Tag Archives: Federal Government

‘Conspiracy to commit riot in furtherance of terrorism’?

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pig cartoonAttorneys for Minnesota Nine call criminal charges ‘outrageous’ and YES they are. The real conspiracy is to extend the US government’s unconstitutional lack of legal norms given to tortured US-held POWs in places like Guantanamo to US citizens in places like Minnesota.

The conspiracy is to use the US legal system now held hostage in the hands of international war criminals lodged in DC, and to us it against ordinary Americans that might actually exercise their rights to Free Speech. The real conspiracy is to defend the undemocratic lock that 2 corporate controlled political parties have on our electoral rights in this country by jailing protesters in illegal manner.

Demand that they drop these criminal charges against these defendants now, and urge that the media begin to cover what’s going on in our country now! They are covering up these criminal actions by government policing agencies with a thick screen of silence. Defend your own freedoms (what’s left of them) NOW!

Wrong place, wrong time, wrong lessons from the RNC This columnist writes for a conservative mainstream daily and had to tone it down quite a bit. Still his writing gives a glimpse of the type of police state mentality that the biggest metropolitan area in Minnesota was put through by the federal government.

Shameful that the local politicians actually were too scared and complicit to object, and instead condoned it largely and covered it up. We have the same type of people in city government right here in Colorado Springs.

GOP turned the federal government into little more than a feedbag for filthy-rich

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Evolution is not our friend. One of the results of natural selection is that people too stupid to stop having babies have out reproduced the rest of us, and terminal stupidity is now the norm rather than the exception. Witness the Republican Party. Their base is composed of all the people who couldn’t think for themselves if their lives depended on it. And they do. But we’re all gonna’ die if the GOP isn’t stopped.

Republicans are such predictable liars. Sarah Palin claims she opposed Sen. Ted Steven’s “Bridge to Nowhere,” but actually she was its most vocal supporter.

McCain ad lies about Palin support of the “bridge to nowhere.”

McCain is only against bailouts when they help the poor and middle class, but when they help the rich, lookout!

Will the Dominionists assassinate McCain to make Palin president?

“Hi, I’m John McCain, and I’m voting for Barack Obama.”

Guess who’s moving to Colorado Springs, the City of Hate?

Party like it’s September 11th. Doomsday Machine finally ready.

The Republicans know they can lie about the Dems all they want, because the Dems are such pussies, they’ll never fight back.

Excerpts from Thomas McCullock’s notes Sept 8, thomasmc.com.

Democratic Mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, is one sorry ass mother

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Ray Nagin and Dubya BushRay Nagin is a typical sorry ass Democratic Party hack. Like all of these mothers, Ray likes to help out the Republicans both rhetorically and concretely. When the Republicans wanted to ethnically clean the City of New Orleans by tearing down and not rebuilding public housing, they had a a friend in Ray. And what will stand out about the Hurricane Gustav that never really fully materialized, will be Ray’s waving the rhetorical shotgun against supposed future ‘looters’. Commentator David Zirin at Znet summed up Nagin’s threats against ‘looters’ below…

‘New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin said over the weekend, “Anybody who’s caught looting in the city of New Orleans will go directly to Angola [Louisiana State Penitentiary]. You will not have a temporary stay in the city. You go directly to the big house, in general population.”

Considering that many of the so called looters after Katrina, were fighting for their lives, and considering that the media had color-coded looters, with white residents classified as heroes, the implications of Nagin’s dictate is chilling. It’s horrifying to think that they could be laying their head in the former slave plantation known as Angola.’

His full commentary, Gustav & the Dome, give a good view of how the Republican US federal government is playing with the people of New Orleans, with Democratic Party Mayor Ray Nagin fully on board assisting with their crimes of neglect, corruption, and overt racism.

Might we ask ourselves, too, isn’t Ray Nagin exactly how an elected Barack Obama most likely would become? Ray Nagin seems like the perfect Democratic Party model for such a politician like Obama. None of Obama’s foreign policy plans seem to be a threat in the least to the now current Republican Party agenda. And Ray Nagin has not been a threat to their New Orleans agenda either.

When Nagin made his threats against his imaginary ‘looters’, he had just rushed back into the city from the Democratic Party Convention in Denver. It’s all photo op for these guys any way, and he was needed to show ‘unity’ with the Republicans in New Orleans more than grandstanding with Biden and Obama at the convention.

One wonders, what will it take for our country to get fed up with the likes of these guys? They come as a team, and as a team they must finally be thrown out for anything to ever change.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are now married to you!

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fannie.jpg Inflation went up by 9.2% over the last year, which makes it the worst 12 months of inflation since 1981. But not to worry, the Federal government has married you to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, 2 sick cousins from the Appalachian Mountains. You are now part of a triage, and ain’t that sexy? You have been made into trailer trash!

Yes, you have gotten kicked in the fannie by Uncle Sam, friend of Freddie, but not you. You’re bailing the couple out with your money! Don’t you just love it, too? Would Freddie and Fannie have helped you out? What about that asshole uncle, Sam?

Good luck, since you’re certainly going to need it. Strangely enough, 75% of Americans actually think the economy will get better in a few years. Are you that stupid? Well if not, 3 out of 4 of your neighbors sure are! They’re as irresponsible and out of it as Fannie and Freddie.

Now, let me tell you about Cousin John… He may be coming soon to stay around your house for at least 4 years? If not, Cousin Barack wants to give you a vacation in Afghanistan. He’s got a plan, too, for a big change. What more could we ask for?

American government and business refuse to take any measures to conserve energy

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All American businesses are trying to pose themselves as being respecters of the environment, energy efficient, and Green, and so is the Federal Government and Pentagon, too. However, even a cursory examination of policies by these organizations show that American government and businesses, at all levels, simply refuse to take any major measures to reduce energy consumption by our country.

Big Business controls government in our country, which can scarcely be considered a democracy due to this business control. We are a corporate plutocracy instead. So, at this time, it is really in corporate hands to control major government policy regarding energy use. What are the needed measures in this country to reduce energy use? These measures are never mentioned or talked about, simply because Big Business and corporate Big government do not want to implement them.

