On any given day you can find a news story that focuses on the conflict between democrats and republicans, or Group A and Group B. These groups could be anything, but as long as they are toted as being the opposite of each other, they will clash. When one party supports a bill, the other tends to oppose it. This holds true for both sides, creating a never-ceasing battle over political parties, as opposed to policy.
The change in each party’s fundamental policies has been warped into an infinitesimally minute amount of distinction from one another. When one does not agree with the “Republican” stance, they generally lean towards a “Democratic” stance. The guise of the two parties creates a false sense of freedom and liberation from a structured ideal.
The Soviet Union’s single party system was a failure due to it’s inability to withstand a dissident attack. The United States two-party system is simply the post-beta form of the Soviet-style political spectrum, with the guise of liberty upon it’s aging fangs.
The word paradigm accurately describes the dimension between the left and right party. This paradigm requires a vice grip of social ideology held together for stability. A single party’s influence can break, without a backboard to cater towards any dissidence.
Two parties can stand up against one another to create both geometrically and intellectually a more powerful structure that can withstand intense dissidence from each party for one reason: the rebellion of the first party’s ideals are reciprocated by the second.
Real Issues
The war between left and right diminishes the focus on real issues. A frighteningly large number of people will make all their decisions based upon their party leaders. The debate turns into left verses right, instead of what is best for the country. The mainstream media loves to turn everything into a matter of “party wars”, instead of discussing the actual issue at it’s core.
Instead of thinking “left” or “right”, think about it from a human perspective. What will this do to our country? How will it affect me? How will it affect my neighbors?
Thinking for yourself
Imagine for a moment that your car has broken down. You go to a used car dealership and search around for a nice car. There are no price tags on the cars, but the place seems rather professional. You find a car you like, and it looks like it’s in pretty decent condition. You ask about the price, and the salesman says it will cost you $95,000.
In this case, most people would first investigate the true value of the car before purchasing it. While it seems completely logical to find the true value of the car, many do not take this metaphorical step when it comes down to left verses right. Placing blind trust in the leaders of a political party is just like trusting the used car salesman to give you the best price. Find out the truth for yourself, as it’s the only way to truly find out what’s going on.
Media Spins
The mainstream media loves to take legitimate topics and turn them into a battle between political parties. A perfect example is the Healthcare bill. Even though it has ridiculous policy changes, and a eugenics-based provision system, it is still turned into a left verses right issue by the media. Luckily people have begun to see through this false two party system, and are beginning to realize they are being played.
The mainstream media’s deception is wearing off quite rapidly, as the public begins to realize that they are being duped. The public is realizing that regardless of which party the current political figurehead (puppet) is affiliating himself with, he is still the same as the previous leader. It is a vicious cycle that continues to this day. The difference is that now the people are waking up to this cycle, and opposing it.
Ally yourself with humanity, not parties
You do not have time to waste on petty arguments that center around the false “party wars”. Use your time to get real information out, like the implications of the Healthcare bill, or the shocking dangers of vaccinations. True patriotism is to have thoughts that do not derive from the structured and targeting news media, or the most famous political puppet in your region.
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Obama Rewrites the Bill of Rights
Make no mistake: Our Founders were onto something when they enshrined the right to keep and bear arms as the Second Amendment to our nation’s founding document, the United States Constitution.
Because the Second Amendment is part of our nation’s supreme law, attacking gun rights means attacking the very foundation of the country.
The gun grabbers know they have to deal with this supreme law at some point if they’re going to push their radical agenda through.
And so they’ve decided to rewrite the Bill of Rights to best suit their plans.
That’s right. In an attempt to circumvent our nation’s fundamental law, Barack Obama has rewritten his own version of the Bill of Rights and posted it on the White House website.
According to Obama, “The Second Amendment gives citizens the right to bear arms.”
I don’t know about you, but my right to defend myself comes from my Creator — not from government, not from some bureaucrat or politician, but from my very nature as a human being.
I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that redefining a fundamental right as a privilege is a very dangerous path to start down. A right is inherent in our humanity and can never be taken away. A privilege can be removed at the whim of one’s rulers.
But the President’s redefinition of our nation’s fundamental law isn’t enough for some anti-freedom zealots.
Gun grabbers in our government-run education system are now seeking to brainwash your children into accepting their anti-gun agenda — also by rewriting the Bill of Rights.
Lesson plans in Garland, Texas, (Texas?! Really?!) now teach the Second Amendment by summarizing as follows, “Amendment 2: We can get permission to own weapons to protect ourselves.”
This couldn’t be any further from what the Second Amendment clearly states!
“The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
I want you to call the White House and the Garland Independent School District and demand they restore the original language to the Second Amendment.
The White House Comment Line: 202-456-1111
GISD Superintendent Curtis Culwell: 972-487–3023
Tell them you will not stand for revisionist history or the weakening of our nation’s fundamental law. The Founding Fathers wrote it that way for a reason!
Because the Second Amendment is part of our nation’s supreme law, attacking gun rights means attacking the very foundation of the country.
The gun grabbers know they have to deal with this supreme law at some point if they’re going to push their radical agenda through.
And so they’ve decided to rewrite the Bill of Rights to best suit their plans.
That’s right. In an attempt to circumvent our nation’s fundamental law, Barack Obama has rewritten his own version of the Bill of Rights and posted it on the White House website.
According to Obama, “The Second Amendment gives citizens the right to bear arms.”
I don’t know about you, but my right to defend myself comes from my Creator — not from government, not from some bureaucrat or politician, but from my very nature as a human being.
I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that redefining a fundamental right as a privilege is a very dangerous path to start down. A right is inherent in our humanity and can never be taken away. A privilege can be removed at the whim of one’s rulers.
But the President’s redefinition of our nation’s fundamental law isn’t enough for some anti-freedom zealots.
Gun grabbers in our government-run education system are now seeking to brainwash your children into accepting their anti-gun agenda — also by rewriting the Bill of Rights.
Lesson plans in Garland, Texas, (Texas?! Really?!) now teach the Second Amendment by summarizing as follows, “Amendment 2: We can get permission to own weapons to protect ourselves.”
This couldn’t be any further from what the Second Amendment clearly states!
“The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”
I want you to call the White House and the Garland Independent School District and demand they restore the original language to the Second Amendment.
The White House Comment Line: 202-456-1111
GISD Superintendent Curtis Culwell: 972-487–3023
Tell them you will not stand for revisionist history or the weakening of our nation’s fundamental law. The Founding Fathers wrote it that way for a reason!
Sunday, October 25, 2009
H1N1 is a National Emergency? Why?
According to the CDC, swine flu infections have already peaked, and the pandemic is on its way out. Peak infection time was the middle of October, where one in five U.S. children experienced the flu, says the CDC. Out of nearly 14,000 suspected flu cases tested during the week ending on October 10, 2009, 99.6% of those were influenza A, and the vast majority of those were confirmed as H1N1 swine flu infections. (http://www.cdc.gov/flu/weekly/)
Even though the H1N1 pandemic appears to have peaked out, U.S. President Barack Obama has now declared a national emergency over swine flu infections. The reasoning behind such a declaration? According to the White House, it’s designed to "allow hospitals to better handle the surge in patients" by allowing them to bypass certain federal laws.
That’s the public explanation for this, but the real agenda behind this declaration may be far more sinister. Declaring a national emergency immediately gives federal authorities dangerous new powers that can now be enforced at gunpoint, including:
• The power to force mandatory swine flu vaccinations on the entire population.
• The power to arrest, quarantine or "involuntarily transport" anyone who refuses a swine flu vaccination.
• The power to quarantine an entire city and halt all travel in or out of that city.
• The power to enter any home or office without a search warrant and order the destruction of any belongings or structures deemed to be a threat to public health.
• The effective nullification of the Bill of Rights. Your right to due process, to being safe from government search and seizure, and to remain silent to avoid self-incrimination are all null and void under a Presidential declaration of a national emergency.
None of this means that federal agents are going to march door to door arresting people at gunpoint if they refuse the vaccine, but they could if they wanted to. Your rights as an American are no longer recognized under this national emergency declaration.
What emergency?
The declaration of this national emergency seems suspicious from the start. Where’s the emergency? The number of people killed by swine flu in the United States is far smaller than the number of people killed each year from seasonal flu, according to CDC statistics. People obviously aren’t dropping dead by the millions from H1N1 influenza. Most people are just getting mild flu symptoms and a few days later they’re fine.
So where’s the emergency? The only emergency I can see is the emergency fabricated by Big Pharma to sell more vaccines. By declaring a national emergency over the H1N1 pandemic. Obama is playing right into their hands.
I find the timing of all this curious. Two days ago, New York gave up on its efforts to require mandatory vaccinations of health care workers. This was designed to defuse a large number of planned protests from health freedom-conscious people who don’t want government-mandated chemicals pumped into their veins.
The planned protests in New York would have fueled yet more resistance among health care workers across the country, and had it been allowed to continue, it could have resulted in a huge nationwide backlash against swine flu vaccines. By backing off the vaccine mandate and blaming it on a vaccine shortage, and then having Obama declare a national emergency, our state and national leaders have halted the protests and put in place a pro-vaccine Big Brother mandate that can be enforced at gunpoint.
Big Pharma must be pleased with all this. With these emergency powers in place, all that’s necessary to force vaccinations upon the entire population is a larger supply of the vaccines — and that’s coming in November.
Even though the H1N1 pandemic appears to have peaked out, U.S. President Barack Obama has now declared a national emergency over swine flu infections. The reasoning behind such a declaration? According to the White House, it’s designed to "allow hospitals to better handle the surge in patients" by allowing them to bypass certain federal laws.
That’s the public explanation for this, but the real agenda behind this declaration may be far more sinister. Declaring a national emergency immediately gives federal authorities dangerous new powers that can now be enforced at gunpoint, including:
• The power to force mandatory swine flu vaccinations on the entire population.
• The power to arrest, quarantine or "involuntarily transport" anyone who refuses a swine flu vaccination.
• The power to quarantine an entire city and halt all travel in or out of that city.
• The power to enter any home or office without a search warrant and order the destruction of any belongings or structures deemed to be a threat to public health.
• The effective nullification of the Bill of Rights. Your right to due process, to being safe from government search and seizure, and to remain silent to avoid self-incrimination are all null and void under a Presidential declaration of a national emergency.
None of this means that federal agents are going to march door to door arresting people at gunpoint if they refuse the vaccine, but they could if they wanted to. Your rights as an American are no longer recognized under this national emergency declaration.
What emergency?
The declaration of this national emergency seems suspicious from the start. Where’s the emergency? The number of people killed by swine flu in the United States is far smaller than the number of people killed each year from seasonal flu, according to CDC statistics. People obviously aren’t dropping dead by the millions from H1N1 influenza. Most people are just getting mild flu symptoms and a few days later they’re fine.
So where’s the emergency? The only emergency I can see is the emergency fabricated by Big Pharma to sell more vaccines. By declaring a national emergency over the H1N1 pandemic. Obama is playing right into their hands.
I find the timing of all this curious. Two days ago, New York gave up on its efforts to require mandatory vaccinations of health care workers. This was designed to defuse a large number of planned protests from health freedom-conscious people who don’t want government-mandated chemicals pumped into their veins.
The planned protests in New York would have fueled yet more resistance among health care workers across the country, and had it been allowed to continue, it could have resulted in a huge nationwide backlash against swine flu vaccines. By backing off the vaccine mandate and blaming it on a vaccine shortage, and then having Obama declare a national emergency, our state and national leaders have halted the protests and put in place a pro-vaccine Big Brother mandate that can be enforced at gunpoint.
Big Pharma must be pleased with all this. With these emergency powers in place, all that’s necessary to force vaccinations upon the entire population is a larger supply of the vaccines — and that’s coming in November.
Friday, October 23, 2009
Hate Crime Bill Will END Free Speech
The U.S. Senate has passed the homosexual hate-crimes bill and will now send it to President Obama to sign it into law. This bill is a trojan horse to legitimize the creation of more laws that will completely obliterate the 1st amendment of the United States.
Many homosexual organizations say this is a victory, however they are just being used to further infringe on Americans rights to free speech.
In a 68-29 vote, senators passed 2010 National Defense Authorization Act, which includes the hate crimes measure that adds “sexual orientation” and “gender identity,” as well as disability, to the current categories — such as race, religion and gender — protected from hate crimes. The House of Representatives voted 281-146 on Oct. 8 for the same defense legislation, which was used as a vehicle for the hate-crimes measure though it is not directly related to the controversial provision. President Obama has said he would sign the bill.
Any “hate crimes” bill is a disaster for the 1st amendment and leads into the direction of a nanny government… we are all grown-ups, correct? When someone puts you down whether it’s about race, gender, sexual orientation do we really want the federal government and the police to get involved in such petty affairs? And shouldn’t the police and the government be investing their time on more serious situations? Any ‘hate crimes’ bill is just a step towards the end of the 1st amendment and stepping into the direction of a nanny government, handing out fines and putting people in prison for hate speech.
I’m not implying that gay rights aren’t a good thing, I think anyone of any sexual orientation, gender, etc. should have a right to marry, but this hate crimes bill is nothing more than a foot-in-the-door for other tyrannical regulations that will criminalize any type of speech.
This bill could lead to an age of “Pre-Crime” and “ Preventive Detentions“, if say the FBI suspects you of potentially committing a hate crime you can be prosecuted and detained even if no crime was even committed. It can also lead to cyber-bullying laws which could mean an expensive fine or prison time for internet bullying, this bill can also lead to ‘political hate laws’ where any dissent against the government or its policies could make you a political prisoner.
The White House is already planning to create an "enemies list" where any dissent against its policies can land many into a permanent White House database. The U.S. Government and Homeland Security have established its hatred for dissidents in this country, they have established that anti-New World Order groups, Alternative Media Outlets (like this one) are potential violent terrorist tools. Anything about the U.S. Constitution, any partisan activists or any civil disobedience of any kind is now considered potential violent extremism by Homeland Security.
The unclassified Homeland Security memo even says people who are concerned about loss of U.S. sovereignty, illegal immigration and gun-control who are genuinely upset about encroaching freedom may be considered a potential insurgents against the U.S. government! Even liberal environmental activism, anti-war activism is considered potential violent extremism.
When you think of the phrase “hate crimes” remember that hate speech is a form of free speech and protected by the 1st amendment of the Bill of Rights and Constitution. The whole point of free speech is to protect unpopular speech like hate speech. When Obama signs this hate crimes bill into law the government will officially turn free speech into a criminal act, and soon it will become a terrorist/extremist act if Homeland Security (aka: the American Gestapo) gets its way.
Many homosexual organizations say this is a victory, however they are just being used to further infringe on Americans rights to free speech.
In a 68-29 vote, senators passed 2010 National Defense Authorization Act, which includes the hate crimes measure that adds “sexual orientation” and “gender identity,” as well as disability, to the current categories — such as race, religion and gender — protected from hate crimes. The House of Representatives voted 281-146 on Oct. 8 for the same defense legislation, which was used as a vehicle for the hate-crimes measure though it is not directly related to the controversial provision. President Obama has said he would sign the bill.
Any “hate crimes” bill is a disaster for the 1st amendment and leads into the direction of a nanny government… we are all grown-ups, correct? When someone puts you down whether it’s about race, gender, sexual orientation do we really want the federal government and the police to get involved in such petty affairs? And shouldn’t the police and the government be investing their time on more serious situations? Any ‘hate crimes’ bill is just a step towards the end of the 1st amendment and stepping into the direction of a nanny government, handing out fines and putting people in prison for hate speech.
I’m not implying that gay rights aren’t a good thing, I think anyone of any sexual orientation, gender, etc. should have a right to marry, but this hate crimes bill is nothing more than a foot-in-the-door for other tyrannical regulations that will criminalize any type of speech.
This bill could lead to an age of “Pre-Crime” and “ Preventive Detentions“, if say the FBI suspects you of potentially committing a hate crime you can be prosecuted and detained even if no crime was even committed. It can also lead to cyber-bullying laws which could mean an expensive fine or prison time for internet bullying, this bill can also lead to ‘political hate laws’ where any dissent against the government or its policies could make you a political prisoner.
The White House is already planning to create an "enemies list" where any dissent against its policies can land many into a permanent White House database. The U.S. Government and Homeland Security have established its hatred for dissidents in this country, they have established that anti-New World Order groups, Alternative Media Outlets (like this one) are potential violent terrorist tools. Anything about the U.S. Constitution, any partisan activists or any civil disobedience of any kind is now considered potential violent extremism by Homeland Security.
The unclassified Homeland Security memo even says people who are concerned about loss of U.S. sovereignty, illegal immigration and gun-control who are genuinely upset about encroaching freedom may be considered a potential insurgents against the U.S. government! Even liberal environmental activism, anti-war activism is considered potential violent extremism.
