HAZY IMAGES NO MORE

By Jim Beers

The US Attorney General has just announced that Federal laws regarding marijuana will no longer be enforced where States allow marijuana use. Like the administrative decisions by other Presidential appointees to not enforce Federal Immigration laws or even to not enforce The Federal Right and Constitutional wording regarding "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed" in cities like Washington, DC or New York City or Chicago or states like Illinois, Wisconsin, New Jersey and Massachusetts: one can only be dumbfounded by the impunity and callous disregard for Constitutional jurisprudence exhibited by "elected officials" and their minions. All of this makes a shambles of Article IV, Section 2 of the Constitution that states, "The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States."
Yet, when it comes to signing a UN Gun Treaty or a "Climate Change" Treaty, or when it comes to enforcing a prohibition against ANY abortion restrictions (parental notification, permission, school encouragement, etc.): these same "elected politicians" and their minions suddenly become Constitutional "extremists". In the case of Gun Rights and in the case of all the "Climate Change" implications in the proposed Treaties we will all be reminded about how a Treaty "shall become the Supreme Law of the Land" per Article VI of the Constitution as they develop a book of regulations that remake the USA into a copy of 1935 Germany or present day Venezuela. In the case of unlimited abortion, mere words constructed out of thin air (a "right to privacy") when uttered by a Supreme Court Justice are treated as etchings on stone tablets being carried about by Moses.
So what is going on? If a law is unenforceable or if a President and his minions choose not to enforce it (on what legal basis?) it should be repealed. As the current Administration decrees what laws will not be enforced it simultaneously is colluding with the Congress to politicize and control American society in ways that are Constitutionally illegal. For instance:
· Controlling the bonuses and pay levels of selected and growing segments of the economy.
· Threatening banks through government regulatory agencies like the FDIC to provide loans to unqualified minority applicants or to contribute significant amounts to minority organizations that helped elect the President in spite of collecting government funds that specifically prohibited any partisan political activity by such groups.
· Awarding Billions of dollars to select banks, investment firms and insurance conglomerates based on secret (political?) criteria with no public accounting on the disposition, use, and results of such public monies.
· Establishing precedents that destroy the Constitutional mandate of Article I, Section 9 that "No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury but in Consequence of Appropriations made by law; and a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time" by additionally proposing to make said favored firms pay back certain funds and then for the Administration to merely reuse such funds ad infinitum.
· Buying auto companies and then operating them in partnership with workers' organizations.
· Eliminating certain businesses like car dealerships that either supported opposition candidates for office or did not contribute to the recently elected politicians.
· Proposing to take control of all health care, doctors, health workers, and hospitals to not only extend its unconstitutional extension of power over the economy and people but to reinforce its anti-life and anti-religious programs of abortion, family numbers control, withholding of care to the elderly and disabled as well as more Draconian policies such as have been in evidence in recent dictatorships and more Socialist western nations regarding euthanasia for the elderly, the sick, and the disabled.
· Proposing a "Cap & Trade" Treaty that will give the central government unprecedented control over every sector of the economy, all human activities, and unlimited taxing power to both collect massive revenues and favor political supporters like same-sex couples and childless couples that leave lower "carbon footprints".
· Targeting private citizens, media outlets, business entities, and academics for marginalizing and destruction because they oppose Administration policies. For instance, re-instituting the "Fairness Doctrine" to destroy Talk Radio and White House encouragement for supportive media to ignore media reports from opponents considered unfavorable to the Administration.
All of these unconstitutional expansions of Federal powers are identical to the actions taken by Communist dictatorships, Nazi tyrants, and current dictatorships like Chavez in Venezuela, Castro in Cuba, and Morales in Bolivia as they assumed all powers over everyone and everything and simultaneously assured their own unopposed lifetime position as ruler.
Politicians and supporters favored by the ruler will be quietly relieved of the burdens placed on the ruled. For instance:
· Does anyone think that rich regime supporters like Ted Kennedy would have been placed on a six-month "waiting list" or have been told he was too old or too sick to receive end-of-life medical care under the proposed Government Health Care takeover?
· Does anyone believe that powerful politicians would have to give up their New York City Gun Permits while they work to disarm the rest of us like Senator Schumer?
· Would any common man; be he middle class, white, or property owner; be un-prosecuted for carrying a loaded gun in no-gun cities like Washington, Chicago, and Boston like many minorities are or as US Senator Webb was when he carried a loaded gun across Washington, DC and into US Senate offices?
· Consider the "poor" Chancellor at the University of Illinois that recently "Resigned Under Pressure" for favoring "politically-connected" applicants over better qualified common-folk applicants. Why aren't he and other such "perps" prosecuted? Aren't the "politically-connected" in Illinois and Chicago the fruit of this system that the President and all his old chums from Ayres and Wright to Daley and Blagoyevich inherited and milked and are now introducing into national politics? Like Claude Rains in the 1942 movie Casablanca being "Shocked" by the gambling at "Ricks", we can all assume that these Illinois politicians are similarly taken aback by such nefarious activities at The State University.
Last night Lannie Davis, a mouthpiece for the Administration, was arguing for the worthiness of many of the travesties mentioned above. As others dismantled his arguments he was forced into a corner wherein he said "well elections have consequences". The clear implication was that an elected President can do whatever he wants, however he wants to do it. That is exactly what Communist dictators, Nazi Tyrants, and despots like Chavez and Mugabe maintain.
Communist dictators like Lenin, Mao, Pol Pot, and Ho Chi Min obtained their "positions" at the point of a gun. Hitler, Mugabe, and Chavez obtained their "positions" in elections during times of economic crisis with the "assistance" of thugs and intimidation.
The current Administration was similarly elected in a time of "crises" as the President's Chief of Staff noted as "opportunities too valuable to waste". The Administration employed thugs and crooks ("ACORN" and associated "community organizers") that were specifically forbidden from such activity by virtue of the public funding paying for their activities yet were never prosecuted.
What is going on is very dangerous. Based strictly on historic and recent precedents, we are clearly heading into dictatorship and single party rulers not only like 1930's Germany and present-day Venezuela but also like Boston, New Jersey, Chicago, Milwaukee, and Detroit. All the foregoing are hard examples of where this Administration and Congress intend to take us.
The ONLY purpose of government is to protect society. Individuals and families can best control government when it is kept at the lowest possible level (a principle called Subsidiarity). Federal responsibilities ought to be limited to national defense and interstate commerce, while State governments and particularly local governments should be concerned with day-to-day things necessary to the common and local good.
Government will inevitably control individuals and families when power is allowed to migrate to the highest possible level. Power concentration will always attract amoral individuals that will scheme and connive to possess that power in perpetuity for their own benefit. Government growth and the concentration of power at the highest level must always be resisted and avoided for the result is always tyranny and dictatorship because by definition there are then no longer any enforceable limits on government.
Jim Beers 21 October 2009