To reduce energy use in the future, government would have to take major steps to change previous and current urban planning and transportation policies. A federal zoning policy would have to be instituted that would make it impossible to stretch out construction of our cities over huge expanses of land as they are stretched out now. Also, measures would have to be taken to push back our overly extended cities into more manageable arenas of human activity. As we can see, corporate government has no plans to do any of this, even though doing it is necessary to reduce energy use.

Too much energy is used in getting people to work, and allowing them to try to escape our ugly cities. Many of our cities are quite frankly pure hell to live in. There is little escape from noise pollution, few clean public spaces of any real beauty, and a boring monotony in our public space. Our cities are making people ill, and most try to escape the cities as much as they can afford. That uses up a lot of fuel.

Simply investing in a really functioning public transit around our country would take a tremendous federal commitment to change the energy inefficient system of public transport we are presently saddled with. There currently are ZERO signs that any of big business and government agencies at almost all levels see any need to change their behaviors, and hence ours. There is nothing on the books other than continuing to fund huge amounts of pavement stretching into infinity.

This is not the time (nor do I have the time now) to discuss the many ways that energy policy must be redirected. Simply enough to just say that American government and Big Business, contrary to how they project themselves in their propaganda, are not interested in taking any measures to conserve energy use in a real manner. They are lying to us when thy talk about being Green. They are ignoring our needs, and are destroying the word for future generations all because they simply want to keep making money in the same old manners they have grown accustomed to. To reduce energy use, our cities must be made into livable places, which most are not.

A vaccine for PTSD.

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There is a natural (perhaps “unnatural”) Immunity Factor to counter Post Traumatic Stress Disorder…

It’s called “sociopathy” and its evil twin “narcissism”.

I know, some people will only accept the opinion of Army scientists on what causes or prevents the disease, so I’ll use a paraphrase of their definitions.

It started to be a really really noticeable problem at the time of our Civil War and the Crimean War(s)…

A time when large standing armies of conscripts were suddenly the norm rather than an aberration.

A time of weapons technologies wherein somebody you could not see or hear, somebody perhaps miles away, could kill you, or your comrades, large numbers of you at a time.

But the truly extraordinary stress, wasn’t from the sudden spurts of violence, not directly, at least.

It was the vastly longer times Between barrages, between battles…

The disruption of you natural Circadian rhythms, sleep patterns and waking patterns, the “attack at dawn” because Dawn is the point at which all living creatures, from the lowest proto-bacterium to the Great Apes, and Humans, are at their lowest level of energy.

So you had to be awake, and aware, by dawn. Guards have to be maintained at all hours… thus intermittent episodes of sleep deprivation. And that not on a regular basis.

The randomness of that is also a factor.

Then there’s the acts of pure murder. You can train yourself to ignore your conscience, or be trained en masse to ignore your collective conscience… to supress the certain knowledge that you are doing something totally against your basic humanity…

But the Basic Training itself, aka Indoctrination, aka Pavlovian Conditioning, aka Brainwashing, is designed not to strenghten your resolve, or your ability to think logically… but to break those barriers, those mental and spiritual bits of armor provided by God, that keep most people from committing outrageous crimes.

You can, if your indoctrination is constantly reinforced, maintain that level of denial… but only for as long as your indoctrination is reinforced.

Once you are separated from your army, or from your cult, or whatever group is brainwashing you, the denial becomes harder and harder to maintain.

False “patriotism”, or devotion to whatever OTHER similar lower-case “g” god you’ve been trained to worship, and a simple fear of admitting, mostly to yourself or your comrades, that you have done wrong, is a very powerful reason to keep it sublimated, to bottle it and suppress it.

Alcohol and other drugs are one really commonly used method.

Perhaps it’s the reason members of the military are actually Encouraged to drink. Somebody who’s a total drunkard might be punished or looked down upon, but so are tee-totallers.

People who abstain from social drinking are actually looked upon as having antisocial tendencies, or at least, not being as suggestible, “not a team player”.

So, what would be a good, non-destructive vaccine, a good prevention for PTSD?

not maintaining a Standing Army for one.

It might sound kind of idealistic, like what would then prevent some foreign power from invading and enslaving America…

Well, for one thing, we haven’t been invaded since 1814. And then it was one of the Superpowers of its time, Great Britain. And they couldn’t maintain their other, bigger wars and still attempt to occupy even those small patches of American ground that they DID gain.

Too much drain on their manpower, materiel and other resources, especially money.

Much like our Federal Government spending DEFICIT after 7 years of Bush is now 5 times (approximately) the Government Budget for the entire 4 years of the “tax and spend liberal” Carter Administration. Add in, (or subtract) an equal amount which was the Projected SURPLUS for 2007, made in 2001 when Bush took office.

That might sound like phantom accounting, unless you realize that the “Liberation” was projected to actually make a profit.

Just not for, you know, the average American or the average “Liberated” Iraqi.

And this is from the economy that the Capitalist Masters say is “The Strongest on earth”.

Israel, one of our proxy states, could not maintain an occupation in Lebanon even with massive American money aid. They can’t maintain an occupation of the West Bank, populated with the poorest Arab nation there is, where their most advanced military technology is a reworked Russian rocket-propelled grenade… without massive American financing.

If we had simply left “goddam insane” alone in 1991, the other Arab nations, and the simple economics, would have ended the invasion.

We’re a rich nation, how would the poorest nations maintain it? Historically, they’ve done it the way Hussein maintained his battle with Iran… with massive amounts of money.

Donated money.

So it’s do-able. People who point out that it’s never worked before fail to recall the other side of that equation, it’s never been tried before.

The same people who say we need to pour (literally) countless trillions of dollars into occupying the Arabian Peninsula for the rest of our national existence, were the same ones who cut the funding for every actual Peace initiative whenever a snag was hit in the progress thereof.

That’s the REAL “surrender mentality”.

The notion that peace would be very difficult to achieve, therefore we shouldn’t even try, and just surrender to Endless War and the Dictatorship necessary to maintain it.

