The IRS Arbitrary Capricious Arrogant And Corrupt

The IRS Arbitrary Capricious Arrogant And Corrupt

Read More Articles by Ron Ewart

“Life is a fight, a fight to stay alive and a fight to keep others from taking your life or your liberty from you!” — Ron Ewart

Many of our readers are aware of our difficulties with the IRS and the articles we have written describing those difficulties, along with just how corrupt the IRS has become.  We will cover more on that issue, later in the article.  Hopefully, President Trump’s Tax Cut and Reform Act of 2017 will cut the IRS off at the knees, or at least slow it down.  We’ll see.

Prior to the passage of the 16th Amendment, the federal government managed to exist on revenues from “Duties, Imposts and Excises to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.”  (Article I, Section 8, Clause 1 of the U. S. Constitution.)

But alas, the taxes collected in accordance with the Constitution were not enough and the bankers that loaned vast sums of money to the United States government, were uneasy about their investments.  Congress, pressured by the bankers, capitulated to their lobby and the 16th Amendment was born in 1913 that created the Federal Reserve and the Internal Revenue Service under a progressive tax rate system, where higher earners pay a significantly higher tax rate, a direct violation of the equal protection clause of the U. S. Constitution.

We are told that the Federal Reserve was created to smooth out the peaks and valleys of our economic system, as prior to the 16th Amendment bank runs and failures were common.  Perhaps there may be an element of truth to this argument.  However, the real reason for the 16th Amendment was that the bankers needed a steady, determinable source of re-payment to secure their loans and what better way to do it than to tax the income of all Americans and to create an agency that puts the fear of God into those Americans to insure compliance of a so-called voluntary law, even if it violated the Constitution.  This could be called, “security for a loan at the point of a gun where the government holds the gun and your head is where it is pointed.”    That is how the Cosa Nostra does it.   Pay up, or we’ll break your leg.

Since 1913, the government and the IRS have grown exponentially in both enforcement power and manpower.  They have become arbitrary, capricious, arrogant and hopelessly corrupt.  Americans no longer are the master but have reversed the role with government and have become the servant.  To give you a rough idea of government growth, take a look at the following statistics in just the last twenty years.

In 2016, the IRS raised $3.333 Trillion in taxes, spending $11.7 Billion, using 78,000 employees.  The taxes raised in that year equaled $10,288 for every man, woman and child in America.  In contrast, in 1987, (just 20 years before) the taxes raised per person was $3,627, on total taxes of approximately $886.3 Billion.  In just 20 years, taxes to run the government, collected by the IRS, have increased 376 percent.  Taxes per capita have increased 284%.  (Source: IRS)  In the same period the Gross Domestic Product only increased by 100 percent.  Even allowing for inflation, the questions raised by these statistics are numerous.  There can be no doubt.  Government is exploding and the “tax man cometh.”  (This massive increase in spending, in just 20 years, can be laid directly at the feet of the Democrat Party and the financially flawed Progressive ideology that uses the Public Treasury to buy votes to maintain political power.)

To collect all this “dough” from the duped American taxpayers, the IRS just had to get more aggressive.  But the IRS has now gone beyond aggressive and has become arbitrary, capricious, arrogant and corrupt.

The operations of the IRS have spawned thousands of books, essays and articles on just how bad it is and has caused probably hundreds of thousand of court cases since 1913 that have landed thousands of taxpayers in jail and many more unnecessarily paying billions in fines and penalties.  The IRS makes mistakes all the time.  It has been estimated that the IRS sends demand notices, liens and taxes-due errors to at least 10,000,000 taxpayers every single year.

Many books have been written describing why individual Americans don’t owe taxes, in a strict interpretation of the Internal Revenue Code.  If you read their arguments you would tend to believe they are right.  One such author, Pete Hendrickson, wrote a book called “Cracking the Code.”  His method, described in his book, shows how to get back all the money you paid to the IRS.   Apparently, using that method, many so-called non-taxpayers (as Pete calls them) have gotten their money back.  However, Pete’s wife spent 18 months in jail for daring to challenge the IRS.  The story is much more complicated than that, which we won’t go into here, except to say in this case, the IRS used judicial brute force to throw an innocent lady in jail, probably seeking revenge against her husband.

However, many other authors who have told Americans they don’t owe taxes under the code have landed in jail as well.  One Irwin Schiff died in jail for daring to challenge the legality of the tax code as applied to individuals.   Some get away with these legal challenges, others do not.

On the other hand, we have never taken that tack.   It is too dangerous because the IRS is fickle.  It will prosecute some folks, but ignore, or let others go.  The IRS is all-powerful.  Why take the chance?  But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t challenge them, especially when they are wrong and they are wrong all the time.  We have challenged the IRS numerous times on their errors and have prevailed, except for the following event.

Back in 2013, the IRS started seizing 15% of our Social Security (SS) benefits for an alleged penalty from Calendar-Year 2011.  We challenged the penalty three days after receiving the Notice of the penalty with an Affidavit and followed up with a Notice of Default and Dishonor 30 days later.  We had been successful against the IRS using this method, at least five times before.  In the past, the IRS never responded to our Affidavits, they just issued a NO TAX DUE notice.

But this time, since the C/Y 2011 penalty was significant, the IRS decided to ignore our Affidavit and began seizing the SS benefits.  Before we could again challenge the seizure, we had to wait until the seizure was done.  That took over two and half years.   After the two and one half years past and the total penalty paid, we were required to file a Claim for Refund with the Secretary of the Treasury if we wanted our money back.  We filed one Claim for Refund with the Secretary and then filed a follow-up Claim for Refund two months later.  We never heard from the Secretary of the Treasury about our Claim.  Nevertheless, we still had to wait another six months after filing the claim before we could file suit in U. S. District Court against the IRS to obtain a refund.  These purposely imposed and excessive wait times are designed to inhibit any challenges to the IRS.

So in mid December of 2017, we filed our lawsuit with the U. S. District Court.  A little over a month later we received notice from the court that they were denying the issuance of the summons and dismissed our claim because the court said; “we failed to state a claim for which relief can be granted.”  This is the great cop out by Courts to weed out lawsuits, especially from pro se litigants.

Our legal arguments were based on three court precedents, namely: Group v Finletter, 108 F. Supp. 327, and United States v. Kis, 658 F.2d 526, 536 (7th Cir. 1981) and Morris v National Cash Register, 44 S.W. 2d 433, a very simple one:  TO-WIT: “An un-rebutted affidavit stands as truth in any court or administrative procedure.”

The court either ignored or refused to look at the secondary issue in these cases and denied our argument.  But we weren’t going to lie down and play dead for the court in docile submission.  We filed a Motion in Rebuttal to their denial and dismissal.  You can read our Motion in Rebuttal HERE.  You will find the Motion both educational as well as entertaining.

Now our Motion in Rebuttal probably won’t get the Court to change its mind, but we had a field day in telling the court what they could do with their order.  Upon learning that the specific judge and the Clerk of the Court were negligent in filing the proper paperwork to establish their authority in the past, in the Motion we questioned the judge’s authority and requested, under an FOIA request, that he send us a certified copy of his Oath of Office and Appointment Affidavit, required for every judge.  Sure, we are tickling the tiger’s tail, but we get some perverse pleasure from it.

We might not win THIS battle, but nevertheless we have won five out of six times against the IRS with legal challenges.  We have saved thousands of dollars in taxes by not giving in and questioning every IRS notice we receive.  On the other hand, the IRS has spent thousands of dollars in keeping up with our challenges.

The point we would like to make here is that if people won’t challenge the government, whether it be the IRS or a whole laundry list of alphabet soup federal, state, or local agencies, the people can expect to be used and abused by government.  If you challenge government when they are wrong and you win, you will feel emboldened to challenge them again.  You will feel like you are in control and you are not a slave or a subject of government.  In fact, you may even feel like you are sovereign.  If more people did this, there would be a lot less using and abusing of the people by government.  Sadly, most people would rather capitulate to government than take on Goliath.  There aren’t too many “Davids” in the general population.  But then there never were.

In contrast to the non “Davids”, we are fighters.  As advocates for rural landowners the National Association of Rural Landowners has been fighting government for over 12 year on behalf of American rural landowners, providing advice, tools and other services.  Individually, we have been fighting the government (especially the IRS) whenever they raise their ugly heads and we have been showing others how to do it.  If you don’t fight, you can expect to be run over.  If you like being run over by government, that is your burden to bear.

Most everyone knows that the government, especially the IRS, has become arbitrary, capricious, arrogant and corrupt.  With new revelations coming out every day about FBI and DOJ agents FIXING the Hillary Clinton investigation, the corruption grows ever more apparent.  It will only get worse ….. IF WE DO NOTHING.

“Without knowledge, experience and a broad point of reference you cannot know the truth, much less be aware of reality, nor will you have the skill set to defend against your enemies.”  — Ron Ewart

© 2018 Ron Ewart – All Rights Reserved

E-Mail Ron Ewart: info@narlo.org

Ron Ewart, a nationally known author and speaker on freedom and property rights issues and author of this weekly column, “In Defense of Rural America”. Ron is the president of the National Association of Rural Landowners (NARLO) (www.narlo.org), a non-profit corporation headquartered in Washington State, acting as an advocate and consultant for urban and rural landowners. Affiliated NARLO websites are “SAVE THE USA” and “Getting Even With Government”. Email: info@narlo.org Website: http://www.narlo.org

Olddogs Comments!

What can be done to help a good, intelligent, hard working man who prefers to butt heads with a 2,000 lb bull rather than follow someone else’s advice. Ron, if you really want to help people and yourself, escape the tyranny of the I.R.S. have them read this site, http://www.annavonreitz.com/

study it and implement the process of returning to a Civilian National instead of a citizen slave. You seem to enjoy the fight more than you desire to win!

---

 One More Time S-L-O-W-L-Y

https://wp.me/p1jN4X-22g

http://www.paulstramer.net/2018/01/one-more-time-s-l-o-w-l-y.html

By Anna Von Reitz

You begin your life as “one of the free, sovereign, and independent people of the United States”—- a Virginian, Minnesotan, Texan, etc….

While still a baby in your cradle, “uniformed officers” conscripted into the U.S. Army — who appear to be civilian doctors, improperly seize upon your name and estate and coerce your Mother to sign a False Information to the effect that you are a “US citizen”— the same political status you would have if you were a Puerto Rican, born in Puerto Rico or one of the other Insular Territories, like Guam.

This status as a “Territorial Citizen” obligates you to serve the government and obey its every whim, to be defined as a “taxpayer” and subjected to Selective Service, and to need a license—which is official permission to do something that is otherwise illegal— like getting married or traveling in your car from Point A to Point B. It also subjects you to the foreign British Equity Law and Territorial Court System, which is rigged against you so that British-affiliated Bar Association members can rule against you 97% of the time via the abundant use of their “judicial discretion”.

Throughout your life these vermin misinform you, either deliberately or in ignorance themselves, and tell you that you “have to” have a Social Security Number, you “have to” have a Driver License, you “have to” have a Marriage License, and you obediently do what you are told. Every time you do, you again unwittingly confirm that you are a “US Citizen” and effectively bear False Witness against yourself and against your own interests, just to get along and survive in this ugly horror show world they have created.

Here is the first take home message, campers!  You are NOT a “citizen” of anything.  Citizens serve the government.  Nationals have the government serve them.  So which one are you?  Uh….duh….are you paying them or are they paying you?  And if they are paying you, what is that payment based upon, if not your own hard work and years of paying taxes you never actually owed?

So in effect, you have been kidnapped and trafficked into a United States Territory, and never told about this change in your official political status. You’ve been subjected to the Queen of England and the debts of the British Crown Corporation and if you woke up enough to complain they slammed you into one of their very own rigged courts where they could rape and pillage you and your name and your estate some more.

But how could this be?  How could this happen?  How could nobody know about this?  Well, they never told your Mother, and you were too young to know anything about it when it happened, so why would you have any inkling that this is so?  You couldn’t know.  You couldn’t even complain about it.  And the dirty rotten vermin planned it that way.

So here you are, transported on paper, to Puerto Rico….without a clue and without a paddle to get home, stuck in THEIR foreign political status, subjected to THEIR foreign law, stuck paying THEIR foreign taxes, suffering through THEIR foreign bankruptcies, and living in THEIR “territorial” reality.  And this is all being done to you by what appears to be your government, but it’s not.  It’s THEIR government, which is supposed to be acting under a contract called The Constitution of the United States of America to protect you and your rights…..

So how do they get around their contractual obligation to honor and serve, and instead pillage and plunder?  They just pretend not to know that you are an American from one of the American nation-states.  After all, your Mother said you were a “U.S. Citizen”—- she just didn’t know which “U.S.” they were talking about and wasn’t told, either.  And then you came along like a good little dweeb and signed up for Social Security, and everyone knows—- Title 42 plainly states– that this program is only for federal employees and dependents and political asylum seekers.  Well, then!  You must have sought political asylum, right?  In Puerto Rico, no less.  I hear the climate is nice there.

Who knew?  The Gubmint knew.  The black-hearted, treacherous cheats in Washington, DC—they knew. That’s how they were getting all the gravy. The Joint Chiefs of Staff— they knew.  That’s how they paid for their newest whiz-bang jet fighters and germ warfare programs and everything else.  The Clintons, Billy and Hillary, and Jimmy and Ronnie and both Georges and Mr. Obummer— they all knew.  Everyone on THEIR side of the fence knew and they used to laugh at you poor idiots stumbling around, still thinking that you were living in America.  They called you “sovereign citizens”— a deliberate oxymoron, and thought you were too stupid to ever get the joke.  They called you “livestock” and treated you that way, too.

And if you are NOT mad enough to spit, if you are not angry to the core, if you are NOT ready to get on your feet, then you still aren’t getting the drift of what has been done here.  Go back to the top and read slowly again, remembering that these are people on your payroll doing this to you and your sons and daughters.

But, you say, they are Americans, too.  How could this be?  Surely, they wouldn’t subject themselves to all these things?  They wouldn’t live like slaves at the mercy of their own employees?  Of course, not.  They had to leave themselves an out, didn’t they?  Well, here it is, black and white, the Foreign Sovereigns Immunity Act of 1976.  You, my dears, are all “foreign sovereigns”— from THEIR perspective.  Oh, they admit that you are in fact sovereign.  They can’t avoid that.  They just pretend that you gave it all away and “volunteered” to be treated as a Puerto Rican and a debt slave and whatever else they wanted to say about you—while they privately retained all their own rights and prerogatives as lawful sovereigns on American soil.  You should see Bill Clinton’s claim of copyright to his own name and estate.  He left nothing out.  Not as much as a comma.

So, if you are sovereign on American soil and you are owed the guarantees and protections of The Constitution of the United States of America, how is it that you are still being chased around by THEIR bill collectors?  Thought to be part of THEIR bankruptcy?  Harassed and addressed by THEIR courts?   Well, remember, all this bullshit is military.  Remember the sentry asking for the password?  And if you don’t know the password he can shoot you?  Right?  It’s the same thing. You have to give them MANDATORY NOTICE that you are exempt and immune, a Foreign Sovereign (with respect to them) per the Foreign Sovereigns Immunity Act of 1976.

And then you start taking names and checking dates and you start holding these vermin feet first to the fire.  You start telling them the truth— that they have no right to address you.  You should also form up your lawful County Jural Assemblies and elect your land and soil jurisdiction Sheriffs, set up your Jury Pools, elect your American Common Law Justices of the Peace.  Many of you have been asking— if Hillary broke the law and endangered national security and Obama illegally spied on Donald Trump for political purposes—-why are these crooks still walking around?  It’s because they are claiming to be Foreign Sovereigns on American soil.  These lousy pirates have beat feet back home and sought the protection of the political status they have stolen from others. The only way to bring them to justice is for all of us to wake up and remember who we are.

Now, most Americans are peaceful, even docile, people.  They want to live and let live, mind their own business, work hard and play hard.  Most Americans want and ask nothing much from the government, except to be left alone and maybe some pothole-filling duty. But THEY won’t leave us alone because THEY want to steal from us.  THEY want to continue commandeering our lawful government.  THEY want to call the shots and rule over the rest of us.  THEY have their cozy little fraud machine and their bogus two party political system all set up.  THEY have their “corporate government” and their “corporate military” and THEY would just as soon forget all the old folks back home.

It’s time to jack them up.  Clear to the ceiling.  And all these Bar Association members?  It’s time to tell them where to get off.  Way off.  Who do they think they are?  Who asked for the services of a British Court on American soil?  What country do they think they are in?  Is this really just Greater Puerto Rico?  Or is this about to become America again?  With a big, flat, heavy foot stomped down on the Queen of England and all her busy, little, perfidious minions?

HERE IT IS: MANDATORY NOTICE!!!!  WE ARE AMERICAN FOREIGN SOVEREIGNS RETURNING TO OUR SOIL.  WE NEVER REALLY LEFT IT, SO DEATH AND DAMNATION TO ANYONE WHO CLAIMS OTHERWISE. 

See this article and over 800 others on Anna’s website here: http://www.annavonreitz.com

 

 

One More Time S-L-O-W-L-Y

http://www.paulstramer.net/2018/01/one-more-time-s-l-o-w-l-y.html

By Anna Von Reitz

You begin your life as “one of the free, sovereign, and independent people of the United       States”—- a Virginian, Minnesotan, Texan, etc….

While still a baby in your cradle, “uniformed officers” conscripted into the U.S. Army — who appear to be civilian doctors, improperly seize upon your name and estate and coerce your Mother to sign a False Information to the effect that you are a “US citizen”— the same political status you would have if you were a Puerto Rican, born in Puerto Rico or one of the other Insular Territories, like Guam.

This status as a “Territorial Citizen” obligates you to serve the government and obey its every whim, to be defined as a “taxpayer” and subjected to Selective Service, and to need a license—which is official permission to do something that is otherwise illegal— like getting married or traveling in your car from Point A to Point B. It also subjects you to the foreign British Equity Law and Territorial Court System, which is rigged against you so that British-affiliated Bar Association members can rule against you 97% of the time via the abundant use of their “judicial discretion”.

Throughout your life these vermin misinform you, either deliberately or in ignorance themselves, and tell you that you “have to” have a Social Security Number, you “have to” have a Driver License, you “have to” have a Marriage License, and you obediently do what you are told. Every time you do, you again unwittingly confirm that you are a “US Citizen” and effectively bear False Witness against yourself and against your own interests, just to get along and survive in this ugly horror show world they have created.

Here is the first take home message, campers!  You are NOT a “citizen” of anything.  Citizens serve the government.  Nationals have the government serve them.  So which one are you?  Uh….duh….are you paying them or are they paying you?  And if they are paying you, what is that payment based upon, if not your own hard work and years of paying taxes you never actually owed?

So in effect, you have been kidnapped and trafficked into a United States Territory, and never told about this change in your official political status. You’ve been subjected to the Queen of England and the debts of the British Crown Corporation and if you woke up enough to complain they slammed you into one of their very own rigged courts where they could rape and pillage you and your name and your estate some more.

But how could this be?  How could this happen?  How could nobody know about this?  Well, they never told your Mother, and you were too young to know anything about it when it happened, so why would you have any inkling that this is so?  You couldn’t know.  You couldn’t even complain about it.  And the dirty rotten vermin planned it that way.

So here you are, transported on paper, to Puerto Rico….without a clue and without a paddle to get home, stuck in THEIR foreign political status, subjected to THEIR foreign law, stuck paying THEIR foreign taxes, suffering through THEIR foreign bankruptcies, and living in THEIR “territorial” reality.  And this is all being done to you by what appears to be your government, but it’s not.  It’s THEIR government, which is supposed to be acting under a contract called The Constitution of the United States of America to protect you and your rights…..

So how do they get around their contractual obligation to honor and serve, and instead pillage and plunder?  They just pretend not to know that you are an American from one of the American nation-states.  After all, your Mother said you were a “U.S. Citizen”—- she just didn’t know which “U.S.” they were talking about and wasn’t told, either.  And then you came along like a good little dweeb and signed up for Social Security, and everyone knows—- Title 42 plainly states– that this program is only for federal employees and dependents and political asylum seekers.  Well, then!  You must have sought political asylum, right?  In Puerto Rico, no less.  I hear the climate is nice there.

Who knew?  The Gubmint knew.  The black-hearted, treacherous cheats in Washington, DC—they knew. That’s how they were getting all the gravy. The Joint Chiefs of Staff— they knew.  That’s how they paid for their newest whiz-bang jet fighters and germ warfare programs and everything else.  The Clintons, Billy and Hillary, and Jimmy and Ronnie and both Georges and Mr. Obummer— they all knew.  Everyone on THEIR side of the fence knew and they used to laugh at you poor idiots stumbling around, still thinking that you were living in America.  They called you “sovereign citizens”— a deliberate oxymoron, and thought you were too stupid to ever get the joke.  They called you “livestock” and treated you that way, too. And if you are NOT mad enough to spit, if you are not angry to the core, if you are NOT ready to get on your feet, then you still aren’t getting the drift of what has been done here.  Go back to the top and read slowly again, remembering that these are people on your payroll doing this to you and your sons and daughters.