KUDOS & BRICKBATS

Editor's note: Kudos & Brickbats was written in response to Jim Beers following column "Reflections of a Nazi Tyranny".

By Jim Beers

My recent piece (Reflections of a Nazi Tyranny) has generated both kudos and some serious brickbats. As I answered one of the kudos and pondered what I might say to those that are so disturbed by what I wrote, the following combined response has come to mind.
To those that enjoyed the article, a reader on the West Coast asked, "I would appreciate any help or insight you may offer towards productive action we might pursue." Here was my response:
1. Form alliances to protect your rights and freedoms. Look to everyone from trappers, gun owners, and pet owners to ranchers being harmed by wolves and irrigators. Always remember that you are protecting the rights of you and your neighbors (in the national sense) and not making ideological judgments about whether or not people outside your community should be able to do this or that based on your personal preferences. As their rights go, so go yours.
2. Speak up in the family, at work, in professional groups and social settings about your concerns in ways that don't antagonize but explain your legitimate concerns in ways that all will consider.
3. Target those responsible for harming you (both declared enemies and those that Lenin referred to as "useful idiots") in ways intended to make them reconsider their actions. These arguments should be made public as much as possible to make as many folks as possible understand your issues and what needs to be done.
4. Regain control of faculties and curriculums in public schools and in State Universities.
5. Strongly, openly, and forthrightly oppose politicians that harm you. Make your reasons simple, public, and understandable.
6. Clean-up corrupt voting processes and corrupt voting administrators at all levels.
7. Explain rural living and private property issues and concerns at every opportunity and in every available media.
8. Treat State and Federal bureaucrats as self-serving individuals concerned with their own (NOT YOUR)) interests. Minimizing their numbers and power, like making politicians and judges always respect the Constitution, should be a never-ending task for each of us.
9. Always support and consider subsidiarity.
Subsidiarity holds that nothing should be done by a larger and more complex organization that can be done as well by a smaller and simpler organization. In other words, any activity that can be performed by a more decentralized entity should be. This principle is a bulwark of limited government and personal freedom.
Subsidiarity conflicts with the passion for centralization and bureaucracy characteristic of the Welfare State. A community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need and help to coordinate it with the rest of society, always with a view to the common good. The principle of subsidiarity is opposed to all forms of collectivism.
When the principle of subsidiarity is ignored, governments often overstep their bounds in managing matters best handled on a more local or individual level. Typically this decreases economy, efficiency, liberty and the personal character of the social order.
I hope this helps. It would be good to sit and talk about this somewhere and sometime but for now, this would seem to be all I can jot down.
Good Luck, Jim Beers
Now to you reluctant readers that condemn what I wrote, particularly my references to the US government exhibiting traits in common with dictators like Stalin and Hitler, the following quotes by two of the better-known tyrannical killers of the last century are offered in response. I submit that these quotes are as relevant to US policies and leaders today as they were to the dictatorships, executions, gulags and shared misery that these two bums were imposing on Mother Russia in their day.
From Joseph Stalin:
"It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything."
"If the opposition disarms, well and good. If it refuses to disarm, we shall disarm it ourselves."
"Education is a weapon whose effects depend on who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed."
"Ideas are more powerful than guns. We would not let our enemy have guns, why should we let them have ideas?"
"Everyone imposes his own system as far as his army* can reach."
(*Note: Think domestically and substitute Geithner's IRS and Napolitano's Homeland Security and the President's promised Domestic Army made up of "organizers" like ACORN and their ilk for Stalin's "army".)
From Vladimir Lenin:
"The way to crush the bourgeoisie is to grind them between the millstones of taxation and inflation."
[bour-geois (boor zhwä) Fr. n.1. a member of the middle class. 2. any person owning property.]
Lenin described those Western reporters and travelers who would endorse the Soviet Union and its policies in the West as "useful idiots of the West". In the United States today, the term is used to imply an ignorant person that is easily swayed (made 'useful') toward causes that are against their own interest, or what they would consider to be the greater good, were they better-educated.
And some people think those guys never had anything worthwhile to say! Some people grab their role models where they find them, just as I use relevant examples of disproved and deadly philosophies wherever I find them.
Jim