And the economic degradation. And the inescapable fact that our children or grandchildren or hell, maybe even our very own generation, would be occupied by a foreign power when the Empire falls.

And then there’s the medical costs, not least the cost of PTSD.

Even if somebody doesn’t have full-blown psychoses as a result of PTSD, it degrades the physical health, medical problems like Diabetes, Heart, lung, kidney diseases, even arthritis, become more common. The human immune system is suppressed by PTSD.

That’s the most common symptom of it, actually, according to the Army. The most expensive.

We have one candidate for president, has said that he WILL cut “social spending”, like public health, VETERANS health care, etc etc etc.. to fund his Masters (Satans) Endless War.

We need to innocculate the entire American public against PTSD, with the knowledge that war is NOT a “necessary evil”. With the knowledge of WHY it can be ended and HOW it can be ended.

It beats living Hell out of the alternative possibilities probabilities.

ACLU opposes the illegal government group punishment of Eldorado parents

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“While we acknowledge that Judge Walthers’ task may be unprecedented in Texas judicial history, we question whether the current proceedings adequately protect the fundamental rights of the mothers and children of the FLDS,” said Terri Burke, executive director of the ACLU of Texas, in a statement.

While the ACLU “deplores” crimes against children, Burke said that “constitutional rights that all Americans rely upon and cherish – that we are secure in our homes, that we may worship as we please and hold our places of worship sacred, and that we may be with our children absent evidence of imminent danger – have been threatened” by the state’s actions.

Lisa Graybill, legal director for the ACLU of Texas, said officials may have violated the U.S. Constitution and state laws in how they conducted the raid and the subsequent custody hearing.

“The government must ensure that each mother and each child in its custody receives due process of law in determining the placement of the children and other matters regarding the children’s care,” she said in the statement.

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And still there are no criminal charges brought against any of the parents for supposedly abusing their children as the press has alleged for almost 2 weeks now! Shame on the State of Texas and US Federal Government.

We Americans are innocent until proven guilty no more it certainly seems…

Texas State Government witch hunt and theft of Eldorado children goes on trial

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The Texas State Government theft of 416 children went on trial today, with 350 lawyers for the kids and their parents, packed into 2 buildings trying to defend against this total abuse of governmental powers. This is just the beginning of this newest government inspired legal nightmare, which certainly matches the legal nightmare of having to defend the federal government use of torture on the POWs at Guantanamo in the courts, too. The Bush Administration really knows its law NOT. They simply think that what they say always goes down, but this time they are going way too far.

Despite the fact that so many in this country think the parents totally guilty of organized pedophilia just by way of being in this Mormon cult, the government has hardly made any case that would justify what it did in seizing these vulnerable children away from their equally vulnerable parents. This old style Mormon cult does believe in polygamy, but that is hardly the same as automatically believing and participating in pedophilia and the sexual abuse of children, despite media attempts to connect the two into being somehow one and same thing.

How far can the government and its Right Wing Christian religious supporters go in abusing children, prisoners, and any folk that seemingly get in their way? They claim to be big supporters of families, yet they cannot even provide the children of this nation with medical care, despite spending trillions of dollars in murdering people in other lands, and occupying their countries. And yet, the type of government they support is out there claiming to be protecting these children from their families?

How far can the liberal Democrats go in turning their backs on these poor parents of this pathetic religious cult and the poor kids being abused by the Texas State government? Supporting abuse of governmental power is not defending children against pedophilia at all. Short cutting normal legal measures that guarantee rights to children by attacking parental rights is not protecting vulnerable children, but abusing them. The State of Texas has yet to prove that even one single case of sexual abuse of a minor actually took place at this Eldorado ranch, and it is more than a week after they initiated their raid!

The government is simply using the media to try and convict these parents and has little to no evidence of any crimes having taken place. It is all government hear say, and no hard evidence. If the Mormon cultists can have their legal rights shredded in this manner, next it might be you. It’s time to wake up about what a monster your government has been turned into. They are the guardians and protectors of very little these days, and it is just stupid to automatically side with what ‘the authorities’ are doing, even if you have no great love for their victims.

Police state runs amok in Eldorado Texas

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Residences for families of breakaway Mormon sectLet’s face it, Republican US President, George W. Bush, and Republican Texas State Governor, Rick Perry, are simply in total cahoots in coordinating the incredible police state witch hunt going on in Eldorado, Texas. The US police state is running amok and this is a test case for how much the government can get away with in denying US citizens their constitutional rights.

And where are the damn Democrats? I thought that these great leaders were grand protectors of civil rights? Is everybody just going to remain totally silent and complicit with this government child abuse and disregard of all citizen rights? Right now, it certainly appears so, doesn’t it? This is a test case, and the report card for all so far, is FFF. Make that F- PLUS.

The number of kids removed from the Eldorado, Texas religious compound is now over 400, with 133 women taken away, too, as if they were mere children. This is the federal police state and their local henchmen posing themselves as grand and noble knights on white horses, saving the maidens and the children from bad men folk, we are all to suppose? Not hardly. And yet, nobody has been charged with any real crime! Talk about going fishing Texas sized. This is Dick Cheney out fishing! Feel that hook in America’s heart?

What is to be established here? That the federal government and/ or local and state governments can treat ordinary US citizens as if they were Afghan civilians in a war zone? Bombs away? What happened to due process of civilian law? We are now all presumed guilty until; we are proven innocent by government authorities, who meantime can do anything they want with our kids, our families, and everybody? Cooperate, or else! So?

Under normal law in a non-police state, if the police has charges against somebody, they arrest that person and charge them with a crime. They don’t go out and throw the lives of around 600 people into total turmoil, including traumatizing small kids. This America we have now is shameful and disgusting. It takes the complicity and apathy of all of us to allow this charade to continue as it is. Shame on the Democrats for not speaking out! Shame on them! And shame on all of us for simply tolerating the abuse of our fellow citizens by police thugs.