When you think of the phrase “hate crimes” remember that hate speech is a form of free speech and protected by the 1st amendment of the Bill of Rights and Constitution. The whole point of free speech is to protect unpopular speech like hate speech. When Obama signs this hate crimes bill into law the government will officially turn free speech into a criminal act, and soon it will become a terrorist/extremist act if Homeland Security (aka: the American Gestapo) gets its way.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Three 9/11 Heroes Dead in Five Days
Thanks to Stephanie Gaskell, New York Daily News Staff writer, I heard of this shocking news, which New York City and the US governments seemingly refuse to let sink into their thick heads and even thicker skin. Thousands of first responders are in dire health conditions, and consequently dire financial and familial conditions, due to illnesses contracted while working at Ground Zero following 9/11.
In this case Robert Grossman, a police office who worked at Ground Zero following 9/11, died of cancer on Friday, October 9. Family members and First Responder activists rightly blame their deaths on the incredible array of poisons released into the air after the explosions and subsequent pyroplastic collapse of the Twin Trade Towers and subsequently Tower Seven.
Stephen Grossman, whose son Robert died of cancer at the age of 44, commented that “Everybody is denying that this stuff is connected to 9/11.” And right he is. Robert Grossman was a police officer in Harlem who worked at Ground Zero for several weeks after 9/11. His father added, “He never once said he was sorry he went down there. None of them walked away even though they all knew it was really dangerous.”
The very day after Grossman passed, Firefighter Richard Mannetta, 44, died of cancer. The preceding Wednesday, 37-year old Police Office Cory Diaz died of cancer. Stephen Grossman pointed out, “Unfortunately, it’s just going to happen more and more.” He added that there are still many more first responders, in fact, thousands of them, who are sick.
Adding a tone of righteous irony, he said “This country just says, ‘That’s fine. We’ll just wait another 15 to 20 years and you’ll all be dead and we’ll all be sorry. This country is [or should be] better than that.”
What hit the victims?
The documentary Dust to Dust catalogs some of the 2,500 contaminants that erupted from the explosions of the World Trade Center towers, Tower Seven and the two, fuel-laden jetliners, turning into a toxic gray dust that hung in the air as well as settled in people’s lungs and on area streets, vehicles, buildings, residences, both outside and inside the city for months . . .
Over 400 tons of asbestos, which once inhaled in any quantity cannot be expelled by the lungs
90,000 liters of jet fuel containing benzene, a carcinogen that suppresses the immune system and causes leukemia
Mercury from over 500,000 fluorescent lights that is toxic to the nervous system, and damaging especially to the kidneys
200,000 pounds of lead and cadmium from personal computers, toxic to the respiratory track, especially damaging to kidneys
Polycystic aromatic hydrocarbons that cause lung, laryngeal and throat cancers
130,000 gallons of transformer oil with PCBs, causing serious skin rashes and liver damage
Crystalline Silica from 420,000 tons of concrete, sheetrock and glass (tiny particulates that lodge in heart, causing ischemic heart disease)
. . . and so on and on and on . . .
I suggest you read the full review to get the full picture of what these heroic people were up against and what they have had to live through and in many cases die from. The tale includes the lies told by the EPA, the New York City and US governments that minimalized the dangers of the environmental catastrophe, the worst in the history of the United States.
The lies were told to speed the return to work of Wall Streeters, as well as to maximize the elimination of the Ground Zero crime scene. The evidence was whisked away in eight months, with men and women working round the clock, while Mayor Rudy Giuliani had a year and a half to complete the work, and in that time, allow for investigators to scour the scene for clues.
It’s no wonder, that as Ms Gaskell reports, “”The James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act -- named after an NYPD detective who died from his post-9/11 ailments -- is still sitting in Congress, and Grossman and others are urging lawmakers to act now.” That is for the men and women who acted “now” when the call came on 9/11 to help. Why can't the members of Congress live up to the integrity and strength of its selfless First Responders!
John Feal, founder of the FealGood Foundation added, “These three deaths are proof that we need this bill passed today -- not a year from now.” Why, indeed, wasn’t it folded into the present health reform bill being hammered out in Congress, that is, if those hammerheads can get anything done!
The bill would put aside $10 billion (most likely less than Wall Street’s bonuses this year) for medical care for hundreds of first responders who have since become ill, though doctors amazingly have not yet correlated these illnesses with the World Trade Center. Given the shotgun blast of what those men were hit with, one wonders where those doctors’ heads are.
As Kenny Specht, a 40-year-old firefighter who worked with the NYPD on 9/11 and was subsequently diagnosed with thyroid cancer three years ago said, “The facts are indisputable. This week alone proves what we’ve been saying is absolutely occurring.” But never let it be said that our government rushes to help its heroes, whether in New York City or Iraq or Afghanistan. It’s too busy protecting the health and well-being of the insurance industry and the stock market, the defense industry, etc., which has got to change.
Feal added that the deaths of Grossman, Diaz and Mannetta in a span of five days should be hard to ignore. “How do you get this high cluster of serious cancer in just people that worked the pile? That isn’t a coincidence.” No, it isn’t, Mr. Feal. Nor is the neglect of the bravest, the finest, and the most dutiful. But that’s gotta change too. Or else they can send the Wall Streeters, AIG-ers and other clowns to the next catastrophe at home or abroad. And god help us!
In this case Robert Grossman, a police office who worked at Ground Zero following 9/11, died of cancer on Friday, October 9. Family members and First Responder activists rightly blame their deaths on the incredible array of poisons released into the air after the explosions and subsequent pyroplastic collapse of the Twin Trade Towers and subsequently Tower Seven.
Stephen Grossman, whose son Robert died of cancer at the age of 44, commented that “Everybody is denying that this stuff is connected to 9/11.” And right he is. Robert Grossman was a police officer in Harlem who worked at Ground Zero for several weeks after 9/11. His father added, “He never once said he was sorry he went down there. None of them walked away even though they all knew it was really dangerous.”
The very day after Grossman passed, Firefighter Richard Mannetta, 44, died of cancer. The preceding Wednesday, 37-year old Police Office Cory Diaz died of cancer. Stephen Grossman pointed out, “Unfortunately, it’s just going to happen more and more.” He added that there are still many more first responders, in fact, thousands of them, who are sick.
Adding a tone of righteous irony, he said “This country just says, ‘That’s fine. We’ll just wait another 15 to 20 years and you’ll all be dead and we’ll all be sorry. This country is [or should be] better than that.”
What hit the victims?
The documentary Dust to Dust catalogs some of the 2,500 contaminants that erupted from the explosions of the World Trade Center towers, Tower Seven and the two, fuel-laden jetliners, turning into a toxic gray dust that hung in the air as well as settled in people’s lungs and on area streets, vehicles, buildings, residences, both outside and inside the city for months . . .
Over 400 tons of asbestos, which once inhaled in any quantity cannot be expelled by the lungs
90,000 liters of jet fuel containing benzene, a carcinogen that suppresses the immune system and causes leukemia
Mercury from over 500,000 fluorescent lights that is toxic to the nervous system, and damaging especially to the kidneys
200,000 pounds of lead and cadmium from personal computers, toxic to the respiratory track, especially damaging to kidneys
Polycystic aromatic hydrocarbons that cause lung, laryngeal and throat cancers
130,000 gallons of transformer oil with PCBs, causing serious skin rashes and liver damage
Crystalline Silica from 420,000 tons of concrete, sheetrock and glass (tiny particulates that lodge in heart, causing ischemic heart disease)
. . . and so on and on and on . . .
I suggest you read the full review to get the full picture of what these heroic people were up against and what they have had to live through and in many cases die from. The tale includes the lies told by the EPA, the New York City and US governments that minimalized the dangers of the environmental catastrophe, the worst in the history of the United States.
The lies were told to speed the return to work of Wall Streeters, as well as to maximize the elimination of the Ground Zero crime scene. The evidence was whisked away in eight months, with men and women working round the clock, while Mayor Rudy Giuliani had a year and a half to complete the work, and in that time, allow for investigators to scour the scene for clues.
It’s no wonder, that as Ms Gaskell reports, “”The James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act -- named after an NYPD detective who died from his post-9/11 ailments -- is still sitting in Congress, and Grossman and others are urging lawmakers to act now.” That is for the men and women who acted “now” when the call came on 9/11 to help. Why can't the members of Congress live up to the integrity and strength of its selfless First Responders!
John Feal, founder of the FealGood Foundation added, “These three deaths are proof that we need this bill passed today -- not a year from now.” Why, indeed, wasn’t it folded into the present health reform bill being hammered out in Congress, that is, if those hammerheads can get anything done!
The bill would put aside $10 billion (most likely less than Wall Street’s bonuses this year) for medical care for hundreds of first responders who have since become ill, though doctors amazingly have not yet correlated these illnesses with the World Trade Center. Given the shotgun blast of what those men were hit with, one wonders where those doctors’ heads are.
As Kenny Specht, a 40-year-old firefighter who worked with the NYPD on 9/11 and was subsequently diagnosed with thyroid cancer three years ago said, “The facts are indisputable. This week alone proves what we’ve been saying is absolutely occurring.” But never let it be said that our government rushes to help its heroes, whether in New York City or Iraq or Afghanistan. It’s too busy protecting the health and well-being of the insurance industry and the stock market, the defense industry, etc., which has got to change.
Feal added that the deaths of Grossman, Diaz and Mannetta in a span of five days should be hard to ignore. “How do you get this high cluster of serious cancer in just people that worked the pile? That isn’t a coincidence.” No, it isn’t, Mr. Feal. Nor is the neglect of the bravest, the finest, and the most dutiful. But that’s gotta change too. Or else they can send the Wall Streeters, AIG-ers and other clowns to the next catastrophe at home or abroad. And god help us!
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Every time the media reports the unemployment numbers, it reminds me of George Orwell’s book, 1984. In the legendary book, a governmental organization referred to as the “Ministry of Truth” would report through the telescreens that the price of chocolate was going down. Winston Smith, the lead character of the book, knew good and well that the price of chocolate was not going down but was actually going up. We are certainly living in Orwell’s world! The difference between ours and the fictional world of Orwell, is that we are not being propagandized about chocolate, but rather unemployment statistics. The controlled news media always attempts to “butter up” the bad numbers, by putting a positive spin on the fact that we are losing our jobs, month after month.
The truth of the matter is that America is in deep, deep trouble and all the gutless globalist lapdogs in the media can do is lie to the people, trying to convince them that we are not in a depression — it’s only a “recession” — and it will soon be over. The deception is intended to get the American people, true to the failed Keynesian economic model, to spend money they don’t have, in a hopeless attempt to apply the defibrillation paddles to the dying patient which is the American economy. They will never tell you the patient is dying. They will never tell you why the patient is dying.
Furthermore, I have to laugh when I read statements like those of Don Miller from Money Morning when he said in a recent column about the horrendous September unemployment numbers,
“The latest data suggest the odds are increasing that the economy may be suffering through its second ‘jobless recovery’ in eight years.”
I have news for Don and all of people in the media and elsewhere who still have their heads in the sand about what is really going on in America. Listen up! Hear me! There isn’t going to be a recovery! You cannot have a recovery without jobs! And you are never going to see our jobs return without a reversal of the policies of globalization which put America into this economic mess.
It isn’t difficult to see the devastation that the policies which gave us the “global economy” have wrought upon America and her people. American companies cut 371,000 jobs in July. Not surprisingly, August wasn’t much better. Mike Larsen at Money and Markets puts it this way,
“In the week ending August 29: 570,000 Americans filed for first-time jobless benefits. The number of Americans who had previously filed and still remain on the jobless rolls was 6.234 million.
“While those numbers are down somewhat from their March highs, they’re far, far above what would be considered normal. The average reading for initial claims over the past 42 years is just under 360,000.
“Then there’s this week’s report from ADP Employer Services. It showed the economy shedding another 298,000 jobs in August. While that was down from 360,000 a month earlier, it also marked the 19th straight month we’ve lost jobs as a nation. The cumulative tally: Almost 6.9 million jobs down the drain!”
September’s numbers are not much better. Reuters news service recently reported that U.S. employers cut another 260,000 jobs last month. Hence, building on Larsen’s numbers, we’ve now gone 20 straight months with a hemorrhaging U.S. job market and there’s no end in sight.
These are astronomical numbers! Add this figure to the already overwhelming number of job losses that we’ve seen since the signing of the NAFTA agreement in 1993, and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist (or an economist, for that matter) to see the effects of globalization upon our country. Yet, do we see any sign of reversal of those same policies? Quite the contrary.
In fact, anyone arguing for a common sense rescission of WTO agreements, a return of our military to our own soil, and an end to the flood of migrant workers coming to this country, is referred to with such disdainful pejoratives as “isolationist,” “protectionist,” and even “xenophobic.”
A perfect example of the mindset of out-of-touch elitism that has permeated globalist circles can be seen in the Foreign Affairs article titled, The Outsourcing Bogeyman by Daniel Drezner, assistant political science professor at the University of Chicago. Drezner pontificated in his May 2004 article,
“Should Americans be concerned about the economic effects of outsourcing? Not particularly. … The creation of new jobs overseas will eventually lead to more jobs and higher incomes in the United States. Because the economy — and especially job growth — is sluggish at the moment, commentators are attempting to draw a connection between offshore outsourcing and high unemployment. But believing that offshore outsourcing causes unemployment is the economic equivalent of believing the sun revolves around the earth: intuitively compelling but clearly wrong.”
What elitist arrogance! And what an insult to the intelligence of the average, every day American workers — who, by the hundreds of thousands, have watched their factories close and their jobs disappear to foreign countries in the post-NAFTA economy! I would like to say to Mr. Drezner that denial is not a river in Egypt. Why don’t you spend some of your millions and take a trip to Motown and tell your philosophy to the unemployed auto workers there?
Mr. Drezner concludes,
“Until robust job growth returns, the debate over outsourcing will not go away — the political temptation to scapegoat foreigners is simply too great.“The refrain of ‘this time, it’s different’ is not new in the debate over free trade. In the 1980’s, the Japanese variety of capitalism — with its omniscient industrial policy and high nontariff barriers — was supposed to supplant the U.S. system. Fifteen years later, that prediction sounds absurd. During the 1990’s, the passage of NAFTA and the Uruguay Round of trade talks were supposed to create a ‘giant sucking sound’ as jobs left the United States. Contrary to such fears, tens of millions of new jobs were created. Once the economy improves, the political hysteria over outsourcing will also disappear.”
Tens of millions of new jobs were created since NAFTA? Where are they, Mr. Drezner? Perhaps in government think tanks and academic egg heads who’ve never gotten their carefully-manicured hands dirty because they’ve never done a real day’s work in their entire lives?
Let’s talk for a moment about that “giant sucking sound” that Ross Perot predicted and that globalist/elitist Drezner likes to discount. Several months ago, I pulled the official NAFTA trade deficit numbers directly off the U.S. Census Bureau web site. These are the official numbers, according to the governments own statisticians.
In the years preceding the signing of the NAFTA agreement, the U.S. trade deficit hovered around even with Mexico give or take a billion or two. In 1991, the U.S. enjoyed a $2.1 billion trade surplus, meaning we exported more dollars worth of goods to Mexico than we imported. In 1992, that number was over $5.3 billion. In 1993, the year NAFTA was signed, American workers enjoyed a $1.6 billion trade surplus. The following year, the effects of NAFTA hadn’t yet hit the American economy. The U.S. still experienced a $1.3 billion surplus. However, that was the last year for any surplus.
By 1995, just two years after the passage of NAFTA, the U.S. economy began feeling the effects in a major way. We went from having a $1.3 billion trade surplus in 1994, to having a $15.8 billion trade deficit the following year, and the figure has climbed almost without exception every year. By 2007, the U.S. trade deficit with Mexico was a staggering $74.6 billion. It’s important to note that NAFTA is only one trade agreement. There are several such agreements that our government has made with impoverished countries, including the Central American Free Trade Agreement, passed by the U.S. Senate on June 30, 2005 and signed by George W. Bush on August 2nd of the same year.
Nearly every one of the countries covered by the CAFTA-DR agreement are highly impoverished, according to the CIA World Fact Book. Here’s the brief rundown:
• Guatemala — Over 75% of the population lives below the poverty line
• Honduras — “one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere”
• El Salvador — “GDP per capita is roughly half that of Brazil, Argentina, and Chile... With the adoption of the US dollar as its currency, El Salvador has lost control over monetary policy and must concentrate on maintaining a disciplined fiscal policy.”
• Nicaragua — “Nicaragua, one of the hemisphere’s poorest countries, faces low per capita income, massive unemployment, and huge external debt... Nicaragua qualified in early 2004 for some $4 billion in foreign debt reduction under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative.” Half the population lives beneath the poverty line.
• Costa Rica — Fairs better than the rest, the wealthiest of these countries. The only Central American country where citizens are not leaving in search of opportunities.
• Dominican Republic — 1 out of every 4 live in poverty.