But, you say, they are Americans, too.  How could this be?  Surely, they wouldn’t subject themselves to all these things?  They wouldn’t live like slaves at the mercy of their own employees?  Of course, not.  They had to leave themselves an out, didn’t they?  Well, here it is, black and white, the Foreign Sovereigns Immunity Act of 1976.  You, my dears, are all “foreign sovereigns”— from THEIR perspective.  Oh, they admit that you are in fact sovereign.  They can’t avoid that.  They just pretend that you gave it all away and “volunteered” to be treated as a Puerto Rican and a debt slave and whatever else they wanted to say about you—while they privately retained all their own rights and prerogatives as lawful sovereigns on American soil.  You should see Bill Clinton’s claim of copyright to his own name and estate.  He left nothing out.  Not as much as a comma.

So, if you are sovereign on American soil and you are owed the guarantees and protections of The Constitution of the United States of America, how is it that you are still being chased around by THEIR bill collectors?  Thought to be part of THEIR bankruptcy?  Harassed and addressed by THEIR courts?   Well, remember, all this bullshit is military.  Remember the sentry asking for the password?  And if you don’t know the password he can shoot you?  Right?  It’s the same thing. You have to give them MANDATORY NOTICE that you are exempt and immune, a Foreign Sovereign (with respect to them) per the Foreign Sovereigns Immunity Act of 1976.

And then you start taking names and checking dates and you start holding these vermin feet first to the fire.  You start telling them the truth— that they have no right to address you.  You should also form up your lawful County Jural Assemblies and elect your land and soil jurisdiction Sheriffs, set up your Jury Pools, elect your American Common Law Justices of the Peace.  Many of you have been asking— if Hillary broke the law and endangered national security and Obama illegally spied on Donald Trump for political purposes—-why are these crooks still walking around?  It’s because they are claiming to be Foreign Sovereigns on American soil.  These lousy pirates have beat feet back home and sought the protection of the political status they have stolen from others. The only way to bring them to justice is for all of us to wake up and remember who we are.

Now, most Americans are peaceful, even docile, people.  They want to live and let live, mind their own business, work hard and play hard.  Most Americans want and ask nothing much from the government, except to be left alone and maybe some pothole-filling duty. But THEY won’t leave us alone because THEY want to steal from us.  THEY want to continue commandeering our lawful government.  THEY want to call the shots and rule over the rest of us.  THEY have their cozy little fraud machine and their bogus two party political system all set up.  THEY have their “corporate government” and their “corporate military” and THEY would just as soon forget all the old folks back home.

It’s time to jack them up.  Clear to the ceiling.  And all these Bar Association members?  It’s time to tell them where to get off.  Way off.  Who do they think they are?  Who asked for the services of a British Court on American soil?  What country do they think they are in?  Is this really just Greater Puerto Rico?  Or is this about to become America again?  With a big, flat, heavy foot stomped down on the Queen of England and all her busy, little, perfidious minions?

HERE IT IS: MANDATORY NOTICE!!!!  WE ARE AMERICAN FOREIGN SOVEREIGNS RETURNING TO OUR SOIL.  WE NEVER REALLY LEFT IT, SO DEATH AND DAMNATION TO ANYONE WHO CLAIMS OTHERWISE. 

See this article and over 800 others on Anna’s website here:

http://www.annavonreitz.com

Why Equity Law is Evil

http://www.paulstramer.net/

By Anna Von Reitz

I have been asked, “Why do I attack British Equity Law so vehemently?”

Here’s the short answer— It’s not British and it’s not Equity and it’s not Law.

In the 1750’s a great hue and cry began in England because of the arbitrary and unjust effects of imposing outdated written “one-size fits all” laws without consideration of mitigating circumstances.

For example, the sentence for murder is death.

But what about unintentional, accidental murder?  What we now call “manslaughter”?   And what about murder committed by children by accident?  Or by the mentally incompetent, who couldn’t possibly know what they were doing?  How about murder in self-defense? The young woman being choked by a would-be rapist and thief, who finds a loaded gun and fires?  Or crimes of passion? The betrayed husband who finds his wife in the arms of another man and snaps?

There was a good deal of well-founded discontent with the hoary and Draconian Common Law of England, which had ceased to be determined on a case by case basis as intended, and devolved— especially in large cities, to a reliance on sentences established by the “case law”.  This over-reliance on the pure written law of record in similar cases (and who is to say what is “similar”?) and the gradual replacement of true jury trial by one’s peers to judgment by rule and by whatever jury was summoned (quite often not actual peers of the accused) led to massive controversy about the true nature of justice and the ability of the Common Law to provide it.

Not, I think, coincidental to the times, the BBC is advertising a series called, “Garrow’s Law” which is supposedly based on actual cases tried by William Garrow, a young Barrister who stood on the forefront of this entire movement to bring a more considered and considerate justice into the courts, and the development of a system of law that could see beyond the black and white words on a page clearly stating things like, “the sentence for murder is death by hanging….” (no matter what).

Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it?  A better law…..a more just law….a more considerate law….a more fair law…..

But, unfortunately, just as the pendulum moved in the 1750’s  to create the shades of grey we all now know and agree to be just, such as the provisions for manslaughter and juvenile court, the same forward and redeeming motion carried too far in the other direction, muddying the virtuous and sure, if sometimes dreadful and Puritanical English Common Law with international Admiralty Law, to create British Equity Law.

The primary proponent of this “mocking marriage” of English Common Law with  Admiralty Law was Lord Mansfield, a former Scottish Admiralty Attorney who rose to favor and crafted the basis of British Equity Law in the years immediately before the American Revolution.

The problem with British Equity Law is that is allows the judge to sit in place of the King, which displaces the traditional place and power of the Jury of One’s Peers.

Suddenly, a Barrister is King….  He can use “his discretion” to inflict the harshest sentence available under the written law, or he can soften the sentence as he sees fit, or dismiss the case entirely.  Just like the King of England might.

Of course, this power is entirely seductive to the members of the Bar Association, and, as it turns out, seductive for the King as well: his minions can use their discretion to benefit him and his friends and the ruling class in general, and if by chance they go too far in their toady behavior, he, the King, can emerge as the savior from these abuses, his hands immaculately clean.

So the idealists who sought to create a more perfect justice than the English Common Law provided, wound up creating something that was more varied, more precise, more mutable—more “sophisticated” in the bad sense of that word, but also far more prone to manipulation, abuse, and the currying of favor.

Also, it must be said, that this new Equity Law totally violated another safeguard provided to individual people by the honestly executed Common Law— judgment by one’s own peers.

England then as now is a culture dominated by culture. A man does not have to speak to be known in England.  Who and what he is, his education, his social station is worn like an armband or — famously— a “funny hat”.   So the tradition of trial by jury of one’s peers is a literal reflection of the fact that different strata of society have different standards, different knowledge, and different values.

What is justice to a chimney sweep or a fisherman is not necessarily the same as the justice of a lord—-or, and this is my point entirely—- a barrister.

What one man regards are gross impropriety is commonplace to another.  So those of the same social class and profession and nation are unavoidably the “peers” that can most rightly judge the actions of another of their brethren.

And, ultimately, this tradition of judgment by peers also yields the most accurate judges of the law itself, by testing a law against all social strata, all professions, all religions, all races—- to judge if it is truly fair and right in all their many eyes.

When a jury of one’s true peers is replaced by a judge, the power and purpose of jury nullification is also lost.  The Common Law of England and the Common Law of America both provide(d) for the additional safeguard of jury nullification.  Quite aside from judging the particulars of an individual case, true common law juries can judge the law itself, and if they find it unfair, unreasonable, or unjust— they can throw it out.

The legislature does not rule the people it serves, so long as the people have access to the power of jury nullification.

This safeguard of the Common Law prevents oppressive, insane, arbitrary, or unfair laws from standing on the books and plaguing entire generations of people.

So from the standpoint of preventing abuse of power by judges exercising their “personal discretion” for personal or social gain, and from the standpoint of ensuring that people are judged by their peers and not by someone alien to the realities of their lives, and from the standpoint of truly refining the law itself— the Common Law stands superior in every respect, despite the occasions when Equity Law has provided true equity and justice via the good heart and wisdom of individual judges.

With a clear insight now into the ways and means used by the British Territorial United States of America subsidiary to gain secretive control of American land and labor assets, and to also insinuate British Equity Law on American soil, it is thunderously apparent how “Equity Law” has been used to oppress the people and gild the “kings”—- those in Westminster and in Congress.

If the object of law is justice and order, then Equity Law is the open door to feudalism, class strife, cronyism, and ultimately—though not in every case—- injustice, because by adopting British Equity Law, we adopt coercive power and place it in the hands of one man or woman, operating only according to his or her “discretion” — which ultimately too often means “what I can get away with”.

It also leads to a perverse rewards system, in which those judges who make the most money for the court get the richest pensions and favors, and who are preened and petted for the choicest professional favors.  He who feeds the king—whoever and whatever the “king” may be— gets fed in return, so in such a system, the natural affinities a man might have for justice too often get set aside in favor of his new vacation home, a college education for his grandson, or a new job promotion for his wife.

The justice provided by one man can be bought or sold; it is only a question of — at what price?   Therein lies another potent reason that British Equity Law fails the cause of justice— it’s relatively easy to buy, bully, or kill one man, but the bulwark of a thousand years of Common Law?  That is not so easily swayed!

Also, finally, and this is most telling, too—- without Jury Nullification doing its after-the-fact pruning and proving of the Legislature’s work, laws proliferate like dandelions in spring.

It seems to be a universal plague of nature that men who are elected to the legislature think that it is their business to pass laws for other men to live by, and if at least ten such mandates do not carry their names and approvals each session, they think they aren’t doing their jobs.

I did a random study here in Alaska some years ago and found that the legislature was passing between two and three hundred new laws per year…..3000 new laws, give or take, per decade.

What, ho?  Are we really creating so many brand new point sources of evil and mayhem that it takes 200-300 new laws every year to keep things in order?  And who is going to learn all these new laws?  And who is going to pay for their enforcement?

Without the operation of Jury Nullification operating in the background, these laws just burgeon and accumulate, like a cancer growing in the dark.  This is why at last count, the federal government and its agencies were busy trying to enforce 80 million laws.

Think about it.  Seriously.  Eighty million laws.

This is yet another dangerous and undesirable result of adopting British Equity Law and allowing it to run rampant on our shores.  It denies jury nullification and results in this unbridled growth and proliferation of laws that simply stay on the books and appear to breed ten new volumes every year.

Somebody has to pay for enforcing all those laws, and plainly, it has already reached the point where any attempt at fair, competent, and universal application of such laws is impossible. Nobody has the ability to know and obey 80 million laws, so they are (a) meaningless or (b) arbitrarily and sporadically enforced, which gives rise to more injustice and more police incompetence and other social evils and costs too numerous to contemplate.

I once estimated that if the current Alaska legislature did nothing but review and repeal laws already on the books, it would take them ten years to arrive at a reasonable number of laws that could be provided a reasonable amount of enforcement.  Ten years of legislative sessions, just to clean up the mess that would have been taken care of by jury nullification otherwise?

Prone to corruption and difficult to correct is a recipe for failure no matter what idealistic goals might otherwise be espoused, and all that is quite aside from the fact that the American people are owed the American Common Law.

American Common Law, unlike its British Cousin, didn’t suffer the disadvantages of the British Equity system.  At worst, it was simply elbowed out of the way and left in relative disuse by the quiet, improper proliferation of British courts on our shores.

Wrapping up with my first comment– it’s not British, it’s not Equity, and it’s not Law—

British Equity Law isn’t British in the same way that a mixed breed dog is neither this breed nor that; the English Common Law is what it is, but Admiralty Law comes from the far corners of the Earth, an ancient amalgam that belongs everywhere and nowhere, with roots in the trading practices of Sumeria, Babylon, Egypt, Mycenae, Crete, Africa, India, China…..

It isn’t equitable, either.  What is equitable about men submitting themselves “in trust” to another man who is not impartial, not likely to be their peer, and who has profit motive to sheer them both?

And as for being Law—  Law is based on timeless religious and ethical principles, not the opinions and individual pet peeves and petty concerns of men caught up in the exercise of their own spleens and the commerce of political power.

So, no, it’s not British.  It’s not Equity.  And it most certainly is not Law.

See this article and over 800 others on Anna’s website here:

http://www.annavonreitz.com

AMERICA: SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED

By Anna Von Reitz

This little monograph was prepared for President Donald J. Trump, and strictly speaking, it is addressed to him. It’s set up in one-page, 30- seconds each page, sound-bite format, so that a busy Executive can quickly read each bit and build up the whole picture like a puzzle.

That being said, it’s not only information needed by Mr. Trump….

The really important points I repeat several times in slightly different ways. Forgive that bit of tedium and be grateful for it.

I have made no effort beyond a cursory naming and dating to give reference citations, except for a few relatively new or unknown cites that don’t appear elsewhere in my writings. All the proof needed is already well-established in the public record and anyone can find it, just as I did, by looking for it.

My dog is senile. He has taken to wandering around aimlessly from room to room, pausing, and giving a single “Woof!” It seems to express all the questions in the world: “Where am I?” “How did I get here?” “Have I been fed yet?”  “Why did I come here?”  “What was I doing— or meaning to do?”

These are the sort of questions this monograph addresses, providing a logical framework showing how our government is supposed to be structured, how it is in fact structured, how it came to be this way, and

—-in a very prosaic way, what needs to be done to fix it.

For most of you who missed Eighth Grade American History, this will be all brand new. For some of you, it will stir vague remembrances. For almost everyone it will be our history as seen from a new viewpoint— that of a businessman looking at the business entities and relationships that have formed the federal government in America.

The Supreme Republican Declaration of the United Colonies of America (1775) declares the republican nature of the colonies and claims right of self-defense for each colony (farm family assembly).

The colonies claimed their air (global), soil and land (national), and sea (international) jurisdictions by natural right in the same way that individual people have the right to self-defense.

The Unanimous Declaration of These United American Colonies published July 4, 1776 declares the nation-states (people plus soil within prescribed boundaries). Each former colony issues its own non- enumerated declaration defining Georgia, Virginia, Maine, etc.

The new nation-states combined forces to fight the Revolutionary War and chose a name: “The United States of America” for their unincorporated union on September 9, 1776.

The United States of America (unincorporated) is fully sovereign; it functions as a Holding Company for the nation-states. The new states had plenary jurisdiction over the soil and via The United States of America, claim to their international and global jurisdictions, too.

Take home messages: (1) our republican nation-states are formed by declarations not by constitutions; (2) The United States of America (unincorporated) is the first and last union formed by our nation- states. (3) The United States of America is the Proper Name of our country in international terms and exercises the sovereign (that is, unincorporated) power of the nation-states. All power flows from the people to the counties to the nation-states to The United States of America (unincorporated) and thence to federal subsidiaries.

The United States of America (unincorporated) subcontracted with several subsidiary organizations to provide specific government services: the States of America (international land jurisdiction); (2) the United States of America (international sea jurisdiction); and (3) the United States (air jurisdiction).

The Constitution for the united States of America resulting from the Treaty of Paris 1778 (Spanish King) is the Original Equity Contract and National Constitution. This governs the delegated international land jurisdiction giving rise to the United States National Government.

The Constitution of the United States of America resulting from the Treaty of Paris 1783 (British King) is the original Territorial Constitution. This governs the delegated international sea jurisdiction giving rise to the Territorial United States Government.

“The Constitution of the United States” resulting from the Jay Treaty is the original Municipal Constitution. This governs delegated global air jurisdiction giving rise to the Municipal United States Government.

Take home messages: (1) the National Government, Territorial Government, and Municipal Government all function in international jurisdictions — land, sea, and air, respectively, and they all function as subsidiaries and subcontractors of The United States of America operating under delegated powers explicitly enumerated in each of their constitutions. (2) It is already easy to see how “United States” became a catch-all term and why it is necessary to define which “United States” and which “United States Government” and which “United States of America” we are talking about at any given time.

By 1791 all (3) three levels of federal government are present in addition to the nation-states governments: National (international land), Territorial (international sea), and Municipal (global air).

The Constitution for the united States of America creates the National Government which then defines the Territorial Government and the Municipal Government (Article I, Section 8, Clause 17).

There is a separate doing-business-name for each federal subsidiary: States of America (land), United States of America (sea), and the United States (air).

There are also four (4) styles of government present: the nation-states have a republican style government, the States are republics, the territories have a democracy, and the municipal government is a plenary oligarchy.

The States of America was an American organization administering our international land jurisdiction. The British-dominated United States of America and the Holy See’s United States organizations were limited to territorial and municipal functions.

Take home messages: (1) all three layers of federal government National, Territorial, and Municipal— are under contract to perform according to their respective constitutions. (2) All three function in either international or global jurisdiction(s) that are foreign with respect to the actual nation-states of this country. (3) The nation- states hold the soil jurisdiction of each state which underlies the land jurisdiction of the country as a whole. (4) The United States of America holds all international and global powers in trust for the nation-states, either to delegate under contract or to reserve as non-delegated powers. It is our National Trust.

All the powers that a government can have are limited to spheres of activity known as jurisdictions. These are described in terms of the location where they operate: soil, land, sea, air. Most recently, the domain of space has been added.

When we speak of “law of the land” we are talking about the law that applies to the land jurisdiction held by a national government, which is different than the law of the sea which is international in nature, or law of the air which is municipal and global.         Jurisdictions can overlap like layers of a cake and the same subject matter can be claimed by more than one jurisdiction, however, he/she/it must be operating in a recognizable capacity within that jurisdiction.

For example: Some American nationals go to work for the British Territorial United States (a federal subsidiary) and are required to adopt Dual Citizenship while employed as a federal civilian or military employee. Acting as Americans they are subject to the Law of the Land. Acting as Federal citizens they are subject to the Law of the Sea.

You can see how certain parties might have an interest in dragging you from one jurisdiction to another, in order to obligate and subject you to their laws (and taxes) instead of your own.

Take home messages: (1) you have to know who you are and in what capacity you are acting. (2) The federal subsidiaries have reasons for wanting you to act as a citizen and become subject to their laws. (3) Most of us are not federal citizens and need to defend against such cross-jurisdictional claims by declaring permanent domicile on the land and soil of our birth nation-state and recording it in the public record so that nobody can just presume that we are acting in the capacity of a federal citizen and voluntarily subjecting ourselves to their foreign jurisdictions, obligations, and laws.

When we talk about our relationship with our federal government service providers we talk in terms of service contracts known as constitutions and in terms of delegated and non-delegated powers.

The various constitutions, national, territorial, and municipal, set aside certain specific powers — all in international or global jurisdictions, to be exercised by our federal subsidiaries doing business as States of America, United States of America, and United States.

There are nineteen and only nineteen enumerated and delegated powers that these federal subsidiaries are hired to exercise for us. The 19th of these powers is the obligation stated in the Preamble of each constitution to honor and protect our rights.

Rights are material possessions. They include copyrights and patents

as well as rights we exercise daily, such as the right of free speech.

Some powers are explicitly delegated to the federal service providers to exercise in our behalf, and other non-delegated powers are reserved by the nation-states and the people.  See Amendment X.

Take home messages: (1) federal power is strictly limited. (2) The federal subsidiaries have only nineteen specific jobs to do. (3) If a power is not delegated in writing, it is reserved. (4) The nation-states and people reserve the right to reform, redefine, or restructure their government, including the federal government, at any time. (5) The living people have reserved all their natural rights whether those rights are enumerated in the Bill of Rights or not.

The United States of America delegates specific functions and powers to the subsidiary organizations doing business as States of America, United States of America, and United States. The United States of America (unincorporated) reserves all powers in international and global jurisdictions which are not explicitly delegated in writing.

As The United States of America (unincorporated) is the “sovereign instrumentality” of the actual states and people of this country, it is the Holder of all the delegated international and global powers owed to the nation-states and the people, who are the Holders in Due Course of all such powers in all jurisdictions.

Take home messages: (1) The United States of America is able to directly exercise the rights of the states and the people that are not delegated to the subsidiaries. (2) The union of nation-states doing business as The United States of America is able to enforce all three constitutions:

(a)  The Constitution for the united States of America (delegated land)

• The Constitution of the United States of America (delegated sea),
• The Constitution of the United States (delegated air).

(3) If the delegated duties are not being performed they revert back to The United States of America. (4) If a federal subsidiary fails, its duties and delegated powers return to The United States of America, not some other business entity. (5) The exercise of delegated powers has to be assigned in writing: any change in services or service providers has to be memorialized via an Amendment to the existing constitution or ratification of a new constitution by the nation-states. (6) A constitution is a debt agreement in which one party provides services and another party agrees to pay for them.

The colonies were by definition agricultural communities. The people living in the colonies were tenants of the King living on his soil. They were obligated to pay taxes, tithes, fees, and rents for the privilege of working the soil as sharecroppers for the King.

(E)states are the next step up from colonial status; small estates can be owned by Freedmen as freeholds. Larger estates are owned by a landlord under an allodial title or land patent granted by a King.