REFLECTIONS OF A NAZI TYRANNY

By Jim Beers

"Daddy, what did you do in the war?" - A common question in fortunate WWII postwar families like mine.
In the turbulence and bitterness of America in 2009 "political correctness", character assassination, and intimidation make dialogue and inquiry all but impossible. Environmentalism, animal rights, socialism, racial divides, and an increasingly powerful and authoritarian central government all seem interwoven with and driven by a deteriorating economy that descends from one "crisis" to another. Desperate people look to a more powerful government as the only salvation and that government is all too willing to take over everyone and everything in a grip it intends never to relax. Government spending has skyrocketed and private enterprises of all kinds are increasingly under government direction. Government opponents in the media are identified and targeted as enemies. Church leaders and institutions are intimidated and told to cooperate or face elimination. A steady drumbeat of "new" laws, many unread by legislators and lied about to an ignorant public, are passed that dramatically change the society. Meetings to organize protests are broken up by "community organizers" that have been told by the President that they will be enlisted in a new domestic police that he plans to establish. This state of affairs could just as easily be used to describe Germany in the 1930's.
Of course there are many exceptions to any comparison of Germany circa the 1930's and the USA today. Today we show no tendency toward foreign conquest, indeed we are pursuing mere conversation for every foreign threat from nuclear weapon proliferation to Moslem Jihadism and Russian power expansionism. Simultaneously, we are embracing communist ideologues (Honduras, Venezuela, Cuba) that 1930's Germans hated and feared would conquer them eventually. In spite of being immersed in a never-ending apology for the worldwide and centuries-old practice of slavery and the conquest of European culture over the primitive culture existing in America circa 1492, we have no national delusion about "restoring" a racial culture of supermen that are superior to all other cultures. While government increasingly divides Americans with racial classifications and programs, no concentration camps or "final solution" are in evidence.
What we do share with Germany circa the 1930's is a radical government agenda and a powerful central government completely controlled by a single party committed to implementing that radical agenda during a time of one economic crisis after another. A thumbnail summary of the domestic (within the country) portion of that agenda might include:
Central Government control of business, banks, health care, insurance and as much else of the economy as possible.
Central Government authority over all lower governments (State, County, City, Local) and any decisions they might make.
Central Government hegemony as a result of a revamped Constitution and the work of radical judges and courts (see the movie Judgment at Nuremberg).
Central government control of religious institutions and religious activities.
Central Government control to be maintained by the party in power.
Central Government power to control any opposition.
Central Government authority over all citizen activity from when they might assemble, what media will be allowed, what speech will be allowed, and who might be allowed a gun to what children would be taught, when persons will be arrested or detained or searched, what property rights will be controlled by government, and who is to be allowed to be better off than others.
I first saw glimmerings of 1930's Germany when the President-to-be remarked about not wanting his daughters to "be punished with a baby". Here was a national leader openly referring to unborn children as deserving of no protection and equivalent to 1930's Jewish, Gypsy, and Disabled Germans that for no other reason than their existence could and should be killed.
Since that time the "new government" has authorized the use of public tax funds for abortions; threatened to eliminate the legal protection of doctors, nurses, and hospitals that will not provide abortions due to moral objections; continuously lied about the eligibility of public funding for abortions in their health care overhaul; proposed panels to make decisions about what care will be allowed the elderly or disabled; and clearly set the table for legalizing and encouraging euthanasia by what new laws they propose and who they have appointed as White House advisors.
Watching the "new government" appoint a gaggle of environmental radicals brought to mind the environmental extremism and nature worship of 1930's Germany. As the new appointees brought a track record of absolute priority for "Native Species" and "Native Ecosystems" to their jobs, one was reminded of 1930's Germany documents and programs aimed at "restoring Pre-Roman plants and animals" to the German Fatherland under the Third Reich. The American obsession with a mythical purity in a pre-Christopher Columbus America is identical to 1930's Germans yearning for a primitive culture that was similarly "spoiled" by a more advanced civilization hundreds of year before. The denigration of "Columbus Day" and the continuing international apologies for what America has wrought throughout the world have only intensifies my impression of this propaganda myth enabling an emerging dictatorship.
