which such individuals as Karl Rove, Grover Norquist, Newt Gingrich, John Fund, among others originated. Heinlein was writing a juvenile science fiction yarn using elements he perceived as potential and threatening to our freedom. That take over worked. The elements present today with the attempted use of biometrics, as applied to the Real ID, the monolithic control reinforced by the evangelical no-think churches, and the routine use of torture and construction of American concentration camps are hauntingly like what you see in the Heinlein novel.

All of the individuals above grew up on science fiction. Heinlein, a libertarian, was the Grand Master of that genre. This is most probably the origin of the approach used to subvert power in America and hand control over to those who lurk behind foreign corporations tied to the military-industrial complex, banking, Big Oil, and Big Pharma. Those interests are the clients that Rove and these others named serve. Among those corporations are many that are closely and privately held. Instead of the transparency that, on paper, we as Americans were guaranteed, we see only lies and a closed door.

The individuals named took as their model what science fiction fans would call, “the forces of darkness.” Today they continue to work for the same employers as they continue to use the Republican Party to divide America.

The Republican Stimulus Package: War

On Friday afternoon, January 16^th, at 1:30 p.m., Congressman Joe Baca (D-43) hosted the first coalition of its kind to respond to Obama's challenge to stimulate the economy. Baca invited elected officials from both San Bernardino and Riverside Counties to sit down and discuss how the funds could be used to rebuild the badly decayed infrastructure in their area. The two counties, also commonly known as the Inland Empire have been the most heavily impacted by the meltdown in California. Foreclosures, lost jobs and despair light up the phones of food banks and in the offices of public officials every day.

Of the five Republican congressmen invited, David Dreier (R-26), Jerry Lewis (R-41), Ken Calvert (R-44), Gary Miller (R-42) and Buck McKeon (R-25) not one attended. All voted against the Obama package.

The cost of the Obama Stimulus Packages is high. The President has asked that billions be alloted for projects that rebuild desperately needed infrastructure while providing jobs lost during the last administration. But the same congressmen supported war in Iraq that destroyed the infrastructure of that country and cost far more. They also supported the exportation of American jobs to third world countries, placing many Americans out of work. They oversaw the administration of Federal funds that paid billions to companies building infrastructure, here and abroad, that are failing. Accountability and quality control have been non-existent.

The bridge which collapsed on Interstate 35 in Minneapolis in Aug., 2007 is just one example of a [problem of which many remain oblivious. The accident in Minneapolis killed 13 people and sounded a wake up call focusing attention on deteriorating infrastructure which cost millions to construct and billions to replace. Accountability for faulty construction is non-existent. Across the country, contractors involved figure among those who donate to Congressional campaigns, either directly of through their agents.

Inland Empire Toasted by Postmus

Simultaneous to the debate on the funding of the Stimulus Packages the Inland Empire witnessed the exposure of Bill Postmus, San Bernardino County Assessor. Postmus has long been known to idolize Karl Rove.

Postmus faces felony charges of drug possession. The disgraced Republican is under investigation by the District Attorney's Office for political malfeasance. $250,000 has been budgeted to pay the law firm retained to conduct the investigation. A recall petition by a broad spectrum of individuals and organizations will file a "Notice of Intention to Circulate Recall Petition" at the San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters office on Fri., Jan. 30, 2009. There will be a press conference in front of the Registrar's office at 4:00 p.m.

Ordinary Americans are fed up with divide and profit politics.

The Stimulus Package meeting of January 16^th was attended by local officials who represented both major parties. The focus of their concern was their district and the needs of their constituents. Former California State Senator Don Rogers, a respected member of the Republican delegation, said of the Postmus indictment, “We need to clean our own house first. The man should resign and other Republicans should make sure that happens.” Anthony Adams, Republican County Chairman for San Bernardino has joined the call or Postmus to step down and save the millions a recall will cost.

Calls to the DC offices of the five Republican produced five press secretaries who were out to lunch or otherwise unavailable. Of the messages left none has been returned.

Will Republicans become obsolete?

Since the November election Republicans have confronted the need to take back their party. Taking it back brings into sharp focus from whom, bringing us back to the names above.

Locally both Republicans and Democrats agree in large that changes are necessary. They know money is in short supply and should not be wasted. Paul Pugh, the COO of Sequoia Valley Resource Corporation, who has worked in the Inland Empire said, “Politics has no part in this kind of decision. We need objective standards. And we need absolute accountability. We have the products to do the job. They cost no more and give us the same number of jobs locally. The age of greed is over.” Pugh is a life long Republican who also expressed concern for the direction his party has taken over the last decades. H proposed the following standard,

Stimulus funds should be granted only to companies that agree to:

High standards for quality for project longevity and durability in accordance to the guidelines provided by studies of technologies now available across the world. Products exist and can be used that reduce the carbon footprint at least 25% during construction. Longevity for high dollar projects must use only products that extend longevity to a millennium.

Absolute transparency – no contacts with private corporations.

To ensure that happens it is reasonable to exclude from consideration companies who have previously done work that failed the new standards.

Much is in motion. Will the Inland Empire exact accountability from Bill Postmus? Will Republicans meet the challenge to come together, despite the Republican delegation to Congress? The answers are coming and Robert Heinlein would have much to say if he still lived.

Healing America

2009-01-23T18:51:00.003-05:00

Update: Stealing Truth - The John Fund Back Story

The Attorney General of New York has received the complaint as well as the incoming US Attorney General.

At the stroke of noon on Tuesday, January 20^th, America breathed a sigh of relief that echoed across the world. I say that and I am a registered Republican who understands the cost of blowing the whistle on Bush and his associates. Of the many things that George Bush destroyed the Republican Party was only one institution. The GOP, once the proud advocate of freedom, was destroyed, its mission extinguished. Our economy, our rights, the Constitution, and the respect America once held across the world are also dead.

The least important of these is, of course, the GOP. It is not political parties that matter, but people. From the streets of America, where veterans pick through trash cans and from Gaza where children are dying from head wounds inflicted by bullets paid for by US taxpayers, it is people who are dying without hope.

At one second past noon on Tuesday, January 20^th, a new president took into his hands the power to enact change. People across the country wept tears of joy. In Santa Fe 40 children, young teenagers, held their own inaugural party, recreating the event. They will never forget that moment.

Barack Obama has began a task of daunting proportions. Along with accountability, and the President has said this is also coming, Obama is calling for stimulus packages. These will jump start the economy and put Americans back to work. Obama named as his first priority America's infrastructure. Our bridges, our dams daily grow more degraded and dangerous to all of us. Engineers hold their breath as they monitor the deterioration, knowing lives are at risk as we saw in Minneapolis on Aug. 1, 2007. In California fifty percent of bridges are unsafe and those in charge know this.

Our veterans, who fought a war both unnecessary and criminal, are returning to homelessness, afflicted with Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. We moved into the danger zone, unconscious of what was happening around us.

War was made on us by Bush and his predecessors, converting our governmental and economic infrastructure. Those who did this were motivated by greed. They intended to steal everything, including our future. What are bridges and dams but the visible part of the future we leave our children?

Romans built for millennia. Our bridges, dams and other public works projects were built to last just long enough for the politically connected contractors to cash their checks, paying off their political cronies.

All of them need to be held accountable. Go here to blow your whistle.

The problems we confront are enormous. By coming together we can solve those problems. Sharing information, identifying what works, and refusing to accept the status quo brings its own power. There was a time when families sat down together then Dad lost his job. They looked at the problem, deciding how to stretch the pennies. The president has given us such an opportunity. To use it effectively we, the people, need to ensure that the funds from the stimulus packages are used wisely. Those who will make those decisions locally and in Congress need to know the same old solutions from the same contractors cannot be trusted. These funds must be used to ensure rapid deployment of new technologies that last and provide jobs.

Paul Pugh, a long time environmentalist who owns Sequoia Valley Resources and has produced and tested many of the new technologies said, “Engineers realize now it is all about using the right product for the application. Archeology has part of the answer. We rediscovered how the Romans did it and went them one better. Pieces of clay pottery lasted thousands of years. Our products can do the same.”

Infrastructure built this way can be in use in the year 3000 for the same or less money, generating as many jobs now. These are technologies in use around the world. As Pugh says, “This is not rocket science.” Politics denied them to us before.

Changing how we build will change your own home. That home can become the heritage you leave your great-great grandchildren, it will need no energy for heating or cooling and generate all the power you need.

Returning veterans suffering from PTSD can restart their lives. Many see PTSD sufferers as permanently marginalized. Instead they can became the core for new ways to live well in community. All of us can and must do the same, we need to be open to new and better ways of living. If we take up that challenge we can build prosperous futures for ourselves as we rediscover what it means to be an American.

Michael Olson, the owner of Metrofarm and the author of the book of the same name has helped many begin making a living providing products close into urban areas, solving the problem of transport while providing healthier food options. Multiply him by thousands who have spent their lives on solutions that work. From transportation to communications there are solutions, not one but many. America Goes Home examines and lists solutions and you can find more yourself.

We can build bridges that span the centuries, leading to a sustainable future for our descendants.

NOW Indict George Bush, Indict Them All

2009-01-23T18:18:00.004-05:00

UPDATE: Stealing Elections – The John Fund Back Story
January 16 – Nothing has been read from the District Attorney in New York. We now file the complaint with the Office of the Attorney General

American veterans are returning from Iraq to homelessness. As the economy melts down so do America's veterans. Tens of thousands who signed up to serve their country are now homeless, unable to function because of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or brain trauma Their condition was directly caused by the Bush Administration. They were told that war was necessary to our safety. It was a lie. Instead, it has lined the pockets of George W. Bush's core constituency.

Americans are struggling with conditions none of us ever imagined possible. Many are showing signs of PTSD themselves. They have never been to Iraq. The war came to them.

They used our banks, the stock market, the governmental agencies intended for our protection to allow them to put their hands in our pockets and steal us blind. By so doing they stole our homes, our retirement, our jobs, and all we need to survive. Then they put their hands back in our pockets and stole our future to reimburse their friends for the 'losses' they had suffered. Our veterans are victims of war, the war being fought not in Iraq but carried out against Americans in boardrooms, in Congress, from the White House, our courts, and through every institution for which we have paid.

If you follow the money you see who profited and who intends to continue being paid.

Last week I wrote an article about John Fund, pointing out how he abused the profession of journalism. Those who covered for Fund did so for profit. He went unpunished for the domestic violence he committed because he could and did use the power according him by the Bush White House and those who worked for them. A valuable operative, he was protected. That was one small story in a vast tapestry of action that has resulted in the present meltdown. But every story comes with links to other stories. George Bush did nothing alone. Every story will lead to others because, like Fund, few intend to go away as Bush will be gone next week.

The problems will still be with us until they are rooted out. They live lavish life styles. They intend to continue. Many of those whose direct action lead to the nightmare we are living are planning to spend June 7 - 19th on a cruise from London to Rome.

Dick Morris just announced in an email I received that, “John Fund, the famous Wall Street Journal writer and Fox News commentator will be onboard as well!” Morris goes on to say that, “John is one of the foremost pundits on economic and political matters. During today's turbulent economic times, he will offer you the insight you need.” and will be, “joining our roundtable as we discuss how to rebuild the Republican party after the 2008 disaster.”
The only disaster noted is their failure to continue in power.
While they cruise an 80 year old woman who a year ago lived comfortably in retirement will struggle to survive on the street. There are many like her. She was invested in Lehman Brothers. Close you eyes. Watch the lives of ordinary hard working people pouring into the pockets of men like Morris, Fund, Cheney and Bush.
We need the names, the facts, and the evidence. The men and women who caused the problems must be indicted along with Bush. We need to exact retribution or else it can and will happen again. Bad behavior always drives out good. When we see the guilty punished to the full extent of the harm done we will be on the way back to sanity.

Stealing Truth: The John Fund Back Story

2009-01-14T13:46:00.003-05:00

If the media had followed the clear rules they had written for themselves, would we now be on the express down elevator to a meltdown of global proportions? Likely not. We would have problems, but we would have seen them more clearly. We needed the truth. We did not get it, for perhaps as many reasons as there are individuals in journalism.

The first problem was that journalists so blithely ignored the standards of their profession.

The Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) has established a code of ethics. The tenets of this code are short, clear, concise, and well-founded. But there is no means of enforcement. If journalists would follow them, we could trust the media. Today most of us do not. If a journalist ignores their ethical obligations, either from sloth or a desire to profit, nothing can be done. If raiding the cookie jar can be carried out with impunity, then there will be no cookies. I know this, having raised several children.

The SPJ has existed since 1909, four years before the Federal Reserve Bank came into being. Their founders could have included Ida Tarbell, the journalist who caused the break up of Standard Oil, though the site does not mention her – an indomitable truth teller. Tarbell told the truth, but a handful of years later the dispersed Standard Oil was larger than ever and still carried out the same exploitive pattern of business.

The takeaway: having the truth does not automatically solve the problem. You need to use the truth to build the cultural tools that enact accountability. We need that accountability today as the world melts down around our ears. Those responsible for the economic collapse are getting bailouts. Those who will be forced to pay are losing everything.

It was not just banks or oil companies or the "military-industrial complex" of which Ike warned us, though the sense of immunity to accountability these corporate-cultural structures enjoy is another part of the problem. Many individuals made decisions they knew to be wrong. Along with those heading corporations, journalists were a pivotal part of this failure. They had ample opportunity to act ethically and make a decision that would have influenced the values by which all of us live, building the world through those uncounted separate choices. Unfortunately, they chose unwisely and unethically – and their bad choices drove out the good.

Large media (and non-media) corporations have swallowed up newspapers and other media outlets during the last few decades with alarming speed, with the goal being the use of these outlets as an extension of their control. Individual journalists did not have to cooperate – but they did, in large part. The lack of dispassionate, objective reporting in journalism morphed the profession towards use as a perpetual public relations service for those in power. The question became not "What is the truth?" but "What do you want the truth to be?" Power and profit became the unassailable be-all and end-all of corporate journalism.

Consider, for example, the case of John Fund.

Sex, Lies, and Journalism

As a member of the Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal for 18 years, Fund was on a trajectory toward greater power in 1998, and that power provided him with a feeling of invincibility. Already accustomed to sexual access to many women who were attracted to him as a figure possessing power and money, he became accustomed to ignoring the consequences of behavior that was deceitful and ugly. He was also accustomed to lying politically. His personal and professional life matched. He knew no matter what he did he would be protected.