Tenants, freemen, and landlords in a feudal system are all subjects of a King, and all are acting in a care-taking or grantee capacity with respect to the soil and its hereditaments. Wastelands were also granted as commonwealth assets belonging to a joint tenancy of paupers.

The Monarch holds the land and soil under Sovereign Letters Patent.

Our nation-states were created by people acting as Independent Sovereigns — meaning that they recognized no King, paid no rents, and possessed the soil as kings in their own right.                                                                                                     They don’t owe it to anyone and are not indebted to anyone for its use.

Take home message: (1) Americans were doing something unusual by standing independent of the King. (2) Tenants (also known as residents), freedmen, and landlords, are all citizens and are all subjects of a King. (3) Commonwealths are granted to paupers who are both subjects and dependents of a King. (4) Under monarchy as under communism, the King acting as the State owns everything; private property doesn’t really exist. (5) Independent sovereigns possess the soil jurisdiction and hold their country in common as joint sovereigns but there is only one other time when this happened: after the death of William the Conqueror in 1087 A.D.

Soil is not the same as land. Soil is the physical dirt, rocks, and sand belonging to a place as part of its natural heritage; land is the description of soil in terms of political subdivisions. Soil is mapped in terms of its topography. Land is mapped in terms of political affiliation.

We will use Georgia of an example: Georgia is one of the nation-states that created The United States of America (unincorporated). Georgia is made of soil and it is populated by living people.

The original Georgia State was called the State of Georgia; it was organized under The Articles of Confederation (1781) and operated under The Constitution for the united States of America. “Georgia State” today operates under a Statehood Compact and is a land trust holding the international land jurisdiction owed to Georgia.

The soil (state republic jurisdiction) of Georgia belongs to the Georgians; the land (international land jurisdiction) is kept in trust by the Georgia State. This jurisdiction includes post offices and public lands. Georgia is a matrilineal republican nation-state, while Georgia State is a patrilineal republic.

Take home messages: (1) Georgia = The United States of America member state, created by declaration, defined as the physical estate and living people within Georgia’s geographic boundaries. (2) Georgia State = now is a foreign franchise organization created by Statehood Compact, controls international land jurisdiction in Georgia and is a Federal District State. (3) Georgia is a physical state complete with alligators and swamps. (4) Georgia State is a political fiction defined as a land trust, run as a lawful business entity that substitutes itself for the original State of Georgia that was operated under The Articles of Confederation (1781).

So, we have the two states, Georgia, holding the nation-state jurisdiction of the actual soil, and we have the Georgia State holding the international jurisdiction of the land.

Georgia is the only sovereign state present. Georgia State is at this time exercising Georgia’s international land jurisdiction without a constitutional delegation of power to do so. The United States of America established a contract with the States of America and the original State of Georgia under the The Constitution for the united States of America.

Red Flag: According to our contracts, States of America is supposed to be operating our National Government—- but isn’t.

Today’s State of Georgia is a territorial franchise of the British Territorial United States of America subsidiary operating under The Constitution of the United States of America.

STATE OF GEORGIA is a municipal franchise of the United States, originally a subsidiary run by the Holy Roman Empire operating under The Constitution of the United States.

Take home messages: (1) Georgia State, State of Georgia, and STATE OF GEORGIA are all federal states operated by federal subsidiaries under contract to The United States of America (unincorporated). (2) The federal states all operate in fictional business and political realms that are foreign with respect to the nation-states. (3) The union of nation-states doing business as The United States of America is fundamentally different in nature from the subsidiary unions of federal states and state-of-state franchises. (4) An unauthorized assumption of delegated power took place when the Georgia State usurped the duties of the original State of Georgia.

Nation-states are operated by County Jural Assemblies, which are composed of people of the land coming together in public meetings, setting up their jury pools, electing their public sheriffs, their justices of the peace, their clerks, their bailiffs, and their coroners in each county. These County Jural Assemblies send their elected deputies to State Conventions to conduct the business of the nation-state. They elect Deputies to serve in the Continental Congress, when one is called to Assemble. The courts created by County Jural Assemblies are administered by Justices of the Peace, and operate under American Common Law established by Juries.

The Federal States, like Georgia State, are formed by County Jural Societies which are composed of civilian non-citizen United States Nationals.      They follow the same basic process, except that the courts they create are administered by County Judges and operate under General Session Law. They elect State Representatives to represent them in the State Legislature and send Delegates to the United States Congress. Members are called constituents.

Take home messages: (1) the soil jurisdiction courts and counties are created by County Jural Assemblies. (2) The land jurisdiction courts and counties are created by County Jural Societies. (3) Assembly Courts act under Public Law, Society Courts act under Private Law. (4) Both the County Jural Assemblies and the County Jural Societies are owed The Law of Peace, United States Department of the Army Pamphlet 1-161-1. (5) None of the living people born in this country are naturally subject to Territorial or Municipal laws and become subject to these foreign federal law systems only by election. (6) Most of us have been elected without our knowledge or consent to act in the capacity of federal citizens.

States of States today are corporate franchises of the British Territorial United States subsidiary presently doing business as the USA, Inc. Their Territorial Courts are formed by appointing or electing Judges from the ranks of the local Bar Associations to serve their State of State Courts and their United States (Military) District Courts which are organized by State of State Attorney Generals and United States Attorneys.

The States of States like the State of Georgia today operate under state franchise constitutions, such as The State of Georgia Constitution, all in compliance with the Territorial contract— The Constitution of the United States of America.

People become members of the State of State Jury Pool by Registering to Vote. This act of Registering to Vote means that you are acting as a British Territorial United States Citizen and are voluntarily subjecting yourself to British Equity Law and Territorial United States Courts, which are foreign international court venues that are only supposed to be serving the needs of federal employees, federal dependents and political asylum seekers, who are living here as temporary residents.

Take home messages: (1) unless you were born in an actual federal territory like Guam, are working as a federal civilian or military employee or are a federal dependent or actually seeking federal political asylum, you have no business Registering to Vote–as spelled out in the 14th Amendment of their Constitution. (2) Residents of the federal State of States are not eligible to own soil in this country and if they aspire to own land, they must first pay off a huge mortgage which the British Territorial United States subsidiary owes. (3) British Equity Law allows the judges in Territorial Courts to use discretionary powers to disregard written law, which in turn leads to petty despotism and abuses of power.

The STATE OF STATES are also foreign with respect to us, and operate under foreign Municipal Law.                                                           These entities like the STATE OF GEORGIA are franchises of the Municipal United States. The Municipal United States Government is limited to operate within the 10 square miles of the District of Columbia— so how is it that we have STATE OF STATE organizations everywhere? Answer: They are acting as appointees of the British Territorial United States subsidiary under the 1951 Appointments Act.

The system of federal racketeering they run is called a Split-Title Scheme in which the British Territorial United States of America subsidiary creates and attaches a copyrighted label known as a title to American assets, then splits the title, keeping the beneficial title, and handing off the legal title to Municipal subcontractors to enforce. The British subsidiary dodges its treaty and trust responsibilities by getting the Municipal subsidiary to do the asset seizures for it.

By 1965, bribes began in the form of Federal Revenue Sharing and Federal Block Grants to County level governments. To receive all this free money the counties had to incorporate as franchises of the British Territorial United States of America subsidiary.

Take home messages: (1) Americans still believe that State of State and National Elections are Public Elections when in fact, these are Private Corporate Elections. (2) As volunteer franchises the victims are liable for all debts of the British Territorial United States of America subsidiary. (3) Just as Territorial States of States function as franchises of the British Territorial United States of America, so do incorporated counties. They are all foreign with respect to us and unknowingly subscribed to be part of this foreign conglomerate when they signed on to receive federal kickbacks.

Olddogs Comments!

You have just read 15 pages of a 60 page document that I converted from PDF to MS Word which may or may not make Anna very unhappy because she has struggled for years with the expenses involved in saving America by informing Americans of the tyranny they have encountered their entire life without once deciding to do something about it.

So, I have made this available as a teaser to the people so they will buy the book!

As I comprehend this travesty we have accepted all our lives it makes me feel like a fool, and that is why I have been increasing exposure to her work.

The excuse of having too many responsibilities and not enough time to read is no longer acceptable if you want to be a free human being.

If anyone reads this that really cannot afford to buy this book, they can contact me at olddog@anationbeguiled.com and I will buy one for you and have it shipped to your address.

America: Some Assembly Required should be on sale soon and should be very affordable.  I will report back as soon as my publisher has it up and rolling. Anna Von Reitz

For Those Incapable of Connecting the Dots

http://www.paulstramer.net/2017/12/those-incapable-of-connecting-dots.html#more

NOTICE:I have posted this article before but it is of such importance that I intend to re-post it a few times more. The average American who instinctively knows that something is wrong must reread this post several times until the sheer depravity of our government sinks in and they resolve to become involved.

Olddog

---

By Anna Von Reitz

For Those Incapable of Connecting the Dots …..We are being “occupied” by our own Army.

The Army we pay for. The Army that we allow our sons and daughters to serve in. The Army that is strictly charged with preserving our freedoms, protecting our money, and supervising the activities of the Bar Association on our shores.

That Army.

How, you might ask, is this possible? It’s possible because the so-called “American Civil War” wasn’t a war. It was and is an illegal commercial mercenary conflict on our shores. It was never actually declared by any Congress. It was never officially ended by any Peace Treaty.

In 1863, during the so-called war, Lincoln bankrupted the original United States (Trading Company) and placed the responsibility for preserving the Union and fulfilling the contractual mandates of the actual Constitution on the Grand Army of the Republic — and the Union Generals.

With respect to the Territorial United States, they have carried on in that role ever since, and grossly expanded upon it. The rules that Lincoln gave them, The Lieber Code, has morphed into The Hague Conventions. The Grand Army of the Republic, also known as the Union Army, has morphed into the US ARMY, the United States Army, and many other permutations. But nothing ever got resolved.

President Andrew Johnson who was Lincoln’s Successor Vice-President declared “peace on the land” in three very public declarations, establishing a public contract. As a result, the people owed the land jurisdiction were recognized as peaceful non-combatants and innocent Third Parties who are all owed The Law of Peace.

Instead of honoring that, successive generations of generals and members of Congress have colluded together to define all of us as “Enemy combatants” and they have directed the falsification of the public records to that end.

Beginning with alteration of Title 37 of the old Federal Code to conscript doctors and dentists and other “uniformed officers” into the Army, and then with the original “Maternity Act” and Sheppard Townsend Act they conspired to register American babies as they were born.

Registration gives up our ownership interest in our own names and estates to the “State of ____________” as our “presumed beneficiary”. So the “State of Wisconsin” organization, for example, would be the presumed beneficiary of my name and estate and would receive the “beneficial title” to the trust ACCOUNT established in my NAME, while the “STATE OF WISCONSIN” organization would receive the “legal title” and be enabled to administer my ESTATE for the benefit of the “State of Wisconsin”.

And as for me, I would get nothing out of the deal whatsoever, except for an “indemnity receipt” from whichever federal corporation seized title to my name and estate, guaranteeing as my “presumed usufruct” that no harm would come to me or my estate as a result of their use of my assets.

This vicious swindle was in effect a species of genocide on paper, unlawfully converting the public records and political status of American state nationals to that of “federal citizens” merely “residing” here temporarily while performing our “presumed” duty to provide “essential government services”.

It also allowed them to subject us to their corporate tribunals being run in lieu of the American Common Law courts we are owed, under the false presumption that we were all federal employees or dependents or political asylum seekers.

They’ve gotten away with this crap for so long that they actually believe their own lies. And all these presumptions which were made about you without your knowledge or consent have not been rebutted because you have been kept in the dark and never told of their existence.

For six generations.

How do you rebut a lie if you don’t know it exists?

But now the game is up, and the Army is looking at the Navy and the Navy is looking at the Army and the Marines are looking at every other branch of service and the Air Force is going, “OMG!” and the plain fact of the matter is that both the Congress and the Armed Forces have been acting in treason against us, their actual employers, and against our Constitution.

These two groups of employees have been attacking us under color of law, under deliberately contrived and known false pretenses, and all behind our backs.

The sheer size and scope of the crime is breath-taking. The complexity and duration of the fraud beyond any simple imagining. And the cost to the American states and people is in the quadrillions of dollars defined as ounces of silver.

It should come as no surprise, then, that our entire “National Credit” — the flip-side of their “National Debt” — has been embezzled from the coffers of the Department of Defense.

How is all this fraud possible? In a debt-credit system, debts are supposed to immediately cancel out via the receipt of equal credit, but the answer is— it’s because they never credited us.

To put it bluntly, the “occupying Army” was double-dipping the whole time, siphoning off the credit owed to us and leaving the debts unpaid, so that they could come in and pretend that they were bankrupt because of our bad behavior and insolvency, and give themselves an excuse to sell off our assets to satisfy their debts as they have done already twice before in 1907 and 1933.

They were using their own cleverly disguised territorial court tribunals to collect on all these supposed debts— which we never owed. Ever.

Why do I say that? Because the debts were racked up by the Municipal United States — which was serving itself, not us—and the debts were being collected by the Territorial United States — which was serving itself, not us.

Remember? We were cut totally out of the picture at birth.

None of this is our debt and none of this criminality is our doing. It’s entirely a federal matter that has nothing to do with us.

Please bear in mind that we are not alone, because the same infectious disease has eaten away at the foundations of lawful government in virtually every country on Earth. The same venal “system” of “federal districts” overlaying the land jurisdiction of every country has imposed the same form of de facto slavery on people from Japan to Belize, from Queensland to Point Barrow, from Manchuria to Moscow and from Moscow to Denmark.

This crime syndicate which has used our country as its home base for 150 years has now moved on to China, where it proposes to set up shop and use its ill-gotten gains to dominate the rest of the world forever.

And what do you all say to that?

Is it time to kick some Generals where it hurts?

Force some actual useless eaters to perform their Oaths and duties?

Tell the Lord Mayor of London exactly where to shove it and how far?

Escort the Popes out of Vatican City to hear the roar?

Bury Buckingham Palace under the enormous pile of manure that they have bequeathed as their legacy to the rest of the world?

How about giving all these bankers new jobs cleaning public toilets?

They can share rooms with members of Congress and the Joint Chiefs of Staff and attend my lectures every morning.

See this article and over 700 others on Anna’s website here:

http://www.annavonreitz.com

 

The Mad Are In Charge Of The Swamp

https://newswithviews.com/the-mad-are-in-charge-of-the-swamp/

Read More Articles by Joe Kress

There is a series on Netflix titled GOTHAM, a fictional city that is so corrupted that it flounders in chaos and fear of violence.  The City of Chicago, where murders have become routine, totaling in thousands; other crimes are  equally routine; MS13 Gangs control whole territories throughout the City’s East side; prostitution is rampant; the police are ineffective based on the fear of entering entire areas within the city;  corrupt politicians slide from one administration to another, stemming back a hundred years.  The City of Chicago is bankrupt.  Ward healers amass great wealth by heading political election campaigns using payoffs, arm-twisting and other forms of intimidation that insures that the mobs’ candidates always survive.  Harry Truman was a ward healer before he became president.

GOTHAM is really Chicago, but the corruption has spread to “Sodom” by the Sea in San Francesco, and Hollywood, California.  There are many pockets throughout our country where illegal people have, through the Obama Administration’s blessing, violated Constitutional law and paid government trucking contractors, with taxpayer funding to redistribute illegals far from our boarders in order to settle in villages and towns throughout our nation. The purpose was to transform the population by mongrelizing the citizenry, blending the brown yellow and black races from Africa, China and other foreign locations to create a metamorphic conversion from western ideals into a caliphate or better yet a communist society devoid of qualifications for entry. Most immigrants do not speak, read or write English; most arrive to obtain a better life at the expense of legal citizens and will work for low wages compared to legal citizens.

THE WEAKENING OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF WESTERN LAWS AND WESTERN CIVILIZATION

The traditions, laws and inheritance of Western culture evolved over 802 years and resulted in enormous achievements in science, medicine, literature, poetry and philosophy when, in 1215 A.D., the  Magna Carta set the standards of law we enjoy today; but now, unhappily, we experience a process of decay of  standards ie; morals, religious and loyalty to our flag.  What once was a nation  based on the brilliance of our forefather’s  written Constitution and laws to enforce the bill of rights the system of justice is now slowly being corrupted.

President Obama encouraged millions of illegal aliens to overwhelm our immigration system complicit with Democrat Party support that applauded restricting, even preventing boarder control guards from doing their jobs.

He used every means to spread his propaganda by lecturing and ranting on TV, and other media, before the public assemblies lauding the rights of aliens to enter this country.  He publically condemned the police, labeling them guilty before they were tried by jury; he promoted racism between whites and minorities and helped racist mayors restrict police interference during riots; he praised Islam as peaceful and friendly despite the fact that Islam once controlled, through invasion, all of Spain and the entire Mediterranean to force captives into enslavement and execution all who refused to follow the teachings of Mohammad. The defeat of the Muslim control left remnants behind until those bloody purges during the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella.

Obama recited in Arabic the verses of the Quran and bowed before the Saudi King of Arabia (demonstrating obeisance) while on an official government visit,  what no other president would dare to do… acknowledge superiority of a foreign Muslim potentate.

His blatant “chutzpah” openly abused the privileges of his office by taking with him an entourage that included friends and family members to exotic locations throughout the world, claiming the trips as necessary, legally urgent and obligatory to conduct meetings and conferences.  He even allowed his wife to use the government backup intercontinental aircraft with the affixed presidential seal to travel to separate destinations accompanied by her own entourage of friends and relatives to enjoy luxurious accommodations at taxpayer expense, she stated the trips to be necessary for creating social comity within foreign countries.   In other words she was acting in the capacity of an ambassador. The cost to the U.S. taxpayers was staggering … amounting to millions of dollars per trip.  Added to these costs is the expense of additional aircraft to haul support vehicles, security personnel and the most expensive accommodations within each country visited.

Obama’s legacy, during his eight years in office, was to bring the United States to its knees by creation of debt so enormous that Americas’ currency, the dollar, which was the most respected, universal vehicle of exchange, to lose its status as the world’s medium for currency conversions. Obama, flooded our country, with non-vetted aliens, including devotees of ISIS, a murderous organization with a purpose to install a world-wide 12^thcentury caliphate based on terrorism.   He created chain migration whereby whole families could join those who held green cards or became temp citizens with a job.  Almost immediately, these relatives receive benefits because most have no needed low skills and are unneeded by industry.  Those temporary Immigrants who are allowed to work have sent millions of dollars to wherever their families and relatives are located.

Obama ignored the problem and the loss of millions of dollars every month to be spent in foreign countries. So did the media and the entire Democrat Party who voted in lockstep to promote the most radical social welfare laws, such as the Medical Care ACT for the welfare state.  Forty percent of our nation’s citizens and noncitizens alike pay no taxes and received free Medicaid benefits.  The majority of Obama and the Democrat’s Party’s  immigration open door policy provides no incentive for the unemployed to exchange the benefits gained by being employed because the gains in the  welfare provided,  exceeds what they could not earn by working.  As stated previously, the majority of immigrants lack the higher paying skills for the jobs that employers require.

One other outrage by Obama was the agreement he made with the Iranian government regarding limiting nuclear development, where only UN mentorship of Iranian sites where nuclear operations and storage are stipulated Iran’s government, excluding all other suspected areas where nuclear development takes place.

Barrack Obama, arranged the transfer of $100,000,000 dollars in cash to be delivered by aircraft to Iran outside of the original agreement, purportedly responding to the Mullah’s later demand for the release of Iran’s funds that were frozen since the overthrow of the Shaw which was subsequently declared illegal by the World Court which does not impede or have authority within the United States jurisdictional authority.  It violates our nation’s sovereignty.

Class warfare

Obama and the majority within the Democrat Party vilify the very wealthy who create jobs, hire workers and pay salaries. The left adopted the philosophy of Marx and Engle’s. Manufacturers who were competing while located in the United States no longer could afford paying taxes, high wages, pensions and medical care and compete with foreign nations who import products to the United States, tariff free.  Either our manufacturers move their plants where taxation, fees and subsidies make it much easier to compete on the world stage or simply fail to exist if there are no comparative tax benefits that are provided by other countries.  Detroit, the hub of auto manufacturing, turned into a ghost town as did so many other major cities throughout the Middle and Eastern United States. Cotton mills and fabric manufacture left our country to China’s economy as did so many other industries.

The reason why our nation declined is not the Obama administration alone, but all the administrations beginning with Teddy Roosevelt coupling with Woodrow Wilson’s international central bankers and international corporate self-serving opportunists. Prior U.S. administrations now inherit the morals and conflicts of Europe and now as a member within the United Nations that opposes 90% of our nation’s interests.

What has changed is exemplified by the transfiguration of our youth and the freedoms bequeathed on them. Their present heritage goes back to the Age of Aquarius 1960.