Given the dire condition of these nations’ economies, how could “President” George W. Bush make the case that having a free trade agreement with these impoverished Central American countries be in the best interest of American citizens and workers? How could American exporters — what’s left of them — expect to gain from a market where the people are too impoverished to buy? The truth of the matter is that haven’t, and they won’t.
Mr. Drezner’s chief problem, along with other Establishment elitists like him, is that he has selective statistics. Those he would call “protectionists” also have statistics. The real difference is that while the statistics produced by Drezner’s ilk is produced in the academic meat grinder to be vomited out in globalist publications, ours is backed by indisputable reality — knowing that the average American doesn’t need academic, media, or government statisticians telling them how good they have it. The numbers the American people look at are their bank accounts, their credit scores, their mortgage payments, their heating and grocery bills, and the price of gas. Increasingly, despite Mr. Drezner’s high rhetoric, Americans have been looking at the digits on their unemployment checks.
The only logical conclusion is that international trade agreements are not designed to benefit the United States, its people, its workers, or its future. They are designed to benefit the poorest countries, at the expense of the American people, leveling the “playing field”, lowering the American standard of living down to the “sustainable” level of third-world status. In other words, unemployment in America, the loss of our jobs, the shrinking of the American way of life, the eradication of our freedom to travel, the elimination of the middle class is socially and environmentally “sustainable.” The wealth of the American people is to be redistributed to the poorest nations, in accordance with chapter 3 of Agenda 21. Our consumption patterns have to be changed in accordance with chapter 4 of Agenda 21. We’ve been sold out by globalist scum, and nothing is ever going to change unless the people understand that this is a part of a deliberate agenda. It isn’t incompetence on the part of our “elected” officials. It isn’t a recession. It isn’t a bad economic downturn. It’s the effects of globalism. Period! We are reaping the natural results of policies that are designed to bankrupt our country.
I hear people say, all of the time, regarding the economy, “it will come back.” Sorry to burst your bubble, but no it won’t! It will never come back until the WTO trade agreements which put us into this mess are rescinded. That won’t happen until the appropriate pressure is applied to Washington by the people and by our state lawmakers who must be pressured to go to Washington and demand the changes.
And if you people who call yourselves “Democrats,” think your buddy Obama is any better than Bush was, then I ask why hasn’t he rescinded these treaties which have obviously been so detrimental to our country? Why haven’t the unions — which have seen their memberships and dues decline — done more to demand a revoking of the international trade agreements that have brought America to its knees? Keep in mind, it was the unions which helped put Clinton in office, who then stabbed them and all American workers in the back by promoting NAFTA after promising to oppose it. It was Bill Clinton who established the President’s Council on Sustainable Development to kick start Agenda 21 implementation in the United States after the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. Agenda 21 implementation mandates the redistribution of wealth from developed to developing countries. It is the reason why your jobs have left. It is Bill’s wife, Hillary Clinton, who currently serves as head of the U.S. State Department, which is the chief agency of the United States government that implements the UN agenda of “sustainability” in America.
When will the American people ever realize that there is no difference between parties? We are not red states, blue states, conservatives, liberals, Republicans, or Democrats. We are Americans. It is about time we dispelled with the labels that the social engineers have developed to divide us — and that we’ve so freely embraced for ourselves — and began to act like true countrymen.
An ancient Roman philosopher named Cicero once said, “A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and he carries his banners openly against the city. But the traitor moves among those within the gates freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears no traitor; he speaks in the accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their garments, and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation; he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city; he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared.”
As I write these words, Ireland has just voted for a second time on the Lisbon Treaty, the Constitution of the European Union. Unlike the first time where they voted it down last year, they just approved it by a margin of 67 to 33 percent. Their government’s fear campaign of economic doom and gloom was the chief reason for the voters who favored it at the polls, according to exit polls. In other words, they were willing to hand the sovereignty of their country over to a regional governing body on the promise of economic prosperity.
They bought the same globalist lie for which America fell when we accepted GATT, NAFTA, CAFTA and many other foreign trade entanglements. If Poland and the Czech Republic follow Ireland — and they are expected to do so — we can look forward to a new European presidency and Secretary of State to be formed. Ireland will eventually cease to exist, as the sovereignty of all of the 27 member countries of the EU will be gradually chipped away, until there is nothing left.
As Americans tail gate, drink beer, and watch their football games, they don’t have time to worry about the fate of the Irish, the Poles, or the Czechs. But they would be do well to learn the lessons of Europe. As the globalist thieves have taken Ireland, so too they come for the west.
The truth of the matter is that America is in deep, deep trouble and all the gutless globalist lapdogs in the media can do is lie to the people, trying to convince them that we are not in a depression — it’s only a “recession” — and it will soon be over. The deception is intended to get the American people, true to the failed Keynesian economic model, to spend money they don’t have, in a hopeless attempt to apply the defibrillation paddles to the dying patient which is the American economy. They will never tell you the patient is dying. They will never tell you why the patient is dying.
Furthermore, I have to laugh when I read statements like those of Don Miller from Money Morning when he said in a recent column about the horrendous September unemployment numbers,
“The latest data suggest the odds are increasing that the economy may be suffering through its second ‘jobless recovery’ in eight years.”
I have news for Don and all of people in the media and elsewhere who still have their heads in the sand about what is really going on in America. Listen up! Hear me! There isn’t going to be a recovery! You cannot have a recovery without jobs! And you are never going to see our jobs return without a reversal of the policies of globalization which put America into this economic mess.
It isn’t difficult to see the devastation that the policies which gave us the “global economy” have wrought upon America and her people. American companies cut 371,000 jobs in July. Not surprisingly, August wasn’t much better. Mike Larsen at Money and Markets puts it this way,
“In the week ending August 29: 570,000 Americans filed for first-time jobless benefits. The number of Americans who had previously filed and still remain on the jobless rolls was 6.234 million.
“While those numbers are down somewhat from their March highs, they’re far, far above what would be considered normal. The average reading for initial claims over the past 42 years is just under 360,000.
“Then there’s this week’s report from ADP Employer Services. It showed the economy shedding another 298,000 jobs in August. While that was down from 360,000 a month earlier, it also marked the 19th straight month we’ve lost jobs as a nation. The cumulative tally: Almost 6.9 million jobs down the drain!”
September’s numbers are not much better. Reuters news service recently reported that U.S. employers cut another 260,000 jobs last month. Hence, building on Larsen’s numbers, we’ve now gone 20 straight months with a hemorrhaging U.S. job market and there’s no end in sight.
These are astronomical numbers! Add this figure to the already overwhelming number of job losses that we’ve seen since the signing of the NAFTA agreement in 1993, and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist (or an economist, for that matter) to see the effects of globalization upon our country. Yet, do we see any sign of reversal of those same policies? Quite the contrary.
In fact, anyone arguing for a common sense rescission of WTO agreements, a return of our military to our own soil, and an end to the flood of migrant workers coming to this country, is referred to with such disdainful pejoratives as “isolationist,” “protectionist,” and even “xenophobic.”
A perfect example of the mindset of out-of-touch elitism that has permeated globalist circles can be seen in the Foreign Affairs article titled, The Outsourcing Bogeyman by Daniel Drezner, assistant political science professor at the University of Chicago. Drezner pontificated in his May 2004 article,
“Should Americans be concerned about the economic effects of outsourcing? Not particularly. … The creation of new jobs overseas will eventually lead to more jobs and higher incomes in the United States. Because the economy — and especially job growth — is sluggish at the moment, commentators are attempting to draw a connection between offshore outsourcing and high unemployment. But believing that offshore outsourcing causes unemployment is the economic equivalent of believing the sun revolves around the earth: intuitively compelling but clearly wrong.”
What elitist arrogance! And what an insult to the intelligence of the average, every day American workers — who, by the hundreds of thousands, have watched their factories close and their jobs disappear to foreign countries in the post-NAFTA economy! I would like to say to Mr. Drezner that denial is not a river in Egypt. Why don’t you spend some of your millions and take a trip to Motown and tell your philosophy to the unemployed auto workers there?
Mr. Drezner concludes,
“Until robust job growth returns, the debate over outsourcing will not go away — the political temptation to scapegoat foreigners is simply too great.“The refrain of ‘this time, it’s different’ is not new in the debate over free trade. In the 1980’s, the Japanese variety of capitalism — with its omniscient industrial policy and high nontariff barriers — was supposed to supplant the U.S. system. Fifteen years later, that prediction sounds absurd. During the 1990’s, the passage of NAFTA and the Uruguay Round of trade talks were supposed to create a ‘giant sucking sound’ as jobs left the United States. Contrary to such fears, tens of millions of new jobs were created. Once the economy improves, the political hysteria over outsourcing will also disappear.”
Tens of millions of new jobs were created since NAFTA? Where are they, Mr. Drezner? Perhaps in government think tanks and academic egg heads who’ve never gotten their carefully-manicured hands dirty because they’ve never done a real day’s work in their entire lives?
Let’s talk for a moment about that “giant sucking sound” that Ross Perot predicted and that globalist/elitist Drezner likes to discount. Several months ago, I pulled the official NAFTA trade deficit numbers directly off the U.S. Census Bureau web site. These are the official numbers, according to the governments own statisticians.
In the years preceding the signing of the NAFTA agreement, the U.S. trade deficit hovered around even with Mexico give or take a billion or two. In 1991, the U.S. enjoyed a $2.1 billion trade surplus, meaning we exported more dollars worth of goods to Mexico than we imported. In 1992, that number was over $5.3 billion. In 1993, the year NAFTA was signed, American workers enjoyed a $1.6 billion trade surplus. The following year, the effects of NAFTA hadn’t yet hit the American economy. The U.S. still experienced a $1.3 billion surplus. However, that was the last year for any surplus.
By 1995, just two years after the passage of NAFTA, the U.S. economy began feeling the effects in a major way. We went from having a $1.3 billion trade surplus in 1994, to having a $15.8 billion trade deficit the following year, and the figure has climbed almost without exception every year. By 2007, the U.S. trade deficit with Mexico was a staggering $74.6 billion. It’s important to note that NAFTA is only one trade agreement. There are several such agreements that our government has made with impoverished countries, including the Central American Free Trade Agreement, passed by the U.S. Senate on June 30, 2005 and signed by George W. Bush on August 2nd of the same year.
Nearly every one of the countries covered by the CAFTA-DR agreement are highly impoverished, according to the CIA World Fact Book. Here’s the brief rundown:
• Guatemala — Over 75% of the population lives below the poverty line
• Honduras — “one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere”
• El Salvador — “GDP per capita is roughly half that of Brazil, Argentina, and Chile... With the adoption of the US dollar as its currency, El Salvador has lost control over monetary policy and must concentrate on maintaining a disciplined fiscal policy.”
• Nicaragua — “Nicaragua, one of the hemisphere’s poorest countries, faces low per capita income, massive unemployment, and huge external debt... Nicaragua qualified in early 2004 for some $4 billion in foreign debt reduction under the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative.” Half the population lives beneath the poverty line.
• Costa Rica — Fairs better than the rest, the wealthiest of these countries. The only Central American country where citizens are not leaving in search of opportunities.
• Dominican Republic — 1 out of every 4 live in poverty.
Given the dire condition of these nations’ economies, how could “President” George W. Bush make the case that having a free trade agreement with these impoverished Central American countries be in the best interest of American citizens and workers? How could American exporters — what’s left of them — expect to gain from a market where the people are too impoverished to buy? The truth of the matter is that haven’t, and they won’t.
Mr. Drezner’s chief problem, along with other Establishment elitists like him, is that he has selective statistics. Those he would call “protectionists” also have statistics. The real difference is that while the statistics produced by Drezner’s ilk is produced in the academic meat grinder to be vomited out in globalist publications, ours is backed by indisputable reality — knowing that the average American doesn’t need academic, media, or government statisticians telling them how good they have it. The numbers the American people look at are their bank accounts, their credit scores, their mortgage payments, their heating and grocery bills, and the price of gas. Increasingly, despite Mr. Drezner’s high rhetoric, Americans have been looking at the digits on their unemployment checks.
The only logical conclusion is that international trade agreements are not designed to benefit the United States, its people, its workers, or its future. They are designed to benefit the poorest countries, at the expense of the American people, leveling the “playing field”, lowering the American standard of living down to the “sustainable” level of third-world status. In other words, unemployment in America, the loss of our jobs, the shrinking of the American way of life, the eradication of our freedom to travel, the elimination of the middle class is socially and environmentally “sustainable.” The wealth of the American people is to be redistributed to the poorest nations, in accordance with chapter 3 of Agenda 21. Our consumption patterns have to be changed in accordance with chapter 4 of Agenda 21. We’ve been sold out by globalist scum, and nothing is ever going to change unless the people understand that this is a part of a deliberate agenda. It isn’t incompetence on the part of our “elected” officials. It isn’t a recession. It isn’t a bad economic downturn. It’s the effects of globalism. Period! We are reaping the natural results of policies that are designed to bankrupt our country.
I hear people say, all of the time, regarding the economy, “it will come back.” Sorry to burst your bubble, but no it won’t! It will never come back until the WTO trade agreements which put us into this mess are rescinded. That won’t happen until the appropriate pressure is applied to Washington by the people and by our state lawmakers who must be pressured to go to Washington and demand the changes.
And if you people who call yourselves “Democrats,” think your buddy Obama is any better than Bush was, then I ask why hasn’t he rescinded these treaties which have obviously been so detrimental to our country? Why haven’t the unions — which have seen their memberships and dues decline — done more to demand a revoking of the international trade agreements that have brought America to its knees? Keep in mind, it was the unions which helped put Clinton in office, who then stabbed them and all American workers in the back by promoting NAFTA after promising to oppose it. It was Bill Clinton who established the President’s Council on Sustainable Development to kick start Agenda 21 implementation in the United States after the 1992 Rio Earth Summit. Agenda 21 implementation mandates the redistribution of wealth from developed to developing countries. It is the reason why your jobs have left. It is Bill’s wife, Hillary Clinton, who currently serves as head of the U.S. State Department, which is the chief agency of the United States government that implements the UN agenda of “sustainability” in America.
When will the American people ever realize that there is no difference between parties? We are not red states, blue states, conservatives, liberals, Republicans, or Democrats. We are Americans. It is about time we dispelled with the labels that the social engineers have developed to divide us — and that we’ve so freely embraced for ourselves — and began to act like true countrymen.
An ancient Roman philosopher named Cicero once said, “A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and he carries his banners openly against the city. But the traitor moves among those within the gates freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears no traitor; he speaks in the accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their garments, and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation; he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city; he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared.”
As I write these words, Ireland has just voted for a second time on the Lisbon Treaty, the Constitution of the European Union. Unlike the first time where they voted it down last year, they just approved it by a margin of 67 to 33 percent. Their government’s fear campaign of economic doom and gloom was the chief reason for the voters who favored it at the polls, according to exit polls. In other words, they were willing to hand the sovereignty of their country over to a regional governing body on the promise of economic prosperity.
They bought the same globalist lie for which America fell when we accepted GATT, NAFTA, CAFTA and many other foreign trade entanglements. If Poland and the Czech Republic follow Ireland — and they are expected to do so — we can look forward to a new European presidency and Secretary of State to be formed. Ireland will eventually cease to exist, as the sovereignty of all of the 27 member countries of the EU will be gradually chipped away, until there is nothing left.
As Americans tail gate, drink beer, and watch their football games, they don’t have time to worry about the fate of the Irish, the Poles, or the Czechs. But they would be do well to learn the lessons of Europe. As the globalist thieves have taken Ireland, so too they come for the west.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Arnie's Ammo Law
Second Amendment advocates and other defenders of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are outraged by California Gov. Schwarzenegger’s scheme to force all law-abiding gun owners in the state to submit data to be inserted in a database when they purchase ammunition.
It makes sense California would enact such a law. The state is lorded over by an avowed Nazi.
”I admired Hitler, for instance, because he came from being a little man with almost no formal education up to power. And I admire him for being such a good public speaker,” Arnie said in the documentary Pumping Iron. The producer of the film, George Butler, considers Schwarzenegger a ”flagrant, outspoken admirer of Hitler.”
In a book proposal, according to the New York Times, Butler also said he had seen Mr. Schwarzenegger playing ”Nazi marching songs from long-playing records in his collection at home” and said that the actor ”frequently clicked his heels and pretended to be an S.S. officer.”
In response to Butler’s accusation, Schwarzenegger told the newspaper in 2003 that he despises Hitler.
He does? If so, why does Schwarzenegger wear a belt buckle bearing the SS Totenkopf, a Nazi SS insignia? Schwarzenegger appeared on the cover of Time Magazine on June 25, 2007, with Michael Bloomberg — who also has contempt for the Second Amendment — wearing the death’s head belt buckle. He wore it again nine months later in the March 2008 issue of Esquire Magazine.