In October of 1998, he began a sexual relationship with the daughter of a long-time friend he had once dated. The woman's name was Morgan Pillsbury, my biological daughter. I had known Fund since 1980 when we met at a Libertarian Party Convention, where he came across as nerdy and bumbling but likable. The impression stuck. Over the years we kept in touch.

When I heard a rumor that Fund was involved with Morgan, I called him directly. He lied to me, telling me she lived nearby. He claimed that he had been feeding her cat for her while she had been away. I believed him. Having had experience with Morgan over many years, I knew she could be dishonest . She would need strong evidence to disprove Fund's claims to me. That is why the audio tape often referred to as the "Weaselsearch tape" was made. If you listen to the tape, it becomes immediately apparent that Fund did not want me to know the truth. He lied and pressured Morgan to lie about their relationship. There was no reason for this; if he had told me he was in a relationship with Morgan, I would have been surprised and appalled, but it had been many years since we had been more than friends. My time was occupied caring for my handicapped son and by my own health needs, not with his love life. And Morgan was no child. She was born July 5, 1967. John was born April 8, 1956.

If this had remained merely a case of a man lying about his love life, journalism would never have been an issue. But Fund wanted to continue the relationship with Morgan covertly so he could also have relations with other women. He did not want his professional life impacted.

Unfortunately for Fund, Morgan refused to be his dirty little secret. For much of the three years they were a couple, Fund used Morgan's computer for professional purposes, but also to receive personal e-mail. Why Fund would have overlooked the chain of evidence thus produced is perhaps explained by the fact that at that time he knew next to nothing about computers. During that time, Fund consistently lied about his relationship with Morgan and pursued other women. It was a strange relationship, and I do not pretend to entirely understand it. But at each point, I demanded proof from Morgan for just that reason. I talked to Fund over dinner, on the phone from the apartment the couple shared. I received e-mails from him and other proof that could not have been falsified, for instance this IM conversation on AOL between Matt Drudge and Morgan. Drudge had been IMing with Fund on Morgan's computer earlier. Fund went to bed, leaving the window up. And so Morgan continued the conversation.

Around January, 2002, Fund – despite claims to the contrary by himself and others – was fired from the Wall Street Journal, probably because of the scandal that exploded over his own behavior. Morgan told me he had battered her on multiple occasions, first in New Jersey and then after he stalked her back to Manhattan and insisted on moving in with her in her new apartment. I heard several of those incidents via phone – as did others.

She finally decided to file charges in both New Jersey and New York.

A letter from Fidelity Investments advised him to, "make a decision about what to do with the savings you have accumulated in your former employer's retirement plan." That employer was the Wall Street Journal. The letter is in Morgan's possession. Fund opened it in her living room and, as Morgan told me, left it laying on the floor.

The lies then escalated.

Morgan told me that Fund coerced a false confession from her to hide his acts. He used threats of violence to get the confession. Morgan sent this email to me and others immediately to refute what she had been forced to sign. Documentation exists to support the truth.

Fund solicited and received the cooperation of other journalists to spin what had taken place. One can only conclude that Fund was very willing to make it worth their while or misrepresent the facts. Evidence almost immediately surfaced that Fund was sexually involved with at least one journalist who then lied for him in print. Some journalists knew the truth. Others were clearly taken in by Fund's lies. All were guilty of a lack of due diligence. If they had followed the tenets set out for journalists today might be different for all of us.

Black Box Road to the Rove White House

Fund's relationship with the Bush White House and the purpose of the book he was then writing, Stealing Elections, were less obvious in 2002. Fund has since admitted he has been routinely briefed by the White House, before and after he was fired from the WSJ. His road to being a willing tool of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue was long and, in many ways, meteoric.

Fund first worked as a political operative in 1979, according to Justin Raimondo. His services were secured to ensure the nomination of Ed Clark for the Libertarian Presidential Nomination for 1980 by Ed Crane. Far from having an interest in stopping voter or election fraud, Fund himself committed a curious specie of fraud by claiming to be a candidate by taking out papers that year but never turning them in while claiming to be running for office and getting 46% of the vote. Justin Raimondo characterized Fund as "an expert lying propagandist of the sleazier sort."

Never in all the years I knew him did I hear Fund express any interest in the issues of election or voter fraud. His political interests were more sensational; his personal interests run to Star Wars and Star Trek. If you really knew him, this sudden change in principal interests should have raised questions about his role with those associated with the administration. It did for me. The book he wrote is now considered by those in the clean elections movement to be a misdirective tool intended to muddy the water on the issue of voter fraud. It focuses in on purported fraud by individuals, ignoring the enormous issues of fraud now ascribed to such companies as Diebold and ES&S. Fund proposed centralizing control over elections as a solution – an idea completely in line with the big and well-connected "black box" mongers – and is nearly successful in undermining the issue by injecting his spin.

Bev Harris of Black Box Voting said of Fund's position, "It is amazing that this bogus solution is still being put forth. His solutions take us directly to ever more centralized control by a small group of insiders. What is needed is for the people to have local control and access to the results. Complete transparency."

Mark Crispin Miller was even more explicit, saying, "Despite his pose as an impartial expert on American elections, John Fund is in fact a dedicated party operative, who for many years has turned out rightist propaganda for the GOP. Specifically, he has abetted the Republicans' election theft by helping to promote the myth of widespread Democratic 'voter fraud'--a fiction that has been disproved by every reputable study, but one which Fund has pushed at every opportunity. And so whatever he may recommend to help 'reform' US elections should be rejected out of hand, as on this crucial subject he enjoys no credibility at all."

Vickie Karp and others involved in the clean elections movement also agree about Fund and his role as a propagandist and deceiver. All of the agree that Fund's "solutions," which provide cover for ever more centralization and displace real reform, are the opposite of transparency.

Inserting himself into that dialog would have been severely hampered had he been in jail for domestic violence. Yet Fund remains a high level political operative. Understanding how he accomplished his goals provides a clear understanding of the covert operation we know as the Bush Administration.

Fund's "Nuts and Sluts" Strategy

Fund solicited several articles attacking both Morgan and myself.

Eric Alterman, a New York based writer known for his partisan political writing, generally perceived as on the left, authored an article for the May 15, 2003 edition of The Nation, Who Framed John Fund? Morgan and I attempted to contact Alterman. On Mother's Day morning, June 11^th, Morgan received an email from Alterman urgently requesting a response to a list of questions. Alterman received her response within three hours. He used none of the material supplied, did not call to follow up on her reply, and did not ask for the further documents that Morgan had offered. On June 25, 2003 a response from another liberal, Mark Crispin Miller, was published with another from Alterman in The Nation. The exchange is titled, 'Ugly Tactics Make for Ugly People.' Alterman sent Morgan a dismissive e-mail on July 4^th.

According to Fred Brown, vice chair of the ethics committee for the Society for Professional Journalists, many journalists would pause before writing an article requested by someone in Fund's circumstances. A journalist who followed the tenets of ethics would also be careful to ensure that all principals had fully aired their cases. Alterman violated every tenet of the code as outlined by SPJ.

Fund was at that time working to have the charges against him in New York dropped. To accomplish that, he had been told he needed to destroy our credibility – Morgan's as the victim and my own as a witness. Along with soliciting journalists with whom he had relationships or could compensate in some way, he solicited libelous letters from at least two individuals, each with a motive for wanting either myself or Pillsbury silenced.

A perfunctory search of the journalists involved also leads to linkages between journalists to be pointed out. Alterman states in articles he has written that he is a friend of Katie Rosman, about whom you will read more below. A Google search of their names shows they often appear at the same events and cite each other. Alterman "adores gossip," by his own report, and admits to being an avid reader of Page Six, a gossip column run by Richard Johnson with associates such as Doug Dechert. Dechert was a regular attendee at the Fabiani Society, which meets the second Tuesday at the Princeton Club, a place where Fund also regularly showed up. The first time I was introduced to Dechert at one of these events, he asked me for $10,000 to be in Page Six. I did not know what Page Six was and would have declined even more rapidly if I had known. Selling print in this fashion is not news, it is not journalism, and it is not public relations, a profession having its own tenets for ethics. Discussing the matter with Fred Brown, we agreed that the term "Slime Journalism" worked to describe it (with apologies to slime, which is an important part of the ecosystem). Reading Alterman's enthusiastic reports on the operation leads one to believe he expects dishonesty and scandal as standard. Certainly that is how his reports read.

The Fabiani Society is jointly sponsored by two NeoCon think-tanks, the Cato Institute and the Manhattan Institute. The speakers usually represent the opinions marketed by those institutions. Many come only for the opportunity to network or the excellent canapés and ample bar.

Fund sent this email to Morgan at the same time these articles would have been in the works, once again demonstrating his lack not only of professionalism but maturity.

An article solicited by Katie Rosman, then at Elle, in the autumn of 2003 presents a strategy also intended to silence us using another tack. We met with Katie Rosman at a coffee shop in Manhattan where she asked for an exclusive on the story. We agreed. Soon her contact with us became sporadic. The story was stalled for months, during a critical time period, and then quashed (see correspondence). Rosman received a job offer at the Wall Street Journal simultaneous to the article being dropped. Rosman is still working at the WSJ and is a friend of Eric Alterman's, according to Alterman.

Fund solicited a woman law professor, Gail Heriot (who was having a sexual relationship with Fund) to assist him. The site, John H. Fund, was originally registered at her address in San Diego, 4830 Hart Drive, San Diego, CA 92116. That has now been changed. Heriot put herself in the category of journalist when she wrote to Gene Gaudette, the editor of APJ, with a letter she sent across the Internet, effectively publishing it. Its content is libelous. (You can read that e-mail from Heriot to American Politics Journal and their demolishing response here).

Heriot had written an email to Fund on January 13, 2002 that reveals the source of her support for Fund: at that time Morgan and Fund were still living together she wrote, "So allow me to introduce myself. I am Gail Heriot, the woman whose hotel room you've found yourself in a few times over the last six weeks." See the full letter here.

Fund solicited other attacks. Wendy McElroy, who wrote "False Rape Charges Hurt Real Victims" for FOXnews.com (published July 22, 2003), also violated the tenets of journalism, evidently profiting thereby. Journalists are required to ensure the principals are heard. McElroy failed to call either Morgan or myself. Since I had known her personally since the 1970s, this was a shock. Instead of carrying out her ethical obligation to seek the facts she wrote the article exonerating Fund and was within weeks hired at FOX News, a media outlet long associated with Fund and his fellow NeoCons. McElroy has made her living for decades writing effective spin for niche groups that want to hear justifications for their positions. These include why women need pornography and why women are as likely to be batterers as men, among others.

Fund was offered support from a female journalist with whom he was evidently conducting an affair at Christian Broadcast Network. Her name was Christine Hall-Reis. Here is a semi-nude photo of her that she sent to Fund, which he downloaded to Morgan's computer and became her property. Fund and Morgan were living together at the time the photo was sent along with the accompanying email.

One can reach no other conclusion that each and every one of these articles was clearly solicited by Fund.

One also has to relish the irony of Fund using women with whom he was intimately involved to deploy a "nuts and sluts" smear campaign.

Fund also received help from individuals hoping to benefit from the opportunity presented who were not compensated. Two such individuals were Eric Garris and Justin Raimondo, now of Anti-War.com. Both individuals had known Fund and myself for many years. Both were members of a small but self-consciously radical group associated with the Libertarian Party and Murray Rothbard, a highly respected free market economist who died in the 90s. I made a call to Eric Garris in 2002 asking for help. Morgan was in hiding, in fear of her life. Fund was using every avenue to destroy my reputation and credibility. Eric refused to help. In 2006 Justin Raimondo wrote this article that appeared on Anti-War.com. I responded in 24 hours with this article.

Soon afterwards I talked to Lew Rockwell, who employs Eric Garris as a webmaster. Eric had read my assertion that the hit piece on Fund was motivated by the realization neither he or Raimondo would never profit by covering for Fund. Lew told me he talked to Garris right after he read my article. Eric, he said, affirmed I was exactly right.

Among journalists on the right, the left and the libertarian realm, Fund had succeeded in persuading journalists to write in his defense.

In each instance they ignored the truth.

In all cases they hoped for some benefit for themselves.

John Fund: Above the Law?

The criminal case to be heard through the District Attorney was still hanging over Fund's head. He needed the charges to be quashed. Photographs of the injuries had been taken by the police. I had given testimony on what I had witnessed. Documents proving that Fund had systematically lied both to many women and to other journalists for years existed and were available, freely offered as proof. Instead of looking at all the evidence, the focus was placed solely on Morgan's veracity. Fund had solicited letters that perpetuated statements that were provably libelous and untrue. He had cooperation from the DA's office in Manhattan to ignore all of these forms of evidence.

When the DA replaced the first ADA assigned to the case, Eric Arnone, with Bonnie Saar, it was clear that the investigation would be neither fair nor thorough. Saar spent hours hammering Morgan with questions as if she were the perpetrator, ignoring the laws and practices usual with victims of domestic violence. Morgan was not even allowed to see her own case file, and that is another violation of existing law and practice. Through a back door into the DA's office, we learned that the letters were from my former husband, Craig Franklin, and one Eugene Volokh, a former boyfriend of Morgan. Both men had reasons for wanting to destroy either Morgan's or my own credibility, and those motives can be documented. In one case, the motive was to cover a felonious fraud amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars.

But that is another story for another day.

Fund's motives were more obvious and also deeper. For years I had been questioning Fund's actions. Beginning with obvious issues, for instance how Hillsdale College used its large endowment, I asked questions. I moved on to research Fund's associates. As the Arkansas Project unfolded and the bizarre information I heard from Fund grew, I began to ask more questions as I observed the NeoCon strategies for winning. By 2000, the issue of election fraud was very present in my mind. During a conversation Fund, Morgan and I had at dinner in 2000, Fund told us that writing the book on elections was his "consolation prize" for not getting the job as Bush speechwriter. He might have been lying, but that is what he said. I was surprised, and said so. Fund shrugged. In what had already become a pattern of "Wingnut welfare" for the NeoCon right's roster of propagandists, the book would be financed, published and promoted – that was what mattered.

Destroying my credibility along with Morgan's accomplished several goals, for Fund and others. Fund knew I was researching him. The conversation we had had regarding Hillsdale had told him I doubted his stated motives. His lack of action on these issues decreased the frequency of his calls to me from 1996 on. Over the years I continued to write about Fund and his connections, branching out from there into the impact on the economy, on our institutions, and on the future.