THE SINS OF THE FATHER

The sins of father’s who attended the massive gatherings where free love, pot and other mind-bending demonstrations against conventional morals and practice of the past were passed on to their children and the left’s political candidates, namely Government leaders.   Blood sweat and tears of our military pay the price because of the misuse of the present Marxists or even worse the Communists who now are the many citizens of American heritage.

This is not unique, since the sins of Adam and Eve were inherited by their sons, Cain and Able as quoted in the first chapter of Genesis of the Bible.  Cain killed his brother Able and that created a first in the sorry history of good vs evil and is perpetuated through all generations.  One fact, that any thinking person must accept, is that it is too easy to take the wider road, the road that appeals to our bad side. The side where sex, gluttony, sloth, anger, misdeeds which are the antithesis of the commandments given by God to Moses on Mount Sinai.  When governments become so immune to feelings of guilt there are no limits. Crimes of murder, the killing of millions through development of weapons: poison gas that fries skin and inflames lungs and disfigures survivors.  Bombs spray deadly metal particles; missiles capable of flattening entire cities to rubble. Every form of weaponry is impervious to the pain and desolation that causes disfigurement tearing off limbs of both civilians and soldiers alike. War is heartless … pure evil. The arms manufactures sell weapons and ammunition for enormous profits, a prime reason that motivates wars.  Today, the rules of war no longer exist.  Our war making machine is now at its apex dedicated toward total annihilation of enemies.  Are our babies’ enemies in arms?  Is the enemy, the elderly or the very young who never wished for war, or is it the Luciferian leadership that forces death on enemies to justify annihilation?

I fear the condemnation by those who fall victim of propaganda that benignly molds minds to conclude that nuclear annihilation is not a proper solution.  Fools fail to foresee that using the nuclear solution as the only solution means more than likely the enemy will retaliate in kind. Mankind needs Divine Guidance.

© 2018 Joe Kress – All Rights Reserved

E-Mail JW Kress: kressretired1982@outlook.com

The “Curmudgeon,” Joseph H. Kress, Lt. Col. USAF (Ret) obtain a B.S. in Business Administration, with a major in economics and minor in accounting. He served in England and Viet Nam where he received the Bronze Star during the TET Offensive, then he was appointed Chief of Supply for two state-side assignments; the DOD’s Defense Disposal Agency where he was chief of disposal operations for all of Southeast Asia, based at CINCPAC Headquarters in Hawaii. He retired from Wright Patterson AFB, Ohio as chief of supply with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel at the age of 52. He resides in Summerville, S.C. Since leaving the military, he was involved in political campaigns, writing articles for the local papers. E-mail: kressretired1982@outlook.com

Urgent Public Message for President Trump from Judge Anna

http://www.paulstramer.net/2018/01/urgent-public-message-for-president.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+http%2Fpaulstramerfeedburnercom+%28http%3A%2F%2Fwww.paulstramer.net++++Paul+Stramer+personal+blog%29

By Anna Von Reitz

Everyone— pay attention.

Last year on January 20, 2017, President Trump took his Oath of Office.

An Office in the Territorial Government is a Public Trust.

Trusts do not become law for a year and a day.

His Office, his Trust, would have become law on January 21st of this year— but that didn’t happen, because Chuck Schummer contrived to shut down the government for three days at precisely the critical time.

This is called “breaking the continuity of the evidence”.

As a result, nothing that President Trump did during his entire first year in Office, all the laws and Executive Orders and Directives he signed—- technically didn’t cure.

Now, either he did this to himself because he wanted to void out mistakes made during the first year of His Presidency, or, far more likely, the Dems saw their opportunity to “win” by technicality and are scheming to invalidate everything he has done and everything he will do this next year and after—-just by sitting back and not telling him that his Office never cured.

These are very devious, very skillful, very evil men he is dealing with, people who have been trained in the black arts and ecclesiastical law.  He truly is contesting with Evil in High Places, so it is important that the “Good Witches” and “White Hats” surround him and educate and warn him and protect him, just as I am doing by writing this memo today.

To counteract this, he has to re-take his Oath of Office, re-do the things he wants to stick— re-sign legislation, re-issue Executive Orders, etc.—and begin the whole timeline over again, being sure that his Office cures and is not interrupted by any more chicanery for a year and a day.

Thereafter, his work will stand and his term will run and there won’t be anything that anyone can say or do against it.

And now you all know why Democrat Chuck Schummer appeared to shut down the government for three days “for no reason”.

See this article and over 800 others on Anna’s website here:

http://www.annavonreitz.com

The Compact Gimmick To Circumvent The Powers Granted To Congress By Article V

https://newswithviews.com/the-compact-gimmick-to-circumvent-the-powers-granted-to-congress-by-article-v/

Read More Articles by Publius Huldah

The supremacy clause at Article VI, clause 2, US Constitution, says:

“This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.”

Two bills, SJR 31 & HJR 49, which purport to provide for the selection and control of “commissioners” to an “interstate convention” for “proposing amendments” to our federal Constitution, have recently been filed in the Virginia General Assembly.  The bills assert that such an “interstate convention” is authorized by Article I, §10, clause 3; the 10^th Amendment; and Article V of our Constitution. As shown below, the bills are unconstitutional because they seek to circumvent Article V, and are not encompassed within Article I, §10, clause 3, or the 10^th Amendment.  Under the supremacy clause, they would be struck down.

1. What Article V says about amending our Constitution

Article V says:

“The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing amendments…”

Our existing 27 Amendments were obtained under the first method:  Congress proposed them and sent them to the States for ratification or rejection.

We’ve never had a convention under Article V – they are dangerous!  If Congress calls an Article V convention, our existing Constitution could be replaced with a new Constitution which sets up a completely new structure of government.[1]

Nevertheless, the People granted to Congress at Article V the power to “call” a convention; and to the Delegates to the convention, the power to “propose amendments”.[2]

Yet the Convention of States Project (COS), in brazen disregard of the plain meaning of Article V, has long insisted that the States “call” the convention; the States propose the amendments for the convention to rubberstamp; and the States will have total control over the Delegates to the convention.

SJR 31 & HJR 49 are an implicit admission that we who oppose an Article V convention have proved our point:  Congress really does “call” the Convention; and pursuant to its grant of power to “call” the convention, Congress really is granted by Article I, §8, last clause, the power to make all laws “necessary and proper” to carry out the powers granted to Congress by Article V; and the States actually have no power over an Article V convention – except to ask Congress to “call” one.[3]

The Congressional Research Service Report dated April 11, 2014 likewise reflects Congress’ clear awareness that it alone has the power to organize and set up an Article V convention. The Report says:

“First, Article V delegates important and exclusive authority over the amendment process to Congress…” [page 4]

“Second . . . Congress has traditionally laid claim to broad responsibilities in connection with a convention, including . . . (4) determining the number and selection process for its delegates;[4] (5) setting internal convention procedures, including formulae for allocation of votes among the states; . . .” [page 4] [italics added]

And contrary to COS’s previous assurances that the States would have total control over an Article V convention, the CRS Report says on page 27:

“In the final analysis, the question what sort of convention?” is not likely to be resolved unless or until the 34-state threshold has been crossed and a convention assembles.”

In other words, we’ll have to get a convention before we know what the Delegates are going to do!

1. The new Gimmick to circumvent Congress’ powers under Article V

SJR 31 & HJR 49 make the bizarre claim that Article I, §10, clause 3, which says:

“No State shall, without the Consent of Congress … enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State…”,

is really talking about an “interstate convention” for the States to meet and “propose amendments” to our Constitution!

First of all, our federal Constitution doesn’t address “interstate conventions”![5] State and local governments and private organizations may hold nationwide conventions (gatherings) on an endless list of matters: trade shows, book fairs, sports events, high school marching band contests, agricultural fairs, meetings of County Sheriffs, whatever they like!  And they don’t need permission from Congress.

Secondly, a “Compact with another State” within the meaning of Article I, §10, clause 3, is separate, distinct, and totally unrelated to the Article V convention called by Congress for the purpose of addressing our federal Constitution.  “Compact”, as used in Article I, §10, clause 3, means binding agreements or contracts between States which deal with state matters.  Traditionally, “compacts” have been used to resolve such matters as boundary disputes between States; and may be used to address various other issues between States.[6]

Article V governs amendments to our Constitution – not Article I, §10, clause 3!  Virginia may not lawfully set up any gimmick to circumvent the powers granted by Article V to Congress.  And Congress may not lawfully approve a “compact” which violates our Constitution!

Thirdly, SJR 31 & HJR 49 claim the 10^th Amendment gives States the power to hold an “interstate convention” to propose amendments to the Constitution.  Rubbish!  The 10^th Amendment addresses powers “reserved to the States…or to the people.”  It is inapplicable here because no powers respecting an Article V convention were reserved to the States: The People granted to Congress the power to “call” an Article V convention; and to the Delegates, the power to “propose amendments”.  The only power the States have is to ask Congress to call the convention.

Once the requisite number of States has applied to Congress, it’s out of the States’ hands.  Pursuant to Article I, § 8, last clause;[7] Congress has the power to make all laws necessary and proper to carry out its power to “call” the convention.  And then, our Fate is in the hands of the Delegates; and they can do whatever they want – as they did in 1787.

III. The new Gimmick attempts to circumvent the Plenipotentiary Powers of the Delegates to an Article V Convention.

Article V shows on its face that the convention is the deliberative body.  The Delegates hold the Power to “propose amendments”; or, to do what our Framers did at the federal “amendments” convention of 1787 (invoke the 2^nd paragraph of the Declaration of Independence) and write a new Constitution which creates a new government.

So, while the States are free to propose amendments to their Congressional Delegations [and this is what James Madison advised];[8] the States have no authority to dictate the amendments to be proposed at the convention called by Congress.

And as shown in “Why states can’t prevent a runaway convention” and “Delegates to an Article V Convention can’t be controlled by state laws!” attempts to control Delegates with “unfaithful delegate” laws are laughably ineffective.

Apparently, the convention lobby  now concedes that “unfaithful delegate” bills won’t work, since with SJR 31 & HJR 49, they attempt to circumvent the plenipotentiary powers held by Delegates to an Article V convention, by fabricating a new kind of convention (meeting) out of  Article I, § 10, clause 3!

1. The solution is to enforce the Constitution we already have

Americans don‘t know what our Constitution says and don’t care what it says. They want what they want; and elect politicians like themselves. The politicians made a mess. To fix the mess, Americans must read our Declaration of Independence and Constitution, and enforce them with their votes and by repudiating unconstitutional federal programs.  State and local governments must enforce our Constitution by renouncing federal funds to implement unconstitutional programs and by nullification.  See also James Madison’s specific suggestions on how States & Citizens can resist federal usurpations.

© 2018 Publius Huldah – All Rights Reserved

E-Mail Publius Huldah: publiushuldah@gmail.com

Endnotes:

[1] This is why Brilliant Men (Madison, Hamilton, four US Supreme Court Justices, and other eminent jurists and scholars) have warned against another convention.  And this flyer sets forth the Facts of the federal “amendments convention” of 1787 at which our existing Constitution was drafted to replace our first Constitution (the Articles of Confederation).

[2] The issue in U.S. v. Sprague  (1931) was whether the 18^th Amendment (Prohibition) should have been ratified by conventions in each State instead of by State Legislatures. The Supreme Court held that Article V “is a grant of authority by the people to Congress” and that the people “deliberately made the grant of power to Congress in respect to the choice of the mode of ratification of amendments.” Accordingly, Congress had authority to select ratification of the proposed 18^th Amendment by State Legislatures instead of by conventions in each State.

[3] THIS handy chart lists who has the power to do what respecting an Article V convention.

[4] Congress is under no obligation to permit States to participate in the Convention.  Congress has the power to appoint its own members, federal judges, or whomever else they want as Delegates!

[5] “Convention” has several meanings. It can be a meeting or gathering, such as a national convention of County Court Clerks or architects; or it can refer to a treaty with foreign countries, such as the Hague and Geneva Conventions on the laws of war.  The author of SJR 31 & HJR 49 may have fallen victim to the Fallacy of Ambiguity since he slips and slides between the two meanings.  “Compact” in Art. I, §10, cl. 3, means “agreement” or “contract” – not meetings!

[6] E.g., States could properly enter into “Compacts”, within the meaning of Art. I, §10, cl. 3, wherein they agree to prohibit waste being discharged into a River shared by them; or respecting the construction of a hydroelectric dam on the River.  Even though the federal government has no delegated authority to deal directly with such issues; the requirement of Consent by Congress to such Compacts is proper because States situated above or below the proposed dam could be affected by the dam.

Neither the Federalist Papers nor Madison’s Journal of the Federal Convention of 1787 set forth what our Framers meant by “compacts” at Art. I, §10, cl.3.  Here are two secondary sources: The Evolving Use and the Changing Role of Interstate Compacts: A practitioner’s guide, by Caroline N. Broun & Michael L. Buenger (see pages 1-9 for the historical basis of “interstate compacts”).  See also Justice Story’s “Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States” (1833), Book 3, Ch. 35, §§ 1395-1403.

[7] Former law professor and pro-convention operative Rob Natelson’s statements to the contrary are untrue.  See “Rob Natelson perverts the Necessary and Proper Clause and thinks in circles”.

[8] E.g., Madison’s letter of Nov. 2, 1788 to Turberville (pages 297-301) at the end of Madison’s point 2 [and then read Madison’s point 3!]

Publius Huldah is a retired attorney who now lives in Tennessee. Before getting a law degree, she got a degree in philosophy where she specialized in political philosophy and epistemology (theories of knowledge). She now writes extensively on the U.S. Constitution, using the Federalist Papers to prove its original meaning and intent. She also shows how federal judges and politicians have ignored Our Constitution and replaced it with their personal opinions and beliefs. E-Mail: publiushuldah@gmail.com

Central Banks From Coordination To Competition

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-01-22/central-banks-coordination-competition

by Tyler Durden

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

This is one reason why I anticipate “unexpected” disruptions in the global economy in 2018.

The mere mention of “central banks” will likely turn off many readers who understandably have little interest in convoluted policies and arcane mumbo-jumbo, but bear with me for a few paragraphs while I make the case for something to happen in 2018 that will impact us all to some degree.

That something is the decay of the synchronized central bank stimulus policies that have pumped trillions of dollars, yuan, yen and euros into the global financial markets over the past nine years. Here are two charts that depict the “tag team” coordinated approach central banks have deployed: when one CB tapers its stimulus, another ramps up its money-creation/asset-purchases stimulus:

The balance sheets of all the primary central banks added together is astronomical:

This team effort is motivated by self-interest, of course; no one central bank can reflate the entire global economy, and yet that is the only way to reflate each nation/bloc’s own economy, given the global connectedness of the modern economy.

But the threads of mutual self-interest are fraying. At this late stage in the credit cycle, the central banks must begin “tapering”, i.e. diminishing and then ending their stimulus policies and eventually reducing their balance sheets by selling assets they bought in the stimulus phase (or simply stop replacing bonds they own that mature).

The Federal Reserve was first out of the gate in launching quasi-unlimited bond purchases, and it was the first central bank to cease stimulus (quantitative easing) and raise interest rates. It has now signaled that it will begin selling assets (i.e. stop replacing bonds that mature).

Those currencies/bonds that pay the highest interest (accounting for inflation, of will naturally attract global capital seeking a safe return above zero.

The net effect of this differentiation is that nations/blocs with near-zero yields will experience capital flight as money will flow to higher yields elsewhere.

The coordination of the stimulus phase will give way to nationalist self-interest in the tightening phase.

Those nations/blocs that need super-easy money and near-zero interest rates to keep their “growth” afloat will be drained of capital as capital goes to wherever it can earn more yield.

There’s a further complicating factor: the relative strength of each nation’s currency. This matters because as a currency appreciates, the issuing nation’s exports cost more to buyers using their own currencies, and the nation with the appreciating currency loses the competitive edge of a cheap currency.

Since higher interest rates attract capital, they also tend to strengthen one’s currency, as the relative value of currency is set by supply and demand: the more demand there is for the currency, the higher it goes relative the field of competing currencies.

There is a third factor as well: central banks need to reduce their balance sheets and raise interest rates, so they have some “policy accomodation” available to counter the next (and inevitable) recession/financial crisis.

The US has so far managed a hat-trick: it has raised interest rates a number of times, yet its currency, the US dollar, has lost over 15% of its value in 2017 compared to the Euro, which has gained 15+%.

There is a Darwinian twist to all this: any nation/bloc which manages to raise rates and end central bank stimulus without stifling its “recovery” or strengthening its currency to the point it hurts exports, and still be a global magnet for capital due to higher yields/rates, will have a substantial competitive advantage over its peers.

In effect, the self-interest that bound the central banks together in the stimulus phase reverses in the tightening/normalizing phase. Thus I anticipate a slow decay of central bank coordination and a rise of conflict/ competition, though this will of course be kept out of the media. This is one reason why I anticipate “unexpected” disruptions in the global economy in 2018, as the coordinated stimulus phase ends and the disruptive, messy, Darwinian phase of tightening/ normalizing rates and balance sheets gathers momentum.

---

World finance now more dangerous than in 2008, warns central bank guru

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2018/01/22/world-finance-now-dangerous-2008-warns-central-bank-

The world financial system is as dangerously stretched today as it was at the peak of the last bubble but this time the authorities are caught in a ‘policy trap’ with few defences left, a veteran central banker has warned.

Nine years of emergency money has had a string of perverse effects and lured emerging markets into debt dependency, without addressing the structural causes of the global disorder.

“All the market indicators right now look very similar to what we saw before the Lehman crisis, but the lesson has somehow been forgotten,” said William White, the Swiss-based head of the OECD’s review board and ex-chief economist for the Bank for International Settlements.William White is the ex-chief economist for the Bank for International Settlements Credit: Real Vision

Prof White said disturbing evidence of credit degradation is emerging almost daily.

The world financial system is as dangerously stretched today as it was at the peak of the last bubble but this time the authorities are caught in a ‘policy trap’ with few defences left, a veteran central banker has warned.

Nine years of emergency money has had a string of perverse effects and lured emerging markets into debt dependency, without addressing the structural causes of the global disorder.

“All the market indicators right now look very similar to what we saw before the Lehman crisis, but the lesson has somehow been forgotten,” said William White, the Swiss-based head of the OECD’s review board and ex-chief economist for the Bank for International Settlements.

William White is the ex-chief economist for the Bank for International Settlements Credit: Real Vision

Prof White said disturbing evidence of credit degradation is emerging almost daily.

 

 

 

 

America: Some Assembly Required

http://www.paulstramer.net/2018/01/america-some-assembly-required.html

By Anna Von Reitz

Many of you have noted that I haven’t been on the airwaves much in the last two weeks, and some have even been worried (bless you for your concern!)— but I have been hard at work as always.

My faithful readers are aware that I have written two books that detail a lot of history and public records:  Disclosure 101 is about my own personal journey and You Know Something is Wrong When…..An American Affidavit of Probable Cause is a “serious comic book” — is written in large print and hits the highlights of our largely unknown and untaught history at a Middle School level.

The purpose of the first book, Disclosure 101, was to provide a public record of at least a small portion of the work I did over a period of years.  The purpose of the second book was to provide a reader friendly “basic primer” so that people could grasp the Big Picture quickly.

So now I’ve written a third book titled “America: Some Assembly Required”.

It came about because a friend of Donald Trump’s came to me and asked me to write an “executive history” in “30 second sound bites” for the President that he could scan through pretty rapidly.  He said that Mr. Trump wants to know the history, but like everyone else, wasn’t taught….. so…….

That is, technically, the reason why I sat down and wrote this third book and since President Trump is a business man, I did something that I think has worked out very well — I wrote it from the perspective of the business history of America.  I promise it isn’t as dull as that sounds.

It turns out that viewing our country’s history from that standpoint reveals a lot of the inner workings of how our government was designed to work and how, when, and by whom it got messed up. And, in a very prosaic way, it suggests how to fix it.  One of my faithful proofreaders said, “It’s like being shown an engine, and suddenly you can see that there are spark plugs missing!”

Seeing it in terms of business structures and business processes and practices may help Mr. Trump and a lot of other people wrap their minds around what has gone on here.

This is another Large Scale book.  I am covering a lot of ground with a short little publication designed to be read in 30 second sound-bites by very busy executives.  The whole idea is to lay it down fast and in little puzzle pieces that self-assemble in an orderly fashion, not a James Michener classic.

So that, folks, is what I have been up to.  The Donald gets a free copy, but it is copyrighted for a reason and I will be blunt: we need to raise money. As important as it is to get this information out to as many people as possible, so is the work of The Living Law Firm and our researchers and Asset Recovery Team.  What started out as a handful of people has grown into a football stadium-sized crowd, and so have the needs.

It’s good that we have people flying to places like Hong Kong and conducting business in behalf of the American People again.  It’s good that we have researchers nailing down the exact pathways that have been used to siphon away the value of our labor, where our gold went, where our credit went. All of it.  It’s good we have legal eagles turning over the dusty pages to discover the details of how our own government, our own employees, have been used against us.  It’s all great, but it all costs money.