Schwarzenegger proudly displayed the death’s head buckle a few months ago at the CeBIT 2009 IT conference in Hanover, Germany.
Schwarzenegger’s late father, Gustav, voluntarily applied to join the Nazi Party in 1938 when it was still illegal in Austria. He also voluntarily applied to become a member of the Sturmabteilung, the Nazi paramilitary wing, on May 1, 1939. He was a Hitler-worshiping brownshirt.
Arnie invited Austrian president Kurt Waldheim to his wedding in 1986 after it emerged that the former UN secretary general had long concealed that he fought in a German army commando accused of atrocities.
All of this may be incidental to Arnie’s signing of AB962, the California ammo bill. But then, considering Arnie’s flagrant display of an SS insignia, it does not seem likely.
Nazis feared an armed public. Soon after grabbing power in 1933, the Nazis conducted massive searches and seizures of firearms from political opponents. “After five years of repression and eradication of dissidents, Hitler signed a new gun control law in 1938, which benefited Nazi party members and entities, but denied firearm ownership to enemies of the state,” writes Stephen P. Halbrook.
“History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing,” Hitler said.
“The Nazi Weapons Law of 1938 replaced a Law on Firearms and Ammunition of April 13, 1928,” writes Jews For The Preservation of Firearms Ownership. “The 1928 law was enacted by a center-right, freely elected German government that wanted to curb ‘gang activity,’ violent street fights between Nazi party and Communist party thugs. All firearm owners and their firearms had to be registered. Sound familiar? ‘Gun control’ did not save democracy in Germany. It helped to make sure that the toughest criminals, the Nazis, prevailed.
In California it is much the same — the state, the toughest criminal on the block, will now have a monopoly on gun possession while the law-abiding citizens will be forced to jump through hoops in order to realize the constitutional right to own a firearm.
It is ironic that Schwarzenegger signed this bill. He is an avowed Nazi that takes pride in wearing the same insignia as the SS. It is a symbol representing not only the secret police and naked totalitarian power, but the Nazi death cult responsible for killing tens of millions of innocent humans.
Millions of them would have lived a lot longer if they had firearms and fought back against the people Arnold Schwarzenegger worships.
It makes sense California would enact such a law. The state is lorded over by an avowed Nazi.
”I admired Hitler, for instance, because he came from being a little man with almost no formal education up to power. And I admire him for being such a good public speaker,” Arnie said in the documentary Pumping Iron. The producer of the film, George Butler, considers Schwarzenegger a ”flagrant, outspoken admirer of Hitler.”
In a book proposal, according to the New York Times, Butler also said he had seen Mr. Schwarzenegger playing ”Nazi marching songs from long-playing records in his collection at home” and said that the actor ”frequently clicked his heels and pretended to be an S.S. officer.”
In response to Butler’s accusation, Schwarzenegger told the newspaper in 2003 that he despises Hitler.
He does? If so, why does Schwarzenegger wear a belt buckle bearing the SS Totenkopf, a Nazi SS insignia? Schwarzenegger appeared on the cover of Time Magazine on June 25, 2007, with Michael Bloomberg — who also has contempt for the Second Amendment — wearing the death’s head belt buckle. He wore it again nine months later in the March 2008 issue of Esquire Magazine.
Schwarzenegger proudly displayed the death’s head buckle a few months ago at the CeBIT 2009 IT conference in Hanover, Germany.
Schwarzenegger’s late father, Gustav, voluntarily applied to join the Nazi Party in 1938 when it was still illegal in Austria. He also voluntarily applied to become a member of the Sturmabteilung, the Nazi paramilitary wing, on May 1, 1939. He was a Hitler-worshiping brownshirt.
Arnie invited Austrian president Kurt Waldheim to his wedding in 1986 after it emerged that the former UN secretary general had long concealed that he fought in a German army commando accused of atrocities.
All of this may be incidental to Arnie’s signing of AB962, the California ammo bill. But then, considering Arnie’s flagrant display of an SS insignia, it does not seem likely.
Nazis feared an armed public. Soon after grabbing power in 1933, the Nazis conducted massive searches and seizures of firearms from political opponents. “After five years of repression and eradication of dissidents, Hitler signed a new gun control law in 1938, which benefited Nazi party members and entities, but denied firearm ownership to enemies of the state,” writes Stephen P. Halbrook.
“History shows that all conquerors who have allowed their subject races to carry arms have prepared their own downfall by so doing,” Hitler said.
“The Nazi Weapons Law of 1938 replaced a Law on Firearms and Ammunition of April 13, 1928,” writes Jews For The Preservation of Firearms Ownership. “The 1928 law was enacted by a center-right, freely elected German government that wanted to curb ‘gang activity,’ violent street fights between Nazi party and Communist party thugs. All firearm owners and their firearms had to be registered. Sound familiar? ‘Gun control’ did not save democracy in Germany. It helped to make sure that the toughest criminals, the Nazis, prevailed.
In California it is much the same — the state, the toughest criminal on the block, will now have a monopoly on gun possession while the law-abiding citizens will be forced to jump through hoops in order to realize the constitutional right to own a firearm.
It is ironic that Schwarzenegger signed this bill. He is an avowed Nazi that takes pride in wearing the same insignia as the SS. It is a symbol representing not only the secret police and naked totalitarian power, but the Nazi death cult responsible for killing tens of millions of innocent humans.
Millions of them would have lived a lot longer if they had firearms and fought back against the people Arnold Schwarzenegger worships.
Saturday, September 26, 2009
What First Amendment?
It’s a shocking scene that wouldn’t have looked out of place on the streets of Nazi Germany or Maoist China in humanity’s darkest historical period – a protester is shoved into an unmarked car by military thugs and driven away to whatever Godforsaken fate awaits him. And yet this is America in 2009, where the First Amendment is now officially a criminal offense and people who dare exercise it are attacked and abducted by military police in broad daylight.
The video shows an unmarked gold Sedan drive up to a side street near Baum Ave & S Millvale Ave. in Pittsburgh. Men in military fatigues wrestle with the protester as other men in cammo exit the vehicle. The protester is shoved forcefully into the car as the military thugs follow him in and the car speeds away.
Watch the clip below.
Protesters scream “what the fuck is wrong with you” as the Sedan disappears into a cloud of tear gas.
In another You Tube clip, the man with the red bandana seen protesting as the other man is abducted is subsequently arrested by riot cops, presumably merely for voicing his displeasure at the disgraceful scenes he witnessed.
“Some guy just got chased down and thrown in a car for no reason,” states the camerawoman before the shot focuses in on the man with the red bandana, who is being manhandled and arrested by three riot cops.
“Why are you doing that, what did he do?” asks the woman.
Other protesters chant “let him go” as media photographers attempt to find out his name. The clip finishes with a another burst of the sound cannon being used against demonstrators.
Another You Tube clip features the image that is re-posted at the top of this story and asks people to try and identify the military police and riot cops who kidnapped the demonstrator.
These videos require no more explanation, they speak for themselves. Riot cops and military personnel driving around in unmarked cars kidnapping American citizens off the streets for the crime of exercising their First Amendment.
There can be no more debate, America as we knew it is officially dead and buried. The U.S. is more of a police state than Communist China. The only free speech that still exists is on the Internet, in the form of You Tube videos that remind us of what we already knew – the whole country has been hijacked and looted by a criminal gang of globalists who are using their cadre of enforcer thugs to crush any form of opposition to their agenda.
Our only hope is that when the world witnesses scenes like this, it will act as a wake-up call and prevent the planet from sliding once again into tyranny. Only the most deluded and brainwashed individual can now deny the threat that faces us all when police and military show such contempt for the Constitution that they swore an oath to protect and defend.
The video shows an unmarked gold Sedan drive up to a side street near Baum Ave & S Millvale Ave. in Pittsburgh. Men in military fatigues wrestle with the protester as other men in cammo exit the vehicle. The protester is shoved forcefully into the car as the military thugs follow him in and the car speeds away.
Watch the clip below.
Protesters scream “what the fuck is wrong with you” as the Sedan disappears into a cloud of tear gas.
In another You Tube clip, the man with the red bandana seen protesting as the other man is abducted is subsequently arrested by riot cops, presumably merely for voicing his displeasure at the disgraceful scenes he witnessed.
“Some guy just got chased down and thrown in a car for no reason,” states the camerawoman before the shot focuses in on the man with the red bandana, who is being manhandled and arrested by three riot cops.
“Why are you doing that, what did he do?” asks the woman.
Other protesters chant “let him go” as media photographers attempt to find out his name. The clip finishes with a another burst of the sound cannon being used against demonstrators.
Another You Tube clip features the image that is re-posted at the top of this story and asks people to try and identify the military police and riot cops who kidnapped the demonstrator.
These videos require no more explanation, they speak for themselves. Riot cops and military personnel driving around in unmarked cars kidnapping American citizens off the streets for the crime of exercising their First Amendment.
There can be no more debate, America as we knew it is officially dead and buried. The U.S. is more of a police state than Communist China. The only free speech that still exists is on the Internet, in the form of You Tube videos that remind us of what we already knew – the whole country has been hijacked and looted by a criminal gang of globalists who are using their cadre of enforcer thugs to crush any form of opposition to their agenda.
Our only hope is that when the world witnesses scenes like this, it will act as a wake-up call and prevent the planet from sliding once again into tyranny. Only the most deluded and brainwashed individual can now deny the threat that faces us all when police and military show such contempt for the Constitution that they swore an oath to protect and defend.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Mandatory Swine Flu Shots For Firefighters?
Let me start off by saying as a volunteer firefighter, I will resign before I take this injection. Firefighters could be added to the list of those mandated to take the dangerous and untested H1N1 vaccine if Parkersburg Fire Department Chief Eric Chichester gets his way, while health workers in Ontario Canada have been told they will not be forced to take the shot.
Firefighters do not work in hospitals, but because they are trained EMT’s, Chichester believes they should get both the seasonal and H1N1 vaccines.
“I plan on getting vaccinated as soon as it’s available,” Chichester said. “Our guys have the choice of getting the regular flu shot, but I’m looking into ways I can make it mandatory for them to receive the H1N1 vaccine,” he told the News and Sentinel.
Capt. Rick Woodyard with the Wood County Sheriff’s Department is quoted in the same article as saying that police will follow the orders of FEMA if there is a widespread H1N1 outbreak.
According to Woodyard, this would involve “guarding injection sites and helping out the medical community.” Whether “helping” the medical community means helping them to carry out forced injections remains to be seen, but it seems there would be little else for law enforcement to do in such a situation other than compel people to follow orders they wouldn’t normally be inclined to.
While health workers across the U.S., notably in Atlanta and New York, are being forced to take the swine flu vaccine as well as the seasonal flu shot or be fired, officials in Ontario Canada have stated that neither health professionals or the general public will be forced to take the vaccine.
Premier Dalton McGuinty told CBC News that the government cannot, “hold anybody down and inject them with a vaccine when they don’t want it.”
Similarly, schools in the U.S. and Canada are making noises indicating that the swine flu shot will not be forced upon children without parental consent. Asotin County Health District Administrator Joe Lillard signaled that kids in Idaho would not be forced to take the vaccine when he told local news channel KLEW-TV 3, “This is not mandatory, it is a voluntary program,” said Lillard. “I strongly encourage parents to get their children immunized, but that’s a personal choice and if they decide they don’t want to do it, it’s their decision.”
However, all this could change if H1N1 returns as a deadlier strain and begins to claim more fatalities, which is exactly what authorities seem to be preparing for as reports of military roadblocks and martial law training drills continue to pour in from all over the country.
Firefighters do not work in hospitals, but because they are trained EMT’s, Chichester believes they should get both the seasonal and H1N1 vaccines.
“I plan on getting vaccinated as soon as it’s available,” Chichester said. “Our guys have the choice of getting the regular flu shot, but I’m looking into ways I can make it mandatory for them to receive the H1N1 vaccine,” he told the News and Sentinel.
Capt. Rick Woodyard with the Wood County Sheriff’s Department is quoted in the same article as saying that police will follow the orders of FEMA if there is a widespread H1N1 outbreak.
According to Woodyard, this would involve “guarding injection sites and helping out the medical community.” Whether “helping” the medical community means helping them to carry out forced injections remains to be seen, but it seems there would be little else for law enforcement to do in such a situation other than compel people to follow orders they wouldn’t normally be inclined to.
While health workers across the U.S., notably in Atlanta and New York, are being forced to take the swine flu vaccine as well as the seasonal flu shot or be fired, officials in Ontario Canada have stated that neither health professionals or the general public will be forced to take the vaccine.
Premier Dalton McGuinty told CBC News that the government cannot, “hold anybody down and inject them with a vaccine when they don’t want it.”
Similarly, schools in the U.S. and Canada are making noises indicating that the swine flu shot will not be forced upon children without parental consent. Asotin County Health District Administrator Joe Lillard signaled that kids in Idaho would not be forced to take the vaccine when he told local news channel KLEW-TV 3, “This is not mandatory, it is a voluntary program,” said Lillard. “I strongly encourage parents to get their children immunized, but that’s a personal choice and if they decide they don’t want to do it, it’s their decision.”
However, all this could change if H1N1 returns as a deadlier strain and begins to claim more fatalities, which is exactly what authorities seem to be preparing for as reports of military roadblocks and martial law training drills continue to pour in from all over the country.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
More on Health Care
The current health care “debate” shows how far gone representative government is in the United States. Members of Congress represent the powerful interest groups that fill their campaign coffers, not the people who vote for them.
The health care bill is not about health care. It is about protecting and increasing the profits of the insurance companies. The main feature of the health care bill is the “individual mandate,” which requires everyone in America to buy health insurance. Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont), a recipient of millions in contributions over his career from the insurance industry, proposes to impose up to a $3,800 fine on Americans who fail to purchase health insurance.
The determination of “our” elected representatives to serve the insurance industry is so compelling that Congress is incapable of recognizing the absurdity of these proposals.
The reason there is a health care crisis in the US is that the cumulative loss of jobs and benefits has swollen the uninsured to approximately 50 million Americans. They cannot afford health insurance any more than employers can afford to provide it.
It is absurd to mandate that people purchase what they cannot afford and to fine them for failing to do so. A person who cannot pay a health insurance premium cannot pay the fine. These proposals are like solving the homeless problem by requiring the homeless to purchase a house.
In his speech Obama said “we’ll provide tax credits” for “those individuals and small businesses who still can’t afford the lower-priced insurance available in the exchange” and he said low-cost coverage will be offered to those with preexisting medical conditions. A tax credit is useless to those without income unless the credit is refundable, and subsidized coverage doesn’t do much for those millions of Americans with no jobs.
Baucus masquerades as a defender of the health impaired with his proposal to require insurers to provide coverage to all comers as if the problem of health care can be reduced to preexisting conditions and cancelled policies. It was left to Rep. Dennis Kucinich to point out that the health care bill ponies up 30 million more customers for the private insurance companies.
The private sector is no longer the answer, because the income levels of the vast majority of Americans are insufficient to bear the cost of health insurance today. To provide some perspective, the monthly premium for a 60-year old female for a group policy (employer-provided) with Blue Cross Blue Shield in Kansas is about $1,200. That comes to $14,400 per year. Only employees in high productivity jobs that can provide both a livable salary and health care can expect to have employer-provided coverage. If a 60-year old female has to buy a non-group policy as an individual, the premium would be even higher. How, for example, is a Wal-Mart shelf stocker or checkout clerk going to be able to pay a private insurance premium?
Even the present public option–Medicare–is very expensive to those covered. Basic Medicare is insufficient coverage. Part B has been added, for which about $100 per month is deducted from the covered person’s Social Security check. If the person is still earning or has other retirement income, an “income-related monthly adjustment” is also deducted as part of the Part B premium. And if the person is still working, his earnings are subject to the 2.9 percent Medicare tax.
Even with Part B, Medicare coverage is still insufficient except for the healthy. For many people, additional coverage from private supplementary policies, such as the ones sold by AARP, is necessary. These premiums can be as much as $277 per month. Deductibles remain and prescriptions are only 50% covered. If the drug prescription policy is chosen, the premium is higher.
This leaves a retired person on Medicare who has no other retirement income of significance paying as much as $4,500 per year in premiums in order to create coverage under Medicare that still leaves half of his prescription medicines out-of-pocket. Considering the cost of some prescription medicines, a Medicare-covered person with Part B and a supplementary policy can still face bankruptcy.
Therefore, everyone should take note that a “public option” can leave people with large out-of-pocket costs. I know a professional who has chosen to continue working beyond retirement age. His Medicare coverage with supplemental coverage, Medicare tax, and income-related monthly adjustment comes to $16,400 per year. Those people who want to deny Medicare to the rich will cost the system a lot of money.
What the US needs is a single-payer not-for-profit health system that pays doctors and nurses sufficiently that they will undertake the arduous training and accept the stress and risks of dealing with illness and diseases.