I had told Fund in 2001 that his highest purpose in life was as an example of what is wrong with journalism. Fund has illustrated in thorough detail what needs to change. Journalism is not spin provided to sell a political agenda. Journalism is a trust essential to ensuring our continued freedom. The public must have the facts, the truth, and the means to decide for themselves.

It is time to start in that direction.

This week a group of journalists will be filing a FOIA demand for the information long withheld by Morganthau's office in Manhattan. Ethics matter. Doing the right thing matters. The file on the case against John Fund for domestic violence may clarify issues. It may raise issues yet unknown. But it must be public. The victim is willing to have you see it. This case can tell us what went wrong with the courts, with the police, with journalism and how political figures and corporations distort and use each of these. This case leads you down the rabbit hole.

No matter who is impacted – just plain folks, social elite, poor or wealthy, black or white, gay or straight – the truth matters. The sign of a healthy society is a system that does right by everyone. A working media, courts that deliver justice, and communities of people who handle things for themselves give us the means to know we are secure.

Concern is growing and some are already taking action. On the Internet and elsewhere, people are looking for solutions. We need to find what works. The Madoff fraud has awakened many to the need for action. Visit Madoff Games. The journalists and activists who set up the site are working to exact accountability and encourage better research by journalists. There will be more such sites.

There are many today, for instance Dan Rather, who understand what it means to go through the crucible of fire for truth, emerging on the other side. We need those who were willing to speak out and we need to listen.

Blighted Christmas

2008-12-16T13:21:00.002-05:00

This year give the truth.

My family, 1952

This year Americans are confronting a melting economy, the massing of troops within our own borders, aimed at us. We are losing our homes to foreclosure and the Chinese are coming over with the faux dollars issued by the FED to buy them up. The shock waves of reality are hitting even those who normally lose themselves in football.

This Christmas give the only thing that can make a difference. America was founded on truths, truths that those in power have endlessly tried to suppress. Those truths show us what happened so we can take action. They don't want that. Our First Amendment has its roots in the common law principle that no one has a right to use their power to suppress the truth. The Zenger Case, heard in New York in 1735 was in the minds of the Founders when the subject was debated. John Peter Zenger was a publisher who printed the truth about the corrupt Royal Governor of New York. He was jailed. Eight months later a jury, exercising their right to determine the validity of law and pass on the facts, freed him.

Know the truth. The Truth will set your mind free to act on the facts.

Christmas, and our futures and those of our children and their children, have been blighted through lies that allow the abuse of power. When you see the monumental scale on which this has been perpetrated you understand. You see what must be done.

While we focus on the stories of just a few the reality is that nearly all of us have been harmed by the grasping deceit and abuse of power by corporations and their partners in government. Edward Bernays, the nephew of Sigmund Freud, made himself wealthy by abusing the trust of ordinary people. Credited as the father of PR, he said,

“"If you can influence the leaders, either with or without their conscious cooperation, you automatically influence the group which they sway", he said. In order to promote sales of bacon, for example, he conducted a survey of physicians and reported their recommendation that people eat heavy breakfasts. He sent the results of the survey to 5,000 physicians, along with publicity touting bacon and eggs as a heavy breakfast.

Bernays also drew upon his uncle Sigmund's psychoanalytic ideas for the benefit of commerce in order to promote, by indirection, commodities as diverse as cigarettes, soap and books.”

Bernays is responsible for many of the ills of our century and for promoting the ugly assertion, now reaching its full fruition, that in contradiction to the founding principles of our right to the truth that it is proper for government and those whose profits depend on government, for instance corporations, to lie to us.

Bernays bears responsibility for a mind boggling number of manipulations of opinion, including the perception that smoking among women was a strike for freedom.

“In the 1920s, working for the American Tobacco Company, he sent a group of young models to march in the New York City parade. He then told the press that a group of women's rights marchers would light "Torches of Freedom". On his signal, the models lit Lucky Strike cigarettes in front of the eager photographers. The New York Times (1 April 1929) printed: "Group of Girls Puff at Cigarettes as a Gesture of 'Freedom'". This helped to break the taboo against women smoking in public.”

The most prevalent correlation between heart attacks in people in early middle age is that of their mothers having smoked during pregnancy. My mother smoked. Of her five children I am the oldest yet living. Earlier this year my brother, who had suffered a heart attack and brain hemorrhage, died after four years of hardship. He was stricken with aphasia, unable to see, speak, or care for himself in his late 50s. My sister Carol died at 36 of a heart attack in 1974. My sister Anne died of a heart attack after suffering brain death in 1994. My younger brother had a triple bypass in his early 40s. I have had two heart attacks.

Carol was the mother of a young son. She had bucked the glass ceiling to achieve success in the corporate world in the 50s and 60s. What else might she had accomplished for herself and those she loved?

Anne was a mathematician, an early programmer who ran a successful business. She had two children but will never know her grandchildren, or they her. She was a force for good in her community.

Charles was a systems analyst in the Governor's Office in California. He had been decorated many times while serving in Vietnam. He went on to a law degree and then to serve his state, trying to stem the ever rising costs that have destroyed the financial integrity of California. His wife and two children lost him far too early and, believe me, they miss his fey sense of humor, his abiding care, and his courage.

Every day I live with the fact I may die before I am able to ensure the continuing care of a disabled son. My younger brother lives with the uncertainty his condition brings to his own family. Our mother smoked all of her life, thanks to Bernays manipulation. If she had known, if smoking had not been misrepresented to her and her generation, that is a choice she would not have made. We are not going to sue, but we will be heard. Smoking and profiting from false advertising is only one relatively minor issue. But consider what it cost our one family.

Lies and deception kill as they enrich the worst among us. Worse, they destroy our ability to see what is is true so that we can invest our lives in what will sustain us and bring joy to ourselves, our families and our larger communities. I miss my siblings every day, no matter how long it has been and will until the day I die.

This is just one family, one set of deaths. Multiply that at least a million times. My siblings were all good, decent people, people who loved their families and supported themselves honestly and transparently.

Bernays lived a profitable life at a cost to all of us that is is yet to be calculated. But the cost of corporate greed and government corruption that directly enables that greed must be understood, calculated, and an accountability exacted from those who profited. And he was only one man. Multiply that by the number of attorneys, politicians, and corporate greedy who view Bernays techniques and entirely justified.

Think about what corporate greed has cost you. Then go to Blight Christmas and tell your story, let those who harmed you know what they did. If we are to change the world we need to begin with our own truth. Know the truth. Be heard, and we can change the future for all of us.

Giving Love

2008-12-12T01:04:00.002-05:00

Christmas is coming and with the joy most of us experience the stress of not having finished our buying. This year most of us are also suffering through the pangs of not having enough money to buy the gifts that would we would normally give.

Across the country people are reexamining the choices they would have made and finding a wealth of possibilities that change their relationships with each other in unexpected ways. Instead of giving from the wallet they are giving from their hearts.

This trend made me smile, recalling to mind the gifts that have stayed with me over the years, many of them from my children. Small objects made by hand with the finger prints will visible; the plates from preschool with their artwork; the small things remind us of days past. The best gifts keeps giving. My daughter, Dawn, gave me a packet of coupons one year. Those memories still make me smile today. I should have Xeroxed them, looking back. I was tempted to keep them but Dawn insisted THEY BE USED, after all, she had worked hard thinking up the contents of each coupon. So I used them, every single one. My favorite was the coupon that promised her room would be cleaned, that once, without argument and to my entire satisfaction. Wow.

Dawn, now very much grown and married and firmly committed to saving the world through going green, went through some interesting times when she was entering her teens. The state of her room was an ongoing issue for the entire family. Our house cleaner eventually told me she was afraid to enter and I had to agree that she had reason.

Dawn's room was accessible only up a narrow staircase, over the garage. It had its own bathroom, with tub and separate shower. It was roomy and had a lovely view of the back yard where various interesting events took place over the years we lived there. The aging Walnut Trees nodded through long, sun warmed summers. When we moved in the room, very private and inaccessible, had a new and crisply clean light blue carpet on the floor. The walls were a creamy white. The bathroom sparkled. As time went on these things changed. At first I tried reminding her. Then I began sending her off on short trips and cleaning it myself. Dawn objected to my invasion of her 'private space.' My pleas did not avail. Nothing kept it fit for human habitation.

A pot pie disappeared there to be found six months later compressed into a flat, green patty in Dawn's bed. Dawn had searched all over the house, complaining someone had stolen it. The cat's viewed her room as a place to relieve themselves since they determined, correctly, no one would notice. I acquired bright yellow hazardous waste tape which I put up, a not so gentle hint. Dawn ignored it. She liked her room just as it was with a foot of waste on the floor and a bathroom that would make any reasonable being blanch. The smell could be intense.

As you can imagine, it was a point of conflict between us and also a cause for humor and horror from her siblings who generally had far more tidy habits.

That was why the gift she gave me that Christmas still makes me smile. The coupon was hand made with an edging of holly and berries. It came with others, one for breakfast in bed, another for any chore I chose. But that one was the best.

I do not recall how many garbage bags it took to clean her room when I finally used the coupon. She took care of it all her self on that occasion But the pile was monumental. Looking back over these many years, and knowing that now she is an impeccable house keeper for herself and her husband and their family of cats, still makes me smile. Dawn knew what would make me happy. She proved she was entirely competent to deliver. She was a woman of her word.

This kind of gift showed she knew what would make me happy. Receiving that small sheaf of coupons had surprised me, telling me I was visible as a person and not just as a mother. I do not recall any other present I received that year. But I remember the coupons and that gift links to another gift she did not know she was giving me. I used to have a lot of keys which lived on a copper ring heavy enough to be used as a minor weapon. Dawn once said that the sound of those keys jingling let her know she was safe, Mom was on her way.

Gifts can come consciously, as something we intend to give. They can also come straight from the heart to warm us long afterwards without our even knowing.

At this time in our Nation's history we are all reaching out for what lasts, sustains us, warms the heart and makes life worthwhile. We will forget most of the things we get this Christmas. But some gifts we will remember forever. The best gifts last a lifetime and never wear out, break, or lose their power to move us. When we use our knowledge of others to show them we really know them, see them, understand what we can do to bring them happiness, we are giving greenly, now and to last.

Today Dawn lives in El Cerrito and has a lovely website dedicated to her passion for growing locally called Garden2table. Growing her own food locally has become another form for giving green, connecting her to those around her. As we move from this year to 2009 growing and giving will become ever more central to our lives. As individuals, as members of families and communities, we need to see each other, care, and ensure no one is forgotten. The moments that nourish us spiritually build love, and that is always a good thing,

Ms. Pillsbury-Foster is the author of the book,“A Star for Christmas,” which warm-heartedly explores an enduring family tradition founded on her memories of James Dean. The book, published by Ship Stone Press, is available online at http://www.lulu.com/content/5029575 and is this year’s “must have” Christmas treasure.

Your Wishes Can Change the World

2008-11-26T15:45:00.003-05:00

This year, as we watch the world around us collapsing, we are learning that Christmas is not about money. Christmas is about loving each other, about gifts that have nothing to do with the green folding stuff, or even silver and gold.

Our money is melting down into worthless goo. Stores are closing; cameras are going up at intersections across the country. This morning I received a call from a friend in Florida who argued for twenty minutes at her bank where she has done business for twenty years. The problem? They wanted to photograph her eyes biometrically. She refused, but not many are as determined as she.

The things that really matter will endure. Gifts like compassion, empathy, humor, familial love and friendship, last a life time and cannot be devalued. This Christmas we need to hold on to those things.

Christmas is being family. It is coming together to create communities. It is being conscious of how our actions and lives touch through time.

For months, years, I have been writing about what was going to happen to our nation and to the people we love. Last year I predicted the end of the world as we know it. Every week I have hammered on the same subject and on what needs to be done so that we can change direction. I have been writing and thinking about the problems for what seems like a life time. What I write is generally politics, but this time I want you to see why I know that change is possible. I know what it is like to feel helpless and lost.

Christmas is loving each other as we are loved by One Who Loves Absolutely.

When you find the strength of love anything is possible. This past week I took a story I had originally written for my children and rewrote it for you. Is a story about a time when I was lost and desperate. Instead of giving up I found the Christmas that glows through the hard times, endures through hardships and seemingly insurmountable problems.

The Star for Christmas was my response to circumstances beyond my control in 1979. There is always strength to sustain us, if we reach beyond ourselves to That One Who Loves Absolutely. Today, we are all reaching. When we extend ourselves we grow spiritually, finding things more wonderful than we could possibly have imagined as long as we do not give up. One of the things we will find is each other.

In 1979 I experienced a time of terrible anguish but I still had small children who needed me, needed to feel the wonder of Christmas. I reached into my own past and found strength from the memories of someone who had taught me the importance of courage, of holding on to my dreams and wishes.

The Star for Christmas custom began that year, drawn from the memories of wishes I had shared with James Dean. In 2001 I began writing the book explaining the custom to my children soon after Thanksgiving Day. Ayn, my youngest daughter, had asked me a question as we sat around the table after dinner. It had been a perfect holiday filled with happy memories revisited and cooperative efforts over turkey and stuffing.

The year was sliding towards the upcoming holidays. We were remembering Christmas' past.

Ayn asked me one of those questions that you never anticipate being asked. That question lead to many insights and eventually to their book and then to this one. The question Ayn asked was about the star in which our family had traditionally placed our wishes for the year to come on Christmas Eve. “When and where did this custom begin?” Ayn asked. She assumed it to be an old New England custom. Although I told her this was not the case it occurred to me that I had not actually explained the custom's origin to my children. I did not share my pain of 1979 with them, feeling it would be inappropriate.

I promised to write the Star’s history for them.

Later, as I sat down to write, I revisited my thoughts that year the custom began. Seeking the Star’s origin became a quest into the dusty reaches of my mind and heart, then, via paper trails, to memories of people long gone. I had never revisited those events, simply sealing them off and moving on. Through this journey I found not just the Star but many more unasked questions. I also found answers to questions that I didn’t know needed asking.

My wishes of 1979 had been answered in ways I did not expect when I considered them. I had never understood the power of hope and the strength of my dreams until then. We need to look at the world, ourselves, and realize what really matters.

Our dreams and wishes can be transformational.

Let this Christmas become a time of renewal for all of us. Savor the love that extends your life into those around you. Bake cookies and let them melt in your mouth. Enjoy every bite. Then plan for a very different future than the one being planned for us. Your wishes can change the world.

A Star for Christmas benefits America Goes Home, a spiritual association dedicated to making tools available that you need to make your wishes reality. Go to Star for Christmas to read more and join our FaceBook group, Gifts From the Heart, to share your ideas for Christmas Gifting.