So in addition to cluing in Donald J. Trump to some of the nuances he might not know about, or think about, America: Some Assembly Required, is a fundraiser for our guys in the field.  I continue to ask for donations for the cause– when some can be spared for the work here, please donate to my avannavon@gmail.com Paypal Account and/or send to: Anna Maria Riezinger, c/o Box 520994, Big Lake, Alaska 99652—-but I also want to give back in terms of products.  All the books will be available on Amazon.com.

America: Some Assembly Required should be on sale soon and should be very affordable.  I will report back as soon as my publisher has it up and rolling.

See this article and over 800 others on Anna’s website here: http://www.annavonreitz.com

Court System Basics

http://www.paulstramer.net/2018/01/nols-and-court-system-basics.html

By Anna Von Reitz

I recently got a “complaint” letter from a reader who apparently got in trouble himself or had friends who were “thrown in jail” as a result of using a Notice of Liability—- and he wanted to let me know that a process I had recommended wasn’t working, etc.

There are two kinds of courts typically at work in America.  Both are foreign to us. American courts have to be staffed and run by us, so until more people take up their responsibility to self-govern, they are relatively rare.

There is the Territorial Court System, meaning British Territorial United States Court System that shouldn’t even be addressing us, which uses British “Equity” Law and there is the MUNICIPAL COURT SYSTEM that uses COMMERCIAL LAW, which is used by the equally foreign MUNICIPAL UNITED STATES.

A Notice of Liability is a commercial document to be used in commercial processes and commercial courts recognize it the same way they would recognize a Bill of Lading or an Invoice.  It’s a normal part of doing business in the commercial realm and is in fact part of your DUTY to fully disclose and properly inform. The reason you do Notices of Liability is not to threaten anyone. It is to fully inform them of their liability in a matter that is either harming you or likely to harm you.

No doubt you have all encountered the concept of “plausible deniability” wherein terrible acts are committed, but the person responsible says, “I didn’t know!” —?  So a Notice of Liability lets such people know and thereby holds them accountable in advance for their actions.  That is the value of a Notice of Liability when going into a commercial court action.

In a commercial court setting, properly composed and entered Notices of Liability can’t be interpreted as a “threat” and the examples that were posted on www.InPowerMovement.com — at least at the time I wrote my article, were all properly executed and could not possibly get anyone in trouble.

You will note that the entire discussion about Notices of Liability came up in the context of addressing Smart Meters being installed by Public Utility companies, which really should be a big clue to everyone that we are talking about commercial operations and commercial courts and commercial processes that are run through the MUNICIPAL COURTS.

Notices of Liability in the Territorial Court System are a completely different matter and NOT ADVISED.

British Equity Law is a supremely evil thing, because it empowers the judge to act— literally—- as the King.  This form of law came about as a result of polluting English Common Law with Admiralty Law back in the 1750’s. It gives the judges vast “powers of discretion” to do whatever they want with little or no reference to the written law or facts.  They are able under “Equity Law” to dispose of you and your assets as possessions of the King, with them playing King.

This is convenient for the actual King, because these sycophants rule in “his” favor and the favor of the elites and the “government” over 97% of the time and if by chance they do something that is unpopular enough to cause riots, the King can wash his dainty hands and appear as the Peacemaker, when in fact this system was created as an instrument of brutal despotism and arbitrary abuse of power.

That’s what you are dealing with in the Territorial State of State Courts, and the best advice is to stay out of them entirely.  If you have your BC and your Certificate of Assumed Name and Act of State claiming your birthright political status on the public record  and you bring that information forward, the Territorial Courts aren’t supposed to address you at all.

The Territorial Courts are operating as “pirate vessels” dry-docked on our “shores” and they are “press-ganging” American assets for British pockets, so it is paramount for you to realize that if they can find a means of charging you they will— but they can only do so if you are acting in some capacity within their jurisdiction.

They pull you into their jurisdiction by “presuming” (mostly from the fact that you actually showed up in their court) that you are a (Territorial) United States Citizen and acting in that capacity.  If so, they can throw the book at you, and they do so with gusto.  That’s why it is so important to properly identify yourself as a non-citizen non-combatant civilian owed the Law of Peace and that you were not acting in the capacity of a Territorial Citizen at the time whatever you are charged with took place and aren’t acting in that capacity in coming to the court.

These courts have a strictly defined 12 mile radius of operations, so if you stay outside that area they are technically not able to arrest you and I generally advise people to conduct all business that may be necessary with these courts via the mail.  They have no right to address you, but you do have a duty to properly identify yourself and your activities as not being subject to their court.

That these foreign courts have been allowed to run rampant on American soil is a terrible travesty that you can hold the politicians responsible for— being careful not to let them misidentify you as a “citizen” either.  I went so far as to send a Registered Letter to the entire Alaska Congressional Delegation making it clear that I am not acting in the capacity of a municipal or territorial citizen and they are not authorized to presume upon or represent me, but are instead obligated to do my bidding.

And then of course I told them exactly what I required. None of them ever replied and I did not expect them to.  They aren’t supposed to address us.  That’s why they fall silent.  When you properly identify yourself they know you are not “one of them” and they shuffle off because you are not one of their Territorial or Municipal constituents.  You are, however, one of their employers and it is when you act in that capacity that they are obliged to obey.

Once you start paying attention and noticing these things the logic of it all clicks into place.  Until then, be aware that commercial documents belong only in commercial court actions and be aware that the British Equity judges and prosecutors are from the Territorial United States (think Puerto Rico and Guam) and shouldn’t even be addressing you at all.

See this article and over 800 others on Anna’s website here:

http://avonreitz.com

 

ARMY MAJOR: “WE ARE KILLING THESE KIDS AND WE ARE BREAKING THE ARMY!”

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-01-18/army-major-were-killing-these-kids-were-breaking-army

 

by Tyler Durden

Authored by Major Danny Sjursen via TheAmericanConservative.com,

Our soldiers are still redeploying at a frenetic pace that cannot keep up with reality – and the cracks are showing…

I’ll admit I was taken aback. This senior officer and mentor – with nearly 28 years of military service – wasn’t one for hyperbole. No, he believed what he was saying to me just then.

“We’re killing these kids, we’re breaking the army!” he exclaimed.

He went on to explain the competing requirements for standard, conventional army units – to say nothing of the overstretched Special Forces – in 2018: balancing Russia in Eastern Europe, deterrence rotations in South Korea, advise and assist missions in Africa. Add to that deployments to the usual hotspots in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

He was genuinely concerned about the physical and emotional toll on the active-duty force, pushed to its limits by 17 years of perpetual combat. After all, with high military suicide rates now labeled the “new normal,” and a recent succession of accidental training deaths, it seems reasonable to wonder whether we are, indeed, “killing [our] kids.”

The overall effects of this rapid operations tempo on morale and readiness are difficult to measure in a disciplined, professional, all-volunteer military such as the one the United States possesses. What we do know is that despite former president Obama’s ongoing promises that “the tide of war is receding” and that America could finally “start nation-building at home,” nothing of the sort occurred then, or is now, under President Trump. Though the U.S. military (thankfully) no longer maintains six-figure troop counts in either Iraq or Afghanistan, American soldiers are still there, as well as serving in 70 percent of the world’s countries in one capacity or another in what has become a “generational war.” America’s troops are still being killed, though in admittedly fewer numbers. Nevertheless, U.S. servicemen continued to die in combat in several countries in 2017, including Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Yemen, and Niger.

After major drawdowns in Iraq (2011) and Afghanistan (2014), many soldiers, myself included, looked forward to longer “dwell time” at home stations and, just maybe, something resembling peace and even normalcy.

It was not to be. Aside from deployments to Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, conventional U.S. Army brigades currently support regular overseas rotations to Kuwait, South Korea, and Eastern Europe. To use just one example, the 1st Armored Division webpage currently boasts that the division has soldiers supporting 20 missions on five continents. Of my three former classmates and colleagues in the West Point History Department (2014-2016), two are currently deployed: one in Romania, another to the ubiquitous Mid-East region. That’s just about as busy as we all were back in the bad old days of 2006-2007.

The military – and the Army in particular – brought some of this upon itself. As conventional ground combat elements (of which the Army owns the preponderance) withdrew from Iraq and Afghanistan, and President Obama signaled a strategic pivot to Asia, U.S. Army leaders became understandably concerned. The Asia pivot would, logically, lean more heavily on the Air Force and Navy—especially when new military doctrine took the (exclusive) name “Air-Sea Battle.” As the economy struggled and budgets tightened, the various service chiefs fought to convince Congress and administration kingmakers of their continued “relevance.” If the Army didn’t appear busy—engaged in a countless number of vital missions—well, it’d be hard to justify its current budget.

It should come as no surprise that around this time the Army touted the versatility of its Regionally Aligned Forces (RAF) brigades—units trained and tailored to support an array of missions for specific geographic combatant commanders. Army leaders also emphasized threats from Russia and North Korea and the need for deterrent brigades on the ground in those theaters. And, with Special Operations Command under strain, the Army also provided six new Security Force Assistance Brigades (SFABs) to carry some of the advise-and-assist workload around the globe. This is not to say that Army leaders fabricated threats or invented missions. It’s all far more complex. Rather, brutal budget squabbles on Capitol Hill combined with increasingly politicized foreign policy threat assessments created an atmosphere where demonstrating “relevance” and “busyness” presented the only sure path to funding at the rates to which the various services had become accustomed.

Relevance is a double-edged sword—well-justified budgets require a frenzied operational pace and an overwrought Army.

Some troopers, at least, appear fed up with the scope and pace of deployments in year 18 of the conflict formerly known as the “war on terror.” No one is publicly sounding the alarm, but there are signals—if you know where to look. When Vice President Mike Pence made a surprise holiday season visit to Kabul and publicly praised U.S. forces in Afghanistan, one observer described the crowd as “subdued,” and noted “several troops stood with their arms crossed or their hands folded behind their backs and listened, but did not applaud.” Polls also demonstrate that although the current president is slightly more popular among the military than the general public, among officers Trump counts only a 30 percent approval rate. More concerning are the February 2017 polls indicating that military service member satisfaction has dropped 50 percent since 2009, due in part, one assumes, to never-ending deployments and time spent away from families. And, among the ever-strained Special Operations forces, reports indicate that mental distress and suicide are again on the rise.

As it stands, the system just about holds together – no doubt due to the determination of leaders and dutiful sacrifice of soldiers – but one wonders whether the active component force could truly weather even one major regional crisis. Something, it seems, would have to give – a drawdown in other missions, compressed training schedules, or—heaven forbid!—calling up the reserves, something American politicians certainly wish to avoid.

The all-volunteer force was always a devil’s bargain: by cutting out the citizenry in the form of a draft out of the equation, presidents, polls, and military leadership could move soldiers around the chessboard with fewer checks on their authority and the decision-making process.

That’s all well and good, until the system cracks. The president’s modest troop escalations in Afghanistan and Iraq, if combined with a (ever more likely) shooting war in Korea, could be just the thing to “break” the professional, volunteer military.

At that point Americans would have some tough decisions to make: ante up some cash and bodies to keep the U.S. military on top, or, just maybe, do less. Let’s hope it never comes to that. In the meantime, count on Congress and the American people to cover their eyes and let the “war on terror’s” third straight president run its cherished heroes into the ground.

What a way to say “thanks for your service!”

Major Danny Sjursen is a U.S. Army officer and former history instructor at West Point. He served tours with reconnaissance units in Iraq and Afghanistan, and has written a memoir and critical analysis of the Iraq War, Ghost Riders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge. 

Cognitive Thinking Yes you!

CAFR1 Home Page

by Walter Burien – CAFR1

It appears most individuals cognitive thinking has been “response conditioned trained” to parrot the government’s promotions and to maintain a void towards the reality of the situation that has developed over the years. (decades)

Just for clarity,  I never have mentioned “tax government retirement accounts”.

The TRFA (Tax Retirement Fund Association) designed to: “Retire Taxation” by consolidation of “Government’s” existing wealth and “NON-TAX income to directly “Benefit” the taxpaying population through the elimination of taxation utilizing the fiduciary trust principle to meet local government’s ongoing budgets. Now if Pensioners “wish” to consolidate their pensions with the TRFA accounts, to get paid directly from the TRFA accounts, they will have the vote option to do so down the road. Government currently has the financial management staff in place to make this happen today.

Per those who say: “Government is too large and should be funded totally by indirect taxation. The lesser the better. ” Well, taxation is nothing new. It has been an extortion tactic used for over 5,000-years. Ending it is the correct path to follow. Regarding government being to large, the greed and opportunity principle has basically been running unrestrained for centuries if not longer.

Taxation has been the #1 facilitator of the same followed by the expansion (takeover) accomplished by the growth of collective government’s investment capital. When the dots are connected, Government now “owns it all” by investment. When the dots are connected, government is funding most of that government debt they list, funded with cash or investment funds previously moved out of and off the Budget of the same.

The population “creates the wealth” and government players have been usurping that wealth in an ever increasing fashion, year by year, decade by decade. An example of the “ever increasing fashion”, I will use Arizona State government; as of 1983 (statistical section of 1992’s report, page 154).

AZ State government’s budget based on “Total Tax” income + Fines / Fees was 1.5 billion and total income 2.3 billion.  Jump ahead to 2016 (statistical section of 2016’s report, page 254) “Total Tax” income + Fines / Fees was 29.8 billion and total income, well too much accounting for me there. The diversity of “other” income sources outside of governmental tax income is extensive. There are many fund balances outside of general governmental and the tactic of “net” accounting obfuscates the standing balances. My estimate of “Total” income as of 2016 (on the low side) is 42.5 billion. Standing totals for “all” investment fund balances??? Keep in mind this is just “State”. Cities, Counties, School Districts, etc. in Arizona, are separate CAFR reports.

Here for “State” government we have a 15X increase from 1983 to 2016 (33-years). If total gross income was validated, we would probably have an increase of 25X. The population’s increase of their income was about 2X. (can be found in the statistical section also) NOTED also: The population of Arizona doubled over the same time period.

Source: State of Arizona CAFR (Comprehensive Annual Financial Report) 1992 to 2016

http://azmemory.azlibrary.gov/cdm/compoundobject/collection/statepubs/id/1166/rec/10    (great source for archived “State” CAFRs from Arizona. Check to see if your state has the same for its archived CAFRs)

Per: “social and corporate welfare redistribution” Government’s view point on that redistribution is: It all comes back to government in a direct or indirect fashion. (taxation; investment income; ownership by equity investment of many private sector companies where government is profiting from those financial transactions via their investments in those companies)

** Government depends on individuals operating, commenting, and cognitively thinking within the parameters of the propaganda they spoon feed the population within the “void” of no cognitive thinking of the basics right under the populations noses. Masterful entertainment and distraction is essential for government to succeed in maintaining the status quo void and “Business as usual”  due to the Money and Wealth held, and power involved. They are Pros at accomplishing that end.

Per: “thieves”, Government, as established by THEIR OWN ACCOUNTING, takeover, and increase in the take over the years, establishes government as the thief of no equal in perspective to all time.

Bottom line: The TRFA (and its intent) is focusing on the restructure of local governments to make the population the 1st line beneficiary of the wealth held and income generated, already in place within government, by and through the elimination of taxation. IT IS NOT NEEDED!

To counter the influences of the void created that influences us all, start focusing on the elephants in the room (never mentioned) and not the mice scurrying around the floor that government and their partners in crime, the syndicated media and political parties are constantly and exclusively pointing at.

As mentioned in previous posts, as of 2008, collective government’s return on domestic and international investment income was about 5.8 trillion dollars, that income primarily benefited government. The financial managers handling those investments are in place today for assignment to manage TRF funds to now “DIRECTLY” benefit the population by and through the elimination of taxation. Those trying to trade the markets “outside” of the government management teams, consistently have the habit (by government’s design) of loosing their shirts. Their loses, become government’s profits, that those profits government generates by design, where not $1 goes to offset or eliminate taxation.

Will you or any others accomplish this paradigm shift contrary to the current intent of government? Probably not. Will the TRFA accomplish it? Well, time will tell. It is being worked on one step at a time. The masterful entertainment and distractions have had no effect in thwarting its progression, just slowing it down has been the effect. When it is all said and done, the majority of the rest can just say to themselves: “Great idea, why did I not think of it.”

Sent FYI and for your cognitive thinking from,

Walter Burien – CAFR1.com and TRFA.us

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How China Infiltrated US Classrooms

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/01/16/how-china-infiltrated-us-classrooms-216327

Technocracy News, The August Forecast & Review and Technocracy Rising are managed and operated by Coherent Publishing, LLC and Patrick Wood, Editor

Even as they face criticism, Chinese government-run educational institutes have continued their forward march on college campuses across the United States.

By ETHAN EPSTEIN

Last year, the University of North Carolina at Charlotte made an announcement to great fanfare: The university would soon open a branch of the Confucius Institute, the Chinese government-funded educational institutions that teach Chinese language, culture and history. The Confucius Institute would “help students be better equipped to succeed in an increasingly globalized world,” says Nancy Gutierrez, UNC Charlotte’s dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and “broaden the University’s outreach and support for language instruction and cultural opportunities in the Charlotte community,” according to a press release.

But the Confucius Institutes’ goals are a little less wholesome and edifying than they sound—and this is by the Chinese government’s own account. A 2011 speech by a standing member of the Politburo in Beijing laid out the case: “The Confucius Institute is an appealing brand for expanding our culture abroad,” Li Changchun said. “It has made an important contribution toward improving our soft power. The ‘Confucius’ brand has a natural attractiveness. Using the excuse of teaching Chinese language, everything looks reasonable and logical.”

Li, it now seems, was right to exult. More than a decade after they were created, Confucius Institutes have sprouted up at more than 500 college campuses worldwide, with more than 100 of them in the United States—including at The George Washington University, the University of Michigan and the University of Iowa. Overseen by a branch of the Chinese Ministry of Education known colloquially as Hanban, the institutes are part of a broader propaganda initiative that the Chinese government is pumping an estimated $10 billion into annually, and they have only been bolstered by growing interest in China among American college students.

Yet along with their growth have come consistent questions about whether the institutes belong on campuses that profess to promote free inquiry. Confucius Institutes teach a very particular, Beijing-approved version of Chinese culture and history: one that ignores concerns over human rights, for example, and teaches that Taiwan and Tibet indisputably belong to Mainland China. Take it from the aforementioned Li, who also said in 2009 that Confucius Institutes are an “important part of China’s overseas propaganda set-up.” Critics also charge that the centers have led to a climate of self-censorship on campuses that play host to them.

Despite years of these critiques—including a recent outcry at the University of Massachusetts at Boston and the shuttering of Confucius Institutes at two of the nation’s top research universities—they’re still growing in number in the United States, albeit at a slower clip than a few years ago. Several opened on American campuses last year. And vanishingly few schools have rethought the institutes and closed them, suggesting that once they’re implanted, they’re entrenched. At several campuses, they’re actually expanding their footprints with bigger facilities and new courses. I contacted more than a half-dozen Confucius Institutes, and several officials said in interviews that they’re not looking back. (Others declined to comment or simply ignored me, further suggesting a commitment to keeping the Institutes going. The Chinese Embassy in Washington also did not respond to a request to comment by publication time.)

That so many universities have welcomed the Confucius Institute with open arms points to another disturbing trend in American higher education: an alarming willingness to accept money at the expense of principles that universities are ostensibly devoted to upholding. At a time when universities are as willing as ever to shield their charges from controversial viewpoints, some nonetheless welcome foreign, communist propaganda—if the price is right.

 “Coordinate the efforts of overseas and domestic propaganda, [and] further create a favorable international environment for us,” Chinese minister of propaganda Liu Yunshan exhorted his compatriots in a 2010 People’s Daily article. “With regard to key issues that influence our sovereignty and safety, we should actively carry out international propaganda battles against issuers such as Tibet, Xinjiang, Taiwan, human rights and Falun Gong. … We should do well in establishing and operating overseas cultural centers and Confucius Institutes.”

Liu’s orders have been heeded. The first Confucius Institute opened in South Korea in 2004. They quickly spread to Japan, Australia, Canada and Europe. The United States, China’s biggest geopolitical rival, has been a particular focus: Fully 40 percent of Confucius Institutes are stateside. In addition to the Institutes at universities, Hanban also operates hundreds of so-called Confucius Classrooms in primary and secondary schools. The public school system of Chicago, for example, has outsourced its Chinese program to Confucius Classrooms.

Beijing treats this project seriously, as evidenced by who runs the show. Hanban (shorthand for the ruling body of the Office of Chinese Language Council International, a branch of the Ministry of Education) is classified technically as a nonprofit agency, but it is dominated by Communist Chinese officialdom. Representatives from 12 top state agencies—including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the State Press and Publishing Administration, a propaganda bureau—sit on its executive council. Hanban’s director general is on the Chinese state council, the 35-member board that basically runs the country.