The abundance of "new government" animal rights radicals has been yet another reflection of 1930's Germany thinking. As we hear and see White House appointees declare how animals should have "rights" and we see their long histories of radical activism on behalf of animals at the expense of human traditions, uses and legal rights such as ownership one is reminded of a similar belief system on the part of the Leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party. In March of 1938 Germany simply absorbed Austria and Hitler made a triumphant entry and tour of several places where he spent his wasted and aimless youth. At his riotous visit to Vienna he first objected to staying at the best hotel because of all the stuffed animals in the lobby only to wind up at the proprietors' suite at the second best hotel where a polar bear rug graced the floor. The Fuehrer "hated hunting" and stayed up most of the night talking with his new puppet Chancellor of Austria. In this regard he would have had much in common with many of the advisors in our "new government".
Then there is all the government hoopla about making us all healthy. The proposed taxes on sodas and fast food and the plans for more exercise for all Americans as in the similar propaganda films of 1930's German civilians exercising happily in large military-like formations is matched with an antithetical government drift to unlimited abortion, withholding of health care to the elderly and disabled, and the foundation for future euthanasia programs.
The constant media exposure of the "new government" leader, the propaganda poster art, the children singing the songs praising the leader and all he does, and the widespread messages to children about how parents are not your role models but rather The State under the Leader are each eerily reminiscent of 1930's Germany.
Some observations and quotes from that period of history shed further light on similarities with today
On Fomenting Racial Division to Have Someone to Blame:
According to Nazi propaganda, the Jews thrived on fomenting division amongst Germans and amongst states. Nazi anti-semitism was racial: "The Jew is the enemy and destroyer of the purity of blood, the conscious destroyer of our race;" however, the Jews were also described as plutocrats exploiting the worker: "As socialists we are opponents of the Jews because we see in the Hebrews the incarnation of capitalism, of the misuse of the nation's goods." In addition, the Nazis articulated opposition to finance capitalism with an emphasis on anti-Semitic claims that this was manipulated by a conspiracy of Jewish bankers. (Consider "white people" remarks by the President and his pastor. Consider Israel. Consider Insurance Executives and Bankers getting bonuses and Oil Company Executives, etc.)
On the complete lack of any ethic of life or any government role in protecting human life:
Hitler considered Sparta to be the first "Völkisch State", and praised its early eugenics treatment of deformed children.
"The earth continues to go round, whether it's the man who kills the tiger or the tiger who eats the man. The stronger asserts his will, it's the law of nature. The world doesn't change; its laws are eternal." (Consider the animal rights and environmental extremists in the White House and what they would teach your children about humanity, morality, and nature.)
On Lying:
"The victor will never be asked if he told the truth."
"Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it." Adolph Hitler
On Education and The Family:
When an opponent declares, "I will not come over to your side," I calmly say, "Your child belongs to us already... What are you? You will pass on. Your descendants, however, now stand in the new camp. In a short time they will know nothing else but this new community." Adolph Hitler
"We are the joyous Hitler youth,
We do not need any Christian virtue
Our leader is our savior
The Pope and Rabbi shall be gone
We want to be pagans once again." - Song sung by Hitler youth (UUU, UUU, UUUMM!)
On Public Information:
"By the skilful and sustained use of propaganda, one can make a people see even heaven as hell or an extremely wretched life as paradise." Adolph Hitler
On Public Opinion:
"What good fortune for governments that the people do not think." Adolph Hitler
What good does it do to make such an outrageous comparison? No reasonable person expects the new government to sign and break pacts or to instigate a "blitzkrieg" or absorb our neighbors. What a reasonable person can expect is the new central government to obtain and hold onto all government power just as happened in 1930's Germany. Whether it is good economically (as it was in Germany) is really immaterial. Whether it is good in some small way for you or me is irrelevant. Whether it is misused as it always comes to be in every dictatorship (which is what emerged in 1930's Germany) by either the current or future governments (as it ALWAYS is) is of no moment to Americans consumed with comfort and self-interest. The fact is that once a moderately responsive government is lost (in Germany just as in the 13 Colonies) you can't just remake it without a lot of blood, sweat, and tears. Also there is no guarantee that you could ever restore this great Republic or anything close to it. Once you lose it, it is lost as millions of Germans would attest.
Just recognizing historical symptoms is something. Knowing what they have led to may be enough to bring us together before it becomes too late. Such has been the lesson of history down through the ages.
"Forewarned forearmed". (From Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes [1547-1616]).