Homophobic violence in Mexico threatens a youth culture sub-group- The Emos

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There is a wave of homophobic violence currently rolling across Mexico against a youth sub-culture group called ‘Emos’, short for ‘Emotionals’. A quick look at youtube.com shows video after video in Spanish threatening these young teenagers with violence, usually for being considered effiminate and weak. You tube should be ashamed to allow this hate material to clog up its network as it is currently allowing.

Several violent attacks have occurred against EMO teenagers across Mexico and the Mexican federal government has had to step in. One gets the idea though that it is more to protect their tourism industry than for any other reason. This government is not known for its promotion of tolerance and multi-culturalism, with the ruling party, the PAN itself, having a long history of homophobic rhetoric employed in its political campaigns.

One notable feature of this wave of homophobic violence in Mexico, was the encouragement by the semi official Mexican TV network, Televisa, in the initial attacks against Emos, but now the realization that this wave of Nazi like behavior might actually hurt Mexico’s international image has braked their zeal for abusing young teenagers. What a cowardly media Mexico has! It reminds one of Fox News right here in the US.

See Mexico’s Emo-Bashing Problem for some reportage in the US of this situation.

April 15 tax protest

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Many people will be protesting April 15th. Will you? Non-compliance is key.
 
Why are we paying income taxes to a thoroughly corrupt and malfeasant federal government? Why are we timid and compliant in the face of, and with the daily evidence of, a well funded predatory fascist military state, protecting the profits and property of the wealthy corporate class, closing in all around us and robbing us of our children’s futures?

Should you stop paying income tax? You decide.

The income tax “law” was based on a fraud of a kind of taxation called un-apportioned direct tax that supposedly became legal through the 16th Amendment to the Constitution. But………the Supreme court ruled since 1914, 3 times no less, that the 16th Amendment conferred no new tax of personal income on the individual and changed no existing taxing power or category, nor added a new category (called un-apportioned direct tax) that didn’t exist before the 16th Amendment. That’s the truth of it. Though tax lawyers and CPAs wail and moan that the 16th amendment is what makes us pay taxes. They are ignorant. They are complicit. They do not know the Supreme court rulings. The extent of the governments taxing powers do not include the un-incorporated individual earner. Your earnings are fruits of your labor, not taxable profits or capital gains.

Don’t believe me?

Here I’ve attached, a brief from a man who has put 9 years of his life into researching the lie and is calling the DOJ, certain Congress members and the IRS out on the rug for this deception. You can use the exact same information of the Supreme Court cases to fight this. And when enough of us do, the IRS and the income tax will go away. On personal income anyway………not corporate earnings.

But don’t fall for a “Fair Tax” (30% sales tax) proposal to replace the lost IRS revenue that some in the tax protest movement are pushing. Very regressive tax as the wealthy will avoid it and buy goods offshore or through tax trusts, shelters etc… and the working and middle classes will foot the bill. (The poor would be exempt from it.) But……. point is, we wouldn’t need to replace the revenue if the Feds collected the money transferred away to shelters and off shore accounts by the wealthy elites/corporations, and cut the Pentagons budget by 75%. Including closing most of the bases around the world. Or nationalized our coal, gas, oil and mineral reserves to become the property of all Americans. Citizens in Alaska receive a monthly dividend from their oil! All gold mined in this country becomes the property of 2 giant corporations when it should be all of ours.

Think the rich corporations are paying more in income tax? Of the income tax money collected, the corporations pay approx. 270 bil. Individuals pay approx. 700 bil. Sure there are a lot more individuals than corporations. But the mass of the individuals are working and middle class paying an illegal tax on their labor. And with inflation (crashing dollar value due to lower Fed interest rate and mass infusion of more worthless money into the economy) you’re losing the battle to hold on to any gains.

Are you a W4 refund taxpayer? That is, do you get a refund at the end of the year by claiming withholding? Wouldn’t it make more sense to get your entire paycheck without withholding, thereby your full worth? Lets make the Federal govt. figure out another way. Read the W4 withholding fraud below.

Still feel like paying your personal income taxes? If so, is it because you’re afraid of the IRS? Sure it is. They don’t want you to discover the Supreme court rulings that make the 16th amendment irrelevant. But they know the deception is soon coming to an end.

Check these videos. Tom Cryer, a lawyer in Shreveport, found not guilty of tax evasion recently. Hasn’t filed for 10 years.
http://www.truthattack.org/page4.php

Information from lawmens listserve:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/national_lawman/join

“The Michigan legislature is now in the process of repealing the state income tax, as they have been informed that the state income tax relies on the federal income tax being properly applied.”

A recent email:

Dear Lawmen and Others: The government has a headache and still it is trying to fool all the people all the time. Read the following:

The Justice Department, on the heels of a split verdict in its tax evasion prosecution of actor Wesley Snipes, is planning a crackdown on the so-called tax protester movement.

The protesters, or tax deniers, assert a constitutional right to avoid federal taxes, relying in part on century-old Supreme Court decisions. Their ranks are growing to include white-collar professionals, and they are costing the government millions in revenue, officials say.

“Too many people succumb to the fallacy, the illusion, that you don’t have to pay any tax under any set of conditions,” said Assistant Attorney General Nathan Hochman, the new head of the Justice Department’s tax division. “That is a growing problem.”

Notice how Mr. Hochman words his statement in an attempt to deceive the public. No one claims that we don’t have to pay any tax under any set of conditions! That is simply deception, lies and deceit. What Mr. Hochman is avoiding saying is that the income tax laws and the constitutional federal taxing powers are entwined into a massive scheme to deceive the American people. Mr. Hochman, we don’t pay you to lie to the American people and subvert our Constitution! The Constitutional taxing power of the federal government is limited to 1) Direct Apportioned taxes, 2) Excises, 3) Duties, and 4) Imposts. There are no other authorized taxing powers of the federal government, as has been stated in numerous Supreme Court rulings.

Mr. Hochman, are you trying to say that precedence law no longer applies if it is good case law and has never been overturned? Are you crazy? Mr. Hochman, where did you get your law degree? From Disney World? Are you trying to say that the Supreme Court of the U.S. did not have the authority to rule on these matters? Are you crazy?