Hanban has been shrewd in compelling universities to host Confucius Institutes. Marshall Sahlins, a retired University of Chicago anthropologist and author of the 2014 pamphlet Confucius Institutes: Academic Malware, reports that each Confucius Institute comes with “$100,000 … in start up costs provided by Hanban, with annual payments of the like over a five-year period, and instruction subsidized as well, including the air fares and salaries of the teachers provided from China. … Hanban also agrees to send textbooks, videos, and other classroom materials for these courses—materials that are often welcome in institutions without an important China studies program of their own.” And each Confucius Institute typically partners with a Chinese university.

They’re kind of like restaurant franchises: Open the kit, and you’re in business. American universities can continue to collect full tuition from their students while essentially outsourcing instruction in Chinese. In other words, it’s free money for the schools. At many (though not all) Confucius-hosting campuses, students can receive course credit for classes completed at the institute.

But the institutes go to some length to obscure their political purpose. There’s the name, for example: Most Americans associate Confucius with wisdom, or cutesy aphorisms. It’s likely the centers would be less successful were they called Mao Institutes. The Institutes also offer a plethora of “fun” classes—not for academic credit, and often open to members of the general public—in subjects like dumpling making and tai chi.

The Chinese teachers are thoroughly vetted by Hanban, according to Sahlins’ report. They “must have a strong sense of mission, glory, and responsibility and be conscientious and meticulous in [their] work,” Hanban says. They’re also explicitly instructed to toe Beijing’s line on controversial political questions. There can be no discussion whatsoever of human rights in China, or the Tiananmen Square massacre. Sahlins found that should a student raise an uncomfortable question about, say, the political status of Tibet, Hanban’s instructors are ordered to refocus the discussion on, say, Tibet’s natural beauty or indigenous cultural practices (which, ironically, Beijing has spent decades stamping out).

Matteo Mecacci of the advocacy group International Campaign for Tibet requested a sampling of the Institute’s course materials from a D.C. area university several years ago. “Instead of scholarly materials published by credible American authors, not to speak of Tibetan writers, what we received were books and DVDs giving the Chinese narrative on Tibet published by China Intercontinental Press,” he wrote in Foreign Policy, “which is described by a Chinese government-run website as operating ‘under the authority of the State Council Information Office … whose main function is to produce propaganda products.’”

One student I spoke to—a junior at the University of Kentucky, which is home to a Confucius Institute—recalls attending a Confucius event at which another student, who was considering studying abroad in China, asked about the air pollution there. The response from the Confucius faculty was that the reports of pollution were “misinformation promoted in the U.S. media.” The student says Confucius faculty also “glorified and glossed over” negative aspects of Chinese culture and politics. Another student, a Kentucky senior who has taken classes at the same Confucius Institute, agrees that the institute “promotes an overly rosy picture of Chinese culture,” though, the student adds, “I don’t think it’s a problem for students to take advantage of [Confucius Institute] resources as long as they view the institute with a critical eye and round out their perspective on China with other experiences and points of view.”

Meanwhile, if Hanban’s instructors are not adequately vetted back home, there can be trouble. Consider the case of Sonia Zhao. Zhao, a Chinese national, was dispatched by Hanban to McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, in 2011 to teach Chinese language. She’s also a practitioner of Falun Gong, the Buddhist-tinged spiritual movement that Beijing despises as a threat to its authority. Zhao quit a year into her tenure, arguing that McMaster University was “giving legitimization to discrimination.” That’s because, in order to secure her employment with Hanban, Zhao said she was forced to disguise her fealty to Falun Gong. Her employment contract with Hanban explicitly stated that she was “not allowed to join illegal organizations such as Falun Gong,” she said. This kind of open religious discrimination is illegal in Canada, as it would be in the United States. McMaster University, in light of this disclosure, subsequently shuttered its Confucius Institute in 2013, citing the institute’s “hiring practices.”

Self-censorship has become an issue as well. In 2008, a court in Israel found that Tel Aviv University, home to a Confucius Institute, had illegitimately closed an art exhibition on Falun Gong because of Chinese government pressure. A year later, North Carolina State University, host to a Confucius Institute, scuttled a planned appearance by the Dalai Lama for fear of Chinese backlash: The director of the Institute warned NC State officials that such a visit could hurt “strong relationships we were developing with China.” A few years later, similar events transpired at the University of Sydney in Australia, which drew heat from members of the Parliament of Australia.

In recent weeks, I contracted administrators at several universities with Confucius Institutes, primarily ones that had opened recently, and none expressed regret or indeed much concern. The George Washington University, the private university nestled in the heart of the nation’s capital, has hosted a Confucius Institute for several years. The institute’s founding director, Peg Barratt, says her university’s “eyes were open” when GW opened its center in in 2013. “We were aware there was some controversy” surrounding Confucius Institutes when other universities opened theirs, she told me. “Some [other universities] had internal censorship,” she readily acknowledges. Nonetheless, she says the Institutes are innocuous, modeled, she argues, on European cultural institutes like the British Council, Goethe Institute and Alliance Française. Of course, not only are Great Britain, Germany and France not communist regimes, but those institutes are standalone enterprises, not on college campuses.

Western Kentucky University, where the Confucius Institute is expanding—it just moved into a new building—also defends its partnership. Terrill Martin, director of the Institute, told me, “I don’t believe the Confucius Institute program is controversial at all. I just believe that people don’t understand, don’t ask the right questions and make a lot of unfounded assumptions about the program, based on the failures of a few.”

Nancy Gutierrez, at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, says the institute there will fill an unmet need. “We made the decision to host a [Confucius Institute] because we believe that this partnership will allow us to expand understanding of Chinese culture very broadly—for community members and for our students,” she says. In other words, Hanban can provide resources that UNC presently can’t. Gutierrez also says, “A faculty advisory committee will provide the intellectual guidance … ensuring that we are guided by principles of academic freedom.” And she notes that Confucius Institute courses will not offer academic credit at UNC Charlotte—at least not yet. The same is true at Western Kentucky University.

Eric Einspruch, who chairs Portland State University’s Confucius Institute, also defends it: The Confucius Institute simply offers “noncredit Chinese courses, cultural programs of interest to the community, and faculty-initiated scholarly activity,” he says. But even the Institute’s innocuous-seeming language courses have come in for criticism. They only teach simplified characters, which are used on Mainland China but not in Taiwan, Hong Kong or Singapore, estranging language learners from Chinese texts produced anywhere but the Mainland.

One institution that bucked the trend was the University of Chicago. The school opened a Confucius Institute in 2010, which quickly proved controversial. To Bruce Lincoln, a now-retired religion professor at Chicago who then served on the faculty senate, the Confucius Institute represented the “subcontracting [of the] educational mission” in the United States—a “hostile takeover of U.S. higher education by a foreign power,” as he told me. (Prior to his battle against the Confucius Institute, Lincoln was involved in another fight at the University of Chicago, against the establishment of a Milton Friedman Institute, which would have been largely funded by conservative donors. That too represented a subcontracting of the education mission, he believes—in this case, the “corporatization of universities.”)

When Hanban’s contract came up for renewal in 2014, Lincoln, along with Marshall Sahlins, led a petition drive, which garnered the support of more than 100 other faculty members, demanding that the contract be canceled. (There was very little student involvement, Lincoln says.) That year, the University of Chicago booted the Institute because of academic freedom concerns. Chicago’s move won praise from outlets as ideologically diverse as Forbes and the New York Review of Books. Shockingly few universities have followed Chicago’s lead, though, Penn State being one notable exception; it also closed its institute in 2014, as well.

Many of those universities who maintain Confucius Institutes appear to go to great lengths to shield them from criticism. Last year, Rachelle Peterson released a thorough report about Confucius Institutes for the National Association of Scholars, a right-leaning academic organization where Peterson is a scholar. At the heart of her report were 12 case studies of Confucius Institutes at New York and New Jersey universities. Over the course of her reporting, Peterson says, “There were a lot of unanswered emails, a lot of unanswered phone calls” (an experience shared by this journalist). When she did manage to set up interviews with Confucius Institute staff, they were often canceled at the last minute, like those at the University of Albany and the University of Binghamton. Another time, when she managed to secure an interview with a Confucius Institute staff member, he insisted that the meeting “happen in a basement … not in his office.” He seemed afraid of being caught, she says.

The most disturbing event transpired at Alfred University in upstate New York. There, Peterson, says, she had “called the Confucius Institute, spoken to a teacher … and received permission to sit in on [a class].” As she observed the Chinese-language class, she recalls, the provost of the university charged into the classroom, interrupting the lesson. He ordered her removal from the classroom and told her she had to leave the campus immediately. The provost and a Confucius staffer swiftly escorted her off campus. (Alfred University did not respond to a request for comment asking to confirm or deny Peterson’s account.)

Today, there are signs of a nascent, if isolated, backlash. Just last month, a group of students and alumni from UMass Boston, home of the Bay State’s only Confucius Institute, wrote a letter to the school’s chancellor expressing deep concern that the university is “unwittingly assisting the Chinese government to promote censorship abroad, while undermining human rights and academic freedom.” The UMass group requested a meeting with the chancellor to discuss their concerns, but according to Lhadon Tethong, a pro-Tibet activist who helped spearhead the letter, that request has yet to be answered. (A spokesperson for the university told the Boston Globe that the institute has succeeded in promoting “the mutual understanding of language and culture.”)

The National Association of Scholars suggests universities shutter their Confucius Institutes. But such counsel is hardly limited the ideological right. The American Association of University Professors, America’s leading professorial guild, also recommended in 2014 that “that universities cease their involvement in Confucius Institutes unless the agreement between the university and Hanban is renegotiated,” so that the universities have unilateral control over the curriculum and faculty, Confucius faculty have the same rights of free inquiry as their fellow teachers, and contracts between Hanban and the partner universities are made public. Nonetheless, none of the schools I contacted said that they had any plans to shutter or reform their institutes.

Instead, Confucius Institutes continue their forward march. In 2015, they opened at Tufts University, New Jersey City University, Southern Utah University and Northern State University in South Dakota. In 2016, Savannah State University added one. And last year, in addition to UNC-Charlotte, Transylvania University in Kentucky is launching a new branch. Gutierrez of UNC concedes that, when her school announced it would open one earlier last year, many faculty members were concerned and “raised serious questions.” But the structure the school developed—so as not allowing courses to be taken for credit—allayed such fears, she says.

Confucius Classrooms, for younger students, are also ascendant these days: In October, local media reported that three new ones would be planted in Texas public schools, and UMass Boston is helping develop them at schools in Massachusetts, including the prestigious Cambridge Rindge and Latin School, where a Confucius Classroom just launched. At scores of universities, meanwhile, the institutes are expanding both physically and programmatically. New courses and scholarships at existing ones are announced all the time. And they’re growing rapidly overseas, particularly these days in Africa, where China has been aggressively expanding its footprint in recent years.

Lincoln, of the University of Chicago, says the institutes have proved successful, in a sense, because Hanban offers a “cheap way to teach classes that [otherwise] wouldn’t have been taught.” Public universities have suffered punishing funding cuts over the past decade: “A decade since the Great Recession hit, state spending on public colleges and universities remains well below historic levels, despite recent increases,” reads a recent report from the left-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. According to the Center, adjusting for inflation, public spending on community colleges and universities was about $9 billion below 2008 levels in 2017. It’s unsurprising, then, that many institutes have sprung up at public universities, or that a huge amount of growth occurred from 2010 to 2012, when budgets were particularly hard hit. But those conditions could return: President Donald Trump’s proposed 2018 budget would also severely slash funding for universities, likely pushing more schools to outsource programs.

The Economist, meanwhile, estimates that China is spending $10 billion a year to promote its image abroad through efforts like cultural festivals, foreign media (think of those China Daily inserts that are slipped into the Washington Post) and educational exchanges. Confucius Institutes are a vital part of this mission. It’s not hard to envision how they might work, for example, by one day weakening Americans’ loyalty to Taiwan.

It seems that Beijing probed, and found a weakness: money. It may be intellectually indefensible for universities to host Confucius Institutes, but at a time of reduced funding, it makes eminent sense. How ironic that the ostensibly communist Chinese seem to understand financial imperatives better than we Yankees do.

Olddogs Comments!

It was not until I went into the burglar alarm business in 1975 that I had some sort of intellectual awakening due to becoming friends with a higher educated class of people, I immediately recognized my short comings would prevent my business from growing and began changing  my leisure time activities. It has been said that a person’s intellect is the results of his/her interest and that had changed considerably. Needles to say the feeling of your mind growing week by week is akin to muscle building, and although I may never reach the level I would like I have proven to myself and to those who knew me earlier that I had accomplished a lot. Now the thing that scares me the most about America’s direction in student education is their aim is to totally destroy individualism. Personally I believe individualism is the most important characteristic of all human beings because anything else is offensive on the level of intellectual theft. To raise children to be just a copy of all other children is destructive to civilization and an offense to God. So, look around folks and understand what is happening to your children from pre-school to the highest level of public education. Our schools are non flexible cookie cutters! Stop and think!!! There is more going on in America than you can imagine, and graduates from this system are not capable of replacing the existing system of government, which must be returned to NON CORPORATE bodies of highly intelligent human beings who are aware of the situation.

Twilight of the American Courts

https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/06/07/twilight-of-the-american-courts/

 Photo by Mihai Bojin | CC BY 2.0

by John W. Whitehead

“As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air – however slight – lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.”

—Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas

We have entered a new regime and it’s called the American police state.

As the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in County of Los Angeles vs. Mendez makes clear, Americans can no longer rely on the courts to mete out justice.

Continuing its disturbing trend of siding with police in cases of excessive use of force, a unanimous Court declared that police should not be held liable for recklessly firing 15 times into a shack where a homeless couple—Angel and Jennifer Mendez—was sleeping.

Understandably, the Mendezes were startled by the intruders, so much so that Angel was holding his BB gun, which he used to shoot rats, in defense. Despite the fact that police barged into the Mendez’s backyard shack without a search warrant and without announcing their presence and fired 15 shots at the couple, who suffered significant injuries (Angel Mendez suffered numerous gunshot wounds, one of which required the amputation of his right leg below the knee, and his wife Jennifer was shot in the back), the Court once again gave the police a “get out of jail free” card.

Unfortunately, we’ve been traveling this dangerous road for a long time now.

In the police state being erected around us, the police and other government agents can probe, poke, pinch, taser, search, seize, strip and generally manhandle anyone they see fit in almost any circumstance, all with the general blessing of the courts.

Whether it’s police officers breaking through people’s front doors and shooting them dead in their homes or strip searching motorists on the side of the road, these instances of abuse are continually validated by a judicial system that kowtows to virtually every police demand, no matter how unjust, no matter how in opposition to the Constitution.

These are the hallmarks of the emerging American police state: where police officers, no longer mere servants of the people entrusted with keeping the peace, are part of an elite ruling class dependent on keeping the masses corralled, under control, and treated like suspects and enemies rather than citizens.

While the First Amendment—which gives us a voice—is being muzzled, the Fourth Amendment—which protects us from being bullied, badgered, beaten, broken and spied on by government agents—is being disemboweled.

A review of critical court rulings over the past decade or so, including some ominous ones by the U.S. Supreme Court, reveals a startling and steady trend towards pro-police state rulings by an institution concerned more with establishing order and protecting the ruling class and government agents than with upholding the rights enshrined in the Constitution.

Police can stop, arrest and search citizens without reasonable suspicion or probable cause.

In a 5-3 ruling in Utah v. Strieff, the U.S. Supreme Court effectively gave police a green light to embark on a fishing expedition of one’s person and property, rendering Americans completely vulnerable to the whims of any cop on the beat.

In a blistering dissent in Utah v. Strieff, Justice Sonia Sotomayor blasted the court for holding “that the discovery of a warrant for an unpaid parking ticket will forgive a police officer’s violation of your Fourth Amendment rights.” Sotomayor continued:

This Court has allowed an officer to stop you for whatever reason he wants—so long as he can point to a pretextual justification after the fact. That justification must provide specific reasons why the officer suspected you were breaking the law, but it may factor in your ethnicity, where you live, what you were wearing, and how you behaved. The officer does not even need to know which law you might have brokenso long as he can later point to any possible infraction—even one that is minor, unrelated, or ambiguous.

The indignity of the stop is not limited to an officer telling you that you look like a criminal. The officer may next ask for your “consent” to inspect your bag or purse without telling you that you can decline. Regardless of your answer, he may order you to stand “helpless, perhaps facing a wall with [your] hands raised.” If the officer thinks you might be dangerous, he may then “frisk” you for weapons. This involves more than just a pat down. As onlookers pass by, the officer may “‘feel with sensitive fingers every portion of [your] body. A thorough search [may] be made of [your] arms and armpits, waistline and back, the groin and area about the testicles, and entire surface of the legs down to the feet.’”

If you still can’t read the writing on the wall, Sotomayor breaks it down further: “This case allows the police to stop you on the street, demand your identification, and check it for outstanding traffic warrants—even if you are doing nothing wrong… So long as the target is one of the many millions of people in this country with an outstanding arrest warrant, anything the officer finds in a search is fair game for use in a criminal prosecution. The officer’s incentive to violate the Constitution thus increases…”

Police officers can stop cars based on “anonymous” tips or for “suspicious” behavior such as having a reclined car seat or driving too carefully. 

In a 5-4 ruling in Navarette v. California, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that police officers can, under the guise of “reasonable suspicion,” stop cars and question drivers based solely on anonymous tips, no matter how dubious, and whether or not they themselves witnessed any troubling behavior. More recently, in State v. Howard, the Kansas Supreme Court declared that motorists who recline their car seats are guilty of suspicious behaviorand can be subject to warrantless searches by police. That ruling, coupled with other court rulings upholding warrantless searches and seizures by police—for such “suspicious” behavior as having acne scars, driving with a stiff upright posture, having car windows that are too heavily tinted, driving too fast, driving too slow, failing to maintain speed, following too closely, improper lane changes, distracted driving, screeching a car’s tires, leaving a parked car door open for too long, avoiding a traffic light by driving through a parking lot, driving near a bar or on a road that has large amounts of drunk driving, driving a certain make of car (Mercedes, Grand Prix and Hummers are among the most ticketed vehicles), having anything dangling from the rearview mirror (air fresheners, handicap parking permits, toll transponders or rosaries), or displaying pro-police bumper stickers—renders one’s car a Constitution-free zone.

Police officers can use lethal force in car chases without fear of lawsuits. 

In Plumhoff v. Rickard, the U.S. Supreme Court declared that police officers who used deadly force to terminate a car chase were immune from a lawsuit. The officers were accused of needlessly resorting to deadly force by shooting multiple times at a man and his passenger in a stopped car, killing both individuals.

Police can “steal” from Americans who are innocent of any wrongdoing.

In refusing to hear a challenge to Texas’ asset forfeiture law, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed Texas police to keep $201,000 in ill-gotten cash primarily on the basis that the seized cash—the proceeds of a home sale—was being transported on a highway associated with illegal drug trade, despite any proof of illegal activity by the owner. Asset forfeiture laws, which have come under intense scrutiny and criticism in recent years, allow the police to seize property “suspected” of being connected to criminal activity without having to prove the owner of the property is guilty of a criminal offense.

Americans have no protection against mandatory breathalyzer tests at a police checkpoint, although mandatory blood draws violate the Fourth Amendment (Birchfield v. North Dakota). Police can also conduct sobriety and “information-seeking” checkpoints (Illinois v. Lidster and Mich. Dep’t of State Police v. Sitz).

Police can forcibly take your DNA, whether or not you’ve been convicted of a crime. 

In Maryland v. King, a divided U.S. Supreme Court determined that a person arrested for a crime who is supposed to be presumed innocent until proven guilty must submit to forcible extraction of their DNA. Once again the Court sided with the guardians of the police state over the defenders of individual liberty in determining that DNA samples may be extracted from people arrested for “serious” offenses. While the Court claims to have made its decision based upon concerns of properly identifying criminal suspects upon arrest, what they actually did is open the door for a nationwide dragnet of suspects targeted via DNA sampling.

Police can use the “fear for my life” rationale as an excuse for shooting unarmed individuals. 

Upon arriving on the scene of a nighttime traffic accident, an Alabama police officer shot a driver exiting his car, mistakenly believing the wallet in his hand to be a gun. From the time the driver stumbled out of his car, waving his wallet in the air, to the time he was shot in the abdomen, only six seconds had elapsed. Although the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals concluded “that a reasonable officer in Hancock’s position would have feared for his life,” the video footage makes clear that the courts continue to march in lockstep with the police, because no reasonable person would shoot first and ask questions later. A report by the Justice Department found that half of the unarmed people shot by one police department over a seven-year span were “shot because the officer saw something (like a cellphone) or some action (like a person pulling at the waist of their pants) and misidentified it as a threat.”

Police have free reign to use drug-sniffing dogs as “search warrants on leashes.” 

In Florida v. Harris, a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court determined that police officers may use highly unreliable drug-sniffing dogs to conduct warrantless searches of cars during routine traffic stops. In doing so, the justices sided with police by claiming that all that the police need to do to prove probable cause for a search is simply assert that a drug detection dog has received “proper” training. The ruling turns man’s best friend into an extension of the police state, provided the use of a K-9 unit takes place within a reasonable amount of time (Rodriguez v. United States).