ALARM BELLS

By Jim Beers

Were alarm bells going off throughout the Twin Towers after the planes struck them and up until they collapsed? Whether or not the alarms sounded until the buildings collapsed or whether they immediately or eventually malfunctioned, the situation is analogous to America today. Regardless of whether the alarms saved some individuals, or malfunctioned eventually, or perhaps were ignored by persons that could not conceive of what was about to take place; the results were the same, an enormous loss of life and the disappearance of those two buildings (forever?).
16 October 2009, alarm bells were going off all over this great nation. The latest three such bells have come across my desk just this morning.
I. Secretary Clinton just announced "negotiations on a global treaty regulating trade in conventional weapons". She assures us that the US would insist on "leaving it up to the States to 'exclusively' regulate the arms trade within their borders".
A. Article. VI. of The Constitution of the United States says "This Constitution and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; AND ALL TREATIES (my capitalization) made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, SHALL BE THE SUPREME LAW OF THE LAND (again my capitalization); and the judges in every State shall be bound thereby, ANY THING IN THE CONSTITUTION OR LAWS OF ANY STATE TO THE CONTRARY NOT WITHSTANDING (again my capitalization)."
B. The goal is to have the President sign and this rubber-stamp Senate ratify A TREATY that will make the 2nd Amendment no longer a guarantee of the right to bear arms but rather a meaningless and legally outdated "individual right" supplanted by "Treaty Obligations". Assurances by the White House or Congress (now or ever) are meaningless and are frankly lies. Aside from the proven lack of veracity from this White House and this Congress, there is a decided lack of outspoken opponents in today's weak-kneed "opposition".
C. A TREATY obligating the Federal government to "control arms" will Constitutionally change our guaranteed right to bear arms into a permission to be granted or withheld by both State and Federal authorities.
SUCH A TREATY would immediately legitimize illegal gun laws in places like Chicago and Washington, DC since "States would exclusively regulate the arms trade within their borders" By gutting the 2nd Amendment, any Federal interest in protecting the right to bear arms in any State would disappear. Second, it would give the Federal government unchecked authority to tighten down the purchase, possession, sale, and transportation of everything from gun types, gun transfers and gun numbers to gun possession, gun ownership, and gun use. Third it would authorize State and Federal bureaucracies to impose registration, reporting requirements, permit requirements, and rules that would be paid for by taxes (excuse me, "fees"): all of course under the cover of paying for "regulating trade in conventional weapons". Fourth -like to hear it or not- this is a thinly veiled strike by government to eliminate all gun possession, just as Hitler and Lenin did. This American anti-gun campaign is not "Million Moms" or neighbors of schools where shootings are common: it is radical government politicians, their radical supporters, and self-serving bureaucrats doing just what every tyrant from Cromwell to Pol Pot knew had to be done - DISARM the populace you intend to enslave them because eventually (like the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising) they will fight IF THEY HAVE THE MEANS.
II. Legislation is currently continuing to wend its way through Congress to simply grant by a truly un-Constitutional Act of Congress the Federal government jurisdiction and authority over "all waters of the United Sates". From the humble beginning of the "Rivers and Harbor Act of 1899" (an earlier period of US environmental hysteria like today) in order to give the Federal government a new responsibility to "promote (nautical and riverine) interstate commerce" a Darwinian power evolution of epic proportions was begun. A march of ever-expanding Federal power expansion was marked by:
- In the mid-60's and early 70's The Water Quality Act and Clean Water Act gave Federal bureaucracies growing power over State waters and privately owned water.
- The EPA was begun to "regulate and enforce" all the emerging Federal "responsibilities" over "waters": this of course was in addition to the explosion of Federal regulations by NPS over National Park's "waters" and "their" watersheds, USFWS regulations over National Wildlife Refuge "waters", USFS regulations over all National Forest "waters", and all of these influenced and combined with the largest explosion of Federal "water" regulations by the Federal granddaddy of Federal "water" responsibilities the US Army Corps of Engineers over "all navigable (in the largest sense of that term) waters of the US".
- Wetlands legislation always was a recurring exercise in creating the claim that "navigable" included creeks, sloughs, and every periodically wet soil anywhere; thereby expanding Federal authority over all water everywhere for unchallenged Federal ownership and control.
- The Safe Drinking Water Act tried mightily to show that we "needed" Federal control over any water that might one day be drunk.
- Waterways were used as excuses for things like The Wild and Scenic Rivers Act to establish not only Federal authority over certain streams but also jurisdiction over uses of the water; recreation on the water; the "watersheds" and "buffers" and "corridors" and "viewsheds" of such streams; and all associated private property.
- Watersheds came to be defined as all manner of underground water as well as streams and storm runoff. Objections by States to the theft of all these State jurisdictions as well as private property within each State were blunted by Federal grants and assistance that made the State bureaucrats and legislatures mere hostages to Federal bureaucrats and politicians ladling Federal "water" funds to each State. Federal water authority came to be just one more radical tool to dictate where people live, what people would be "allowed to do and not do", and what permits and permissions would cost (i.e. taxes and "fees").
- The Endangered Species Act was molded yet again into a Federal power tool as it came to be used to breach dams, shut down agriculture, and threaten irrigators and other water users.
Thus has the simple, yet naïve, purpose of enabling the Federal government to fulfill its Constitutional role stated in Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3 "To regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes" become a threat to the Republic. By ratifying the authority of the Federal government to maintain and improve "the navigable waters of the United States" we created a tool to be envied by dictators down through the ages: a tool of repression that transfers large portions of lesser governmental powers and all ever-greater portions of individual rights to one supreme central government with little awareness by the public thereby verifying the old maxim that whoever controls the water, controls everything.
III. I have just been informed by a friend that "The US Fish and Wildlife Service is planning to make climate change* its highest priority."
(Note the term "climate change" as opposed the term "global warming" that originally got everyone's shorts all wadded up. Forgetting for a moment the silly linkage of CO2 and "warming" or the nebulous quantification of influencing "change" regarding "climate"; the bureaucratic wonder of "climate change" is that, like "job creation" with Stimulus Funds, there is NO measurement possible and there is NO end to the government funding it can generate nor any limit to the Federal government power it can generate throughout society.)