Growing Home

2008-11-21T00:21:00.002-05:00

Perhaps you are too young to remember when childhood was safe; children played outside from the time they were small. We went trick or treating without thinking someone might hurt us. Doors were open in our neighborhoods; we accepted and trusted each other.

Children learned most of what mattered at home and in their neighborhoods before ever starting school and old people were sources of amazing stories.

I learned about the Pony Express from Mr. Black across the street who had, at 16, been a Pony Express Rider. His eyes lit up when he talked about it. At age 90 Mr. Black was the one in the family who fixed the antenna on the roof. I climbed up with him and no one thought I was in danger, but a help.

Along the street I visited with neighbors who were retired and had a lot to tell me about a world then gone. I experienced it through them. I learned I was capable and could think for myself.

I am old enough to remember staying up late during the summer to play with friends, climbing fences, and organizing complicated games that could go on for days. I remember helping with chores, feeling the pride of knowing my work mattered.

I am old enough to remember when we were not afraid to experiment with the chemicals from our chemistry sets. Our parents asked about what we had learned, and we learned a lot. It was painless. We were exploring the world around us with minimal oversight.

Kids knew chemistry and physics and electronics by doing.

My first job was ironing handkerchiefs and shirts for my married sister. I was six at the time and counted every penny. My first business was a lemonade stand that sold lemonade made from the lemons produced by our own tree. I also sold candy bars I bought, three for a dime, at the Sav-on store where you got that price break. I walked there alone and earned hundreds of dollars in this way.

I grew up in Los Angeles. It was a wonderful world.

That was the world I wanted for my kids and I was disappointed. By the 70s and 80s the world was changing for parents and children. It was not perfect when I was growing up, but in those days we still trusted each other; the frightening world was still 'out there.'

We grew up hearing at school about The Bomb, we practiced hiding under our desks from the unthinkable. But that was a small thing; it was not all around us but something we could forget about most of the time.

As I was raising my children I wanted them to have the neighborhood I had known and it had vanished.

In the world where I had grown up government had not yet oozed into our lives so much that there was nothing we could so without asking. Ronald Reagan had not yet converted California to the model for the federalized State. The logic of control was beginning to constrict the lives we lived in community but we did not yet see where that logic would take us.

Today the stock market continues to plunge; bailouts pay our hard-earned money into hands that spend it for lavish weekend binges. The retirement funds guaranteed by lifetimes of work are canceled in the blink of an eye. Homeland Security buys multi-million dollar finger print machines for small local police departments. Local law enforcement are told they make the law and that the Constitution is a myth meaning nothing. Those who disagree are 'domestic terrorists,' 'Constitutional Nuts.'

They, not us, are demented.

In school, children once studied the Constitution. In the 7^th Grade all students received a copy of the Declaration of Independence. 8^th Graders could pass tests on the Constitution that today flummox US Senators. Our family read the Declaration aloud on the 4^th of July. We understood what the 4^th of July meant.

When I was growing up the PTA raised the money needed for our school's special projects. Parents were in charge. No one looked to government, parents handled it.

Despite what you hear most Americans are still doing just that. In most towns and cities today, it is still community volunteers who raise the money and get it done. Homeless shelters, hospice care, help at the hospital, first aid training, search and rescue, these and more are carried out by volunteers.

From before the time of the Revolution communities handled their own problems. Fraternal orders came into being; women's clubs took on jobs, organizing either locally or nationally to ensure that their local community needs were met. Libraries were started, stocked with books; children were educated. Orphans were adopted by families. In 1853 The Children's Aid Society undertook to meet the need of children abandoned on city streets. People took action, using the tools available and raising the money.

If a tool is not working you should notice that and get the right tool. Government is a tool. It is not working.

Every county in the United States is bankrupt along with the states and, of course, the Federal government. Having spent us into debt those same people are looking at us as a source of more money to continue their life styles and fund their retirement; it is not them, they think, who will accept less pay, be laid off, lose those 'golden years.' Having never stayed within a budget they do not understand the concept.

There was a time when families sat down together to talk when Dad lost his job. Deferring purchases of clothing, eating more cheaply, canceling vacations, growing their own food; they did what was needed. Parents and children, aunts, uncles, cousins and others in the community pitched in where necessary, knowing they, in their turn, might need help. We can do the same.

“What do we really need?” is the first question to ask ourselves. The second is, “how do we provide those essentials for less money?”

When those employed by government give you their priorities you will understand why government does not work.

Most of the good things that happen in our lives take place in exactly the same way they did before the Revolution. People locally see the need and come together to ensure those needs are met. Look at your own community if you doubt this.

Get active in your community and relearn the lessons once common to a people who governed themselves.

Are Your Ready for Peace, Prosperity, and Good Will?

2008-11-08T21:25:00.002-05:00

You CAN have it all.

My friend was choked with tears. Obama had won, she told me through tones filled with joy. It would be a new world, one where our hopes would give birth to renewed prosperity, peace, and good will. I just listened. Such outpourings of happiness are all too rare in life. In six months she will be filled with doubt and looking for excuses but at least she can enjoy these weeks.

Call me a cynic but no candidate elected to president, not even Ron Paul, could stem the meltdown that is destroying the world as we knew it.

America has now passed through the old and much misunderstood of ritual of the presidential election. Candidates offered themselves; the media did its best to ensure that the ones anointed by their employers received the nod from the two major parties; the voting machines where lined up; Rove decided that this time the spread was too great for even the last flurry of 'pulling even' announcements to work, even with the attractions of an attractive woman in the second slot, and the agony of the ritual drew record numbers to the polls.

Rituals build cultural cohesion, affirming beliefs be they ever so easily debunked. The world around us continues to melt; in California the governor quietly defunded programs that ensure the survival of the elderly and handicapped. California is bankrupted, asking for aid from a Federal government that is, itself so far underwater the printing presses should be using toilet paper as they clatter through the night.

Slightly more than one year ago, September of 2007, I wrote the following here in an article titled, “Blackstone, China, and the end of the world as we know it: Get Ready” The article began with, “America is now poised for an event that has happened elsewhere in the world but never, for living Americans, here on US soil. That event is a hyperinflation that will destroy our savings, milking Americans dry. Those who planned this event have been in charge of the monetary system, and in charge of every branch of government. While occupying those positions of trust they have profited mightily. Now, many of those who believed their were 'insiders' will face a reality that confronts them with the fact that they, too, have been had. Their employers have used them to immunize themselves as they prepared to move off shore, convert their stolen assets into Swiss Francs, hard money, and commodities, hunkering down to ride it out as they slurp champagne.”

Anyone ready for a pheasant hunting party with some friendly bankers? The article also included the insights from a man who had experienced the hyperinflation that took place in Russia in the 80s. It was bad, worse than Americans can possibly understand. The Great Depression was nothing in comparison and that event, as noted both my myself and Mr. Stan Mikhalsky, could pale beside the full global meltdown that has only begun.

The article ended with advice that included the following:

“Pay off your mortgage if possible or find the means for at least lowering your exposure by moving to a fixed interest rate loan.” Now I advise you to take steps to cancel your mortgage; nearly all mortgage documents contain fraudulent terms and can be canceled if you understand the law. Canceling your mortgage keeps money out of the hands of foreign banks and with Americans.

“Get ready to look for the investment opportunities that will soon be available to ordinary people for lower cost alternatives in energy, transportation, and other off-grid technologies.” This is still true. Do it.

“Can you grow your own food? Look into starting a coop, bringing in locally grown farm food. Join with those around you; this will build a community of cooperation that will bring both security and provide the means for local control.” The resources for doing this on smaller spaces are now greatly increased. Liquid Probiotics is one of several products that can remineralize your soil and so provide food for you and your family that will actually improve your health.

“Growing and eating locally will reduce your exposure to reliance on food that is shipped in from off shore, perhaps bringing in with it diseases or toxic substances, and also mean more security for you and those around you in a steady, clean, supply of food.” Truer every day and you need to take action.

“Make sure you know what your children are learning. Schools now routinely turn out students who are functionally illiterate, suited only for the kinds of jobs they envision for our posterity. Dumbing down was part of their agenda.” How many children today can build their own radios? Our children need to know practical physics. How many can pass the routines tests on the Constitution given to kids in the early part of the 20^th Century?

“The best indicator for future success in life is how early you have your first job, not how many degrees you accumulate; education has become about symbols over substance. Tesla had no degrees and never attended college. This generation of children will be finding out what it means to work the hard way. Nothing about the policies that have extended childhood far into the twenties have been about protecting children; those policies are about control.”

“At the same time you need to come together with others in your community to take back control. Use persuasion; true community is about including and caring for everyone voluntarily.” Coming together in community is essential of those now in danger are to survive. America began as people governing themselves from their own communities. It worked because the principles are true. People are careful with their own hard earned cash. People will do the right thing when they control their own time and wealth and are free to choose.

“Look at your local police. You pay their salaries. If they are focused on a militarized agenda, converting you and other citizens into criminalized targets, ignoring your Constitutional rights under the coloration of 'gang control' you need to take action. The Constitution is for all of us.” More obviously true every single day.

“We need to take back control of our courts. Understand the bait and switch that took place and study the common law that is America's real heritage for enacting justice and lowering the transaction costs of conflict and crime. A crime has not taken place if there is no victim.” Study the Constitution and the Common Law and teach your children.

“The Sheriff in your County is the highest Constitutional law enforcement authority. If you can't trust him, remove him and elect someone who will be willing and able to tell the Feds to stay out. Expect them to move rapidly on their agenda to assert control over regional areas and state governments. Be ready to react accordingly.” Now, you need to be ready.

“Lastly, start thinking about the many ways that same Corporate Elite has conned us, manipulated us continue their predatory behavior. Through the stock market, through the mortgage industry grab, through the continued rackets they run in every place they touch our lives.

Count up what they have cost you, when, where and who. Make a record. Gather together all of those accounts that show how they have stolen from you, done all within their power to suck you dry. .

There will be an accounting and you need to be ready.”

Nothing that happens from DC can help you. Visit America Goes Home, consider your options, and get active. America can go home to all of the things that matter.

You Can Go Home Again

2008-10-31T20:26:00.002-04:00

Taking Back America

Albert Einstein said, “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

They boiled us too fast over the last fifteen or so years. Now, most Americans realize that despite the rhetoric they are not free; a rhetoric that sold growing restrictions on us as freedom has stopped working. Us frogs, paddling around in the pot, the water growing ever hotter, figured it out.

Even mainstream Americans have finally noticed. Gun sales are up sharply.

A vocal minority has been working diligently over the last many years, but none of their efforts over that time have even slowed down the growth of government and the erosion of our rights. And despite the insight above, provided by that very intelligent individual, we are doing the same thing repeatedly and hoping that this time it will work. It is time to change our approach.

Freedom is natural. Government is not.

Nothing about human culture is natural. Let me repeat that. Nothing about human culture is natural. Natural behavior and natural attributes are common to all Homo Sapiens. List the number of identical cultural tools we all share. None.

Ideas are the basis of all human tools. That is true for a cutting blade and true for a monetary system. It is true of gathering and grinding grain; of using fiber to weave cloth; it is true of the Constitution and the Common Law. They began as ideas. What worked was improved. What did not work was discarded.

Remember that because we will go over it again. Keep what works. Dump what does not work.

The idea of money is less than 4,000 years old. The cutting blade is naturally far older.

Both were intended to improve the human condition, ensuring that babies prospered and that the tribe continued.

Only recently have we been wealthy enough to continue to use really bad ideas over and over again. Our monetary system does not work. Tremendous effort and rhetoric has been expended to persuade us it is indispensable.

Accepting rhetoric in the place of reality is only possible when you do not have the immediate test of trying the blade and finding it does not cut the haunch. Somewhere along the way we lost sight of what the words mean.

This is a very important word. Freedom

Freedom is not granted by government, not our government, not any government. Freedom, noticed by Thomas Jefferson, is the natural state to which we are born and as God made us.

Our Founders took their faith seriously. But they were already engaged in war when the Declaration was written in 1776, The Founders immediate attention was on the kind of government they would create and the principles on which it would stand. For them there was no contradiction.

Individual rights. Our natural and spiritual sovereignty. These are the foundation on which America as a nation stands. If you are a Christian you know that Christ called us into Community with Him; By our own individual acceptance and His Gift we become One through Him. To accomplish that we must become a community here in America. Real community is founded on our individual freedom, our right to decide for ourselves.

Freedom is not one thing, it is everything, touching us and beckoning us from all parts of our being. .

Freedom is the precondition to your survival. If you cannot act in your own interests you could well starve or become the dinner of some member of another species. Freedom is your right to run from the bear, gather berries, protect your home, and decide for yourself how you will spend your life.

The blandishments of rhetoric sold us on ideas that logically lead to serfdoms in many forms. Americans rejected the enticements of monarchs and their ilk, embracing their natural condition of freedom.

The Declaration of Independence mentioned no social contracts; I, for one, never signed one and would view with suspicion anyone who tried to foist one on me. Government was and is a tool. The Founders saw it as such or would not have made this our Mission Statement.

“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

I repeat: Government is a tool. This government works as well as keeping a bear in the house to eat your garbage. When it gets big enough it eats you, too.

The last two centuries have provided data we need to consider.

This government has proven conclusively that it is not a good tool for very many things.

The Revolution worked because the people who carried it out were used to governing themselves from small townships and there was a critical percentage of the population who agreed on the Mission Statement for America. They accomplished their goals through the Committees of Correspondence. They attended town meetings, discussed what needed to be done and made sure it happened. They had grown up seeing adults handle their own conflicts using Common Law. They saw and participated in Common Law Juries, passing judgment on both fact and law. They protected themselves using their own local cooperatives called Committees of Safety. They kept government small, local and directly under the control of the people. They were a people who governed themselves.

What works is direct government by the people at the local level for those few things we have government handle.

The original Constitution and the Bill of Rights were written to limit what Federal government could do, not us. Our Founders clearly felt that the Federal government they were building needed to be limited, not the rights of the people. They were familiar with people who successfully handled their own, local governments.

Therefore:

To establish a people who govern themselves you need a people who first free themselves.

If you want an oak tree start with an acorn; you will never persuade an acorn to become a orchid plant. If you want to be free then ignore the distractions of federal politics. Go home to your community; take control of the government there and take back your freedom.

Take Back Your County – The Agenda

Understand the Common Law
Ensure that your Sheriff will uphold the Constitution
Take Judges and other Officials out of Office who fail to uphold the Constitution
Place Elections in the hands of the people
Ensure that your local government carries out only those jobs you, the people, determine it should undertake.