Not only are police largely protected by qualified immunity, but police dogs are also off the hook for wrongdoing.

The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of a police officer who allowed a police dog to maul a homeless man innocent of any wrongdoing. The case arose in 2010 after a police dog attacked a homeless man near an abandoned house where police were tracking a robbery suspect. The cop refused to call off the dog immediately, despite the man’s pleading and the fact that he did not match the description of the robbery suspect. The homeless man suffered deep bites on his hand, arm and thigh—which required a nearly 16-inch skin graft—as well as causing severe bleeding, bruising, swelling and an arterial blood clot. Incredibly, not only did the court declare that the police officer was protected by qualified immunity, which incentivizes government officials to violate constitutional rights without fear of repercussion, but it had the nerve to suggest that being mauled by a police dog is the equivalent of a lawful Terry stop in which police may stop and hold a person for questioning on the basis of “reasonable suspicion.”

Police can subject Americans to strip searches, no matter the “offense.” 

A divided U.S. Supreme Court actually prioritized making life easier for overworked jail officials over the basic right of Americans to be free from debasing strip searches. In its 5-4 ruling in Florence v. Burlington, the Court declared that any person who is arrested and processed at a jail house, regardless of the severity of his or her offense (i.e., they can be guilty of nothing more than a minor traffic offense), can be subjected to a strip search by police or jail officials, which involves exposing the genitals and the buttocks. This “license to probe” is now being extended to roadside stops, as police officers throughout the country have begun performing roadside strip searches—some involving anal and vaginal probes—without any evidence of wrongdoing and without a warrant.

Police can break into homes without a warrant, even if it’s the wrong home.

In an 8-1 ruling in Kentucky v. King, the U.S. Supreme Court placed their trust in the discretion of police officers, rather than in the dictates of the Constitution, when they gave police greater leeway to break into homes or apartments without a warrant. Despite the fact that the police in question ended up pursuing the wrong suspect, invaded the wrong apartment and violated just about every tenet that stands between us and a police state, the Court sanctioned the warrantless raid, leaving Americans with little real protection in the face of all manner of abuses by police.

Police can use knock-and-talk tactics as a means of sidestepping the Fourth Amendment.

Aggressive “knock and talk” practices have become thinly veiled, warrantless exercises by which citizens are coerced and intimidated into “talking” with heavily armed police who “knock” on their doors in the middle of the night. Poor Andrew Scott didn’t even get a chance to say no to such a heavy-handed request before he was gunned down by police who pounded aggressively on the wrong door at 1:30 a.m., failed to identify themselves as police, and then repeatedly shot and killed the man when he answered the door while holding a gun in self-defense.

Police can interrogate minors without parents present.

In a devastating ruling that could very well do away with what little Fourth Amendment protections remain to public school students and their families—the U.S. Supreme Court threw out a lower court ruling in Camreta v. Greene, which required government authorities to secure a warrant, a court order or parental consent before interrogating students at school. The ramifications are far-reaching, rendering public school students as wards of the state. Once again, the courts sided with law enforcement against the rights of the people.

It’s a crime to not identify yourself when a policeman asks your name.

In Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District Court of the State of Nevada, a majority of the high court agreed that refusing to answer when a policeman asks “What’s your name?” can rightfully be considered a crime under Nevada’s “stop and identify” statute. No longer will Americans, even those not suspected of or charged with any crime, have the right to remain silent when stopped and questioned by a police officer.

Police can carry out no-knock raids if they believe announcing themselves would be dangerous.

Police can perform a “no-knock” raid as long as they have a reasonable suspicion that knocking and announcing their presence, under the particular circumstances, would be dangerous or futile or give occupants a chance to destroy evidence of a crime (Richards v. Wisconsin). Legal ownership of a firearm is also enough to justify a no-knock raid by police (Quinn v. Texas). For instance, a Texas man had his home subject to a no-knock, SWAT-team style forceful entry and raid based solely on the suspicion that there were legally-owned firearms in his household. The homeowner was actually shot by police through his closed bedroom door.

The military can arrest and detain American citizens. 

In refusing to hear Hedges v. Obama (2014), a legal challenge to the indefinite detention provision of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 (NDAA), the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that the President and the U.S. military can arrest and indefinitely detain individuals, including American citizens. In so doing, the high court also passed up an opportunity to overturn its 1944 Korematsu v. United States ruling allowing for the internment of Japanese-Americans in concentration camps.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we are dealing with a nationwide epidemic of court-sanctioned police violence carried out against individuals posing little or no real threat, who are nevertheless subjected to such excessive police force as to end up maimed or killed.

When all is said and done, what these assorted court rulings add up to is a disconcerting government mindset that interprets the Constitution one way for the elite—government entities, the police, corporations and the wealthy—and uses a second measure altogether for the underclasses—that is, you and me.

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More articles by:John W. Whitehead

John W. Whitehead is the president of The Rutherford Institute and author of Battlefield America: The War on the American People.

Olddogs Comments!

Do not forget that John is a bar member and is doing nothing to promote Common Law in spite of his attempts to help the down trodden.   

Just How Bad Is The BLM?

https://newswithviews.com/just-how-bad-is-the-blm/

 Read More Articles by Ron Ewart

By now many of our readers have heard that a U. S. District Court Judge in Nevada has dismissed the federal government’s case against Cliven Bundy and his two sons for an April 2014 armed standoff at the Bundy Nevada ranch between a heavy contingent of armed Bureau of Land Management (BLM) agents and hundreds of private citizens (some of them armed).  But most Americans are not aware of the details behind the case and why the BLM lost and why it was so important that the BLM lose this case.  The case reeks of federal government overreach and abuse by the BLM, and egregious prosecutorial misconduct.  The government was out to bury Cliven Bundy and his sons for daring to challenge the all-powerful federal government.  They almost succeeded.

The issue resolved around rancher Cliven Bundy grazing his cattle on federal government land that surrounded the Bundy ranch.  The federal government owns most of Nevada.  In fact, the federal government owns 84.9% of Nevada Land.  You can’t spit in Nevada without it landing on federal land.

The Bundy family for several generations have been grazing their cattle on federal land since before the turn of the 20th Century.  Bundy did not recognize federal land ownership in Nevada and paid his grazing fees to the state instead of the federal government.  Of course, the FEDS didn’t like that and took Bundy to court.  Bundy lost in federal court, twice.  Now the BLM was Hell bent on rounding up Bundy’s cattle on federal land, which led to the armed standoff in April of 2014.

On that fateful day in April 2014, the BLM assembled a large team of armed agents to oversee the rounding up of Bundy’s cattle by a private contractor and then positioned snipers (snipers mind you) and surveillance cameras on the high ground surrounding the ranch.  What was the BLM afraid of?

Having gotten wind of the pending BLM occupation of the Bundy ranch, citizens from all over the West (some of them armed) descended on the ranch to confront the BLM “army.”  Had a shot been fired, a blood bath would have taken place on the Nevada desert that day, a blood bath that would have been unprecedented in Western history.  Fortunately, because of heavy media coverage of the event, the BLM backed down.

The 2014 event eventually ended up in the occupation by Bundy’s two sons, Ammon and Ryan, and other militants, of the Malheur National Wildlife Preserve in South Central Oregon in January of 2016 because of the BLM abuse of Oregon ranchers Dwight and Steve Hammond.  To read the full story of what the BLM did to the Hammonds, click HERE.

The Oregon Preserve occupation ended up in the assassination of Lavoy Finicum on a remote Oregon Highway by State and Federal Officers and the capture of the occupiers.  Nevertheless, a federal trial against the Preserve occupiers amazingly ended in an acquittal.

But the FEDS weren’t threw with Cliven Bundy, his two sons Ammon and Ryan, and others.  Right after the Oregon Preserve occupation trial, federal officers arrested the Bundy’s and through them in a Nevada jail to await charges for the April 2014 armed standoff.  The four defendants were charged with threatening a federal officer, carrying and using a firearm, and engaging in conspiracy.  The case looked like a slam-dunk to the government.

As in most federal cases against landowners, the “deck” against the Bundy’s was heavily stacked, in favor of federal prosecutors, relying on damning evidence provided by the BLM.  Had it not been for an expose’ of the BLM by BLM special agent Larry Wooten, the Bundy’s could have gone to jail for many years.  The Title of Mr. Wooten’s report is very revealing:

“A Disclosure and Complaint Narrative In Regard to the Bureau of Land Management Law Enforcement Supervisory Misconduct, and Associated Cover-ups, As Well As Potential Unethical Actions, Malfeasance and Misfeasance by the U. S. Attorney’s Office Prosecutors from the District of Nevada (Las Vegas) In Reference to the Cliven Bundy Investigation.”

For those interested in reading the report, we have uploaded it to our website HERE.  It is fascinating reading and exposure of blatant BLM corruption.

Wooten, a BLM special investigator, spared no words when describing BLM behavior in the Bundy case.  He accused the BLM of “a wide spread pattern of bad judgment, lack of discipline, incredible bias, un-professionalism and misconduct, as well as likely policy, ethical and legal violations among senior and supervisory staff at the BLM’s office of Law Enforcement and Security.”  He further went on to accuse “BLM law enforcement supervisors of making a mockery of the BLM’s position of special trust and confidence, portraying extreme unprofessional bias that adversely affected our agency’s mission and ignoring the intent and letter of the law regarding the trial of Cliven Bundy and his alleged co-conspirators.”

The unrelenting attack on BLM corrupt behavior by special investigator Wooten could not be ignored by U. S. District Court Judge Gloria Navarro who dismissed the case against Bundy and others with prejudice, meaning they could not be tried again for the April 2014 event.

“Navarro rebuked federal prosecutors — using the words “flagrant” and “reckless” to describe how they withheld evidence from the defense — before saying ‘that the universal sense of justice has been violated’ and dismissing the charges.  Navarro didn’t buy the prosecution’s assertion that it had provided all evidence to the defense and shredded the government for a ‘reckless disregard for Constitutional obligations.’  She said she was troubled by the prosecution’s tardiness in delivering information about the government’s placing of surveillance cameras and snipers outside the ranch.”  (a quote from a Los Angeles Times article)

It didn’t used to be this way with the BLM.  Before the rise of radical environmentalism and the passage of the National Environmental Policy Act in 1969, other federal environmental acts in the early 1970’s and UN’s Agenda 21 in 1992, the BLM had a symbiotic relationship with ranchers and farmers.  The use of federal lands by ranchers for grazing and watering cattle and other livestock were handled by allotments, some of which were actually attached to a landowner’s deed and ran with the land.  The BLM worked well with ranchers on those allotments, that was until most BLM agents became rabid environmentalists, after graduating from our liberal colleges.  They were bound and determined to drive ranchers and farmers off of those allotments and went so far as to illegally round up cattle and sell them at auction (a Nevada case – Wayne Hage), or fence off water sources (a New Mexico case – Sacramento Grazing Association).  The BLM became decidedly environmentally militant, which led to the five-year incarceration of Oregon ranchers Dwight and Steve Hammond on a trumped-up charge of arson ….. and other abuses throughout the West.

A little BLM history from their website:

With historical roots dating back to the earliest days of the nation, the BLM administers the lands that remain from America’s original “public domain.”  Created in 1946 through a government reorganization during the Truman Administration, the BLM is the successor to the General Land Office (established in 1812) and the U.S. Grazing Service (originally called the Division of Grazing and renamed in 1939).

This year (2016), the BLM is commemorating two milestone events: its 70th anniversary as an Interior Department agency, and the 40th anniversary of the principal law defining its mission: the Federal Land Policy and Management Act of 1976, commonly referred to by its acronym of FLPMA.

As the manager of more land (245 million surface acres or one-tenth of America’s land base) and more subsurface mineral estate (700 million acres) than any other government agency, the BLM carries out a dual mandate under FLPMA: that of managing public land for multiple uses (such as energy development, livestock grazing, mining, timber harvesting, and outdoor recreation) while conserving natural, historical, and cultural resources (such as wilderness areas, wild horse and wildlife habitat, artifacts, and dinosaur fossils).  In the language of FLPMA, the BLM’s responsibility is to administer public lands “on the basis of multiple use and sustained yield” of resources.

What this means, on a practical level, is that the BLM – except in areas specifically set aside for conservation purposes – must multitask to fulfill its duties.  Nevertheless, consistent with the BLM’s goal of good stewardship of public land resources, “multiple use” does not mean every use on every acre.

 This all sounds benign and friendly, except that their actions on the ground don’t comport with their mission and gloss over their hidden radical environmental agenda and evil intent.  If the BLM doesn’t comply with strict environmental law or the FLPMA, wealthy, powerful environmental groups sue them.  Who pays when environmentalists win?  The taxpayer.  And environmentalists win all the time.

Today, ranchers and farmers are in a constant battle almost to the death with the BLM, the Environmental Protection Agency, the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Agency and the Department of the Interior.  Many landowners are driven out of business.  Many have committed suicide.  (That’s right, suicide)

The Wayne Hage family of Southeastern Nevada has been fighting the BLM and U. S. Fish and Wildlife Agency in court for 24 years.  They were awarded $14,000,000 by the U. S. Court of Claims but the government keeps appealing the case and the Hage’s have received not a penny after spending over $2,000,000 in legal fees, expert witnesses and court costs.  The elder Hage’s died during the long trials and now the son has taken up the family banner to pursue the case, that is if the family doesn’t run out of money first.  The government is great at stretching and delaying cases until the Plaintiff goes broke.

The federal government and all of its alphabet-soup agencies aren’t the only ones going after farmers and ranchers in America.  State and local governments, blinded by the religious cult of environmental protection at any cost, are piling layers upon layers of regulations and taxes on landowners and hiring armies of code enforcement officers to enforce those regulations.  A landowner can’t turn sidewise without bumping into a regulation or the officer enforcing the regulation.  Fines and penalties mount and many landowners go broke or end up in jail on minor offenses, you know, like collecting rain water on your land ….. without a permit.  In Washington State the State Supreme Court ruled that you can’t drill a well on your land.

Code enforcement officers show up and trespass on your land and after trespassing, hand you a laundry list of violations and steep penalties if you don’t comply.  Many jurisdictions have turned what would be civil cases into criminal cases, allowing criminal warrants and searches and seizures.  Los Angeles County created a fully armed nuisance abatement team to go after and arrest landowners at gunpoint that don’t move swift enough to correct a code violation.

You may not be a rural landowner but what happens to them, eventually trickles down and happens to you.  After all, they grow or raise the food you eat.

Ladies and gentlemen, all this is why we formed the National Association of Rural Landowners in 2005 to act as advocates for the beleaguered rural landowner.  We provide products and services to the landowner to defend against government abuse and illegal trespassing.   Over 7,000 of our powerful, legally intimidating 18″ x 24″ No Trespassing signs have been installed on rural lands all across America, blunting trespassing by government agents and law enforcement.  Our unique, one-of-a-kind Rural Landowner Handbook is only available on our website.  It could take you a couple of weeks to digest all of the vital information on the website and in the handbook, specifically designed for the rural landowner.  It’s not just the BLM that will come after you and make your life miserable, it’s all the other state and local government agencies that relentlessly pursue landowners for compliance.   Defend yourself and be on your guard, or become a victim.

If you are a rural landowner and have questions or concerns, contact us HERE.

© 2018 Ron Ewart – All Rights Reserved

E-Mail Ron Ewart: info@narlo.org

Ron Ewart, a nationally known author and speaker on freedom and property rights issues and author of this weekly column, “In Defense of Rural America”. Ron is the president of the National Association of Rural Landowners (NARLO) (www.narlo.org), a non-profit corporation headquartered in Washington State, acting as an advocate and consultant for urban and rural landowners. Affiliated NARLO websites are “SAVE THE USA” and “Getting Even With Government”. Email: info@narlo.org Website: http://www.narlo.org

Legislator calls on feds to give up land ownership

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By now most of you should have noticed you no longer are receiving New Article Alerts every day. This is no fault of mine, but due to a new format on my Mail Chimp account which has a fault they will not fix and I believe it is to force a higher cost to their customers. For a service company to deny help to their clients is inexcusable and I am trying to find a solution through other bulk emailers.

Possibly my web site hosting company will either allow me to mail new post notices through them or arrange for me to send them through Constant Contact at no charge. But only I am interested in getting it done in a hurry!

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http://mobile.wnd.com/2018/01/legislator-calls-on-feds-to-give-up-land-ownership/

No constitutional right to ‘grazing, mineral development, agriculture,

forests, or even national parks’

Grand Staircase territory

image: http://mobile.wnd.com/wp-content/themes/worldnet-theme/_/images//feed.png

 

Bob Unruh
Bob Unruh joined WND in 2006 after nearly three decades with the Associated Press, as well as several Upper Midwest newspapers, where he covered everything from legislative battles and sports to tornadoes and homicidal survivalists. He is also a photographer whose scenic work has been used commercially.

If President Trump wants to be known as a president seeking the restoration of the U.S. Constitution, one of his goals should be to turn federal lands – the millions of acres run by the Bureau of Land Management, Forest Service and National Park Service – over to the states.

It’s because the Constitution doesn’t allow for federal ownership of land unless it’s for certain limited purposes, argues a former California lawmaker.

Steve Baldwin served in the California Assembly from 1994 to 2000 and was minority whip during that time. He’s argued in a new report in the American Spectator that two recent cases highlight the problem with the federal government owning vast acreages.

And he says the solution is in the Constitution.

“Most Americans have no clue what our founders said about federal land management. The Constitution’s Property Clause (Article IV, Section 3, Clause 2) gave Congress the power to dispose of property, but does not mention a power to acquire property. However, under the Necessary and Proper Clause (Article I, Section 8, Clause 18), the federal government was given the power to acquire land but only for the purpose of carrying out its enumerated powers. This would include parcels for military uses, post offices, etc.

“Nowhere does the Constitution give the federal government the power to retain acreage for unenumerated purposes such as grazing, mineral development, agriculture, forests, or even national parks. This was wisely left up to the prerogative of the states and the people.”

He noted the issue has arisen before.

Sen. Tom Coburn has come up with the answer to a Washington bureaucracy that doesn’t seem to care about the Constitution, or American people: An Article V convention, which he describes in “Smashing the DC Monopoly: Using Article V to Restore Freedom and Stop Runaway Government.”

“Most Americans have forgotten this, but the shady tactics of federal land management agencies were a big issue in Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign. At the time, the movement of those fighting such abuses was called the ‘Sagebrush Rebellion,’ and this issue propelled tens of thousands of voters to support Reagan’s candidacy. To be honest, though, Reagan was unable to carry out any substantial reforms regarding federal land ownership.

“If Trump wants to go down in history as a president who restored the federal government to its proper limited role, then he should revitalize this forgotten section of the U.S. Constitution and transfer all non-enumerated federal land back to the states. Such action will allow states to control their own destinies, create better managed parks and preserves, and create tens of thousands of new jobs by energizing natural resource industries such as oil, natural gas, mining, and timber.

“This is a perfect issue for him. Be bold, Mr. President, and just do it.”

The two issues that came up recently, he explained, were Trump’s decision to reduce the size of federal land grabs under Bill Clinton and the fight over the Bundy Ranch grazing rights.

“Both events illustrate how the federal government has used its massive land holdings to control the lives of Americans,” he said.

At this point, the federal bureaucracy has acquired some 640 million acres of the nation, about one-third.

“The majority of land in Nevada, Alaska, Utah, Oregon and Idaho is owned by the feds. In Arizona, California, Wyoming, New Mexico and Colorado, federal ownership exceeds a third. Indeed, if all 11 Western states were combined into one territory, the feds would own nearly 50 percent of it,” he wrote.

The Utah land fight saw Trump knock down the size of the lands demanded under Clinton and Barack Obama from 3.2 million acres to about 1.2 million.

“Not surprisingly, the left went ballistic, but the truth is Trump is the one acting in accord with the Constitution and in the best interest of the people of Utah, and even the environment,” he pointed out.

“Both of these land grabs were initiated with little or no input from Utah’s civic, political, and business leaders. And, of course, as with most Democrat ‘environmental’ initiatives, cronyism and corruption are evident. For example, Bill Clinton’s Utah land grab — the ‘Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument’ — placed off-limits all energy development, including the world’s largest known deposit of clean burning coal. Not coincidentally, this proviso also quietly benefited the owners of the world’s second-largest deposit of clean burning coal: the Lippo group, owned by the Indonesia-based Riady family and, of course, large donors to the Clinton Foundation (and huge Clinton donors going back decades).”

In the Bundy case, in which a federal judge recently dismissed counts and ordered the government not to file more charges because of massive prosecutorial misconduct in the first case, the Bureau of Land Management launched a police-state action against the ranching family over payment of grazing rights fees.

The family argued the land belonged to the state and the feds had no right to charge fees.

Baldwin’s report explained how former BLM Special Agent and whistleblower Larry Wooten pulled back the curtain on the government’s nefarious activities.

Wooten wrote, “the investigation revealed a widespread pattern of bad judgment, lack of discipline, incredible bias, unprofessionalism and misconduct, as well as likely policy, ethical, and legal violations among senior and supervisory staff at the BLM’s office of Law Enforcement and Security.”