The USFWS draft strategy and action plan are "open" for public comment until November 23, 2009." My friend goes on to inform us that:
- "The literature cited list for this redirection is less than a page long, and reveals something less than full dedication to scientific method."
- "Large scale full landscape conservation measures are featured prominently."
- "I have not yet been able to find a postal address or fax number for comment submission."
- "There is a lot in these plans that will limit private property rights in both the near and long term."
- "The plans include the implementation of huge wildlife corridor cores and buffers, cross-border cooperation for landscape conservation projects, and much, much more."
As an old bureaucrat, allow me to observe that this sort of inevitable and unchecked government expansion of power and expense is being conducted throughout Federal offices. The total costs of all the increased land acquisition, hiring, operations and maintenance will be not only astronomical but will be directly proportional to future losses of private property and future diminishment of the authority of State and local governments to protect the rights and lifestyles of the communities that have relied on them for over 200 years.
These three items (international gun trade regulation, "protecting" "all waters", and massive government programs to prevent the "climate" from "changing") are what H. L. Mencken once famously identified as products of "practical politics". He said, "the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." This humorous truism should not deter us from understanding the deadly seriousness of each of these matters. To see any of them alone should send shivers down our spines and elicit calls to throw out every bum (i.e. all of them) in Washington today. To take notice of all three on one day is akin to seeing Attilla the Hun coming over a Hungarian ridge or seeing Luftwaffe bombers and Panzer Divisions streaking across Polish countryside.
Each of these steps toward eventual tyranny should sound an alarm to us all but like hearing the shepherd boy constantly calling "wolf" we have tuned out the alarms. However in all fairness, the clamor of "approaching tyranny" alarms going off all over has never been as great in this Nation as it is today.
Consider all the following alarms in the past year and just how fast we are plunging headlong into a tyrannical government from which there will be no easy escape:
- Federal appointees setting private sector salaries.
- Federal nationalization of banks.
- " " " Insurance companies.
- " " " Automobile companies.
- " " " Health Care.
- ACORN/SEI thugs breaking up citizen assemblies (like SS or communist "organizers").
- "Cap & Trade" legislation that will raise energy and other costs astronomically for no end other than increasing government power and revenue.
- Complex and lengthy laws passed in the dark of night without public notice or even cursory reading by those that vote for them.
- Powerful political offices passed down in families like Kennedy, Rockefeller, Dingell, Biden, Daley, etc.
- Taxes on sodas and "fees" for health care each claimed to be for social justice or health ends but really for nothing but government revenue.
- Proposals to ban foods like bacon and hamburger while giving animals "rights"???
- Proposals to use public taxes to fund abortions.
- Proposals to prohibit hospitals and health workers from refusing to commit abortions or euthanasia on moral grounds under pain of government termination.
- "Wars" between politicians and certain news media and certain churches over disagreement with regime policies.
- Massive deficits, unlike any ever seen in history.
- Government entities like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac masquerading as "non-government" while working with agencies like the FDIC to browbeat banks into continuing to make bad loans or give money to ACORN thus perpetuating the housing crisis and the unemployment crisis thus keeping the public ripe for "more Federal intervention".
- A steady loss of private property and private property rights to Federal and State wastrels.
- A steady assault on Constitutional rights from bearing arms to freedom of speech, assembly, press, and security of our property from unwarranted search and seizure.
- Government preferments and favoritism for women and blacks in spite of female majorities and blacks everywhere from The White House to Commanding Generals.
- Black athletes and black leaders using "racist" accusations to deny fellow Americans their Constitutional rights where, if the tables were turned and white leaders proclaimed that "certain blacks weren't wanted in nor should be allowed in businesses that were 70% white" there would be an outcry of unfairness just like blacks cannot commit "hate crimes" on whites despite a wildly disparate rate of black-on-white crime in practically every large city.
- We continue to ship Billions to nations that hate us for their oil while refusing to develop or use our own massive deposits of coal, oil, and gas.
- We refuse to build nuclear power plants for the high demand for power while building windmills that kill birds, produce minimal power, and lie still in the summer when power demands are highest.
- Schools that fail at education while propagandizing children about aberrant sexual lifestyles, the passé' nature of religion and marriage, and the need for compliance with the leader's wishes (UUU-UUU-UUMMM!) like every tyrannical dictatorship of recent history.
Just like those Twin Towers after the planes hit them, there should be alarms going off everywhere for each of these things.
Before I began working as a law enforcement officer many years ago a discovery was made that has saved many lives. All American police and emergency vehicles had similar sirens that whined a constant and identical sound while in Europe they used sirens that varied in pitch and played various notes. Lo and behold it was discovered that there were far more serious accidents at the scenes of emergencies in the US than in Europe involving police and emergency vehicles racing to the scene. The reason, it was determined, was that you could not hear similar-sounding sirens while you were in a vehicle with the same siren turned on with the same whine. The answer was to adopt the European sirens and thereby save many American lives by allowing the emergency personnel to remain aware of other racing vehicles heading toward the same destination.
We are each like those emergency vehicles with the old sirens all heading toward Armageddon oblivious to all the others doing exactly the same thing. We ignore gun rights if we have no guns. We ignore water hegemony with the ill-informed impression that anything to "clean" or "save" water must be OK. We ignore the inevitable losses of health care and the loss of human lives to abortion and euthanasia in the mistaken assumption that we will get something else and that we don't expect to "need" an abortion and we will stay healthy by running and eating healthy foods.
Has there ever been an "educated" population of free men and women that so simply and willingly surrendered to the tyrannical rule of a dictator and a gang that all expect to profit like those that surround Hugo Chavez and Robert Mugabe?
As painful and controversial as all this is to say; it must be said. We are all rushing into a dictatorship as surely as we are angry with those that mention it just like someone shouting "Iceberg!" on an "unsinkable" ship like the Titanic.