And take back the commerce of your county as well.

1. Cutting Off GridCorps

Mortgages – Get out of them and keep your home

Credit Cards – Dump the debt.

2. Local Barter/Trade System – Try Fourth Corner Exchange

3. Localizing Commerce

4. Energy Alternatives

5. Food Production

6. Health Alternatives

7. Wireless local networks

8. Alternative comm systems

9. Alternative Media

The County is the smallest Constitutional unit. One of the systemic glitches overlooked by our Founders was the size of the county. As we take them back we need to make the size smaller so that the people can keep an eye on what is happening. Steps 1. and 2. can be carried out simultaneously.

Remember what Einstein said. He was a very intelligent man. Remember another Man who died for us 2,000 years ago. He also wanted you to realize the freedom that is His Father's gift to you.

Remember, and go home to the real America.

The Exit from Fascism Is Open

2008-10-24T19:46:00.002-04:00

When you lose your illusions you see yourself and your own actions clearly. We need to see our present circumstances as they are and not as we want them to be. We have an opportunity to take back our country but that window of opportunity will close rapidly. We need to return to the form of government experienced by our Founders. We need to stop talking about freedom and set tasks that return control of government to the people at the most local level and change our economy from one that has us hemorrhaging jobs and money to one that keeps money local.
Each of these goals takes us to freedom; not just words but the reality. And despite appearances to the contrary, the establishment of a real freedom has never been more possible.
To accomplish that we need to build coalition from all ideological viewpoints. Without coalition we will not be able to come together as a people who govern themselves at that most local, community level. It is possible; we need to lose our illusions. The government we see today does not work and it cannot be fixed. All hierarchal systems are subject to the same problems.
When people are remote from you they seem alien and therefore less human. This was true with all people. Those they do not know they are willing to abuse and manipulate.

All movements experience the same problems, left to right, Patriot, Progressive, Libertarian, Liberal, Ron Paul, Environmental, Conservative, Free Market, Election Reform, Peace, have been created from frustrations with the present systemic conversion and corruption. All of us have spent to much time spinning our wheels, engaging in action that did not advance the agenda for freedom or justice. We need to change that, starting now.

A people who govern themselves must first free themselves, starting with their prejudices, misconceptions and illusions. We cannot free America; each of us must do that for ourselves, but we can give Americans the tools to do so.
Only by coming together and seeing the truth can we bring America back from the precipice. The community is our exit from fascism.
Over the last more than 200 years our form of government has been converted from a people who governed, handled it themselves at the most local level, to a serial monarchy that rules from the Federal level as subcontractors and partners to that small clutch of European bankers.
The present states, counties, cities and towns, have nearly all incorporated. This allowed those European Bankers and their domestic partners to limit liability, turn money entrusted for the common good into profits for a small cadre, now including judges, the local comptroller, and others. They had a real growth industry on their hands and they were willing to share the stolen property in small increments. In this way control was solidified.
The use of disinformation and ideology to divide Americans began very early, longer ago than the life of any living among us today. Terms such as Communist, Socialist, Radical, Constitutionalist, Right Wing Nut, Environmental Crazy and so forth all came into use as ideas used to divide and control us. When they started buying up the media it was the final nail in the coffin for freedom existing in a hierarchal world.
Those who laid out that strategy to ensure their own profits intended to destroy the foundations on which our freedoms rested. They wanted us to forget what freedom really means. They failed but they came close. Our freedom rests on cultural roots, values and practices and in our very nature.

We have focused on politics and ignored the local and cooperative institutions that made America the most powerful force for prosperity and security that has ever existed. It wasn't hidden from us, we just overlooked it, taking it for granted. Americans had problems in the 1800s and they solved those problems using innovation, initiative, sweat equity, and their own hard earned money.
The often repeated dichotomy between “Private Sector and for profit” and “Government Solutions” ignores neatly what actually works best. When you see it you understand why and how a free people could and did govern themselves. They cooperated.
Many call it the Civil Sector. It is made up of churches, fraternal orders, civic organizations, charities and other groups, who solve the problems that occur in any community. Those are the people who see problems and take action. They are staffed and run by the people who raise the money and do the work. Staying local works. That is the core of the solution.
The Civil Sector generated enormous profits from what they did and do - but those profits are not calculated in money but in social benefits, stability, and security enjoyed by all of us.
Such organizations came in all flavors for every taste and need, you can take your pick. Americans did just that.
The Elks started the first member support program when they were still 12 out of work actors in New York in 1867. One of their number died. Looking at each other the remaining 11 ponied up the funds to bury their dead friend and support his wife and children. In just three decades they had over a thousand chapters.
The Grange, known also as the Order of Patrons of Husbandry, started on December 4, 1867 in Washington D. C. Its major objectives were to support stewardship of America's natural resources; promotion of world-wide free trade; a combination of local and federal support for rural education, medical, communications, and road systems; non-partisan political participation; assurance of safe and properly labeled food products; organization of cooperatives and other economic services to support rural Americans; and elimination of direct government farm programs so as to assure a competitive and efficient farm system. It is the first organization that allowed women to hold any office.
Those are two examples. There are thousands.
Today our civic sector is struggling because all such organizations have been sidelined by government in ways overt and subtle. But they remain with us and they and new ones can be used or rebuilt.
We have the tools for rebuilding. Community. Cooperate. Constitution. Common Law. The three Cs.
Instead of using the word, “govern” think “how do we handle it ourselves?” The Civic Sector can help solve the problems that we will encounter at the local level. It was the tool Americans built to solve their own problems. It is still there, waiting. Go home to your community. Look at what is there and how many solutions others have built for us.

The institutions we pay for, courts, government, and so forth are presently under the control of a small group. We are locked into an economic system enforced by corporations. We can break out. We can enact change that affirms our inherent nature for individual freedom. The solutions are already there because Americans innovate like no one else on the face of the Earth. We do not need to politically persuade, just show others why those solutions will make their lives better. When that becomes obvious the opposition will be trampled into goo.
We can go home to the real America. America Goes Home is coming. Until then find the exits at The Melinda Show on The Micro Effect.

Bailing out the Banks, James Dean, and Freedom.

2008-10-01T12:33:00.002-04:00

“In real life, James Dean was much like the character he played in Rebela psychologically troubled young man raised in a broken family. Known mostly for his attitude, Dean's life was marked by pain. Sullen and painfully vulnerable, he was tormented by an offensive world and his own internal desolation. I try so hard, Dean once wrote to a friend, to make people reject me. Why?

The above quote came from yet another article published this time by John W. Whitehead at Rutherford Institute. Again it mischaracterizes a man 53 years dead of whom the author knew nothing except self-serving comments from Dean acquaintances collated with his own projections.

What we think we know is too often mythology. This is true about individuals and it is true about our institutions.

John W. Whitehead claims to 'know' about James B. Dean from books written by individuals who in fact knew little about him. Jimmy died young. He lived his life from the time he returned to Los Angeles struggling to establish himself as an actor against the wishes of most of his friends and family.

Those struggling to make their way in the entertainment industry do what is necessary to succeed. Such individuals range from those without a serious thought in their heads to individuals, like James Dean, who were serious thinkers. Serious thinkers are normally reluctant to express ideas that mark them out as marching to the beat of a different drummer in Hollywood.

During his life time James Dean was not famous. At the moment he died only one of his three movies had been released. That was East of Eden; Rebel Without A Cause was not yet in the theaters. Giant was yet to be finished.

When he died no one had yet considered the tiny body of work Dean left behind as a potential legacy. No one expected him to die. But today James Dean's movies represent the only tangible statement of his skill and those movies in themselves have proved to be a monumental commentary. The three films illustrate ability and mastery that plumbs depths and exhibits an intelligence unusual in an actor only 24 years of age. The roles he created in those movies expand to dominate the screen against far more experienced actors. The intelligent portion of Hollywood understood that, but as with all professions only a few could see what was so clearly before their eyes. They felt, without understanding, his power, never able to comprehend its source. Most people who are fascinated by the magnetic appeal Dean was able to project ascribe that appeal to those causes that more define themselves than they do James Dean.

These are facts. The brilliance of Jimmy's performances in these three movies were a testament to a well-honed and practiced mastery of his craft. The characters portrayed are not Jimmy.

It is easy for strangers to ooze opinion about someone when that person has been six feet under for more than half a century. His family was reticent and had never really understood him. Dying when he was 24 years old, he could never speak for himself; but those movies burn with the intelligence and hard work James Dean brought to every facet of his life. Many young actors are the product of the need in Hollywood for fresh meat. They last only a season, until the next meat comes down the sidewalk. Not so with James Dean.

John W. Whitehead never knew Jimmy. He expresses opinions based on mythology, a common failing to people who rely more on books and opinion than on actual experience. Since much of American culture comes from the same doubtful process this is, perhaps, understandable. But allowing ourselves to see only the surface of things is costing us now. Today we are living with a bizarre collage of institutions that were either converted from their original purpose or made up out of whole cloth for purposes never publicly admitted. Because we are creatures of habit who value security, a survival strategy longer than human memory, we tolerate much. As Thomas Jefferson said, “mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”

Along with too much tolerance for forms we fail to discern the wizard behind the curtain, the truth garbed in illusions.

The Federal Reserve, the banks on the corner, the courts on which we depend for justice; All of these are very different than they appear on the surface. When Whitehead looks at James Dean he sees a petulant, angst-ridden boy caught in a morass of ideas not of his making or understanding. But the real Jimmy was an intellectual who delighted in ideas and understood their function in creating our world far better than does Whitehead. Jimmy would have seen behind the curtain to the Wizard; he would have known that the Emperor had no clothes.

James Dean was a man who thought deeply, intensely, and understood the power of ideas. He tested ideas for truth using a finely honed discernment that is rare in any individual. Rutherford positions himself as a man dedicated to the ideas of freedom. But Jimmy understood the inner reality that transforms us, using freedom to grow spiritually.

I know this for a fact because Jimmy discussed those ideas with me and lived by his own rules. Jimmy was free and he understood what freedom means in every sense.

I saw Jimmy when he visited us, usually at lunch time, from the time I was three until that last week in 1955. Jimmy came, I am sure, at least partly in hopes of a sandwich at first. Then, he was a starving student and want-to-be actor. His tastes in food were eclectic but he always helped clean up. He was one of the few people in the world who could dry the dishes in a way that satisfied my mother.

Jimmy's mother and my own mother had known each other; were cousins, according to Jimmy.

Every visit Jimmy made involved talking about ideas, not just philosophy, but about how the world worked. From Jimmy I learned the whys for such things as photosynthesis, “Trees breathe. They breathe in light and breathe out life,” he told me when I was four. Jimmy was always thinking, taking ideas apart and then reassembling them, in ways that made them new.

On that last visit Jimmy said this to me about freedom, something that, presumably, Mr. Whitehead understands himself.

We were sitting in the back yard watching butterflies. My little brother had exercised his own freedom by wandering off with his new lasso after our cat, Tiger Lady. Tiger had retreated slowly, keeping an eye on him. Jimmy and I watched. At age three Stephen's aim was not very good. My new lasso was sitting on my lap. Jimmy had brought them with him and shown us how to spin.

Later, I would continue to practice spinning. Jimmy had just finished telling me about the courage and perseverance of Howard Roark, the character from the Fountainhead by Ayn Rand. At age 6 I had yet to hear of Rand. Looking me right in the eye he said this, “Your freedom is not one thing. It is everything. Freedom is your life, how you spend it. As you grow it will become all the things you dream, wish and work for. Those things,” he said, “will be the record you take to God of how you spent the life He gave you. Freedom is God's gift to you.” Freedom is different for each of us, in each case unique. Freedom knows only the limits you, yourself, accept.

James Dean was no hormone-driven Hollywood wind up doll. He was insightful, intellectually alive, and very aware of the kind of people and motives that confronted him in the reality of Hollywood, 1955. To be successful in Hollywood you had to play the games Hollywood expected. Jimmy understood people; he understood their limitations and their prejudices. He had learned to project what was expected of him.

The Hollywood perception of James Dean is colored by the timing of when he died and by the limited access he allowed to those whose approval he needed to succeed in the career he was passionately pursuing. If he had died three years later he would have had time to let Hollywood know who he really was; if he had died ten years later he would have changed Hollywood. But that is not what happened.

There was only one James Dean. How much of him you saw depended on how much it was safe for him to show.

Jimmy had no obligation to share what was private and assuming you know about others can lead you astray. Jimmy, dead, remains who he was. The projections that made him an icon are irrelevant to that truth.

But how we see people does matter.

The truth about the world around us, about the people we have placed in positions of trust, the institutions they run, their motives, and their work, is today at the source of the melt down we face. Large, centralized organizations do not work; they break down for simple, human reasons.

Humans work best in small communities where they can assess those they choose to trust. The reason America worked in the time of the colonies through the Revolution was their communities were small and operated on the idea of cooperation, not profit. The system today has removed the ability for us to know each other through personal contact. The Federalization of government, carried out in contradiction of the Constitution, removed the check on greed and deceit that has mangled our history.

Today we confront the immediate need to see people and institutions for what they are and enact change. As long as we iconize people, removing the warts, we cannot know who to trust. As long as we persist in a form of government that is diametrically opposed to that envisioned by our Founders we will be vulnerable.

Systemic deceit promote a reliance on mythology as fact that is destroying us.

Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Delano Roosevelt were very different from the myths they have become. Icons do not reflect truth but projection and spin. Both Lincoln and Roosevelt are examples of that process. Each promoted a centralized state that was useful to those who today are asking to be bailed out. The myths on which the Roosevelt and Lincoln reputations were constructed employed fictions that promoted a continuing agenda of Federal power and centralized control. They were not what we have been taught to see.

We need the simple truth and a return to what works.

At the beginning of this week a group of wealthy bankers whose predecessors set into motion the largest scam in the history of the world, came to the American people demanding their debts be underwritten by the same people they have been defrauding for generations. Instead of being jeered and stoned, as they deserve, the Bush Administration is doing all possible to accommodate them. This administration will continue to do that, buoyed up by the mythology that the Federal Reserve Bank and its partners are Constitutional entities working lawfully to ensure that the need of the American people for a means of exchange is fulfilled. The facts are nakedly contrary; the FED is private. Its business is emptying the pockets of Americans, converting their hard earned wealth into gold and other real property intended to profit only that same, small group of bankers and stock holders. That is the crème de la crème of Bush's 'core constituency.'