For example, Wooten explained, the BLM posted photos of the Bundy family with x’s on their faces “as if they were to be eliminated.”

His report includes statements attributed to officials such as “Go out there and kick Cliven Bundy in the mouth (or teeth) and take his cattle.”

Other comments by the government included, “rednecks,” “retards” and “douche bags,” the report said.

Baldwin explained that there certainly were nefarious components to the Bundy ranch fight.

“Reports … indicated that former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had teamed up with Chinese billionaire Wang Yusuo in an effort to create a massive 9,000-acre solar energy farm on the same federal land apparently used by Bundy to graze cattle. And Yusuo’s company, the ENN Group, contributed over $40,000 to Reid over the course of three election cycles. One BLM document makes clear that Bundy’s cattle grazing negatively impacted potential solar farm development on this land,” he explained.

When that plan fell apart, Reid began working on another project “which, again, targets the area Bundy’s cattle grazes on.”

According to Courtwatcherblog, “Harry Reid’s interests are clear. He doesn’t care about public lands, but what he stands to profit off of their sale, no matter if it’s sold to China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, or even South Africa… the facts show Harry Reid’s interests in the Bundy men being in jail, make it a lot easier to grab their land…”

Baldwin said returning land to the states would restore the constitutional standard, and would energize the economies of many states.

Baldwin explains that it was during federal convention debates in 1787 that Elbridge Gerry, later vice president, issued a warning. He said federal ownership of land “might be made use of to enslave any particular state by buying up its territory, and that the strongholds proposed would be a means of awing the state into an undue obedience.”

WILL TECHNOLOGY KILL US?

https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/01/13/will-technology-kill-us/

The Digital Revolution along with nuclear weapons and artificial intelligence are examples of technology that can result in human extermination. The reports below from the London Telegraph illustrate how technology has become the Black Plague of today.

 Note: The solar storm of  of 1859 named the “Carrington Event”  only affected   the telegraph  system. Imagine what would happen if such a solar blast occurred today. — RH   

Telegraph
The truth about Hard Sun’s solar apocalypse: just how scared should we be? 

By Tristram Fane Saunders 

You might not have noticed it, but two years ago an event took place which might just have brought about the collapse of modern civilization.
In July 2012, an enormous flare burst from the far side of the sun. Had it happened just one week earlier, it would have been pointing directly towards the Earth, causing the worst geomagnetic storm in over 400 years.
As Reuters reported at the time, the resulting magnetic disruption could have “fried the world’s electricity grids and left hundreds of millions of customers without power for months or even years”.
Next time, we might not be so lucky. A new BBC series, Hard Sun, imagines a similar solar phenomenon. Two London coppers (played by Jim Sturgess and Agyness Deyn) stumble across a USB drive containing a secret digital dossier, counting down towards an “extinction level event” in five years time.
In early episodes, there is some doubt about the cause – “Did it refer to a meteor, or a comet?” one character asks – but it doesn’t take Scotland Yard’s finest to figure out the truth: the drama begins with the sight of giant flares leaping from the surface of the sun.

“This isn’t science fiction. This is the real world,” the show’s writer Neil Cross has said. But how plausible is it? Should we be concerned? And for those of us who dozed off in science at school, what exactly is a geomagnetic storm anyway?
“The surface of the Sun is an incredibly dynamic place,” says astrophysicist Dr Katie Mack. In an active phase, it can release bursts of plasma and radiation into space. If directed towards the earth, these eruptions (known as Coronal Mass Ejections, or CMEs), can disrupt the Earth’s magnetic fields in what we call a geomagnetic storm. It’s a CME that we see in the opening moments of Hard Sun’s first episode.
“It can be hugely disruptive if it’s very strong,” Dr Mack explains. “Sudden variations in the electromagnetic field can cause sparks to pass between electronic components, shorting out circuits. The biggest dangers would be to satellites (including the GPS system) and to the power grid on Earth.”
The closest we have come to this kind of storm was the Carrington Event of 1859, named after the British astronomer Richard Carrington, who discovered a link between the “two patches of intensely bright and white light” he noticed erupting from sunspots just before the event, and the strange phenomena that followed. During this major geomagnetic storm, the Northern Lights were visible as far south as Honolulu, while eerie illuminations made the night almost as bright as the day.

One contemporary newspaper quoted a woman from Sullivan’s Island, South Carolina, who was dazzled by what she saw. “The whole island was illuminated,” she said. “The sea reflected the phenomenon, and no one could look at it without thinking of the passage in the Bible which says, ‘the sea was turned to blood.’ The shells on the beach, reflecting light, resembled coals of fire.”
For anyone working on the fledgling electrical telegraph system, the effects were far stranger. Sparks leapt from the machines, shocking the operators and setting fire to highly flammable telegraph paper. The surge of energy running through the wires was strong enough to melt the instruments’ platinum contacts.
While many telegraph communications stopped dead, a few operators in Boston found that their transmitters still worked even with the batteries unplugged, and that they were able to send telegraph messages using only the current from the aurora.
Today, with electricity and satellite communications playing an essential part in our daily lives, the effects would be far more serious.
A CME of that kind would not only knock out power generators, but also telecommunication towers. With no radio or TV news, and mobile phone networks dead, the sudden and unexplained black-out could easily lead to a mass panic and rioting. Worse still would be the potential failure of the all-important electric cooling systems at nuclear power plants; the result could be a disaster on the scale of the 2012 Fukushima incident.

A report published in 2013, following the previous year’s major CME, warned that “our society would still be picking up the pieces.” One of the report’s authors, Dr Daniel Baker of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics, has suggested that it could take up to 10 years to fully recover from such an incident.
To make matters worse, in real life – unlike in Hard Sun – we wouldn’t have five years to prepare for it. At best, our advance notice would be closer to a single day. “We get 19 hours or more for a coronal mass ejection, but we don’t know whether or not it will hit Earth, or what the conditions may be,” Plasma physicist Dr Melanie Windridge told the Mail in November. “Fifteen minutes warning is all we have to tell us about the specific conditions of what will hit us and how problematic it could be.”

The chance of another enormous solar flare erupting in the next decade has been estimated at just one in eight. Of course, the chance of it being directed at Earth is much smaller, and there are steps we can take to prepare for such an event. In the US, the Department of Energy is working on a “strategic transformer reserve” – a system for providing power stations with back-up transformers to quickly replace any that might be knocked out by a geomagnetic storm.
Other possible safety measures include using capacitor banks to absorb excess energy, or constructing Faraday cages around irreplaceable pieces of equipment to block out electro-magnetic radiation. Even so, safeguarding the entire grid in this way could cost up to $30 billion.
But without these safeguards, would we really be looking at the kind of catastrophe imagined in Hard Sun? In the BBC One series, when detectives Renko and Hicks access the secret USB drive, a number of frightening and unintentionally ridiculous phrases flash up on screen: “magnetic disruption”; “homicide rates”; “body bag demand” (is the bag shortage itself really that much of a concern?); and more seriously, “crop failure”.

This nightmarish scenario, Dr Mack tells me, is a bit far-fetched. “I really doubt it could harm surface agriculture,” she says. “For something like that, you’d need something strong enough to seriously damage the magnetic field or atmosphere, and I don’t see how a CME from the Sun could be that powerful. It would be a short-term disruption and would mess with electromagnetic fields for a bit but it wouldn’t strip the Earth’s protection completely. Screwing with the power grid could harm a heck of a lot of things, but the CME itself isn’t going to kill all our plants.”
So, it’s not the end of the world after all? “We’re not doomed,” Dr Mack tells me, patiently. “There are procedures in place to try to shore up the power grid. Losing GPS and other satellite communications (and possibly cell phone communication) would be a huge mess but we’d recover.”
But what about all those BBC One viewers who have been left cowering behind the sofa? “We’re still learning a lot about the Sun. For example, the upcoming Parker Solar Probe will get up close and personal with the solar corona, hopefully solving some of the abiding mysteries and helping us make better predictions,” says Dr Mack. “If you’re worried, encourage more investment in space science!”

Note: If any other machine in history had been as unreliable as digital technology no one would have given it houseroom. It is only because we have allowed ourselves to become  dangerously dependent on the technology that it is tolerated. — RH 

Telegraph
Meltdown bug: Microsoft halts security updates after PC owners report ‘blue screen of death’

 Margi Murphy
9 JANUARY 2018 • 2:40PM

Microsoft was forced to abruptly suspend security fixes for Meltdown and Spectre flaws over fears they might render millions of devices nothing more than expensive bricks.
Customers who have received the latest security update claimed they were met with “blue screen errors”, the so-called “blue screen of death”, or frozen screens on Windows 10, Windows 8.1 and Windows 7, Microsoft said in a blog post.
The technology company is working to send updates to billions of devices running Windows operating systems and are currently vulnerable to hacking thanks to a hardware flaw.
Last week it emerged that the security hole, which has existed in Intel, AMD and ARM chips for up to twenty years, could be leaking confidential information including passwords, files and photos from a range of devices including iPhones, iPads, Android smartphones and PCs. Apple and Google are also sending out security updates to affected products.
But in the latest twist for the Meltdown debacle, Microsoft’s hopes that remote software updates would solve the problem has been thwarted, as devices running AMD chips are not reacting as expected. Customers have also reported issues loading the start menu or task bar after installing the updates. 

“To prevent AMD customers from getting into an unbootable state, Microsoft will temporarily pause sending the following Windows operating system updates to devices with impacted AMD processors at this time,” a Microsoft spokesman said in a statement.

The microchip bugs, which affect almost every computer processor in the world, were disclosed in an article by the Register.  However, Intel had been made aware of the flaws – named Meltdown and Spectre – in June 2017 by Google researchers.
Since the announcement, it was feared that opportunistic criminals would seize the chance to exploit this flaw to steal passwords for online services, or personal and confidential files. Companies are working around the clock to create a software “workaround” to patch the holes. The alternative – something which was quickly rejected by technology companies – would be to recall millions of pieces of hardware.
Intel’s chief executive broke his silence on the matter on Monday evening during his keynote speech at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, claiming that 90 per cent of devices should be secured “within a week”.
Computing giant IBM also appeared to fall victim to the bug this week, with workers reportedly being told to stop updating their systems as new security fixes were playing havoc with antivirus protection already put in place.
Telegraph
Millions of computers using Intel chips prone to hacking – and fix ‘slows machines by 30 per cent.’

Software giants Microsoft and Amazon scramble to issue fix for Intel flaw, sacrificing computer performance in the meantime 

 Margi Murphy
3 JANUARY 2018 • 11:45AM

Millions of computers using Intel chips are prone to hacking because of a flaw that went unnoticed for a decade, it has emerged.
Software giants are currently working on a fix for the flaw but industry experts have warned it could potentially slow down all devices running the chips by up to 30 per cent.
The flaw could allow hackers a “persistent and undetectable backdoor into someone’s computer”, Mike Godfrey, cyber expert at Insinia Security told the Telegraph.
The flaw grants access to a computer’s kernel, which runs and stores every function on the device, and means an outsider could potentially bypass antivirus or firewall security software without the owner knowing. It could allow malicious software to steal passwords and sensitive files or crystallographic keys, necessary for keeping us safe online.
The National Cyber Security Centre, an arm of GCHQ issued a statement on Wednesday afternoon advising individuals to install updates when they became available.  

“We are aware of reports about a potential flaw affecting some computer processors,” a spokesman said.
“At this stage there is no evidence of any malicious exploitation and patches are being produced for the major platforms.”
Intel chips appear in almost all personal computers and other technology. Financial institutions and businesses with large IT infrastructure may have been compromised for several years, Godfrey added. Train systems and autonomous cars also use the chips.   

Intel has reportedly warned software vendors including Microsoft, Amazon and Apple, who are believed to be creating a workaround to fix the flaw. But this fix could make computers 30 per cent slower, according to technology website The Register.
Matthew Hickey, security expert and co-founder at My Hacker House said: “The real problem is for companies trying to support customers on their servers. Hypothetically, if a company once had capacity to support 100,000 users, that number may drop to 70,000.
“It could have real cost implications for businesses that have been using or intend to use cloud technology and Intel servers.”  

The bug has been known by security workers for some time, but is not due to be publicly disclosed until software giants like Amazon and Microsoft have issued a patch, so that the details cannot be exploited by criminals. Fixes are expected to be released in the next week.
Intel itself is unable to fix the flaw, so guarding against it requires a software update that will slow computers by between 5 per cent and 30 per cent, or to fix the processors completely.
Hundreds of millions of devices could be affected, including those still on the production lines.
Mr Hickey added: “The real problems are for companies who are trying to get the best performance out of servers to support so many users. They may find that they had the capacity to support 100,000 users on their software, but that number could drop to 70,000. It could have real cost implications for business.”

It is unclear whether anyone has been hacked thanks to this flaw, but penetration tester at Insinia Security, Matthew Carr, told the Telegraph that it was not inconceivable that a vulnerability that has existed for ten years had already been exploited by nation states, criminal gangs or expert level hackers.
Chip rival AMD shares soared 7.2 per cent after the disclosure on Wednesday, while Intel dropped to a low of 3.8 per cent.
Intel have yet to comment on the matter. Microsoft had nothing to share and Google, Amazon and Apple are yet to comment.

THE EXPLODING STAR OF SOCIAL SECURITY

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-01-09/social-security-proposes-immediate-and-permanent-reduction-benefits

 

Consider the exploding star of Social Security, one of the largest and most important pension programs in the world.

Literally tens of millions of people depend on it.

The Social Security Administration itself reports that 62% of recipients rely on the program for at least HALF of their income.

And further research by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) shows that, without Social Security, 22.1 million Americans would fall below the poverty line.

Needless to say, major cuts to the program would have nuclear effects.

And yet, year after year, the Social Security Board of Trustees publishes an annual report that describes the program’s terminal financial challenges in excruciating detail.

They mince no words in plainly stating that Social Security pays out far too much money, and takes in far too little.

According to the 2017 Trustees report, “Trust Fund reserves become depleted in 2035.”

They’re practically giving us a date that we can circle on a calendar and mark “End of Social Security.”

The Trustees go on to lightly propose solutions, including an “immediate and permanent reduction” in benefits to all current and future Social Security recipients.”

And in case you’re wondering who these whack-job Trustees are, they include the Treasury Secretary of the United States, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, and the Secretary of Labor.

These aren’t just random people.

We’re talking about politicians at the highest levels of government who are telling us that Social Security is running out of money… and calling for an immediate and permanent cut in benefits.

Given the tens of millions of people who depend on the program, the consequences of either scenario would be catastrophic.

Sadly, this is not a new problem. The Trustees have been screaming for years that Social Security’s finances are unsustainable.

Yet year after year, the problem was ignored… which brings the end-game one year closer, and the ultimate solution that much more painful.

That’s what makes Social Security a gigantic supernova.

The star exploded years ago. But it will take until 2035 for everyone to realize it… though frankly it could be sooner than that.

People are living longer than ever before– the average life expectancy in the US is a full EIGHTEEN YEARS longer than it was when Social Security was conceived back in the 1930s.

This means that Social Security will have to pay out more money to more recipients for much longer than they’ve ever had to pay before.

This will be an enormous cost to the program.

Simultaneously, despite all the celebration of the low unemployment rate in the US, the Labor Force Participation Rate is still near a multi-decade low.

This means that there are fewer people in the work force who are actually paying in to the Social Security System.

According to its own projections, Social Security requires 3 employed workers to support one retiree.

And they watch this worker-to-beneficiary ratio very closely.

In 2010 it dipped below 3 for the first time, and in 2013 hit 2.8. The Trustees’ projections show it will continue to fall, to as low as 2.2.

So if you look at the big picture, a growing number of beneficiaries is being supported by a declining number of workers.

This isn’t rocket science– it’s pretty obvious what’s going to happen.

Yet the collective response is to simply ignore the problem… or outright refuse to believe it, as if this is some crazy conspiracy theory.

This isn’t a theory.

It’s simple arithmetic based on government data, backed by the same conclusions reached by the Treasury Secretary of the United States.

 

Now, the bad news is that none of us can actually fix Social Security.

And we sure as heck can’t convince someone to prepare for a problem that they refuse to acknowledge.

But we can easily do something about it ourselves.

After all, this is one of those MAJOR problems we’ve been talking about– and one that can easily be avoided.

The good news is that many of the solutions haven’t changed with the new tax law.

You can still establish, for example, certain self-directed IRA structures or a solo 401(k).

These structures not only dramatically increase your contribution limits (to more than $50,000 annually), but also vastly expand the universe of investment options– real estate, cryptocurrency, private equity, etc.

So ultimately you could save more, and earn more, for your retirement.

The Social Security star has already exploded. But it will take the light another 15+ years to reach us.

That’s plenty of time to prepare for anyone with the right education and the will to act.

In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act

CONTACT YOUR CONGRESS PEOPLE AND TELL THEM THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE AND TO DEPORT THESE SO CALLED REFUGEES AND ILLEGALS AND QUIT GIVING THEM THE $$$ WE WHO WORKED ALL OUR LIVES PAID IN.

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Olddogs Comments!

The corporate United States Government has stolen Billions of dollars by selling our trade name and also false life insurance claims, so how about you high flying researchers finding a way for us peons to claim a refund on their illegal profiteering, and we can then process our documents to reclaim our trade names. As it stands now people who want to be free civilians instead of corporate citizens will lose our social security.

What Do They Want In The End?

https://newswithviews.com/what-do-they-want-in-the-end/

 

Read More Articles by Lee Duigon

What would America be like, if the Far Left got everything they say they want?

Thanks to America’s bloated, over-funded “higher education” system, we are able to get a few glimpses into that chamber of horrors. As a class, America’s college professors are all on board the wacko express. They try hard to “teach” their students to be as out-to-lunch as they are.

As part of a recent “Social Justice Lecture Series”—students got extra credit for sitting through these sessions—a Diablo Valley College political science professor exhorted students to “violate the laws” and “abolish white democracy”. Your tuition dollars at work!

According to the prof, “We exist in a white supremacist, patriarchal, hetero-normative, capitalist system,” and it’s just got to be fundamentally transformed into… well, what?

There must be several dozen genuine white supremacists in America, who never had it so good. Not so long ago, they were a handful of ineffectual nobodies. Now they’re the boogie man. Our colleges have painted them out to be several hundred times more important than they are.

Okay, Far Left America won’t have any role for white people anymore. Except maybe to keep on paying taxes and cheerfully taking the blame for anything that’s wrong in anybody elses life.

Gotta get rid of that patriarchy, too—whatever it is. The only thing worse than a man is a white man.

But that hetero-normativity stuff, that’s infinitely worse! The only thing worse than a white man is a non-gay white man. I’m not sure what the leftids want to do about hetero-normativity. Make homosexuality compulsory? Bob Hope was only joking, when he mentioned it some fifty years ago. But the Left is not known for its sense of humor.

And of course capitalism has got to go. It causes Income Inequality. It causes Global Warming. It causes people to have jobs they don’t like—something that never happens under communism. That it also provides thousands of brainless university professors with a damned nice living doesn’t seem to inspire any gratitude.

“Democracy” will be out, too. White people ruined it. Maybe they could set up a really inclusive form of democracy that excludes white people. That might work.

To bring about these utopian conditions, says the prof, college students have to get into the habit of violating the law. A few killjoys have pointed out that the professor never said which laws ought to be violated. Did he leave that out simply because his whole schtick is half-baked, muddle-headed, and incoherent? Or did he mean to suggest that all laws should be violated? Because he refuses to be interviewed, it’s hard to guess what he really meant. Possibly he doesn’t know.

Still, a society with no written laws ought to appeal to leftids. If you don’t have a criminal code on the books where anyone can read it, then any act, or any failure to act, is potentially a crime and may be punished as such. This is great for keeping the deplorables in line. If you never know when they’re going to drag you off to jail for something you never knew was against the law, or for not doing something that they say you should have done—hey, it worked for the Soviet Union, didn’t it? They just love to hear someone crying “What did I do? What did I do?” as he’s being propped up for the firing squad or sentenced to a stint of Sensitivity Training. It’s what made Mao Tse-tung’s Red Guards tick.

So violate all the laws until there is no law except for whatever the Party says happens to be the law on any given day. Keep everybody guessing.

It would be interesting to ask the parents of these students what they think they’re getting for their money. We could also ask whether this kind of “education” does our country any good; but I think we already know the answer.

I have discussed these and other topics throughout the week on my blog, http://leeduigon.com . Stop in and visit. A single click will take you there.

© 2018 Lee Duigon – All Rights Reserved

E-Mail Lee Duigon: leeduigon@verizon.net

Lee Duigon, a contributing editor with the Chalcedon Foundation, is a former newspaper reporter and editor, small businessman, teacher, and horror novelist. He has been married to his wife, Patricia, for 34 years. See his new fantasy/adventure novels, Bell Mountain and The Cellar Beneath the Cellar, available on http://www.amazon.com Website: LeeDuigon.com E-Mail: leeduigon@verizon.net

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Olddogs Comments!

Sarcasm Extraordinaire!

Good Job Lee!