WHAT HAPPENED TO GLOBAL WARMING?

By Paul Hudson
Climate correspondent, BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8299079.stm

This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.
But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.
And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.
So what on Earth is going on?
Climate change sceptics, who passionately and consistently argue that man's influence on our climate is overstated, say they saw it coming.
They argue that there are natural cycles, over which we have no control, that dictate how warm the planet is. But what is the evidence for this?
During the last few decades of the 20th century, our planet did warm
quickly.
Sceptics argue that the warming we observed was down to the energy from the Sun increasing. After all 98% of the Earth's warmth comes from the Sun.
But research conducted two years ago, and published by the Royal Society, seemed to rule out solar influences.
The scientists' main approach was simple: to look at solar output and cosmic ray intensity over the last 30-40 years, and compare those trends with the graph for global average surface temperature.
And the results were clear. "Warming in the last 20 to 40 years can't have been caused by solar activity," said Dr Piers Forster from Leeds University, a leading contributor to this year's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
But one solar scientist Piers Corbyn from Weatheraction, a company
specialising in long range weather forecasting, disagrees.
He claims that solar charged particles impact us far more than is currently accepted, so much so he says that they are almost entirely responsible for what happens to global temperatures.
He is so excited by what he has discovered that he plans to tell the
international scientific community at a conference in London at the end of the month.
If proved correct, this could revolutionise the whole subject.
Ocean cycles.What is really interesting at the moment is what is happening to our oceans.
They are the Earth's great heat stores.
" In the last few years [the Pacific Ocean] has been losing its warmth and has recently started to cool down."
According to research conducted by Professor Don Easterbrook from Western Washington University last November, the oceans and global temperatures are correlated.
The oceans, he says, have a cycle in which they warm and cool cyclically.
The most important one is the Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO).
For much of the 1980s and 1990s, it was in a positive cycle, that means warmer than average. And observations have revealed that global temperatures were warm too.
But in the last few years it has been losing its warmth and has recently started to cool down.
These cycles in the past have lasted for nearly 30 years.
So could global temperatures follow? The global cooling from 1945 to 1977 coincided with one of these cold Pacific cycles.
Professor Easterbrook says: "The PDO cool mode has replaced the warm mode in the Pacific Ocean, virtually assuring us of about 30 years of global cooling."
So what does it all mean? Climate change sceptics argue that this is
evidence that they have been right all along.
They say there are so many other natural causes for warming and cooling, that even if man is warming the planet, it is a small part compared with nature.
But those scientists who are equally passionate about man's influence on global warming argue that their science is solid.
The UK Met Office's Hadley Centre, responsible for future climate
predictions, says it incorporates solar variation and ocean cycles into its climate models, and that they are nothing new.
In fact, the centre says they are just two of the whole host of known factors things that influence global temperatures - all of which are accounted for by its models.
In addition, say Met Office scientists, temperatures have never increased in a straight line, and there will always be periods of slower warming, or even temporary cooling.
What is crucial, they say, is the long-term trend in global temperatures.
And that, according to the Met office data, is clearly up.
To confuse the issue even further, last month Mojib Latif, a member of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) says that we may indeed be in a period of cooling worldwide temperatures that could last another 10-20 years.
Professor Latif is based at the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at Kiel University in Germany and is one of the world's top climate modellers.
But he makes it clear that he has not become a sceptic; he believes that this cooling will be temporary, before the overwhelming force of man-made global warming reasserts itself.
So what can we expect in the next few years?
Both sides have very different forecasts. The Met Office says that warming is set to resume quickly and strongly.
It predicts that from 2010 to 2015 at least half the years will be hotter than the current hottest year on record (1998).
Sceptics disagree. They insist it is unlikely that temperatures will reach the dizzy heights of 1998 until 2030 at the earliest. It is possible, they say, that because of ocean and solar cycles a period of global cooling is more likely.
One thing is for sure. It seems the debate about what is causing global warming is far from over. Indeed some would say its hotting up. Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/science/nature/8299079.stm
Published: 2009/10/09 15:22:46 GMT
(c) BBC MMIX
===========================
Robert Ferguson, President
Science and Public Policy Institute
www.scienceandpublicpolicy.org
bferguson@sppinstitute.org
202-288-5699

GOVT-FUNDED RESEARCH UNIT DESTROYED ORIGINAL CLIMATE DATA

by Christine Hall
October 5, 2009

Govt-Funded Research Unit Destroyed Original Climate Data
CEI Petitions EPA to Reopen Global Warming Rulemaking
Washington, D.C., October 6, 2009―In the wake of a revelation by a key research institution that it destroyed its original climate data, the Competitive Enterprise Institute petitioned EPA to reopen a major global warming proceeding.
In mid-August the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU) disclosed that it had destroyed the raw data for its global surface temperature data set because of an alleged lack of storage space. The CRU data have been the basis for several of the major international studies that claim we face a global warming crisis. CRU's destruction of data, however, severely undercuts the credibility of those studies.
In a declaration filed with CEI's petition, Cato Institute scholar and climate scientist Patrick Michaels calls CRU's revelation "a totally new element" that "violates basic scientific principles, and "throws even more doubt" on the claims of global warming alarmists.
CEI's petition, filed late Monday with EPA, argues that CRU's disclosure casts a new cloud of doubt on the science behind EPA's proposal to regulate carbon dioxide. EPA stopped accepting public comments in late June but has not yet issued its final decision. As CEI's petition argues, court rulings make it clear that agencies must consider new facts when those facts change the underlying issues.
CEI general counsel Sam Kazman stated, "EPA is resting its case on international studies that in turn relied on CRU data. But CRU's suspicious destruction of its original data, disclosed at this late date, makes that information totally unreliable. If EPA doesn't reexamine the implications of this, it's stumbling blindly into the most important regulatory issue we face."
Among CRU's funders are the EPA and the U.S. Department of Energy - U.S. taxpayers.
Read the CEI petition to the EPA.
Read more about the data dump: The Dog Ate Global Warming, by Patrick J. Michaels