A private health care system worked in the days before expensive medical technology, malpractice suits, high costs of bureaucracy associated with third-party payers and heavy investment in combating fraud, and pressure on insurance companies from Wall Street to improve “shareholder returns.”
Despite the rise in premiums, payments to health care providers, such as doctors, appear to be falling along with coverage to policy holders. The system is no longer functional and no longer makes sense. Health care has become an incidental rather than primary purpose of the health care system. Health care plays second fiddle to insurance company profits and salaries to bureaucrats engaged in fraud prevention and discovery. There is no point in denying coverage to one-sixth of the population in the name of saving a nonexistent private free market health care system. The only way to reduce the cost of health care is to take the profit and paperwork out of health care.
Nothing humans design will be perfect. However, Congress is making it clear to the public that the wrong issues are front and center, such as the belief of Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) and others that illegal aliens and abortions will be covered if government pays the bill.
Debate focuses on subsidiary issues, because Congress no longer writes the bills it passes. The New Deal transferred law-making from the legislative to the executive branch. Executive branch agencies and departments write bills that they want and hand them off to sponsors in the House and Senate. Powerful interest groups took up the same practice. The interest groups that finance political campaigns expect their bills to be sponsored and passed. Thus: a health care reform bill based on forcing people to purchase private health insurance and fining them if they do not.
When bills become mired in ideological conflict, as has happened to the health care bill, something usually passes nevertheless. The president, his PR team, and members of Congress want a health care bill on their resume and to be able to claim that they passed a health care bill, regardless of whether it provides any health care.
The cost of adding public expenditures for health care to a budget drowning in red ink from wars, bank bailouts, and stimulus packages means that the most likely outcome of a health care bill will benefit insurance companies and use mandated private coverage to save public money by curtailing Medicare and Medicaid.
The public’s interest is not considered to be the important determinant. The politicians have to please the insurance companies and reduce health care expenditures in order to save money for another decade or two of war in the Middle East.
The telltale part of Obama’s speech was the applause in response to his pledge that “I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits.” Yet, Obama and his fellow politicians have no hesitation to add trillions of dollars to the deficit in order to fund wars.
The profits of military/security companies are partly recycled into campaign contributions. To cut war spending in order to finance a public health care system would cost politicians campaign contributions from both the insurance industry and the military/security industry. Politicians are not going to allow that to happen.
It was the war in Afghanistan, not health care, that President Obama declared to be a “necessity.”
The health care bill is not about health care. It is about protecting and increasing the profits of the insurance companies. The main feature of the health care bill is the “individual mandate,” which requires everyone in America to buy health insurance. Senate Finance Committee chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont), a recipient of millions in contributions over his career from the insurance industry, proposes to impose up to a $3,800 fine on Americans who fail to purchase health insurance.
The determination of “our” elected representatives to serve the insurance industry is so compelling that Congress is incapable of recognizing the absurdity of these proposals.
The reason there is a health care crisis in the US is that the cumulative loss of jobs and benefits has swollen the uninsured to approximately 50 million Americans. They cannot afford health insurance any more than employers can afford to provide it.
It is absurd to mandate that people purchase what they cannot afford and to fine them for failing to do so. A person who cannot pay a health insurance premium cannot pay the fine. These proposals are like solving the homeless problem by requiring the homeless to purchase a house.
In his speech Obama said “we’ll provide tax credits” for “those individuals and small businesses who still can’t afford the lower-priced insurance available in the exchange” and he said low-cost coverage will be offered to those with preexisting medical conditions. A tax credit is useless to those without income unless the credit is refundable, and subsidized coverage doesn’t do much for those millions of Americans with no jobs.
Baucus masquerades as a defender of the health impaired with his proposal to require insurers to provide coverage to all comers as if the problem of health care can be reduced to preexisting conditions and cancelled policies. It was left to Rep. Dennis Kucinich to point out that the health care bill ponies up 30 million more customers for the private insurance companies.
The private sector is no longer the answer, because the income levels of the vast majority of Americans are insufficient to bear the cost of health insurance today. To provide some perspective, the monthly premium for a 60-year old female for a group policy (employer-provided) with Blue Cross Blue Shield in Kansas is about $1,200. That comes to $14,400 per year. Only employees in high productivity jobs that can provide both a livable salary and health care can expect to have employer-provided coverage. If a 60-year old female has to buy a non-group policy as an individual, the premium would be even higher. How, for example, is a Wal-Mart shelf stocker or checkout clerk going to be able to pay a private insurance premium?
Even the present public option–Medicare–is very expensive to those covered. Basic Medicare is insufficient coverage. Part B has been added, for which about $100 per month is deducted from the covered person’s Social Security check. If the person is still earning or has other retirement income, an “income-related monthly adjustment” is also deducted as part of the Part B premium. And if the person is still working, his earnings are subject to the 2.9 percent Medicare tax.
Even with Part B, Medicare coverage is still insufficient except for the healthy. For many people, additional coverage from private supplementary policies, such as the ones sold by AARP, is necessary. These premiums can be as much as $277 per month. Deductibles remain and prescriptions are only 50% covered. If the drug prescription policy is chosen, the premium is higher.
This leaves a retired person on Medicare who has no other retirement income of significance paying as much as $4,500 per year in premiums in order to create coverage under Medicare that still leaves half of his prescription medicines out-of-pocket. Considering the cost of some prescription medicines, a Medicare-covered person with Part B and a supplementary policy can still face bankruptcy.
Therefore, everyone should take note that a “public option” can leave people with large out-of-pocket costs. I know a professional who has chosen to continue working beyond retirement age. His Medicare coverage with supplemental coverage, Medicare tax, and income-related monthly adjustment comes to $16,400 per year. Those people who want to deny Medicare to the rich will cost the system a lot of money.
What the US needs is a single-payer not-for-profit health system that pays doctors and nurses sufficiently that they will undertake the arduous training and accept the stress and risks of dealing with illness and diseases.
A private health care system worked in the days before expensive medical technology, malpractice suits, high costs of bureaucracy associated with third-party payers and heavy investment in combating fraud, and pressure on insurance companies from Wall Street to improve “shareholder returns.”
Despite the rise in premiums, payments to health care providers, such as doctors, appear to be falling along with coverage to policy holders. The system is no longer functional and no longer makes sense. Health care has become an incidental rather than primary purpose of the health care system. Health care plays second fiddle to insurance company profits and salaries to bureaucrats engaged in fraud prevention and discovery. There is no point in denying coverage to one-sixth of the population in the name of saving a nonexistent private free market health care system. The only way to reduce the cost of health care is to take the profit and paperwork out of health care.
Nothing humans design will be perfect. However, Congress is making it clear to the public that the wrong issues are front and center, such as the belief of Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) and others that illegal aliens and abortions will be covered if government pays the bill.
Debate focuses on subsidiary issues, because Congress no longer writes the bills it passes. The New Deal transferred law-making from the legislative to the executive branch. Executive branch agencies and departments write bills that they want and hand them off to sponsors in the House and Senate. Powerful interest groups took up the same practice. The interest groups that finance political campaigns expect their bills to be sponsored and passed. Thus: a health care reform bill based on forcing people to purchase private health insurance and fining them if they do not.
When bills become mired in ideological conflict, as has happened to the health care bill, something usually passes nevertheless. The president, his PR team, and members of Congress want a health care bill on their resume and to be able to claim that they passed a health care bill, regardless of whether it provides any health care.
The cost of adding public expenditures for health care to a budget drowning in red ink from wars, bank bailouts, and stimulus packages means that the most likely outcome of a health care bill will benefit insurance companies and use mandated private coverage to save public money by curtailing Medicare and Medicaid.
The public’s interest is not considered to be the important determinant. The politicians have to please the insurance companies and reduce health care expenditures in order to save money for another decade or two of war in the Middle East.
The telltale part of Obama’s speech was the applause in response to his pledge that “I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits.” Yet, Obama and his fellow politicians have no hesitation to add trillions of dollars to the deficit in order to fund wars.
The profits of military/security companies are partly recycled into campaign contributions. To cut war spending in order to finance a public health care system would cost politicians campaign contributions from both the insurance industry and the military/security industry. Politicians are not going to allow that to happen.
It was the war in Afghanistan, not health care, that President Obama declared to be a “necessity.”
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Healthcare "Reform"
Let me begin by saying that I have been holding off on writing about the healthcare fiasco until I had the time to research it myself. Then I wanted to wait until after President Obama gave his speech to Congress just to see what spin he put on it. His speech ended 2 1/2 hrs. ago and it’s still spinning like a top. What you are about to read is really going to piss off my Democrat friends but the facts speak for themselves. Everything I have written is what the President is proposing.
I am actually quite open to the idea of a single payer healthcare system here in the United States. I have heard proposals that I believe could achieve the goal of healthcare for every American without raising taxes and without the Federal or State governments being involved in the doctor -patient decision-making process. Of course, these proposals have been scrapped and ignored from the very beginning. But, as I say that I am open to the single payer system, it may surprise many that I am opposed to the current healthcare bill generating so much debate around the country. So, let me explain myself.
First, this bill is not single payer. The mainstream media has created a false debate in this country. Liberals and democrats support this bill because they see it as single payer healthcare for all while conservatives and republicans oppose it because they see it as single payer socialized medicine. But as the American people argue over something that does not even exist, they completely miss the things that spell the opposite of healthcare for all as well as the things that are much worse than “socialized medicine.” Essentially, this bill is going to require every American to purchase a private insurance plan with their own money. If you can’t afford this private insurance, then you will be “taxed” or fined by the government (Title IV, P.167).
Secondly, before denying healthcare to the elderly and the handicapped became a national joke, there was a flicker of debate about what the mainstream media mockingly labeled as “death panels.” I regret to inform the readers that these panels do in fact exist both within this bill as well as other legislation. Section 1233 of the healthcare bill is rife with clauses that establish government control over the health care procedures you undergo particularly at the end of life. This section asserts that a government approved list of end of life resources will be established(Section 1233, p. 425) as well as the required “end of life counseling” every five years or if his/her health takes a sudden turn for the worst (Section 1233, P.425). It goes even further to say that a government board will determine what level of treatment you will receive, if any, at the end of your life (Section 1233, P.430). Section 1162 indicates that the government will mandate what it calls “outcome based measures,” which is a polite way of saying rationing (Section 1162, P.335).
The government panel that will make these decisions is actually already in existence. It was created earlier in the year tucked away safely in the stimulus bill. The stimulus legislation created a new bureaucracy called the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research which is modeled on a UK board that oversees the rationing of healthcare procedures in that country and uses a formula to determine who receives care and who doesn’t . With its’ focus on “cost effectiveness” and “outcome based measures,” it is clear that the elderly, the handicapped, and the chronically ill will receive far less care than younger healthier patients as they are seen to benefit less in terms of quality of life and quantity of years. Yet it should be clear to everyone that it is not a question as to whether or not these individuals will benefit from the treatment, it is a question of whether or not they are seen as a benefit to the governmental establishment.
If one is not convinced of the intended rationing of healthcare by simply reading the bill, then he/she should consider what the authors and largest supporters have said in regards to it. Former Senator Tom Daschle, also a former Obama nominee for the position of Health and Human Services Secretary, actually wrote many of these provisions. Daschle is quoted in his book as saying that Americans expect too much from their healthcare system and that Europeans should be commended for being more willing to accepting “hopeless diagnoses” and foregoing “experimental treatments. He also goes on to say that seniors should be more accepting of these hopeless diagnoses and illnesses that come with age instead of treating them.
Ezekiel Emanuel, health policy adviser at the Office of Management and Budget as well as a sitting member of Federal Coordinating Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research is quoted as saying that doctors take the Hippocratic oath too seriously, “as an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of the cost or effects on others” (JAMA June 18, 2008,). Indeed, that is generally what patients want from their doctors. In an article written for the Hastings Center Emanuel says, “services provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens are not basic and should not be guaranteed. An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia” (Hastings Center Report Nov.-Dec. 1996, p.13). Emanuel is clearly advocating a eugenics-based rationing system.
The healthcare bill also contains other frightening clauses such as Subpart XII, Section 340L which establishes a “Corps” that will conduct “Home Healthcare visits” as explained in Section 1713 to assess the designated families’ “economic self-sufficiency, employment, school readiness, and educational achievement” and to coach them on how to raise their children(Section 1713,P.768). This bill does in fact contain provisions that would set the wages of doctors (Section 225 and Section 223), possibilities of a draft to a National Health Service Corps (as mentioned also in the stimulus bill; section 1713), creation of a National Medical Device Registry(Section 2521), and potential to mandate even the food we eat (Section 3121).
It is important for the American people to realize that this bill is not single-payer and that it does not provide healthcare for all. It is a eugenics program that will ration healthcare for most and outright deny it for some. The mainstream media and those who control it have created a false debate among us in an attempt to divide and distract us from the real issues at hand. The American people continue to argue with one another over issues that do not even exist. While we spin around chasing our tails they attack yet one more link in the chain of tyranny and government control.
I am actually quite open to the idea of a single payer healthcare system here in the United States. I have heard proposals that I believe could achieve the goal of healthcare for every American without raising taxes and without the Federal or State governments being involved in the doctor -patient decision-making process. Of course, these proposals have been scrapped and ignored from the very beginning. But, as I say that I am open to the single payer system, it may surprise many that I am opposed to the current healthcare bill generating so much debate around the country. So, let me explain myself.
First, this bill is not single payer. The mainstream media has created a false debate in this country. Liberals and democrats support this bill because they see it as single payer healthcare for all while conservatives and republicans oppose it because they see it as single payer socialized medicine. But as the American people argue over something that does not even exist, they completely miss the things that spell the opposite of healthcare for all as well as the things that are much worse than “socialized medicine.” Essentially, this bill is going to require every American to purchase a private insurance plan with their own money. If you can’t afford this private insurance, then you will be “taxed” or fined by the government (Title IV, P.167).
Secondly, before denying healthcare to the elderly and the handicapped became a national joke, there was a flicker of debate about what the mainstream media mockingly labeled as “death panels.” I regret to inform the readers that these panels do in fact exist both within this bill as well as other legislation. Section 1233 of the healthcare bill is rife with clauses that establish government control over the health care procedures you undergo particularly at the end of life. This section asserts that a government approved list of end of life resources will be established(Section 1233, p. 425) as well as the required “end of life counseling” every five years or if his/her health takes a sudden turn for the worst (Section 1233, P.425). It goes even further to say that a government board will determine what level of treatment you will receive, if any, at the end of your life (Section 1233, P.430). Section 1162 indicates that the government will mandate what it calls “outcome based measures,” which is a polite way of saying rationing (Section 1162, P.335).
The government panel that will make these decisions is actually already in existence. It was created earlier in the year tucked away safely in the stimulus bill. The stimulus legislation created a new bureaucracy called the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research which is modeled on a UK board that oversees the rationing of healthcare procedures in that country and uses a formula to determine who receives care and who doesn’t . With its’ focus on “cost effectiveness” and “outcome based measures,” it is clear that the elderly, the handicapped, and the chronically ill will receive far less care than younger healthier patients as they are seen to benefit less in terms of quality of life and quantity of years. Yet it should be clear to everyone that it is not a question as to whether or not these individuals will benefit from the treatment, it is a question of whether or not they are seen as a benefit to the governmental establishment.
If one is not convinced of the intended rationing of healthcare by simply reading the bill, then he/she should consider what the authors and largest supporters have said in regards to it. Former Senator Tom Daschle, also a former Obama nominee for the position of Health and Human Services Secretary, actually wrote many of these provisions. Daschle is quoted in his book as saying that Americans expect too much from their healthcare system and that Europeans should be commended for being more willing to accepting “hopeless diagnoses” and foregoing “experimental treatments. He also goes on to say that seniors should be more accepting of these hopeless diagnoses and illnesses that come with age instead of treating them.
Ezekiel Emanuel, health policy adviser at the Office of Management and Budget as well as a sitting member of Federal Coordinating Council on Comparative Effectiveness Research is quoted as saying that doctors take the Hippocratic oath too seriously, “as an imperative to do everything for the patient regardless of the cost or effects on others” (JAMA June 18, 2008,). Indeed, that is generally what patients want from their doctors. In an article written for the Hastings Center Emanuel says, “services provided to individuals who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens are not basic and should not be guaranteed. An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia” (Hastings Center Report Nov.-Dec. 1996, p.13). Emanuel is clearly advocating a eugenics-based rationing system.
The healthcare bill also contains other frightening clauses such as Subpart XII, Section 340L which establishes a “Corps” that will conduct “Home Healthcare visits” as explained in Section 1713 to assess the designated families’ “economic self-sufficiency, employment, school readiness, and educational achievement” and to coach them on how to raise their children(Section 1713,P.768). This bill does in fact contain provisions that would set the wages of doctors (Section 225 and Section 223), possibilities of a draft to a National Health Service Corps (as mentioned also in the stimulus bill; section 1713), creation of a National Medical Device Registry(Section 2521), and potential to mandate even the food we eat (Section 3121).