The mortgage meltdown was carefully orchestrated as just one means by which the theft of American wealth could take place. The price of homes rose; fractional reserve banking ensured that every hopeful home owner would pay many times what that home was worth many times over. First, Americans paid through their mortgage payments, each adding to the mindbogglingly enormous flood of real wealth flowing into those same banking pockets. In so doing they traded earned dollars, real money, for more fiat currency guaranteed only by their own credit. No one ultimately profits but the bankers.

By real law the lack of any exchange of values makes the whole invalid, unenforceable. The credit that backs the faux funds, resting on values never issued by those same bankers, is the credit of the homeowner, who then, to add even more insult to injury, is forced to pay taxes on a home and income whose value has been inflated through that process.

The bankers whine for Congress to keep the illusion going. Congress, nervous now, hesitates. The outcome will not be as anyone expects.

That is all it is, illusion, a mythology with no more real substance than the movies that have romanticized the world of finance from one rapacious gold merchant ripping off unwary customers in Frankfort, Germany in 1770 to one of monumental myth.

Americans are close to losing nearly everything they accepted as secured to them. The fact that many of us knew they were dancing on the thinest of edges does not change the shock waves now reverberating through all of our lives. Americans believed that banks could be trusted, that there would be food on the table, that their homes belonged to them and that there was hope for tomorrow.

Losing the myth, the illusion, is the first step towards real freedom and real hope. Be glad this is happening. There is no freedom until you have the truth. When you have the truth anything is possible, even justice.

James Dean understood the need for truth. He was an individual who saw clearly and who had values that were defined and honed through years of thought. If he had lived Jimmy would have transformed the entertainment industry; injecting the vibrant ideas and values that moved him originally into acting. Because that industry supplies the memes and cultural content of so much that we, as Americans, live and breathe every day of our lives, and because the world watches us as the edge of cultural change, it is fair to say that James Dean would have changed the world. That was his intention and his aim; to impact the world through the craft of acting.

He understood how it could be used. He intended to use it.

James Dean had confronted such issues and the life of the spirit, mortality, the profound differences between people, and the ideas that drive the world when he was very young. He began life as a Mama's boy, enveloped in maternal attention. He shared with his mother a world of make-believe that helped him understand the difference between reality and fantasy. They also talked about ideas. That world was shattered when his mother died and he was relocated to Indiana to live with his aunt and uncle, two people who were decent, kind, hard-working and very different. He was a sensitive child. He did not forget his mother, he continued to remember and to grieve, creating an intense internal life of ideas. Those ideas eventually took him into acting. People who are highly intelligent and creative make their own rules.

You know how little his family understood him by where they chose to bury him. If Jimmy could have chosen he would have been next to his mother, never his father.

Jimmy knew what Hollywood wanted him to be so that is what they saw. He was much more.

James Dean loved thinking about the processes of life. He loved books and the ideas that roil in the mind when that mind weaves the possibilities of what is now with what could be. He pounced on new facts with delight.

The first time I met Jimmy it was over Beanie sandwiches in the kitchen of the family home in West Los Angeles. He was a student; I was a kid. He was the kind of person who listened and responded thoughtfully; he was able to connect and engage in a real discourse, not talking down to me but exploring the ideas that found their way into our conversation, introducing ideas as part of the text. With Jimmy if there was conversation there were ideas to discuss.

It was on that very first visit that Jimmy and I discussed mortality. It was the first time anyone had mentioned the subject to me. I had been watching a tortoise dissolve back into dust, so to speak. I had discovered the tortoise already very dead behind a bush in the back yard of the house. I was fascinated by the process of its dissolution as ants carried it away and it shrank into itself. I had not told anyone else because I knew how they would react. The tortoise would evoke shrieks and Mom would remove it.

Given a chance I hauled Jimmy back to look, too. Jimmy was delighted. He proceeded to tell me about observing the same process with a cow on a farm back home. Then, squatting down for a closer look, he told me that the essence of the tortoise, the thing that had make it move and live, was gone. The same happened to all that lived, he told me.

If you only know the character Jimmy portrayed in his three movies you don't know Jimmy, only his undoubted ability to craft a performance. It is your loss, not mine.

But if you make the mistake of believing mythology over reality, about Jimmy or about banking, your brain still needs training wheels.

Protect yourself, your family and America

2008-09-29T19:36:00.001-04:00

When your drug-sodden brother starts taking out loans and expects you to pay your remedy is to run a notice in the paper under LEGAL NOTICES. We have all seen them.

The time has come for all of us to do just that. Do it today. Protect yourself and let Congress, and the world, know we are not going to stand for it. Get on record.

LEGAL NOTICES

We, the Undersigned, hereby notice all that we are not responsible for the debts assumed by Congress by bailing out the banks.

(Your name here)

Click through from there to the Iconoclast Page!

A copy of your ad will go to every head of state and millions of others will read it and understand that Americans are fighting back. They will know that we, the people, still have a voice, still speak for America. The Iconoclast is ready. The world will hear us.

About the Iconoclast:

The Iconoclast is the local paper for Crawford, Texas, Bush's home town. In 2004 the editorial issued by the Iconoclast forged the format of the debates because their editorial, endorsing Kerry over Bush, was read by millions. They nailed the real issues, moving that campaign from irrelevancies to substance.

The NeoCon establishment immediately targeted them and nearly destroyed the small paper. We all know the NeoCons do not tolerate media who speak the truth. Those who work at the Iconoclast were physically threatened and harassed; they nearly went under. Their editor, W. Leon Smith persisted. He is a descendant of Erastus Smith, the man who relieved the survivors of the Alamo and first cried, “Remember the Alamo,' during the battle that made Texas a free nation. Smith never gives up. Freedom is in his blood.

Today the Iconoclast is a major source of news and whistle blower stories to the world. Whistle blowers know they can trust the Iconoclast to protect their anonymity; through this small paper the world hears the truth. Protect yourself, speak your mind, and unite Americans.

Go on record now, before the vote.

More here on what people are saying.

NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY DEBTS BUT MY OWN

2008-09-24T22:33:00.006-04:00

Time for Legal Notice to be served.

When you have someone in your life who has been totally, or even criminally, irresponsible, the usual practice is to write up a small ad and insert it in your paper informing everyone you cannot inform directly that you are not responsible for their debts. It is legally binding. This is your opportunity to let them know you are not having it, for yourself or for your children.

The US government, formally known as the Municipal Corporation of the District of Columbia, has decided to indenture our great-great grandchildren with a debt paid into the coffers of their friends and associates, banks in Europe that have been stealing us blind for generations already. The wrongness of it is so palpable that Congress was inundated with a rage of missives, calls and emails.

The outrage and frustration being felt by nearly all non-comatose Americans is unmeasurable.

The letters being written range from mild to vitriolic. One example said,

“It is unreasonable to vote for the financial services bail out. The alleged crisis has been in an ever accelerated burn for more than a year yet only now do we have an emergency? Please reject nationalizing institutional losses and the continued privatization of profits. I think a better use of our currency would be to provide immediate foreclosure protection and to allow the banks, finance firms and investment bankers, to utterly fail. What are we saving with this bail out anyway? Vote against it.”

Another American, the mother of three, wrote this:

“Dear Congressman XXXXXX

I was watching you do some questioning today regarding the banking MESS. You seem to be very intelligent in your questioning; however, it looks to be an answer of song and dance.

Here is my plan:

Cause of the mess: Banking ripping off homeowners with inflated rates, arms, etc. in addition forced placed insurance policies included in escrows and financed back into loans that ho one is referring to. In addition the taxes all across the country, inflated county taxes, and counties riding off these funds, but escrowed and financed into mortgages. Everything blown up.

Solution Part 1.

Give a boost to the homeowners, have applications sent into a regulatory agency that will use the billions Wall Street is asking for and save all of our homes (with set guidelines), i.e. Months behind in payments, why etc. limits on amounts and negotiate with mortgage firms just like the modification teams that are charging people 3 K or more. Save the people by extending this service to them, thereby the money saved can be well spent in other ways. Then, in this way, the homeowner will use additional funds to boost the banks and business naturally.

Gasoline is killing us all. Small business like mine for example, is dying. I had to layoff everyone in anticipation 1.5 years ago of the high prices. My debt is not being forgiven. Let it go to small business through the S BA and lift regulatory requirements so a business can walk in and apply for a loan. We are struggling to keep our heads above water. You are pushing us under.

The banks have gotten everyone into this mess. CEO's have been raping companies with large salaries, let them fall. Investors knew the risk going into Wall Street. They accepted the risk, let them absorb it now.

The counties will expenditures on silly items, for example 3 men to dig one hole and two to supervise. Fire them. Let them get honest jobs. Stop squandering our money.

Why should I or my children pay taxes to subsidize corporations with no more sense of thrift than kindergärtners?

How much did the CEO of Goldman make before leaving his company? No one is going to forgive my business like that.

Will the government send me a healthy dividend check when these companies start showing a profit again? You know the answer. No one can keep the profit and cancel the debt, not even you.

I hope you and your associates take my comments to heart. I vote, as little as that seems to mean today.”

And another man laid it on the line to Congress. This was served this morning.

“Americans did not create the banking crisis. We should not be asked to bail out the banks. It is not in our interests. We are being asked to bail a strictly private bank, The Federal Reserve. It is not a United States Government Agency. This private corporation owned by its Federal Reserve Members who in turn are owned by private interests has failed its mission.

The Federal Reserve was created to stop banking panics like the one in 1907. The Federal Reserve Chairmen (multiple) have admitted in testimony to the Congress that it was at the controls of the Great Depression. Its actions exacerbated the Great Depression of the 1930s.

At present Americans are being asked not just to bail out our commercial banks and investment banks but we are being asked to bail out the Federal Reserve itself. The Federal Reserve has demonstrated that it is a failed institution. It has not served its intended purpose from outset of the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. The Federal Reserve causes the U.S. Treasury Department to issue not United States Currency but Federal Reserve Paper also known as Federal Reserve notes.

Shall the Congress continue to in debt us to a private bank that is failed?

It is not in America’s interests to continuously prop-up, feed, repair and fuel an institution that is self immolating.. It must be allowed to consume itself and the debris removed. The Federal Reserve System collapse can be likened to Chernobyl. It is not repairable and by its nature hazardous to us all.

Thomas Jefferson states it best, "If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them (around the banks), will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."

We should not be having hearings about a bailout; instead we should be having hearings on how we intend to replace the Federal Reserve with money created and issued by the Government of the United States.”

What will Congress do? Does it matter? They have let us know their intentions. We need to protect ourselves now.

The melt down of the mortgage market was carefully planned and orchestrated as a way to pump trillions out of our hands and into the coffers of central banks. Each step in the process was carefully manufactured. They stole our homes and changed the bankruptcy laws to make our serfdom inevitable.

Their plan has been in motion for a very long time.

1913 - The establishment of the Federal Reserve Bank obligating Americans with a currency that profited only a small clique of private bankers while all Americans paid.

1933 - The bankruptcy of the US government, MCDC, which resulted in each individual American being listed as a source of credit on those bank balance sheets through their birth certificate the moment it was filled out.

2008 – Overt Corporatization, “privatization” of America into the direct, obvious control of those same corporations.

Fractional reserve banking is the ultimate license to steal, allowing those same banks to write money into existence with no obligation to themselves. The obligations have all been ours.

It has always been a fraud, on which there is no statute of limitation. They use Congress in attempts to evade accountability. We can not let them get away with it.

Now is the time to notice them and everyone else. If it was your drug-soddened cousin, your irresponsible ex-spouse, your larcenous former business partner you would notice the world; we are noticing the whole world.

This notice will be sent out across the globe. It will tell everyone that we, those signing below, are not responsible and will not pay. Protect yourself and those you love.

We, the Undersigned, hereby notice all that we are not responsible for any debts but those owed to living persons who are not affiliated with corporations working with or benefiting by the unlawful actions of the Municipal Corporation of the District of Columbia.

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Armageddon or Freedom. Never have we had more reason for optimism

2008-09-20T20:55:00.002-04:00

No one has to tell you that America's economy is melting just like the Wicked Witch of the East. The stock market is slipping south; the currency market is volatile; more Americans every day face eviction; and naturally the government is grabbing food for its own use. Suppliers of food, intended to be used for long term storage, are being confiscated; the contracts signed with buyers, ignored.

To the chagrin of the US Senate laws intended to fight terrorism that provided common data bases for law enforcement at the county, state, and federal levels, are now being applied to all crime. Those data bases are being used as I write. And crime is what the Executive Branch says it is. Scary thought.

Many of those serving in the Senate, not known for their rectitude, are chagrined. Everyone, even those serving in Congress, have limits and the limits have been reached for most of us.

Questions are being raised. Let's consider for a moment what questions really need to be asked. Those questions frame the dialogue that creates world in which we live. This is why there was that almost physical shiver of fear among the power elite when Ron Paul was actively eviscerating that paradigm last year. “We just walked in, we can just come home!” said Paul of our presence in Iraq. Words and acts build the walls of our world; they also tear down one, building another.

The Paul response to our presence in Iraq powered a movement still redefining how we view nearly everything. And slowly the boundaries that kept us is the carefully constructed world where 'just wars' are directed against nations that have resources desired by major corporations, have stopped making sense. Ron Paul makes sense; his words spoke truth. He gave his supporters hope, real hope instead of hype.

Many people no longer think voting makes any difference. The revelations of such people as Bev Harris of Black Box Voting tells us she is right. We grow uneasy at the focus and expense of campaigning that means nothing. People continue to look for people who offer something they can believe in.

Many people are very positive about at least one part of the present Republican ticket. The Palin nomination for Vice President was an attempt to redirect the power of the Ron Paul Revolution to another focus. While her selection was the product of masterly stage managing, it is working.

Palin has not yet proven herself to be just another politician. Therefore people can hope. She is a woman; therefore many are eager to trust. She is a mother; therefore many want to love her.

The question there is whether the politically not so naïve Palin, who has very willingly abandoned positions that proved to be unpopular before, will remain controllable. Palin is already placing herself at the top of the ticket; reflecting that she knows what she brings to the table. Appearing with McCain in Iowa, attendees began walking out 5 minutes into the McCain speech. And the poll associated with my article, “Sarah Palin, Ron Paul and Perception versus Reality” showed indications that support for Palin, increases if she sheds McCain. Knowing she has the traction this may well be more a Palin Presidency than anyone, especially McCain, imagined. The other picks provide no potential surprises. Would anyone care if Biden announced he was a transsexual? Probably not, even if anyone could remember who he is.