YIKES! CALIFORNIA CLUES

By Jim Beers
My Minnesota paper informs me "that investigators are searching for clues" to the origin of the latest catastrophic California fires that have taken the lives of firefighters and destroyed numerous homes and their families' belongings. While I take no issue with just punishment for anyone causing, either intentionally or accidentally, a fire; when speaking about "who caused the fire" there is a long list or perpetrators that go unmentioned and unnoticed.
For instance:
-What steps have California Governors, Legislatures, and Universities taken in recent years to change the plant communities that quickly create an abundance of fire fuel annually on public lands?
-Why is there no discussion of non-native plants to supplant the mostly native species that cause such devastation?
-Why is there no discussion of road patterns to serve as firebreaks and access for firefighting? ---Why is there no discussion of encouraging grazing and tree-cutting regimes that pay for themselves and even generate much-needed tax revenue and precious jobs?
-Why is there no exploration of state incentives to restore logging and timber mills or markets for sheep and goats (both of which eat the fuels that otherwise soon become hazardous in California climates) and their many products?
-What has state government done to force federal agencies that own and ("manage" is an untrue depiction of what they currently do) close so much of what was originally California wood, brush, and grass lands that once supported California families but now endanger California families, homes, infrastructure, and budgets?
-What have state government or the media done to refute the federal canard that the agencies "need more money" to reduce fire fuel accumulations on "federal" lands when grazing, logging, road development and maintenance by users have financed fire management and local communities steadily through carefully managed uses of renewable natural resources throughout the last century?
-What is state government doing to stop and reverse the federal trend to make all federal lands roadless wildernesses that are inaccessible and unavailable for public use, revenue generation, and public enjoyment while they accumulate fire fuel at the fastest rate possible?
-What is being done to break the absolute hammerlock that extremist environmental organizations and radical animal rights organizations have on California land management? --
-What has California done to tone down federal demands such as not allowing any brush management where a certain rodent is said to desire to live?
Why have state and federal politicians as well as state and federal bureaucrats been allowed to create these catastrophic fire fuel sumps in the midst and surroundings of California families, homes, and communities? Did the Founding Fathers not see two of the primary goals of government to be insuring "domestic Tranquility" and promoting "the general welfare": how then can we tolerate state and federal governments that do neither? Unlike most "whodunits", clues as to whom and why are everywhere we look. Clues, like failed responsibility and blame, abound.
Positive steps are obvious to any sensible observer:
-Proactive management of plant communities without regard to how long the plants have occurred in California on federal, state, county, and private lands should be mandated on the public lands and encouraged or required for the general welfare on private lands.
-Politicians should demand such solutions and Universities should reacquire the wherewithal to provide such solutions regardless of nature veneration by "scientists, current searches for bogy-men like global warming and "stressed" ecosystems, or specious claims about native and non-native species.
-Private and sustainable uses of plants on public and private lands should be encouraged to reduce or eliminate fire fuel accumulation. Grazing, logging, and other plant uses by private enterprise should be encouraged and managed by government land "managers" to greatly reduce fire fuel accumulation.
-Economic activities that are supported by the use of renewable natural resources by private enterprises should be explored and encouraged to generate funding for government "managers" and local communities to use for fire prevention and other purposes like schools and roads.
-Roads on government lands should be encouraged to both enable fire fighting and fire prevention as well as to allow uses that generate funds to otherwise manage the lands for public uses: wherever feasible such roads should be constructed and maintained by user fees from those public lands.
Note to the reader, I have written about all this before:
-Recent fire-related deaths of firefighters and homeowners seem to be tolerable to Californians. -Property and tax losses in the Billions must be endurable to California rulers and their cohorts.
-Tax bills in the Billions for things that could not only be accomplished without tax money but that would generate user fees and taxes seem to be of no importance to Californians that once upon a time supported the senseless lockup of enormous deposits of Utah low-sulfur coal that could have generated power in Utah for Californians in the midst of a "power crisis".
-Like the revered mountain lions that kill and maim Californians while devastating desirable wildlife species ("yes, Virginia, there are desirable and undesirable wild species"), Californians seem to value cougars and "scientifically" designated plant communities above human lives, local communities, and a citizenry that supports a government rather than the other way around.
Today's papers abound with California's self-immolation of San Joaquin farmers (and the income they provide the state and local governments) in favor of a fairy tale about a certain fish. These fish like the smelt here, the suckers up by Klamath, and the snail darters in Tennessee are merely Lilliputian versions of wolves, that is to say they are surrogates for environmental cabals and all-powerful central government advocates to bring America to heel for their own purposes.
The sea otter debacle off the California coast and its impact on abalone is now a matter of history. Contrast this California sea otter veneration with the current whale worship including killer (oops I forgot we are supposed to call them "Orcas" to make everyone love these killers of the N Pacific and Bering Sea) whales that have greatly decimated the cute sea otters of the Aleutians. If any Californians complained, I must have missed it.
Californians are not alone in these regards: the great "Ivory-billed Woodpecker (extinct for six decades now) March to the Sea" (by bureaucrats and environmentalists, not Sherman) in the South differs from the search for The Abominable Snowman only in the regard that the Yeti doesn't generate millions in federal funding and serve as an excuse and hammer for agencies and The Nature Conservancy to buy and ease more land while shutting down more rural activities (and increasing fire fuel accumulation by the way).
So when they find "who started this fire" I am sure we will all be outraged and call for the maximum penalty. One recently convicted California arsonist is on Death Row as I write this. Another "arsonist" was convicted here in Minnesota recently. He was a Washington DC resident who had loved and enjoyed his N Minnesota cabin every summer for years. He was convicted of letting a garbage fire get away and thereby causing a conflagration. The fact that about a decade before a Minnesota storm downed million of acres of N Minnesota trees that were not cleaned up (much less logged as in "forest management") and soon became fire fuel in search of a match in his area because of federal Park rules, well that went unmentioned. The poor man went home and committed suicide in his garage. No doubt some similar punishment will be meted out in California and we will all think that will help avoid future conflagrations, if only we can pass "Cap and Trade" and "get more money in the US Forest Service budget"!
But it will all work out for "the best". Governors will get reelected. Legislatures will go back to fleecing people. Politicians and bureaucrats will get bonuses, health insurance, and hefty retirements. Environmental organizations will continue reaping their rewards. Government land ownership will continue expanding. Government land agencies will show ever-growing deficits for operations and maintenance budget requests while getting more and more land control. Universities will wail about "warming" and find ever more tiny groupings of heretofore-unnoticed plants and animals to justify government funding for themselves, private property restrictions, and the expansion of government agencies and power. All of these things have never before had a central government (White House and Congress) more favorable to and sympathetic about such problems because the California fire "crises" are viewed as more "opportunities" for imposing larger agendas. Such is "the best" in America today.
The California fire crisis is a symptom of the wider problems faced by more and more states. The more urban the state, the more advanced are these natural resource issues caused by fictitious "science" claims and gullible voters that are but symptoms of the larger national affliction hobbling this country today. The best analogy that comes to mind is that California is like an old Yosemite (how appropriate!) Sam cartoon where Sam goes to draw his two guns and they start going off in his holsters and he rises up off the ground in outrageous fury while failing to realize that he is the source of his own problem. I hereby nominate Yosemite Sam as the State Cartoon Role Model of California.