It is important for the American people to realize that this bill is not single-payer and that it does not provide healthcare for all. It is a eugenics program that will ration healthcare for most and outright deny it for some. The mainstream media and those who control it have created a false debate among us in an attempt to divide and distract us from the real issues at hand. The American people continue to argue with one another over issues that do not even exist. While we spin around chasing our tails they attack yet one more link in the chain of tyranny and government control.
More Info on Swine Flu Vaccines
A document on the World Health Organization(WHO) website states that it is common procedure to release pandemic viruses into the population in order to get a jump ahead of the real pandemic, so as to fast track the vaccine for when it is needed.
In Europe, some manufacturers have conducted advance studies using a so-called “mock-up” vaccine. Mock-up vaccines contain an active ingredient for an influenza virus that has not circulated recently in human populations and thus mimics the novelty of a pandemic virus.
According to the website, “Such advance studies can greatly expedite regulatory approval.”
Sources: World Health Organization
Dr. Mercola’s Comments:
On June 11 the World Health Organization (WHO) raised its swine flu pandemic alert from a 5 to a 6. Phase 6 is the highest level alert, and reflects the speed with which a virus is spreading — not its severity.
This classification also allows for a vaccine to qualify for a “fast-track” procedure for licensing and approval, and this process is now ongoing for the swine flu vaccine.
What you may not know, however, is that WHO, together with health officials, regulatory authorities and vaccine manufacturers, have been working since 2007 – long before this new “threat” of swine flu emerged – to “explore a broad range of issues surrounding the regulatory approval of pandemic vaccines.”
According to the WHO website:
“Ways were sought to shorten the time between the emergence of a pandemic virus and the availability of safe and effective vaccines.”
One such method used in Europe is to conduct advance studies using a “mock-up” vaccine that contains an active ingredient for an influenza virus that has not circulated recently in human populations.
When testing these mock-up vaccines, it is very possible to release the novel influenza virus into the population, as its purpose is to “mimic the novelty of a pandemic virus” and “greatly expedite regulatory approval.”
Government officials have other tricks up their sleeves to ensure these new, barely tested vaccines easily make it to market as well, such as:
Labeling the vaccine a “strain change” rather than an entirely “new” vaccine. This method states the new vaccine has built on technology used to produce vaccines for seasonal influenza, and the change for the pandemic vaccine is similar to a strain change used to produce a new seasonal vaccine each flu season.
In the United States, vaccine manufacturers are required to submit fewer data if they already have a licensed flu vaccine and will use the same manufacturing process for the pandemic vaccine.
Using a “rolling review procedure.” This allows manufacturers to submit sets of data for regulatory review “as they become available.” In other words, they’re free to distribute the vaccine and then submit the safety data later on.
Would You Want a Fast-Tracked Vaccine Injected Into Your Body?
By very definition, fast-tracked vaccines are those that have received very little safety testing prior to being used. So any time you agree to get one, you are essentially a guinea pig.
Vaccine manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline has actually stated:
“Clinical trials will be limited, due to the need to provide the vaccine to governments as quickly as possible. Additional studies will therefore be required and conducted after the vaccine is made available.”
And WHO likewise says:
“Time constraints mean that clinical data at the time when pandemic vaccines are first administered will inevitably be limited. Further testing of safety and effectiveness will need to take place after administration of the vaccine has begun.”
Why would anyone who knows the facts sign up for a vaccine that really needs further safety studies … but won’t receive them until AFTER it’s already been given out? By then it will be too late.
So please realize that if you or your child receive a swine flu vaccine, you will be acting as a TEST subject.
Remember this vaccine will not be made using the methods of the past. In order to speed up the cultivation of the virus and the manufacturing process, they’re using human liver cells instead of chicken eggs. Whether this new procedure is better or worse than the old method, I can’t say … but it’s never been used before and they have not had time to conduct any human testing.
So, it’s a giant game of Russian Roulette that you simply want to avoid. Nearly all of the vaccines created will also include thimerosal (mercury), and the toxic adjuvant squalene, both of which have been clearly shown to carry significant health risks.
You should know, too, that vaccine makers and federal officials have been rendered immune from lawsuits. Should anything go wrong with this current vaccine they will not have to pay a single cent to anyone!
Who Stands to Benefit From the Swine Flu Pandemic (and Future Pandemics)?
This is the question you need to ask yourself when you hear the media dishing out the latest statistics about the swine flu pandemic.
In the last few days alone, I’ve seen major news outlets warning that come flu season, the swine flu could kill 90,000 Americans and hospitalize 2 million. This sounds a lot like the fear-mongering that went on during the Bird Flu pandemic (that never materialized) back in 2005.
Back then scientists and governments were congratulating themselves for averting a threat that never was by stockpiling worthless vaccines. Now I’m having déjà vu.
In response to this newest swine flu pandemic, what did the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently suggest?
Swine flu shots for all! Of course, what else would you expect?
As the Washington Post reported, CDC said: “As soon as a vaccine is available, try to get it for everyone in your family.”
Well, you might be tempted to do just that if you believe the sensational number of swine flu deaths they’re predicting. But, really, these numbers are not based on facts.
WHO continues to define the severity of the H1N1 virus to be moderate, generally defined as an illness requiring neither hospitalization nor even medical care. Most cases are having MILD symptoms that clear up on their own.
Further, no one really knows for sure just how many cases of swine flu there are, because some countries are no longer confirming them by lab.
In the UK, for example, they now appear to be collecting swine flu data online and via the phone, based on nothing but self-assessment. So did they really contract the swine flu? Or did the vast majority of them simply have a case of the sniffles or a seasonal flu bug? Without laboratory confirmation, no one will ever know, but they sure are using those numbers to scare you!
Going back to my original question though, you must ask yourself who stands to benefit from all of this paranoia and hysteria. Of course you know the answer to this one.
Big Pharma … which stands to gain up to $49 billion a year on the swine flu vaccine alone plus an infinite amount on top of that for future pandemic vaccines. The vaccine manufacturers would love for every man, woman, and child to heed the CDC’s advice to get vaccinated. But now you know better. The swine flu is typically a mild illness.
The swine flu vaccine has not been tested for safety or efficacy, but we DO know it will contain harmful additives.
The choice, to me, is obvious. And in the future, anytime a new “pandemic” appears and officials urge you to rush out and get a shot, please remember this blog and ask yourself if it’s really you who stands to benefit from their advice.
In Europe, some manufacturers have conducted advance studies using a so-called “mock-up” vaccine. Mock-up vaccines contain an active ingredient for an influenza virus that has not circulated recently in human populations and thus mimics the novelty of a pandemic virus.
According to the website, “Such advance studies can greatly expedite regulatory approval.”
Sources: World Health Organization
Dr. Mercola’s Comments:
On June 11 the World Health Organization (WHO) raised its swine flu pandemic alert from a 5 to a 6. Phase 6 is the highest level alert, and reflects the speed with which a virus is spreading — not its severity.
This classification also allows for a vaccine to qualify for a “fast-track” procedure for licensing and approval, and this process is now ongoing for the swine flu vaccine.
What you may not know, however, is that WHO, together with health officials, regulatory authorities and vaccine manufacturers, have been working since 2007 – long before this new “threat” of swine flu emerged – to “explore a broad range of issues surrounding the regulatory approval of pandemic vaccines.”
According to the WHO website:
“Ways were sought to shorten the time between the emergence of a pandemic virus and the availability of safe and effective vaccines.”
One such method used in Europe is to conduct advance studies using a “mock-up” vaccine that contains an active ingredient for an influenza virus that has not circulated recently in human populations.
When testing these mock-up vaccines, it is very possible to release the novel influenza virus into the population, as its purpose is to “mimic the novelty of a pandemic virus” and “greatly expedite regulatory approval.”
Government officials have other tricks up their sleeves to ensure these new, barely tested vaccines easily make it to market as well, such as:
Labeling the vaccine a “strain change” rather than an entirely “new” vaccine. This method states the new vaccine has built on technology used to produce vaccines for seasonal influenza, and the change for the pandemic vaccine is similar to a strain change used to produce a new seasonal vaccine each flu season.
In the United States, vaccine manufacturers are required to submit fewer data if they already have a licensed flu vaccine and will use the same manufacturing process for the pandemic vaccine.
Using a “rolling review procedure.” This allows manufacturers to submit sets of data for regulatory review “as they become available.” In other words, they’re free to distribute the vaccine and then submit the safety data later on.
Would You Want a Fast-Tracked Vaccine Injected Into Your Body?
By very definition, fast-tracked vaccines are those that have received very little safety testing prior to being used. So any time you agree to get one, you are essentially a guinea pig.
Vaccine manufacturer GlaxoSmithKline has actually stated:
“Clinical trials will be limited, due to the need to provide the vaccine to governments as quickly as possible. Additional studies will therefore be required and conducted after the vaccine is made available.”
And WHO likewise says:
“Time constraints mean that clinical data at the time when pandemic vaccines are first administered will inevitably be limited. Further testing of safety and effectiveness will need to take place after administration of the vaccine has begun.”
Why would anyone who knows the facts sign up for a vaccine that really needs further safety studies … but won’t receive them until AFTER it’s already been given out? By then it will be too late.
So please realize that if you or your child receive a swine flu vaccine, you will be acting as a TEST subject.
Remember this vaccine will not be made using the methods of the past. In order to speed up the cultivation of the virus and the manufacturing process, they’re using human liver cells instead of chicken eggs. Whether this new procedure is better or worse than the old method, I can’t say … but it’s never been used before and they have not had time to conduct any human testing.
So, it’s a giant game of Russian Roulette that you simply want to avoid. Nearly all of the vaccines created will also include thimerosal (mercury), and the toxic adjuvant squalene, both of which have been clearly shown to carry significant health risks.
You should know, too, that vaccine makers and federal officials have been rendered immune from lawsuits. Should anything go wrong with this current vaccine they will not have to pay a single cent to anyone!
Who Stands to Benefit From the Swine Flu Pandemic (and Future Pandemics)?
This is the question you need to ask yourself when you hear the media dishing out the latest statistics about the swine flu pandemic.
In the last few days alone, I’ve seen major news outlets warning that come flu season, the swine flu could kill 90,000 Americans and hospitalize 2 million. This sounds a lot like the fear-mongering that went on during the Bird Flu pandemic (that never materialized) back in 2005.
Back then scientists and governments were congratulating themselves for averting a threat that never was by stockpiling worthless vaccines. Now I’m having déjà vu.
In response to this newest swine flu pandemic, what did the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently suggest?
Swine flu shots for all! Of course, what else would you expect?
As the Washington Post reported, CDC said: “As soon as a vaccine is available, try to get it for everyone in your family.”
Well, you might be tempted to do just that if you believe the sensational number of swine flu deaths they’re predicting. But, really, these numbers are not based on facts.
WHO continues to define the severity of the H1N1 virus to be moderate, generally defined as an illness requiring neither hospitalization nor even medical care. Most cases are having MILD symptoms that clear up on their own.
Further, no one really knows for sure just how many cases of swine flu there are, because some countries are no longer confirming them by lab.
In the UK, for example, they now appear to be collecting swine flu data online and via the phone, based on nothing but self-assessment. So did they really contract the swine flu? Or did the vast majority of them simply have a case of the sniffles or a seasonal flu bug? Without laboratory confirmation, no one will ever know, but they sure are using those numbers to scare you!
Going back to my original question though, you must ask yourself who stands to benefit from all of this paranoia and hysteria. Of course you know the answer to this one.
Big Pharma … which stands to gain up to $49 billion a year on the swine flu vaccine alone plus an infinite amount on top of that for future pandemic vaccines. The vaccine manufacturers would love for every man, woman, and child to heed the CDC’s advice to get vaccinated. But now you know better. The swine flu is typically a mild illness.
The swine flu vaccine has not been tested for safety or efficacy, but we DO know it will contain harmful additives.
The choice, to me, is obvious. And in the future, anytime a new “pandemic” appears and officials urge you to rush out and get a shot, please remember this blog and ask yourself if it’s really you who stands to benefit from their advice.
Monday, September 7, 2009
Pathways to "Prosperity" in the Americas...Yeah Right
The Pathways to Prosperity in the Americas, which some have dubbed PPA, was first launched by the Bush administration in September of 2008 in an effort to further deepen existing economic partnerships in the region. Many speculated that it was a last ditch effort by Bush to resurrect a revised version of the failed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). The Obama administration has continued with the PPA and is set to re-launch and expand the initiative which would lead to greater integration in the Americas. Some aspects of the PPA are similar to the defunct Security and Prosperity Partnership and could spread SPP objectives to other parts of the Western Hemisphere.
At the Pathways to Prosperity Ministerial held in El Salvador on May 31, 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pledged support for the PPA. She stated, “President Obama has emphasized that it’s not important whether ideas come from one party or another, so long as they move us in the right direction. This meeting builds on the work of the previous U.S. administration, but the President and I are also committed to re-launching Pathways to Prosperity, and expanding its work to spread the benefits of economic recovery, growth, and open markets to the most vulnerable and marginalized citizens of our region.” It appears as if the Obama administration wishes to put their own stamp of approval on the PPA and further expand it.
The PPA now includes 14 partner countries Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, the U.S. and Uruguay. Besides NAFTA and CAFTA, there are other Free Trade Agreements amongst partner nations that are already active, with some being negotiated or pending legislative approval. At the meeting, Clinton also stressed that, “Pathways should be open to working with new partners including other nations and sub-regional banks that share our commitment to open markets and greater social inclusion. I want to note the presence of the observer countries – Brazil and Trinidad and Tobago – that are here today. Going forward, I hope you and other countries from our hemisphere will join us in this initiative as full members.” If you combine all the bilateral and regional trade deals in the Americas, it could facilitate a larger multilateral agreement. Expanding the PPA could be a backdoor to achieving something similar to the FTAA.
A Joint Statement By North American Leaders from the recent Summit held in Guadalajara, Mexico on Aug 9-10 stated, “Our three governments recognize that we cannot limit our efforts to North America alone, and we have agreed to instruct our respective Ministers to strive for greater cooperation and coordination as we work to promote security and institutional development with our neighbors in Central America and the Caribbean.” Could they be referring to the PPA? The Leaders also promised to hold public consultations on the North American agenda as it appears that they have learned from mistakes made with the SPP. At least in rhetoric, the PPA attempts to balance economic progress and trade initiatives with social justice. They can talk all they want about fair trade, social development priorities and how they are going to listen to our concerns. Until something is done with the flawed NAFTA model which has benefited multinational corporations at the expense of labor, health, safety and environmental rights, it will not mean a damn thing.
An article from April of this year entitled Obama’s Agenda for Change and the 2009 Summit of the Americas called on the new administration to announce the cancellation of the SPP, along with its hemispheric extension, the PPA. It pointed out that, “The PPA bears many of the hallmarks of the SPP.” It goes on to say, “The PPA, like the SPP, is little more than an attempt to justify economic deregulation and to promote an escalation of militarism in the region.” The SPP website now says that it will serve as an archive for documents and will not be updated and announced that, “Going forward, we want to build on the accomplishments achieved by the SPP and further improve our cooperation.” Stuart Trew of the Council of Canadians reported that as a venue for North American integration, the SPP is dead.
Trade, social development and foreign aid, along with other endeavors, have been used to further promote U.S. interest around the globe. In some cases, this has resulted in shared security goals and closer military cooperation which has led to U.S. involvement in the region. In the aftermath of the SPP’s demise, beware of other initiatives that could take its place and advance economic, political, social, security and military integration, not only in North America, but the rest of the Western Hemisphere.
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Why Swine Flu Vaccines Don't Add Up
Here's a seventh grade word problem for you: If swine flu has infected one million people and killed 500, how many people might be expected to die if it infects 150 million people(assuming no major changes in the virus)? The correct answer, of course, is 75,000 people, and that's within the range of the number of swine flu deaths now being publicly predicted by the White House.
But there's another part to this word problem: How many vaccine shots and hand washings does it take to boost vitamin D levels in the average person?
The question, of course, makes no sense. Vaccine shots don't boost vitamin D levels any more than eating pork infects you with swine flu. So why is the official advice on swine flu protection essentially limited to "wash your hands, get your vaccine shot, and cough into your elbow?"(Seriously, I'm not making this up.)
The Associated Press has distilled swine flu advice to "10 things you need to know." None of those 10 things include boosting your nutrition, getting more vitamin D, or taking anti-viral medicinal herbs. They do, however, include hilarious explanations like "If you develop breathing problems, pain in your chest, constant vomiting or a fever that keeps rising, go to an emergency room."
They don't bother to mention that in a pandemic scenario that strikes you with constant vomiting, the entire emergency room is likely to be overrun with people joining you in a hospital room vomit fest.