Mr. Hochman, do you know that the Constitution is over 200 years old? Does that mean it is out of date in your eyes? Are you crazy? Are you saying that subject matter jurisdiction does not apply to the cases on income tax?

Mr. Hochman, do you know that the corporate income tax is a tax on the privilege of incorporation, and not a direct tax on the income of the corporation? Do you know that the corporate income tax is an excise tax? Do you know that a direct tax is a tax on the person, property or rights of an individual? Do you know that all direct taxes must be apportioned? Do you know that there has been no direct apportioned tax imposed on the general population since 1861? Do you know that Title 26 does not impose any direct apportioned tax on the general population?

Can you rebut any of these propositions, Mr. Hochman?

And if you find all this hard to believe, then why does 26 USC 7608 limit all enforcement authority of all domestic agents to ATF taxes? Why did the IRS have to stoop to out and out lies and claim that all persons, even private employees of private employers, must have deductions taken from their paychecks under the authority of 26 USC 3401-05? You are a lawyer, Mr. Hochman, and you can perfectly well read the regulations that explain who is an employee and who is not an employee, for the purposes of withholding.

Who are YOU, Mr. Hochman, to presume that your government position entitles you to deceive and defraud the American people? Are you crazy?

Have you ever heard of precedence decisions? Have you read the Anastasoff case of 2000, in which the 8th Circuit stated that the American Courts get their power from precedence? Do you know that? Do you believe that? If you don’t, then you should talk to a psychiatric counselor, not a legal counselor!

Let’s put our slogan out in front of the public so the government cannot suppress the information on direct un-apportioned taxes anymore. The government’s fraudulent claim that the prohibition was overturned by the 16th Amendment, is rebutted by the STEWARD case, 24 years after the 16th Amendment was passed. Nothing has changed that since 1937.The last direct apportioned tax was in 1861.

Everyone should put the slogan on direct taxes on their signature lines. That is the issue.
No direct un-apportioned tax confirmed by the US Supreme Court rulings in CHAS. C. STEWARD MACH. CO. v. DAVIS, 301 U.S. 548, 581-582(1937)

A recent email:
To make a provable case, just look at the STEWARD case (1937), 24 years after the passage of the 16th Amendment.
“Steward” ruled that the sovereign has the authority to impose 1) Direct Taxes with “apportionment”, 2) Excises, 3) Duties, and 4) Imposts. Then Stewart goes further to state that there are NO other taxing powers, even though there have been many attempts to claim there was another taxing power given to the sovereign. The Court stated that not in a hundred years has there been such a taxing power discovered. All federal taxes must fall into one of the four classes.

The Appeals Judge in my case made a false statement in his ruling. He said that Conces claims that the government cannot levy a tax on individuals and non-incorporated businesses. He is DEAD wrong! I didn’t say that. The Supreme Court said first, that individuals could always be taxed from the very beginning, but if it was a direct tax, it must be apportioned. The last apportioned tax was in 1861.

What makes a good teacher?

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What makes a good teacher? The Bush Adminstration and the various school adminstrations in Colorado Springs think that they have the answer to that simple question. They think that a good teacher is one that is bullied by themselves, and that is forced to follow fixed curriculums that somehow are to make them ‘accountable’ for what they are doing in the classroom. They think that constant testing is an integral part of the teacher bullying process, where local school boards have to be bullied by the federal government who in turn bully the teachers, who in turn bully the students who in turn take ‘tests’.

All this is rather sad and pathetic, especially when students are taught a nonsensical course called ‘bully proofing’! Comical is it not? Oh, and did I forget that part where the school boards tend to bully parents that might not be so behind the bullying of ‘No Child Left Behind’? That is important, too. All this bullying from up on high is to convince all of us below that we are powerless people.

‘Do as you are told!’

But there is another approach than this authoritarianism masked and disguised and packaged to us as educational theory. It is allowing the teacher, hence the students, some freedom. See… What makes a good teacher?

America currently has few good teachers and few educated students. What we do have is ‘No Child Left Behind in Being Screwed by the Public Schools’ program. Another reason to be less than proud of what America has become.

Libertad! Mexico wants freedom from US paid asesinos

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Imagine if today the federal government had taken over the Colorado Springs Police Department, the Denver PD, and the Boulder PD? Imagine if that followed the federal government having taken over even more and bigger US cities’ PDs?

The US Drug War’s spillover into Mexico is just like that and yesterday the Mexican federal government took over the narco infiltrated police forces in Matamoros, Nuevo Laredo, and Reynosa. Just before, it was in Tijuana and some neighboring cities south of California that the police HQs got taken over by the army.

That does not mean that the Mexican military are the good guys Down South. They most certainly are not. They are the American government’s puppet henchmen directed by America’s puppet Mexican dictatorship. In all, they are a bunch of asesinos (assassins) and tortureros (torturers). The government there has a lot in common with Dick and Dubya’s.

The Mexican state of Oaxaca is where resistance to the US puppets remains strongest at this time despite last year’s repression. You can watch an 8 minute film of one of the latest marches for freedom there.
Youth March for the Liberation Of Political Prisoners

And how nice to see young people that are not passive and demobilized.
Libertad! Libertad!

Say’s Law and undemocratic monetarism

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Richard C. Cook has written an excellent synthesis of C. H. Douglas, Keynes and Galbraith in Global Research repudiating the orthodox economics used to legitimate the Federal Reserve under which the world’s capitalist economies are enslaved.
 
Cook writes: “Overall, banks have served four main purposes—one legitimate, one dubious, one puzzling, and one deeply flawed.

1. Legitimate
“The first purpose—a legitimate one—is to facilitate commerce. It is often cheaper for a business to borrow capital from a bank than to stockpile cash itself. This was the purpose of the state banking system in the U.S. prior to the Civil War. The state-chartered banks existed to provide working capital for commercial transactions, such as stocking inventory, or for business expansion. Use of banking for these purposes was tied to specific commercial activities—the “real bills” doctrine. Of course credit used for this purpose has a cost which is factored into prices. When these loans are repaid, they are canceled at the bank which thus removes purchasing power from the economy. This is another area, besides retained corporate earnings, that contributes to the gap between prices and purchasing power identified by C.H. Douglas. But lending for commerce itself remains a legitimate activity.