The present Wag the Dog Extravaganza, put on to distract and provide desperately needed framing for the same old bunch of political and media subcontractors to the Prime Powers is really irrelevant in the long term but it certainly provides color and insight.

Over and over again, people are looking for answers and hope. They found that in Dr. Paul; they are finding that in Sarah Palin, and they are finding new meaning in old words, understanding that may well bring new hope from a very unexpected direction. As America retreats into third world status Americans are finding new meaning in old words.

What is now unfolding has an amazing similarity to the scenario laid out in Revelations. If you understand the Beast in Revelations not as a living thing but as a human invention many things make sense, strangely enough. The Beast is a creature like no man had ever seen.

Revelations 4

[6] And before the throne there was a sea of glass like unto crystal: and in the midst of the throne, and round about the throne, were four beasts full of eyes before and behind.
[7] And the first beast was like a lion, and the second beast like a calf, and the third beast had a face as a man, and the fourth beast was like a flying eagle.
[8] And the four beasts had each of them six wings about him; and they were full of eyes within: and they rest not day and night, saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come.

What was John seeing? Was it spoiled fish or something yet to come? Among the visions of death and disaster came a warning.

Revelations 7

[3] Saying, Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees, till we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads.

John of Patmos warned against outrages against the Earth. Very environmentally appropriate and remarkably relevant for today.

Revelations 9

[20] And the rest of the men which were not killed by these plagues yet repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship devils, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood: which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk:
[21] Neither repented they of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts.

It sounds as if John could have been seeing the impact of corporate greed on the Earth. Today corporations are using the power of money to own the water we drink, control the air we breath, and the food we need to survive. It would explain a lot if the curious amalgamation of corporations, private and corporate, were the many headed Beast. Corporations on the multinational level and the 'governments' that are, in fact, themselves corporations, have blended to the point where you cannot define where one stops and another begins.

Revelations 17

[8] The beast that thou sawest was, and is not; and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into perdition: and they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, whose names were not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast that was, and is not, and yet is.

“..and it is not, and yet is?” Sounds like what a corporation would look like to someone used to real people. Corporations are made up entities, existing only through our suspension of disbelief.

Revelations 21

[5] And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful.

[6] And he said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely.

And that sounds like we will come through this to a new world. Hope is a wonderful thing to have now as we experience the final logic of corporate greed in all its forms. Remember that as the meltdown continues.

As our economy melts we watch dollars issued by a private corporation, the Federal Reserve Bank, used to bail out other corporations, for instance AIG, Fanny Mae and their friends. The corporation that is authorizing those bailouts is yet another corporation, the one we think of, incorrectly, as a government. That is the Municipal Corporation of the District of Columbia. In case you did not know its charter was issued from the State of Delaware in 1871. You probably know that the Federal Reserve Bank is a private corporation owned, mostly, by European banks.

I bet you did not know that your town, county, and state are also.....corporations. You can check this out by looking up their Dunn and Bradstreet EIN numbers and then inquiring where their incorporating papers were filed.

Corporations, are not people in the sense St. John knew them, but defined by statute as persons against all reason to avoid accountability. All of these artificial entities are joined at the hip. We see them as Halliburton, Koch Industries, your local county, the State of California, the Federal Government on ad nauseum. But they are all corporations hiding behind a fiction. They pretend to be people; they are not. We are the people.

The world is about to change and Revelations makes it clear who is going to get it in the neck.

September 11th, Ron Paul, Bob Barr and James Dean

2008-09-11T21:45:00.002-04:00

Today, September 11^th, is a day to remember the dead, and renew our hope. On this, the 7^th anniversary of the attacks on the Pentagon and the Twin Towers, we have much to consider. Never in our history have we needed more wisdom; never have we so needed hope. Now cast your mind back in time. In those days after 9/11 you should remember that the world reached out to us with compassion. We were poised for peace, not war. No contrast could be greater. Today we understand how we were manipulated.

Today, finally, Americans are coming together, slowly erasing the chasms that have divided us. In so doing we are finding hope that, despite the deterioration in our economy, did not exist 7 years ago. Sometimes what you need to lose is your illusions.

We have moved through shock to confront truths that are unpalatable. We have found wisdom, gaining understanding and appreciation for what we have so nearly lost. What you come close to losing, you truly value.

In September 11^th my daughter should have been in one of those towers. An argument with her fiancé kept her home. Small things change our lives.

Now, so close to losing freedom, we need to see the world clearly and find wisdom.

In 1955 a wise man shared with me his vision of freedom. His words remain with me today. Those words changed me and my life. For a million different reasons today each of us sees ourselves, our nation, and freedom differently having learned it from many wise men and women over time.

While this is true for all, for those who work politically this takes on a special meaning now.

Over the last week events have taken place, refocusing us on what must be done if America is to turn back towards freedom. The two major parties have announced their candidates. John McCain found coat tails, lifting his faltering campaign out of the coffin.

That is politics as it has been.

Political parties are like all other human organizations; tools for our use and convenience. Human organizations are constituted for specific purposes. That may be civil, for business, or worship. They may be political. Any political party, like any organization, must be judged on its usefulness as a tool to enact our will. It matters not if you are a Republican, Democrat or member of a third party or refuse to participate. It matters mightily that you understand that in America the power was to remain always directly in the hands of the people.

Read the Declaration of Independence if you doubt the clarity of that intention. Every American should read it, every child should hear it and understand what it means to them personally.

The two party system has come close to destroying America . It has become the tool of those who steal our power. This week a coming together took place that was to send a profound message to all Americans. That message was muted by discord but still rings true.

Ron Paul held a news conference in Washington DC, calling on Americans to support third party candidates, refusing to endorse John McCain, who had begged him to do so. Paul was joined on the podium for the event by presidential candidates Cynthia McKinney of the Green Party, Chuck Baldwin of the Constitution Party, and Ralph Nader of the Reform Party. Conspicuously absent was the Libertarian candidate for president, Bob Barr. Those gathered were making the point that the two party system has stifled our choices politically and our freedoms. It was a point that needed making; a coming together that spoke loudly, joining action to rhetoric. Left to Right in American politics is disappearing. More and more every day, we are coming to see that our issues have one solution.

It was a profound moment.

Ron had built found common ground and urged all of us to stand together with one common agenda for peace, privacy, financial sanity, and the end of the Federal Reserve. Not a complete agenda, but a real beginning. Then Bob Barr was heard.

Barr did not attend the Coming Together News Conference. Claiming it conflicted with his own news conference, scheduled to take place just a short later in the same location, Barr thought his was more significant.

Barr has decided to offer Ron Paul the slot of vice-president. Anyone who has been a Libertarian longer than a day knew that Ron was the LP candidate in 1988 and could have had the LP presidential nomination at any time for the asking. Mary Ruwart, the candidate for the nomination this year who nearly defeated Barr, would have stepped aside to give it to him - if he would have taken it - in a heart beat. So why would Ron Paul want to accept a second slot to Barr? Clearly, he would not. His own agenda transcended party affiliation, which is completely in line with the founding vision of those who founded the Libertarian Party and makes a move away from partisan politics entirely.

If you listen they always tell you what they really mean. By announcing the 'offer' Barr proclaimed his desperation. Having promised to raise millions he is left with a rate of fundraising running at $25,000 a week. He has raised in total less than a million dollars. He has only 8,000 donors to the nearly 100,000 now donating to Ron Paul, who is not a candidate. Barr needed a Palin and the original was not available so he made a bid for Ron Paul, who declined.

The body with the power to change candidates is not Barr but the Libertarian National Committee. This fact obviously escaped Barr giving the onlookers another insight into how his mind works.

Libertarians govern their own organization. The LNC decides who will run if a replacement becomes necessary after the nominating convention. They have considered seriously removing candidates before. That might happen again.

Barr's clever strategy fell flat on its face, embarrassingly so. But Barr provides a useful example of a politician who persists in believing that his nomination was in effect an anointing. He has made his living selling the rhetoric of freedom in place of reality for his entire career. But he believes that politicians rule. He probably sees no difference between the words used to control and pacify you and the elemental truths affirmed by the words of Thomas Jefferson. Those likely confuse him.

This latest revelation on what Bob Barr really thinks should therefore give all Libertarians pause, not just to consider why they nominated him in the first place but the deeper issue of why they allowed themselves to buy the lie of words intended only to deceive in place of the real thing.

Through the last more than 200 years, the hunger for freedom has endured despite the persistence of such lies. Over and over again Americans have believed the words, losing the reality of freedom. That same hunger founded the LP in 1971. Moved by the vision of America's founders, the original libertarians were determined to return government to the people.

Everyone makes mistakes and Libertarians are no different. But the mission remains. If the LP has a mission it is to awaken that truth in the minds of Americans. Never accept words in place of the reality of freedom. It is time to remember what freedom means.

Efficiency it is not freedom. Freedom is simpler and more profound; its nature lies in its universal truth, speaking to each of us and through each of us.

When I was very young the wise man I mentioned earlier told me what freedom was to him. We were sitting in the back yard watching butterflies. My little brother had exercised his own freedom by wandering off with his new lasso after our cat, Tiger Lady. Tiger had retreated slowly, keeping an eye on him. We watched. At age three Stephen's aim was not very good. My new lasso was sitting on my lap. Later, I would continue to practice spinning. This very wise man had just finished telling me about the courage and perseverance of Howard Roark the character from the Fountainhead. At age 6 I had yet to hear of Ayn Rand. Looking me right in the eye he said this, “Your freedom is is not one thing. It is everything. Freedom is your life, how you spend it. As you grow it will become all the things you dream, wish and work for. Those things,” he continued, “will be the record you take to God of how you spent the life He gave you. Freedom is God's gift to you.” Freedom is different for each of us, in each case unique. Freedom knows only the limits you accept.

Later this month, on September 30^th, the man who spoke those words to me, James Byron Dean, will have been dead 53 years. He lived his life a free man, as each of us should. Life and freedom, Jimmy knew, comes with no guarantees.

Freedom is personal. Government is the human tool we use to order our lives, reduce conflict, and secure justice. If it works it is a good tool. If it doesn't work we are free to change it.

Today, September 11^th, remember what freedom is for you and renew your determination to be someone who, working peacefully with others, governs yourself.

Next time you see Barr let him know.

Support the Heritage Association and Constitution Your County. And bid on these Ron Paul coins, donated for the purpose by a great guy.

Sarah Palin, Ron Paul and Perception versus Reality

2008-09-04T22:38:00.002-04:00

The corporates find the coat tails that McCain desperately needs.

Chuck and Sally Heath are proud of their daughter; they also have a bumper sticker on their truck that reads, “Vegetarian – Old Indian term for Bad Hunter.”

Sarah Palin, their daughter and, if the present nomination stays put, the next Vice President of the United States, was a pick that shocked and thrilled people who have long been indifferent to politics.

Have no doubt, the election results have been decided. The reforms needed to make it otherwise have not taken place. That said, the Palin phenomena is now changing the playing field, introducing new elements into an old game which just days ago, was so tired and obviously scripted that few cared.

Despite the undoubted charisma of Barack Obama, picked to ensure that the Democratic Party loses another bid for the White House, no doubt remains. A clear corporatist with no substantial experience or credentials and many doubts, his pick for VP brought with it no surge of support.

McCain was smarter. Only a vanishingly small number of those people know anything about Palin, but they are experiencing a rush of enthusiasm and, dare we say it? Hope.

Palin is the mother of five children. As the governor of Alaska and before that the mayor of her home town, Wasilla, where in 1984 she won the title of Miss Wasilla, she ran to enact reform each time. Charges she asked for federal assistance should alarm fiscal conservatives, perhaps, but why would Democrats, committed to the federalization of funding, be attacking her on that issue?

Her husband, Todd, reported to be an employee of BP is actually a blue collar worker and half native Alaskan. In one fell swoop, a real minority is a heart beat away from power. Amazing. The family yearly takes advantage of Todd's right to fish for part of the food they eat, something Palin herself loves doing.

In the wake of the announcement several things happened that increased her support. The first of these was the ugly reaction of Democrats generally. Palin was sneered at and vilified for being a hunter and having a bear skin in her gubernatorial office. In fact, Palin was raised in a family that depended on hunting as part of their livelihood, as traditional as apple pie and motherhood. Palin made the point that choosing to kill your own wild game is arguably less cruel that eating animals raised in the agonizing conditions common to feed lots.

Americans love a plucky underdog; this only burnished her appeal.

The attacks on Palin point up the chasm in values and culture that persists between right and left in America today. Palin's 18 year old son has enlisted in the army. Palin bemoans the energy policies that make America dependent on foreign oil. The birth of her most recent child, four months ago, was ogled by the left because the baby was born with Down's Syndrome. The family expressed nothing but joy at the birth. Within just a day Palin was denounced for running with a child so young while at the same time the values of those on the left affirm the right of women to do just that. When Palin announced that her 17 year old daughter is pregnant and will marry her baby's father and take responsibility for her choices many Democrats attacked her for not keeping her daughter from getting pregnant. Those of us who are parents might ask how you do that today. Americans are hungry for parents who do the right thing. Palin gave it to them.

This may well be a campaign that elicits a real dialogue on issues, something that would be good for all of us, an unexpected benefit coming out of a pick by McCain clearly made for reasons that were entirely political. He desperately needs the support of at least some part of the Conservative wing of the Republican Party. With Palin he gets more; he gets coat-tails that may well come with unexpected consequences. Voters who are excited by Palin personally, despite politics will have impact.

Why McCain picked Palin as a running mate illustrates the need to bolster the impression that the Republican Party has not stopped twitching. Their pick has been ratified by a rush of enthusiasm that holds an almost Princess Diana-like vibrancy. That enthusiasm flowed spontaneously at the recent Republican Convention, saving that gathering from a wake-like tenor.

The Rally for the Republican Conference, recently finished in St. Paul for Ron Paul, had more attendance; tens of thousands of Ron Paul supporters camped in and camped out around St. Paul to attend the event, listening to Dr. Paul speak about the need to renew freedom and the rights of individuals as the essential tenet in what he called, “The Freedom Philosophy” in his speech given on September 2^nd. The speech included this quote, “Individual liberty must be our goal. Prosperity and peace will follow. Without liberty, peace and prosperity are unachievable.”

Palin has also expressed liking and support for Ron Paul. Another plus this year.

Insiders whisper that Palin was picked because, among other reasons, she can be expected to fracture the support Ron Paul supporters would otherwise give to Chuck Baldwin, the candidate of the Constitutional Party and Bob Barr, former Congressman, who is now the candidate of the Libertarian Party. This may be well founded. While writing this article three prominent Ron Paul supporters were interviewed on the Palin nomination with interesting results.