Nor do they mention some other important math: The very limited number of anti-viral medication courses available in the United States. The last time I checked, that was roughly 50 million courses. If the U.S. population is roughly 300 million people, and there are 50 million courses of anti-viral meds available, how many Americans will have no access to those meds? That would be 250 million people.
Here's an even more interesting brain buster for you: If each vaccine shot generates $25 in revenue for drug companies, and the U.S. government orders the production of 160 million vaccines, how much money is Big Pharma making off the pandemic? That answer is roughly $4 billion in net revenues.
But even that doesn't count all the repeat business from the future victims who suffer neurological side effects from the vaccines and have to be institutionalized and subjected to high-dollar medical care for years on end. In all, a mass vaccination program could end up generating over $10 billion in revenues for drug companies.
Now let's look at some serious statistics: If one million people have already been infected with swine flu, and 500 have died, that's a fatality rate of 1 out of 2,000 people. Depending on which research you believe, vaccines might at most be credited with preventing 1% of flu deaths during any given flu season(and that's being very generous to the vaccine). So here's the question: How many people have been vaccinated with the new swine flu vaccine to save ONE life from a swine flu fatality? (Notice, carefully, this question has never been asked in the mainstream media. That's because the answer isn't exactly what most people want to hear...) This question is easy to answer,actually. If the vaccine were 100% effective(that is, they prevented every death that would have otherwise occurred), they could be credited with saving 1 life out of 2000, right? Because that's the normal death rate for this particular virus(these figures are widely quoted by AP, Reuters, and the White House, by the way).
But no vaccine is 100% effective. As I already mentioned, seasonal flu vaccines might-at a stretch- be credited with preventing 1% of the deaths that might otherwise have occurred. With this 1% effectiveness factor calculated back into the formula for swine flu (assuming the same 1% effectiveness factor), it turns out that you would have to vaccinate 200,000 people to save ONE life from swine flu.
That puts a whole new perspective on the vaccine push doesn't it? 200,000 vaccines costs taxpayers about $5,000,000, and it subjects 200,000 people to the potential side effects of these vaccines which have never been subjected to any long-term testing whatsoever.
It all begs the question: Is it REALLY worth it?
Is it worth spending $5 million and exposing 200,000 people to potentially dangerous vaccine side effects in order to prevent ONE death from swine flu? And why isn't anybody breaking down the numbers on this issue and providing a serious cost/benefit analysis as I'm doing here?
Vaccine pushers might argue that the vaccine is far more than 1% effective at preventing swine flu deaths. In their wildest dreams, they might imagine a death reduction rate of, say, a wildly optimistic 10%. But even considering that, is it worth it? If the vaccine stops 10% of deaths that would've otherwise occurred, that still means you'd have to vaccinate 200,000 people to prevent the deaths of 20 people.
I'm going to throw out a wild guess here and suggest that far more than 20 people will be killed by the vaccine itself, completely nullifying any net reduction in total deaths. Mathematically, you see, mass swine flu vaccinations make absolutely no sense given the very low rate of fatalities being seen right now.
Of course, public health policy is never based on sense. It's based on politics. And the politics demand that "they DO something!" That's what the public wants: Do something! It doesn't matter if doing something is worse than doing nothing...they just want to see some action.
It's the same story with breast cancer screenings(almost completely useless), prostate cancer screenings (now proven to be far more harmful than helpful), and of course ADHD screening tests (which are only designed to trick parents into drugging their kids). Much of western medicine, it turns out, is complete BS. We would all be better off without the screenings and vaccinations altogether.
The point of all this is simple: TO SELL VACCINES. It's the one math problem that everybody understands. To make money, you have to sell a product, and there's no better way to sell vaccines to 150 million people than to scare them into begging for injections. But I suppose anything is possible in a country where state governments can punitively tax the poor by convincing them to play the lottery. Most people who play the lottery are the same ones who will be getting vaccine shots. It's like a lottery on your health, except that your odds of "winning" are far worse than your odds of winning something in a lotto.
Let's see: You have a 1 in 1 chance of being injected with foreign viral matter, and yet you only have a 1 in 200,000 chance of your life being saved by it.
I also noticed an announcement by CVS and Walgreens pharmacies. The powers that be are so desperate to all Americans injected with this EXPERIMENTAL vaccine that CVS and Walgreens are now offering FREE swine flu vaccine injections to anyone who doesn't have a job!
That's right: Just show up, prove you're unemployed, and you get jabbed at no charge. What's next? Retailers handing out free Soylent Green?
But there's another part to this word problem: How many vaccine shots and hand washings does it take to boost vitamin D levels in the average person?
The question, of course, makes no sense. Vaccine shots don't boost vitamin D levels any more than eating pork infects you with swine flu. So why is the official advice on swine flu protection essentially limited to "wash your hands, get your vaccine shot, and cough into your elbow?"(Seriously, I'm not making this up.)
The Associated Press has distilled swine flu advice to "10 things you need to know." None of those 10 things include boosting your nutrition, getting more vitamin D, or taking anti-viral medicinal herbs. They do, however, include hilarious explanations like "If you develop breathing problems, pain in your chest, constant vomiting or a fever that keeps rising, go to an emergency room."
They don't bother to mention that in a pandemic scenario that strikes you with constant vomiting, the entire emergency room is likely to be overrun with people joining you in a hospital room vomit fest.
Nor do they mention some other important math: The very limited number of anti-viral medication courses available in the United States. The last time I checked, that was roughly 50 million courses. If the U.S. population is roughly 300 million people, and there are 50 million courses of anti-viral meds available, how many Americans will have no access to those meds? That would be 250 million people.
Here's an even more interesting brain buster for you: If each vaccine shot generates $25 in revenue for drug companies, and the U.S. government orders the production of 160 million vaccines, how much money is Big Pharma making off the pandemic? That answer is roughly $4 billion in net revenues.
But even that doesn't count all the repeat business from the future victims who suffer neurological side effects from the vaccines and have to be institutionalized and subjected to high-dollar medical care for years on end. In all, a mass vaccination program could end up generating over $10 billion in revenues for drug companies.
Now let's look at some serious statistics: If one million people have already been infected with swine flu, and 500 have died, that's a fatality rate of 1 out of 2,000 people. Depending on which research you believe, vaccines might at most be credited with preventing 1% of flu deaths during any given flu season(and that's being very generous to the vaccine). So here's the question: How many people have been vaccinated with the new swine flu vaccine to save ONE life from a swine flu fatality? (Notice, carefully, this question has never been asked in the mainstream media. That's because the answer isn't exactly what most people want to hear...) This question is easy to answer,actually. If the vaccine were 100% effective(that is, they prevented every death that would have otherwise occurred), they could be credited with saving 1 life out of 2000, right? Because that's the normal death rate for this particular virus(these figures are widely quoted by AP, Reuters, and the White House, by the way).
But no vaccine is 100% effective. As I already mentioned, seasonal flu vaccines might-at a stretch- be credited with preventing 1% of the deaths that might otherwise have occurred. With this 1% effectiveness factor calculated back into the formula for swine flu (assuming the same 1% effectiveness factor), it turns out that you would have to vaccinate 200,000 people to save ONE life from swine flu.
That puts a whole new perspective on the vaccine push doesn't it? 200,000 vaccines costs taxpayers about $5,000,000, and it subjects 200,000 people to the potential side effects of these vaccines which have never been subjected to any long-term testing whatsoever.
It all begs the question: Is it REALLY worth it?
Is it worth spending $5 million and exposing 200,000 people to potentially dangerous vaccine side effects in order to prevent ONE death from swine flu? And why isn't anybody breaking down the numbers on this issue and providing a serious cost/benefit analysis as I'm doing here?
Vaccine pushers might argue that the vaccine is far more than 1% effective at preventing swine flu deaths. In their wildest dreams, they might imagine a death reduction rate of, say, a wildly optimistic 10%. But even considering that, is it worth it? If the vaccine stops 10% of deaths that would've otherwise occurred, that still means you'd have to vaccinate 200,000 people to prevent the deaths of 20 people.
I'm going to throw out a wild guess here and suggest that far more than 20 people will be killed by the vaccine itself, completely nullifying any net reduction in total deaths. Mathematically, you see, mass swine flu vaccinations make absolutely no sense given the very low rate of fatalities being seen right now.
Of course, public health policy is never based on sense. It's based on politics. And the politics demand that "they DO something!" That's what the public wants: Do something! It doesn't matter if doing something is worse than doing nothing...they just want to see some action.
It's the same story with breast cancer screenings(almost completely useless), prostate cancer screenings (now proven to be far more harmful than helpful), and of course ADHD screening tests (which are only designed to trick parents into drugging their kids). Much of western medicine, it turns out, is complete BS. We would all be better off without the screenings and vaccinations altogether.
The point of all this is simple: TO SELL VACCINES. It's the one math problem that everybody understands. To make money, you have to sell a product, and there's no better way to sell vaccines to 150 million people than to scare them into begging for injections. But I suppose anything is possible in a country where state governments can punitively tax the poor by convincing them to play the lottery. Most people who play the lottery are the same ones who will be getting vaccine shots. It's like a lottery on your health, except that your odds of "winning" are far worse than your odds of winning something in a lotto.
Let's see: You have a 1 in 1 chance of being injected with foreign viral matter, and yet you only have a 1 in 200,000 chance of your life being saved by it.
I also noticed an announcement by CVS and Walgreens pharmacies. The powers that be are so desperate to all Americans injected with this EXPERIMENTAL vaccine that CVS and Walgreens are now offering FREE swine flu vaccine injections to anyone who doesn't have a job!
That's right: Just show up, prove you're unemployed, and you get jabbed at no charge. What's next? Retailers handing out free Soylent Green?
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Martial Law is Around the Corner
A high school in Maine was taken over by the National Guard this past Thursday to train Guardsmen to deal with unruly citizens begging for swine flu vaccines.
Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School in Paris, Maine, has been chosen as a distribution site for the H1N1 flu vaccine by state officials.
Thursdays drill involved a riot scenario after Gov. John Baldacci and Gen. John Libby, adjutant general of the Maine National Guard, agreed that measures should be in place to deal with a possible public rush for inoculations against swine flu.
"On Thursday morning four or five National Guard Humvees traveled from Augusta to Paris with vials of fake serum." reported the Maine Sun Journal.
"The National Guardsmen took on the roles of panicked citizens and military police and practiced what they would do, such as using tear gas, in the case of a riot." The article continues.
Local police will also liaise with the National Guard on the school grounds. The school itself will remain open according to the report.
Center for Disease Control figures state that there are 323 confirmed cases of H1N1 in Maine. One man has died from the disease, though he was said to have "underlying health conditions" that were worsened by the flu.
The story dovetails with reports from late July indicating that the U.S. military is gearing up to get involved in the H1N1 swine flu outbreak promised to strike in the fall.
"The U.S. military wants to establish regional teams of military personnel to assist civilian authorities in the event of a significant outbreak of H1N1 this fall, according to Defense Department officials," a proposal that is currently on the desk of Defense Secretary Robert Gates, according to a CNN report.
The report indicates that troops could be drawn from either active duty forces or National Guard and Reserve forces, or both.
"As a first step, Gates is being asked to sign a so-called 'execution order' that would authorize the military to begin to conduct the detailed planning to execute the proposed plan." The report states.
Gates' overtures to usurp control of the Guard in a national emergency, and even to eventually merge the Guard and the Army Reserves into a "Total Force" of the U.S. military, under management of the DoD, has angered state authorities.
Last week The National Governors Association wrote to the Pentagon condemning the military's open plans to effectively seize domestic control of National Guard and federal forces deployed in the event of a natural disaster or terrorist attack.
The NGA noted that the military's agenda amounted to a dilution of governors' constitutional responsibilities.
In addition to these ongoing proposals, the Pentagon has announced that at least 20,000 more active duty soldiers will be placed inside the United States under NorthCom to "help state and local officials respond to a nuclear terrorist attack or other domestic catastrophe."
According to NorthCom itself, the move also includes "civil unrest and crowd control".
The ACLU has warned that the deployment represents an expansion of presidential and military authority and a militarization of homeland security.
The trend hasn't gone unnoticed on Capitol Hill either. Georgia Congressman Paul Broun warned attendees of a town hall event Tuesday that the Obama administration is planning to use a pandemic or a natural disaster to implement martial law in the United States, in the wake of increased political unrest and plunging approval ratings.
The use of the National Guard for law enforcement duties and confrontation of American citizens is becoming increasingly common throughout the U.S.
National Guard troops were used to control the public during the Boston Marathon, the Kentucky Derby, and during New Year celebrations in Times Square last year.
The sheriff of Alabama's most populous county has announced he will probably have to bring in National Guard troops to perform law enforcement duties due to budget cuts.
Such a move has been replicated in other parts of the country, including in Schenectady, New York, where budget constraints were not even cited as a reason for the changeover.
In April of this year, the Maryland National Guard was put on alert under an anti-terrorism program in anticipation of nationwide Tea Party protests. A "Force Protection Advisory" document stated that Guardsmen and Guard facilities might become "targets of opportunity".
In March, the United States Army Reserve Command published a Force Protection Advisory recommending "situational awareness" and "mitigation measures" in response to End the Fed protests.
Other National Guard units have recently undergone training to engage in combat with "militia" groups and held door to door gun confiscation drills.
Meanwhile the Army National Guard is advertising for qualified personnel to work as "Corrections Officers and Internment/Resettlement Specialists.
The use of military assets in civilian law enforcement is still illegal under Posse Comitatus, unless a clear state of emergency exists.
It's time to wake up people! The day will come when we have to decide if we are going to lose all our rights to our dictatorial government, or are we going to stand up and fight back?
I hope that the men and women in our military remember the oath they took to support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America. If they do, then they will not follow orders to take up arms against innocent American citizens.
It's our right and duty as American citizens to engage in civil disobedience. Don't be afraid to fight for the rights our Founding Fathers gave their lives for.
Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School in Paris, Maine, has been chosen as a distribution site for the H1N1 flu vaccine by state officials.
Thursdays drill involved a riot scenario after Gov. John Baldacci and Gen. John Libby, adjutant general of the Maine National Guard, agreed that measures should be in place to deal with a possible public rush for inoculations against swine flu.
"On Thursday morning four or five National Guard Humvees traveled from Augusta to Paris with vials of fake serum." reported the Maine Sun Journal.
"The National Guardsmen took on the roles of panicked citizens and military police and practiced what they would do, such as using tear gas, in the case of a riot." The article continues.
Local police will also liaise with the National Guard on the school grounds. The school itself will remain open according to the report.
Center for Disease Control figures state that there are 323 confirmed cases of H1N1 in Maine. One man has died from the disease, though he was said to have "underlying health conditions" that were worsened by the flu.
The story dovetails with reports from late July indicating that the U.S. military is gearing up to get involved in the H1N1 swine flu outbreak promised to strike in the fall.
"The U.S. military wants to establish regional teams of military personnel to assist civilian authorities in the event of a significant outbreak of H1N1 this fall, according to Defense Department officials," a proposal that is currently on the desk of Defense Secretary Robert Gates, according to a CNN report.
The report indicates that troops could be drawn from either active duty forces or National Guard and Reserve forces, or both.
"As a first step, Gates is being asked to sign a so-called 'execution order' that would authorize the military to begin to conduct the detailed planning to execute the proposed plan." The report states.
Gates' overtures to usurp control of the Guard in a national emergency, and even to eventually merge the Guard and the Army Reserves into a "Total Force" of the U.S. military, under management of the DoD, has angered state authorities.
Last week The National Governors Association wrote to the Pentagon condemning the military's open plans to effectively seize domestic control of National Guard and federal forces deployed in the event of a natural disaster or terrorist attack.
The NGA noted that the military's agenda amounted to a dilution of governors' constitutional responsibilities.
In addition to these ongoing proposals, the Pentagon has announced that at least 20,000 more active duty soldiers will be placed inside the United States under NorthCom to "help state and local officials respond to a nuclear terrorist attack or other domestic catastrophe."
According to NorthCom itself, the move also includes "civil unrest and crowd control".
The ACLU has warned that the deployment represents an expansion of presidential and military authority and a militarization of homeland security.
The trend hasn't gone unnoticed on Capitol Hill either. Georgia Congressman Paul Broun warned attendees of a town hall event Tuesday that the Obama administration is planning to use a pandemic or a natural disaster to implement martial law in the United States, in the wake of increased political unrest and plunging approval ratings.
The use of the National Guard for law enforcement duties and confrontation of American citizens is becoming increasingly common throughout the U.S.
National Guard troops were used to control the public during the Boston Marathon, the Kentucky Derby, and during New Year celebrations in Times Square last year.
The sheriff of Alabama's most populous county has announced he will probably have to bring in National Guard troops to perform law enforcement duties due to budget cuts.