2. Dubious
“The second use of banking—the dubious one—is for capital formation in the creation of new businesses, a function which overlaps with capital markets such as the stock exchanges. But this use very easily turns into lending for speculation by permitting investors to borrow money in order to buy stock on margin or to “leverage” investing by borrowing money in order to purchase whole companies. The costs of this borrowing also show up in consumer prices without introducing any new purchasing power into the system.

“This practice has mushroomed in recent decades starting with the buyout/merger/acquisition mania of the 1980s and has reached disastrous proportions through the creation and growth of equity and hedge funds. The use of bank borrowing for such speculative purposes is an obvious abuse that should not even be legal. It is actually a form of theft from the nation’s natural and normal store of credit that should be carefully administered by competent public authorities as a utility as critical to social health as the water supply.

3. Puzzling
“The third use of banking—the puzzling one—is for consumer credit. This includes borrowing for big purchases such as buying houses and automobiles, or small ones such as items bought with credit cards. Increasingly it includes purchasing even the necessities of life such groceries.

“Buying an object with a credit card often means that a person cannot afford to buy it at the present moment. So the person is gambling that he or she will be able to pay off this loan—including interest—at some point in the future. What is puzzling is that in the midst of what is claimed to be the most productive economy in the history of the world, why are most people so poor that they cannot buy what they need to live with the proceeds of their present earnings? This is the ultimate repudiation of Say’s Law and its derivatives—Libertarianism, supply-side economics, and the like.

4. Flawed
“The fourth use of banking—the one that is deeply flawed—is the financing of government inflation through purchase of public debt instruments which allow deficit financing of public activities, most particularly the waging of war. Banking for the purpose of financing war has a long pedigree, going back to the medieval times where kings were perpetually in hock to the money-lenders. Today we have the national debt, which has been used primarily for war, as well as for the Keynesian pump-priming described previously. A classic case of the use of banking for deficit financing of war is the borrowing by the federal government under the Bush/Cheney administration to raise the trillion dollars already spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.”

Oprah’s doc busted!

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Sometimes US fantasy world just gets too funny and it’s worthy for a good laugh. Such is the case with Doctor Who… I mean ‘Doctor Phil’ and his intervention to supposedly save Britney Spears from herself.

He showed up at her hotel room after she got the word of the judge ruling against her and that she was subsequently losing custody of her kids to her ex! I guess this dimwit thought he was there to perform an exorcism, or some Catholic ritual of that sort?

Who knows, but this brilliant pontiff on all matters psych seems to need a psych GPS device himself to stay out of hysterically funny situations. Oprah’s doc is now busted by Britney’s mom in fact! Truth is funnier than soap opera it seems…

Next you know, ‘Phil’ will be intervening to save the Bush administration from itself! Imagine if he had shown up at the hotel after Dick Cheney had plugged his friend down in South Texas? Now that would have been rich!

Oopsssss….! There is breaking news on the Spanish language channels… Britney Spears has retreated to Rosarito, Mexico 25 miles or so south of Tijuana for ‘vacation’! What a great choice! The Mexican federal government just flew in troops to take the police over ther because they were being run by narcotic traffickers! How restful it will be for her there amongst the festivities then!

Maybe she can do some charity work or something until she gets herself back together? Either way, at least she will be safe from Dr. Phil.

Ho!Ho!Ho! NORAD tracks Santa and the media lets you jolly well know!

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The Spy and Bomb crew located under our local Colorado Springs mountains and over the woods to Santa’s House at Peterson Air Force Base on the plains is tracking the fat socialist known as Santa Claws. You can find out about this vermin and his nefarious plans thanks to the trillions spent on National Insecurity and their back up crowd from the corporate media and sales teams located world wide.

Want the data on this commie? Then go to Santa’s Home Page and track on to this derelict courtesy of NORAD’s Santa Tracker prominently displayed. Maybe they plan to taser this guy and then waterboard him for more info about his Jihad and the terrorist elves that infect consumerist society with good ill?

Our world wide surveillance system and nuclear bomb coordinating system is run in a jolly good manner! Thank you, Federal Government! Thank you, Pentagon! We are safe from Martians, elves, and Arabs for now…

New Orleans

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Police attack crowd with mace and tasers where people were trying to express opposition to tearing down perfectly serviceable Public Housing units in New Orleans. The US government wants Black people not to return to New Orleans for the same racist reasons that they didn’t bother reinforcing the levees in the first place before Katrina hit.

It was then a Black dominated city and the White Dixiecrat political establishment of Louisiana hated having to govern over such a concentration of poor income Blacks. It was an Apartheid city where Blacks had too much sway over the politics of the area in the White Political Establishment’s eyes, so the federal government, too, just didn’t think it important enough to do the job of holding back the flood waters that might occur, and eventually did.

So now they are trying to keep poorer Blacks dispersed by Katrina from being able to return to their former neighborhoods. Nothing has changed. The federal, state, and local governments are engaged in a giant racial relocation program that keeps former Black residents from being able to survive return to their city. White policy here? Divide, keep them away, and conquer. The same policy of divide and conquer used in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Their ‘Free enterprise’ hellholes for our elderly

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When ‘free enterprise’ doesn’t want to provide a social service it melts it down first. In the case of America’s nursing homes…

…the corporate sector uses its control over the federal government to create a regulatory system and funding system completely full of any and all holes possible.

Then it promptly sets out to loot the system it has set in place, all the while blaming the horrors taking place on the legal system and government agencies which are totally guided by them in the first place.

See the New York Times article today More Profit Less Nursing at Many Homes to catch a glimpse of this process at work.

Who loses besides the patients? That list is a long one. It includes family members, tax payers, and the workers caring for the elderly while the government and corporate administrators sabotage their care giving in every way imaginable. All come out losers excerpt the owners of the nursing home chains. They make their money at any rate.