Sheriff Richard Mack, the man who first filed against the Brady Bill in the early 90s affirmed his delight and support for Palin, saying she is, 'one great lady.” Mack was an early endorser of Ron Paul.

Connie Ruffley, the co-chairman of United Republicans of California and a Ron Paul supporter as well, was more moderate, expressing concern over some of the positions held by Palin, especially on her support of the War in Iraq.

But the most interesting response came from California's Mr. Conservative, former State Senator Don Rogers who said that if Palin was at the top of the ticket he would vote for her over all other candidates, even if she insisted on keeping McCain in the second slot. Rogers went on to point out the dangers McCain, who he characterizes as a RHINO, Republican In Name Only, corporatist who is, according to him, “A gun grabber who wants to give amnesty to illegal aliens.” Rogers then outlined the McCain history of having just last year partnered with Ted Kennedy on a bill that would have given amnesty to 20 million illegal aliens in our country. Further, Rogers continued, McCain would try to close gun shows, stop the private sale of guns, expand the Patriot Act, take away more of our freedoms, continue the destruction of the Constitution, and put the Security and Prosperity Partnership on fast forward. That plan, still in stealth mode in most parts of the country, would chop America in half, with a two football field wide corridor for global trade running through Texas to the Canadian border. That system is already in motion; something that surprises Americans who do not live in the area. Using her to trick conservatives to accept him and his one world government candidacy was nasty, but what can you expect?

The present presidential campaign is now decided. What remains in question is what if, as suggested by Senator Rogers, Palin was at the top of the GOP ticket. This goes along with other fantasies, for instance what if we had an honest election, but it makes the point.

Now let's find out.

If you like Palin and would support her for president let us know. If you loath McCain and would vote for Palin for President only if she dumps him, let us know that, too. I am sure McCain will be delighted to know. You can vote in this poll (which is honest) or you can actually send her a flower, which indicates even more enthusiasm. Then tell us why. In any case, check here next week and we will let you know what happened.

Americans, the Common Law, and Freedom – What you need to know.

2008-08-22T23:05:00.002-04:00

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, —“

When you read the preamble to the Declaration of Independence remember what the world looked like to the men who wrote it. Then look at our world through their eyes; understanding their world and the institutions they used routinely brings understanding of what has gone so wrong with our world today.

Their world was the same and different. The agreement to go to war came after a long process of discourse over the issues, not by leaders, but by ordinary people. The Committees of Correspondence drove a dialogue on why the people should govern themselves, enacting formally what they had been doing for two centuries. They were a people who expected to cooperate, looking across into each other's eyes, never up to anyone in government.

Over that time they had built a vibrant and robust society that was stretching out in all directions. The people governed themselves, using of a system of organizing tools, proven over time. Those tools were town government operating with transparency, ensuring that real control remained directly in the hands of the people. For justice, they used the Common Law, brought with them from England.

Control of the functions of government through the town ensured that government would never eat up the seed corn. Direct scrutiny by the people on what was spent, the authority always with them to approve or deny, kept government small and honest. Delving back in time you see these people assumed that no one went into government to make money or secure their retirement because the pay was terrible and there were no benefits. Those serving in government were assumed to have enough money to be able to donate their time. That model still persists in some parts of New England. The same principles were in use for the justice system through the Common Law Courts. Judges performed a service to the community, drawing from their own time to do so.

In use by the people for centuries, the common law was not something apart from the people but like the air they breathed. School children saw it operating and were prepared to use it themselves when they became adults. Going to court was serious, a process treated with respect, but instead of dividing them they entered into that process knowing that, ultimately, there would be justice. Contrast that to how the system of courts looks to us today.

The Common Law is a system for justice that is handled directly by the people. That is the system our Founders assumed would continue; it was one of those tools, used sparingly, that allowed a free people to govern themselves directly. Town government, with its absolute transparency and resulting low costs, along with the Common Law, were the foundation for freedom that the Founders assumed would continue.

Elections handled directly by the people; the votes totaled openly and transparently.

Spending by government overseen directly by the people.

Common law courts that possessed the right to judge both the facts and the law.

The system worked. It remains the system intended by our Founders. It can still work today.

How do we become, again, a people who govern themselves? That we can do so is inherent in our mission statement. The Declaration of Independence says,

“That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

The first Amendment of the Bill of Rights owes its existence to a common law case heard in New York in 1735. In 1735 the Royal Governor of New York attempted to suborn the right of jury to decide fact and law. It had begun with the publication of the New-York Weekly Journal in 1633 with Zenger as the editor. The paper began because Crosby, the Royal Governor, was corrupt and the people needed the truth. Zenger was arrested and incarcerated for telling the truth on November 17, 1734. The bail set made his release impossible.

The Zenger Case was heard on August 4^th of that year saw a jury of twelve men render the verdict of not guilty, thus overthrowing the law and setting a course that lead to the principle that the truth is its own defense. It was this case that remained in the minds of our Founders when they wrote the Bill of Rights, addendum to the Constitution, which was intended to limit government, never us.

The verdict of Not Guilty affirmed the right of anyone to break a law that violated the conscience of the community and the right of an individual to speak the truth.

The Zenger Case is with you any time you serve on a jury.

The Common Law is the muscle behind our rights.

Many today think of the Common Law as antiquated and impractical; nothing could be further from the truth. The disused understanding of these tools are waiting for us to pick up. They are easy to use and bring with them amazing benefits, also forgotten, that created the American people as different from any nation on the face of the Earth.

When you are empaneled as a juror on a Common Law Court you already understand that this is a grave responsibility. You take up the charge to become, with those others serving, the conscience of your community. You leave behind you any prejudices. Those who serve understand they must see the matter at hand dispassionately, demand the facts, scrutinize the evidence, see beyond evasion to the root of the issues. Then, the juror must reflect on each other point, listening as if the life of their community depended on it.

America itself owes its existence, in part, to another case where the jury refused to violate the conscience of the community and the right of the individual. That jury heard its case in England in 1670. King Charles II demanded the prosecution of William Penn for the crime of preaching his Quaker faith. The jury foreman, Edward Bushel, along with the rest of the jury, found the law unjust, in violation of the people's right to worship. The case was heard at the Old-Bailey from the 1^st to the and 5^th of Sept.

Afterwards, the jury was incarcerated for returning a verdict that outraged the judge. He directed that the jury reconsider their verdict. They retired and returned with the same verdict, Not Guilty. The judge then confined the jury in Newgate Prison to remain without food or water until the desired verdict was rendered. They continued to hold that William Penn was not guilty. Eventually they were fined and released.

William Penn, then 26 immigrated to Pennsylvania. The lesson of the right of the jury to decide is the birth right of all Americans and the midwife of our freedom.

The Common Law and its principles remain in use, though those now in power try to disguise their existence. A pivotal example of the same kind of courage shown in the Zenger and Penn cases took place in the township of Credit River, Minnesota on 12^th December 1968. The issue was the fraud being perpetrated by banks across the world. It is known as the Credit River Case.

Jerome Daly faced eviction from his home. Daly had sued the bank, his house in foreclosure; while reviewing the papers and practices he had noticed that the mortgage was issued with no legal consideration. The verdict rendered hinged on the admission by the president of the First National Bank of Montgomary that there was no legal consideration with the loan written for Jerome Daly's mortgage. The bank president testified, ‘this was standard banking practice exercised by their bank in combination with the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, another private bank, further that he knew of no United States Statute or law that gave the plaintiff the authority to do this.”

Daly kept his home. Two weeks later the judge in the case, Mahoney, was murdered. No one ever said that freedom and justice would come without costs.

Courts that follow the common law accept the tenet that the jury decides on all issues, both fact and law; they can demand more information. Nothing is hidden from them. The judge is only there to be called on by the jury. They must understand that the rights of individuals trump statute, and, most importantly, they are acting as the incarnation of the conscience of the community.

Arguably, the most important check and balance to power in government is the power of the informed jury to decide on the issues of both of law and fact. Today, we as Americans face the need to restore to use the tools that connect us to our own power, granted not by government, but by God.

Start with your local county, establish your own Heritage Association on the common law and the Constitution.

Let your local law enforcement know what their obligations are under the Constitution.

Celebrate Jury Rights Day, September 5^th . Get to know the Fully Informed Jury Association.

A free people will govern themselves; a people who will be free do it themselves.

Restore the Constitution

2008-08-08T19:50:00.003-04:00

About this Project

This is the first Restore the Constitution Project for you to undertake in your county. Using it you can deliver the message that the Constitution is the Supreme Law of the land. You will find instructions, sources for supplies and a Proof of Service Form for this project. Other projects, each on its own small site, will follow. Using these, you can serve law enforcement officers with a letter and a copy of the Constitution. If you like, you can also include a copy of “The Proper Role of Law Enforcement,” by Sheriff Richard Mack.

The project can be carried out by a small group very inexpensively. It is the first of a series of such projects. Together, the projects will enable you to restore your county to government by the people, transitioning from the present system to one that is stable and reliable and resistant to becoming uppity.

The Heritage Association, who is sponsoring the Restore the Constitution Projects, can be organized in each county to do further outreach to the people who you could never get interested in politics. Ordinary people are interested in learning the history of the Common Law and the Constitution using the speeches and other resources provided when it is introduced as a short presentation that includes history and made relevant. Through existing local organizations such as the Lion's Club and your local women's club, we can inject an understanding of how America was intended to work using the Common Law in the hands of the people and the Constitution to rigidly limit the power of government. You can show them how a common law court worked using the model we will provide. They can see how it feels to be a real jury, the kind familiar to our ancestors, that decided on fact AND law.

First broaden understanding into the mainstream, then we will be in a position to take effective action. This can happen in just a few months when accompanied by the opeds and other materials Heritage makes available. Heritage provides a foundation for local organizing; you can use it or another local organization, as works for you. Please read this and pass it on.

Thanks, Melinda Pillsbury-Foster

Restore Constitutional Government to America

Every day we move closer; every time we open the paper, surf the Internet, it is worse. Left, right, libertarian, green, we know in our bones and hearts that we need to take action. We have been divided along lines of political opinion where we should have been joined to find solutions. We have been cut off from each other, manipulated for the profit of corporations and their cronies. It is bad and when we look into the future there is little to spark hope; The meltdown of the economy and the narrowing of what is permitted us grows daily more frightening.

Like someone trying to restart their car as it rolls towards the cliff, we all face the same crying need whether we recognized that years ago or last week. We need to reactivate the Constitution as the law of the land. That awareness might have grow slowly but it has now reached a tipping point.

It was the Constitution, intended to limit government, never us, and the Common Law that were to stand between us and tyranny. They are the foundation of our freedoms, the tools we need desperately today to check the unbridled greed of those who are caging us in to a perpetual serfdom.

When we get in our cars, when we see a law enforcement officer we feel fear, not relief. It is wrong; it violates the intentions of our Founders and the spiritual direction intended for us as the people who would govern themselves.

We are being pitted against those sworn to protect and defend. This threatens us and also those who follow orders intended to use them as weapons against us. This is the pause point, when action is still possible without violence. Those in law enforcement must be recalled to their duty and to an essential understanding of their oath and the Constitution. It can be done.

We can thwart the attempt to use local law enforcement as a tool to oppress us. To do that we need to let them know directly that the Constitution was not canceled, as so many have been told. This morning I had a conversation with a friend in DC who was shocked speechless to discover that a year ago local police were beginning to lump 'Constitutionalists,' and those who talk about their rights along with gangs. I heard this in a local luncheon meeting of the National Federation of Republican Women from a deputy sheriff who waxed eloquent on the subject. Being a Constitutionalist myself I began to worry.

A few days ago another friend of mine was told by a local policeman that he did not have to pay attention to the Constitution. It was just a piece of paper

Most judges do not sign the oath of office mandated by the Constitution. Like Thomas Anderle of Santa Barbara, they act like they are the law.

When someone, or thousands of someones like those employed in law enforcement, are so seriously mistaken then it is time to take rapid action. In this country today those in law enforcement are being aimed at us, manipulated to do ugly things to us and our neighbors. Those training them are telling them this is what it means to be in law enforcement. It is wrong.

When the system is this far out of line you need to make sure they get the message. But that message must be non-violent; most of those in law enforcement are not rocket scientists and they, too, are at risk. Law Enforcement officers who violate their oath can and will end up in jail, lose their pensions, and be bankrupted by civil actions. And if they do not draw back that is what we need to make sure happens.

But it is far better for all of us to send them a word of caution and advise now.

So this is what we propose.

In every county in the US we need to serve everyone working in law enforcement with a demand letter requiring that they read the Constitution and be bound by it. We need to spell out the consequences for ignoring that demand, for their sake as well as our own.

If you have read Richard Mack's book, “The Proper Role of Law Enforcement,” or heard him speak you know about his story and how he was awakened to his obligation to follow the Constitution while he was still a cop writing traffic tickets. One day while writing a ticket he was struck by the fact that the woman had done nothing that endangered anyone or anything. He could not continue writing. Turning away, his mind in a tumult, he went into the station house, found the oath he had signed, and read it carefully. Mack said of that moment, “In the oath I gave my word and promise to protect and defend and obey the U. S. Constitution and the Utah Constitution as well. I had never read either and knew virtually nothing about them.” It changed his life. He began to study the Constitution. When Richard Mack became a sheriff himself he insisted each officer carry the small book with them. Those officers began calling it, “Mack's Bible.”

That moment of insight became the moment that turned back the threat of the Brady Bill, creating the Supreme Court Decision that affirmed the right of the sheriff in the local county to uphold the Constitution. The issue of that moment was the 2^nd Amendment but the larger issue was the obligation of the county sheriff to uphold the Constitution despite orders from Washington D.C.

We need every officer to confront the choices they will be asked to make before harm is done. We can do that now.

We have put together a simple set of instructions and some resources so you can gently remind law enforcement in your community that the Constitution of their duty and the danger they may face if they fail to choose honorably. You can find that site at Constitution Your County.

Although the future looks bleak we actually stand at a point in time that makes change more possible than you might imagine.

Americans are the people who fought to establish for all time the right to govern themselves. They fought and died to pass on to us that wisdom. The wise understand that hope is a place on the horizon towards which they look, that draws them to become greater than they imagined possible. The future looks bleak, but it can be wonderful, if we make it so. This can become the launch point for an America that takes us back to hope and on to a vibrant reality we live and leave our children. Together, we can make it so