Such a move has been replicated in other parts of the country, including in Schenectady, New York, where budget constraints were not even cited as a reason for the changeover.
In April of this year, the Maryland National Guard was put on alert under an anti-terrorism program in anticipation of nationwide Tea Party protests. A "Force Protection Advisory" document stated that Guardsmen and Guard facilities might become "targets of opportunity".
In March, the United States Army Reserve Command published a Force Protection Advisory recommending "situational awareness" and "mitigation measures" in response to End the Fed protests.
Other National Guard units have recently undergone training to engage in combat with "militia" groups and held door to door gun confiscation drills.
Meanwhile the Army National Guard is advertising for qualified personnel to work as "Corrections Officers and Internment/Resettlement Specialists.
The use of military assets in civilian law enforcement is still illegal under Posse Comitatus, unless a clear state of emergency exists.
It's time to wake up people! The day will come when we have to decide if we are going to lose all our rights to our dictatorial government, or are we going to stand up and fight back?
I hope that the men and women in our military remember the oath they took to support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America. If they do, then they will not follow orders to take up arms against innocent American citizens.
It's our right and duty as American citizens to engage in civil disobedience. Don't be afraid to fight for the rights our Founding Fathers gave their lives for.
Friday, August 7, 2009
Nazi-America Is Here!
A privately-run informant program operating nationwide encourages Americans to anonymously turn each other in to the authorities for cash rewards eerily similar to the Nazi "denunciations"of 1930 Germany, where neighbors would give their neighbors up to the local Gestapo over petty issues.
The WeTip organization takes anonymous tips online or via toll-free phone lines and carries the creepy slogan "For A Safer America" on its website(www.wetip.com) beneath an American flag.
The group forwards tips given by the public to law enforcement authorities across the country, with no jurisdictional borders.
An Orwellian poster being plastered up across American towns and cities as part of a campaign run by the organization reads,"ILLEGAL ACTIVITY IS NOT TOLERATED" and advises citizens to "turn them in" and receive a reward of up to $1000. Things to "turn them in" for include drug dealing and theft, but more vague examples "threats and intimidation" as well as "weapons" and "gang activity" are listed, as is "child abuse".
Is the presence of a "weapon" in and of itself evidence of a crime in a country where citizens have a legal right to own firearms? Will your neighbor be turning you in if he sees you loading your vehicle with a rifle on your way to participate in legal and licensed hunting activities? What about "child abuse"? Will your friendly local spy be informing the authorities when he sees you disciplining your child?
What else constitutes suspicious activity? According to law enforcement and Homeland Security guidelines suspicious behavior includes owning guns, being politically active, and having bumper stickers on your car, seriously, bumper stickers.
The WeTip organization also offers a training institute for schools, businesses and government employees, presumably providing skills courses on how to become an expert domestic spy, just like in Communist East Germany.
WeTip also claims in its promotion material that it has been endorsed by both Bush presidents, as well as Bill Clinton, and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
What's really ironic is that Schwarzenegger starred in the movie The Running Man, a futuristic portrayal of a wacky dictatorship where citizens are reminded by huge TV screens placed on street corners that they can "earn a double bonus for reporting on a family member"
As America sinks into a military police state, it begins to parallel more and more aspects of Nazi Germany, especially in the context of citizens being turned against each other, which in turn creates a climate of fear and the sense that we are always being watched.
One common misconception about Nazi Germany was that the police state was solely a creation of the authorities and that the citizens were merely victims. On the contrary, Gestapo files show that 80% of all Gestapo investigations were started in response to information provided by denunciations by "ordinary" Germans.
People who informed on their neighbors were motivated primarily by greed, jealousy, and petty differences. NOT by a genuine concern about crime or insecurity.
Partners in business turned in associates to gain full ownership. Jealous boyfriends informed on rival suitors. Neighbors betrayed entire families who left shared bathrooms unclean or who occupied desirable apartments. And then there were those who informed because for the first time someone in authority would listen to them and value what they had to say.
Germans who sicked the authorities on their neighbors knew very well what the consequences would be for the victims-families torn apart, torture, and internment in concentration camps, and ultimately in many cases death. But they still did it with few qualms because the financial rewards and convenience were more important to them.
Last year a New York Times feature article celebrated the fact that an increasing number of Americans are becoming informants and turning in their neighbors and family members to the authorities in return for cash rewards. In a piece about a new program run by Southwest Florida Crime Stoppers, citing gas prices, foreclosure rates, and runaway food inflation, The Times lauds the fact that citizens are reporting on each other ensuring "a substantial increase in Crime Stopper-related arrests and recovered property, as callers turn in neighbors, grandchildren, or former boyfriends, in exchange for a little cash.
The WeTip program and its offer of $1000 for turning people in, in an environment of recession and unemployment, the temptation to inform on people for minor indiscretions would be too tempting for many to resist, creating a backlog of petty offences reported by people with no criminal detective skills whatsoever, leading to harassment of innocent people and ensuring that more real crimes go unsolved.
I encourage you to do what I have done. Use the WeTip "Submit a Tip" form to remind the crypto-Nazis behind this program that this is America, not Germany in the 1930's. Building strong communities is about establishing strong bonds and friendships with your neighbors, not giving them up to the authorities for a quick buck!
The WeTip organization takes anonymous tips online or via toll-free phone lines and carries the creepy slogan "For A Safer America" on its website(www.wetip.com) beneath an American flag.
The group forwards tips given by the public to law enforcement authorities across the country, with no jurisdictional borders.
An Orwellian poster being plastered up across American towns and cities as part of a campaign run by the organization reads,"ILLEGAL ACTIVITY IS NOT TOLERATED" and advises citizens to "turn them in" and receive a reward of up to $1000. Things to "turn them in" for include drug dealing and theft, but more vague examples "threats and intimidation" as well as "weapons" and "gang activity" are listed, as is "child abuse".
Is the presence of a "weapon" in and of itself evidence of a crime in a country where citizens have a legal right to own firearms? Will your neighbor be turning you in if he sees you loading your vehicle with a rifle on your way to participate in legal and licensed hunting activities? What about "child abuse"? Will your friendly local spy be informing the authorities when he sees you disciplining your child?
What else constitutes suspicious activity? According to law enforcement and Homeland Security guidelines suspicious behavior includes owning guns, being politically active, and having bumper stickers on your car, seriously, bumper stickers.
The WeTip organization also offers a training institute for schools, businesses and government employees, presumably providing skills courses on how to become an expert domestic spy, just like in Communist East Germany.
WeTip also claims in its promotion material that it has been endorsed by both Bush presidents, as well as Bill Clinton, and California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
What's really ironic is that Schwarzenegger starred in the movie The Running Man, a futuristic portrayal of a wacky dictatorship where citizens are reminded by huge TV screens placed on street corners that they can "earn a double bonus for reporting on a family member"
As America sinks into a military police state, it begins to parallel more and more aspects of Nazi Germany, especially in the context of citizens being turned against each other, which in turn creates a climate of fear and the sense that we are always being watched.
One common misconception about Nazi Germany was that the police state was solely a creation of the authorities and that the citizens were merely victims. On the contrary, Gestapo files show that 80% of all Gestapo investigations were started in response to information provided by denunciations by "ordinary" Germans.
People who informed on their neighbors were motivated primarily by greed, jealousy, and petty differences. NOT by a genuine concern about crime or insecurity.
Partners in business turned in associates to gain full ownership. Jealous boyfriends informed on rival suitors. Neighbors betrayed entire families who left shared bathrooms unclean or who occupied desirable apartments. And then there were those who informed because for the first time someone in authority would listen to them and value what they had to say.
Germans who sicked the authorities on their neighbors knew very well what the consequences would be for the victims-families torn apart, torture, and internment in concentration camps, and ultimately in many cases death. But they still did it with few qualms because the financial rewards and convenience were more important to them.
Last year a New York Times feature article celebrated the fact that an increasing number of Americans are becoming informants and turning in their neighbors and family members to the authorities in return for cash rewards. In a piece about a new program run by Southwest Florida Crime Stoppers, citing gas prices, foreclosure rates, and runaway food inflation, The Times lauds the fact that citizens are reporting on each other ensuring "a substantial increase in Crime Stopper-related arrests and recovered property, as callers turn in neighbors, grandchildren, or former boyfriends, in exchange for a little cash.
The WeTip program and its offer of $1000 for turning people in, in an environment of recession and unemployment, the temptation to inform on people for minor indiscretions would be too tempting for many to resist, creating a backlog of petty offences reported by people with no criminal detective skills whatsoever, leading to harassment of innocent people and ensuring that more real crimes go unsolved.
I encourage you to do what I have done. Use the WeTip "Submit a Tip" form to remind the crypto-Nazis behind this program that this is America, not Germany in the 1930's. Building strong communities is about establishing strong bonds and friendships with your neighbors, not giving them up to the authorities for a quick buck!
Saturday, July 25, 2009
How Many of Us Are Federal Criminals?
With all the attention that's been paid lately to long federal sentences for drug offenders, it's surprising that a far more troubling phenomenon has barely hit the media's radar screen. Every year, thousands of upstanding, responsible Americans run afoul of some incomprehensible federal law or regulation and end up serving time in federal prison.
What is especially disturbing is that it could happen to anyone at all -- and it has.
We should applaud Reps. Bobby Scott (D-Va.) and Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), then, for holding a bipartisan hearing on Friday to examine how federal law can make a criminal out of anyone, for even the most mundane conduct.
Federal law in particular now criminalizes entire categories of activities that the average person would never dream would land him in prison. This is an inevitable result of the fact that the criminal law is no longer restricted to punishing inherently wrongful conduct -- such as murder, rape, robbery, and the like.
Moreover, under these new laws, the government can often secure a conviction without having to prove that the person accused even intended to commit a bad act, historically a protection against wrongful conviction.
Laws like this are dangerous in the hands of social engineers and ambitious lawmakers -- not to mention overzealous prosecutors -- bent on using government's greatest civilian power to punish any activity they dislike. So many thousands of criminal offenses are now in federal law that a prominent federal appeals court judge titled his recent essay on this overcriminalization problem, "You're (Probably) a Federal Criminal."
Consider small-time inventor and entrepreneur Krister Evertson, who testified at Friday’s hearing. Krister never had so much as a traffic ticket before he was run off the road near his mother's home in Wasilla, Alaska, by SWAT-armored federal agents in large black SUVs training automatic weapons on him.
Evertson, who had been working on clean-energy fuel cells since he was in high school, had no idea what he'd done wrong. It turned out that when he legally sold some sodium (part of his fuel-cell materials) to raise cash, he forgot to put a federally mandated safety sticker on the UPS package he sent to the lawful purchaser.
Krister's lack of a criminal record did nothing to prevent federal agents from ransacking his mother's home in their search for evidence on this oh-so-dangerous criminal.
The good news is that a federal jury in Alaska acquitted Krister of all charges. The jurors saw through the charges and realized that Krister had done nothing wrong.
The bad news, however, is that the feds apparently had it in for Krister. Federal criminal law is so broad that it gave prosecutors a convenient vehicle to use to get their man.
Two years after arresting him, the feds brought an entirely new criminal prosecution against Krister on entirely new grounds. They used the fact that before Krister moved back to Wasilla to care for his 80-year-old mother, he had safely and securely stored all of his fuel-cell materials in Salmon, Idaho.
According to the government, when Krister was in jail in Alaska due to the first unjust charges, he had "abandoned" his fuel-cell materials in Idaho. Unfortunately for Krister, federal lawmakers had included in the Resource Recovery and Conservation Act a provision making it a crime to abandon "hazardous waste." According to the trial judge, the law didn't require prosecutors to prove that Krister had intended to abandon the materials (he hadn't) or that they were waste at all -- in reality, they were quite valuable and properly stored away for future use.
With such a broad law, the second jury didn't have much of a choice, and it convicted him. He spent almost two years locked up with real criminals in a federal prison. After he testified Friday, he had to return to his halfway house in Idaho and serve another week before he is released.
The other hardened criminal whose story members of Congress heard Friday is retiree George Norris. A longtime resident of Spring, Texas, Norris made the mistake of not knowing and keeping track of all of the details of federal and international law on endangered species -- mostly paperwork requirements -- before he decided to turn his orchid hobby into a small business. What was Norris's goal? To earn a little investment income while his wife neared retirement.
The Lacey Act is an example of the dangerous overbreadth of federal criminal law. Incredibly, Congress has made it a federal crime to violate any fish or wildlife law or regulation of any nation on earth.
Facing 10 years in federal prison, Norris pled guilty and served almost two. His wife, Kathy, describes the pain of losing their life savings to pay for attorneys and trying to explain to grandchildren why for so long Poppa George couldn't see them.
Federal criminal law did not get so badly broken overnight, and it will take hard work to get it fixed. It is encouraging that members of Congress such as Reps. Scott and Gohmert are now paying attention to the toll overcriminalization takes on ordinary Americans. Congress needs to begin fixing the damage it has done by starting to restore a more reasonable, limited and just federal criminal law. Friday’s hearing was an excellent first step.
What is especially disturbing is that it could happen to anyone at all -- and it has.
We should applaud Reps. Bobby Scott (D-Va.) and Louie Gohmert (R-Texas), then, for holding a bipartisan hearing on Friday to examine how federal law can make a criminal out of anyone, for even the most mundane conduct.
Federal law in particular now criminalizes entire categories of activities that the average person would never dream would land him in prison. This is an inevitable result of the fact that the criminal law is no longer restricted to punishing inherently wrongful conduct -- such as murder, rape, robbery, and the like.
Moreover, under these new laws, the government can often secure a conviction without having to prove that the person accused even intended to commit a bad act, historically a protection against wrongful conviction.
Laws like this are dangerous in the hands of social engineers and ambitious lawmakers -- not to mention overzealous prosecutors -- bent on using government's greatest civilian power to punish any activity they dislike. So many thousands of criminal offenses are now in federal law that a prominent federal appeals court judge titled his recent essay on this overcriminalization problem, "You're (Probably) a Federal Criminal."
Consider small-time inventor and entrepreneur Krister Evertson, who testified at Friday’s hearing. Krister never had so much as a traffic ticket before he was run off the road near his mother's home in Wasilla, Alaska, by SWAT-armored federal agents in large black SUVs training automatic weapons on him.
Evertson, who had been working on clean-energy fuel cells since he was in high school, had no idea what he'd done wrong. It turned out that when he legally sold some sodium (part of his fuel-cell materials) to raise cash, he forgot to put a federally mandated safety sticker on the UPS package he sent to the lawful purchaser.
Krister's lack of a criminal record did nothing to prevent federal agents from ransacking his mother's home in their search for evidence on this oh-so-dangerous criminal.
The good news is that a federal jury in Alaska acquitted Krister of all charges. The jurors saw through the charges and realized that Krister had done nothing wrong.
The bad news, however, is that the feds apparently had it in for Krister. Federal criminal law is so broad that it gave prosecutors a convenient vehicle to use to get their man.
Two years after arresting him, the feds brought an entirely new criminal prosecution against Krister on entirely new grounds. They used the fact that before Krister moved back to Wasilla to care for his 80-year-old mother, he had safely and securely stored all of his fuel-cell materials in Salmon, Idaho.
According to the government, when Krister was in jail in Alaska due to the first unjust charges, he had "abandoned" his fuel-cell materials in Idaho. Unfortunately for Krister, federal lawmakers had included in the Resource Recovery and Conservation Act a provision making it a crime to abandon "hazardous waste." According to the trial judge, the law didn't require prosecutors to prove that Krister had intended to abandon the materials (he hadn't) or that they were waste at all -- in reality, they were quite valuable and properly stored away for future use.
With such a broad law, the second jury didn't have much of a choice, and it convicted him. He spent almost two years locked up with real criminals in a federal prison. After he testified Friday, he had to return to his halfway house in Idaho and serve another week before he is released.
The other hardened criminal whose story members of Congress heard Friday is retiree George Norris. A longtime resident of Spring, Texas, Norris made the mistake of not knowing and keeping track of all of the details of federal and international law on endangered species -- mostly paperwork requirements -- before he decided to turn his orchid hobby into a small business. What was Norris's goal? To earn a little investment income while his wife neared retirement.
The Lacey Act is an example of the dangerous overbreadth of federal criminal law. Incredibly, Congress has made it a federal crime to violate any fish or wildlife law or regulation of any nation on earth.
Facing 10 years in federal prison, Norris pled guilty and served almost two. His wife, Kathy, describes the pain of losing their life savings to pay for attorneys and trying to explain to grandchildren why for so long Poppa George couldn't see them.
Federal criminal law did not get so badly broken overnight, and it will take hard work to get it fixed. It is encouraging that members of Congress such as Reps. Scott and Gohmert are now paying attention to the toll overcriminalization takes on ordinary Americans. Congress needs to begin fixing the damage it has done by starting to restore a more reasonable, limited and just federal criminal law. Friday’s hearing was an excellent first step.
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