Imagine how it hurts to work in such a hellhole? It breaks your back, your heart, and your soul. You are bossed around by people who don”t care either for you, or the elderly and infirm you are caring for. All the while, the lower level administrative bosses slime false ‘concern’ for your supposed lack of doing the proper job they have sabotaged you from doing. They slime false concern for the sick and infirm, all the while continually ignoring their most basic needs.

No amount of hypocrisy is beyond the government regulatory staff and the corporate hacks that run this business. There must be a special place in Hell for them. They have a total moral vacuum inside themselves. Their paychecks depend on doing less and getting more profit squeezed out for the big wigs by doing as they do.

One thing to remember, too, is simply that the corporate government and their bosses, the corporations themselves don’t want to deliver any care at all. All care given subtracts from their profits since it is expensive. Just like how they often try to squeeze wages and benefits to the point of total disappearance, they do the same to the actual service they contract to provide. In doing so, the ‘free enterprise system’ creates hellholes for America’s elderly, and these hellholes now pockmark our landscape just like the military bases and prisons do. They are dull ugly spots most people try to ignore as they pass by.

Capitalism is not an efficient system. In its production of products it turns out gobs of garbage and scrap. In its production of services, it does even worse. It makes scrap out of live human beings.

You need care for your family member or yourself, but unfortunately you just get a false phony smile and a knife in the back while looking for that care. You want to believe…. Yet you find the elderly going down an assembly line to death, illness, and scrap. Corporations have turned the downward process of aging into a torture of the aged. It doesn’t have to be this way, but this is often what there is.

Iraq Parasite invades Colorado Springs

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My landlady has had a growth under her arms. We thought it was a return of lymphoma, not so.
 
My landlady just got back from the doctor.
 
What she thought and feared, that it was a lymphoma, wasn’t.
 
It’s a microscopic parasite native to the Euphrates river basin.

Most of the people in the region are immune to it, well, duh, they’ve lived there 5000 years and longer.

But it’s been brought back by returning servicemen, they thought for a while that it was confined to the hospitals and the bases but IT’S ENDEMIC IN COLORADO SPRINGS NOW.

Good news is, it’s treatable.

Bad news, the Fucking Army has not told people about it.

“Oh, by the way we’ve brought back a deadly parasite, that kills PEOPLE and we ain’t gonna Tell nobody about it cause we can do shit like that”

The mite burrows into the skin, then finds a lymph node and spreads to the entire body.

Once it invades the lungs, it causes pneumonia, and it’s almost untreatable.

There have been fatalities. The Army isn’t admitting anything, the Federal Government isn’t kicking out any money for treatment of this shit they put on us.

I posted this on a national site.

I’m about to post it on my blog, somebody spread this as far and wide as we possibly can.

Largest vet’s group defends antiwar vets right to protest war

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Adam Kokesh, and other vets speaking out against the continued US occupation of Iraq, are being threatened by the top military brass and Bush Administration. Yet, it is striking in how unpopular the war has become, that the leader of the largest vet’s group in America, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, is now defending the right of these vets to protest this war without harassment from the Pentagon establishment.

Many politicians in local, state, and federal governments, feel that it is perfectly OK for soldiers to be forcibly paraded in pro war demonstrations paid by our tax monies, but that free speech for dissenters, including military dissenters, should be put down by any means at their disposal, including using attacks by police, dishonourable discharges of GIs, etc. This war will not be ended either by soldiers or civilians sitting back quietly and waiting for politicians to act responsibly. The politicians will act in the interests of the military-industrial complex instead, unless pressured by our continued protests.

We owe the antiwar vets all of our support. Together, patriotic vets and patriotic civilians can end this war by our actions and continued opposition to the politican’s war. Those dissenters in the military are an inspiration to us all, and together show that patriotism does reside in the ranks, even in a military full of people voluntary largely recruited by rank economic incentives.

The Peace Movement needs to do all it can to help defend from government persecution our friends, the antiwar vets of America. They are supporting the end to persecution of foreign peoples by our imperialist government often at great personal risk to themselves. May their ranks grow yet larger, as the world needs this as well as our own country itself. It is a case where patriotism becomes international solidarity, and international solidaritiy really is the patriotism of the future that the world needs more of now.

Why did the city police attack the pro-Peace group at the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade?

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The city police and parade organizers did not fully think out the consequences of their actions, but the attack on the peace group at the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade was not unintentional. In fact, it followed logically from the political direction given by the Colorado Springs city council and mayor.

The city police are employees under the control of the city council and mayor, and it is the city police on behalf of the city government itself, that gives out John O’Donnell his own permit each year to hold a parade. In all effects, John O’Donnell is merely a sub contractor for the city who is given a permit to issue yet even more permits, that simply allow and disallow who amongst the general public can participate in a city sponsored parade each year.

John O’Donnell has a long history of operating city promoted events in our city, and most of them have a highly charged social message of support for the wars waged by the US government. He takes positions on social issues, and they are almost always relatively in support of war, and many events he has helped organize have been fully funded by the city of Colorado Springs city government. Though some have only been partially underwritten.

In fact, less than 3 years ago, John O’Donnell, the city government, and the US military (US government) used large amounts of city and federal tax moneys to parade troops through Colorado Springs streets in support of the Republican Administration led US invasion and occupation of Iraq. They called this ‘supporting the troops’, and called the parade a ‘Welcome Back Home’ rally. Of course, we now know that the troops have been redeployed over and over from Fort Carson, and the public has slipped dramatically in its support of this US government war making. At that time, nobody appeared too much concerned to see the city government and federal government working through O’Donnell to parade for a partisan cause.

Because the city government and John O’Donnell are so intertwined in supporting the partisan cause of celebrating the constant US government wars and aggressions that destroy other nations, it is no surprise that the city police acted to thump peace partisans for entering into the Saint Patrick’s Day Parade. It was a natural reflex on their part, and to their credit, at least they did not get so totally out of hand and severely injure anybody they manhandled. That is the reason that the new police chief, Richard Myers can posture that ‘nobody got hurt’.

However, the city government and its police do hurt others when they take up partisan causes like supporting a US government war, and make no mistake about it, that is what they have been constantly doing. Driving down Cascade Ave. one sees the city tax money’s paid-for signs that say ‘Colorado Springs Supports the Troops’. Hint, hint… That means that the city government is supporting the Iraqi War. How clever the city government thinks it is to phrase their support for the Iraqi War in this manner.

In short, the city has a history of taking up the ‘social issue’ of supporting the US war on Iraq and uses the tax monies of all its citizens to do so. The annual military air shows each year are yet more ways that the city government uses tax monies and facilities to sponsor pro-war Pentagon fed propaganda. And through this steady city support of military aggression, now 7 people face criminal charges coming from a police action that could easily have led to no arrests, no threats, and no physical take-downs if the police had only had directions to use restraint, instead of heavy force.

To the city police, it seems natural to stop pro-peace participants from participating in city events. They have received no city government direction to do otherwise, and Mayor Lionel Rivera’s continued refusal to admit that the several police ambushes on us through the years have been totally totally uncalled for, only will lead to repeats of the same excessive use of police force in the months and years ahead. Too, he has repeatedly shown so far that the city government will refuse to accept that it has real bias in what events are allowed to parade through city streets. The bias is in favor of the military and war, and against peace advocacy by any public pro-peace assembly that would appear against war. The police are directed in their activities with this bias in effect no matter how much they might state that they are out there to protect us all. It will surprise no one that the police actually protect some more than others, and endanger many.

It is highly symbolic that John O’Donnell and the police decided to use the intersection of St Vrain and Tejon to have the police ambush us on St Patrick’s Day. This is the same intersection where the city and federal governments had him lead off the ‘Welcome Home Troops’ pro-war parade in June, 2004. They marched the troops with our tax monies around in a circle and then ended their pro-war demo at the same point. They had no problem with pushing social causes at that event at all. They do have a problem with us when we cross that fatal intersection calling for PEACE instead.

Mayor Lionel Rivera and his city police will do what they can do to try to stop us from participating in future city organized events. As it has been said already, we got roughed up for the message we carried, and not just for how we went about bringing it to the public. They will try to deny us the use of the public streets again unless policies are changed now.

The police and the mayor have refused to accept any blame for what was done St Patrick’s Day. To the credit of some of the city council members, others have done the opposite. Our thanks goes out to them for that.

We do want to work together with all to assure that all do have a way for public assembly without censure. Let the military march with kids in their camouflage khaki uniforms on, and let those that have the opposite message march alongside. The city belongs to both of our groups, and both of our groups pay tax dollars to open up city streets for public parades, and to close it off for other tax paying citizens who might even be against what the parades might seem to them to be about. After all, we don’t want the type of sectarian violence that the US military now has brought to the Iraqi people inside America itself. Do we? So city government needs to stop bias in what social causes it funds and endorses.

Kurt Vonnegut goes

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Kurt Vonnegut lectures at HarvardM and I just read Harrison Bergeron together two nights ago. I remembered the story from high school, where we also read Slaughterhouse Five to my father’s consternation. I like to think it was just the language he objected to.
 
My favorite essay of KV’s at In These Times was about governance guesswork.
 
Kurt Vonnegut could say it all and I don’t think he was through.

I just came across an excerpt someone posted from Jailbird:

“What could be so repulsive after all, during the Great Depression, especially, and with yet another war for natural wealth and markets coming, in a young man’s belief that each person could work as well as he or she was able, and should be rewarded, sick or well, young or old, brave or frightened, talented or imbecilic, according to his or her simple needs? How could anyone treat me as a person with a diseased mind if I thought that war need never come again–if only common people everywhere would take control of the planet’s wealth, disband their national armies and forget their national boundaries; if only they would think of themselves ever after as brothers and sisters, yes, and as mothers and fathers, too, and children of all other common people–everywhere. The only person who would be excluded from such friendly and merciful society would be one who took more wealth than he or she needed at any time.”

And this from an interview with Joel Bleifuss in 2003:

I myself feel that our country, for whose Constitution I fought in a just war, might as well have been invaded by Martians and body snatchers. Sometimes I wish it had been. What has happened, though, is that it has been taken over by means of the sleaziest, low-comedy, Keystone Cops-style coup d’etat imaginable. And those now in charge of the federal government are upper-crust C-students who know no history or geography, plus not-so-closeted white supremacists, aka “Christians,” and plus, most frighteningly, psychopathic personalities, or “PPs.”

To say somebody is a PP is to make a perfectly respectable medical diagnosis, like saying he or she has appendicitis or athlete’s foot. The classic medical text on PPs is “The Mask of Sanity ” by Dr. Hervey Cleckley. Read it! PPs are presentable, they know full well the suffering their actions may cause others, but they do not care. They cannot care because they are nuts. They have a screw loose!

And what syndrome better describes so many executives at Enron and WorldCom and on and on, who have enriched themselves while ruining their employees and investors and country, and who still feel as pure as the driven snow, no matter what anybody may say to or about them? And so many of these heartless PPs now hold big jobs in our federal government, as though they were leaders instead of sick.

What has allowed so many PPs to rise so high in corporations, and now in government, is that they are so decisive. Unlike normal people, they are never filled with doubts, for the simple reason that they cannot care what happens next. Simply can’t. Do this! Do that! Mobilize the reserves! Privatize the public schools! Attack Iraq! Cut health care! Tap everybody’s telephone! Cut taxes on the rich! Build a trillion-dollar missile shield! Fuck habeas corpus and the Sierra Club and In These Times, and kiss my ass!

A nasty little thought…

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The Army is calling up 13,000 National Guard soldiers to Iraq.

I thought the “surge’ was supposed to be 20,000? Somebody’s not doing his math, or maybe the BigPigs are just LYING to us…

but that’s not the nasty little thought, although it swims around the edges of the Nasty Little Thought…

The National Guard, don’t the States have to pay for a significant part of their expenses, and the Federal Government therefore doesn’t pay all?

Wouldn’t that kind of “shoot skates under” the cap on war spending in Congress?

Because even though the individual states are required to pay for it, the Guard is ultimately under the command of the President….
_________________

Statement regarding The City of Colorado Springs responsibility for its police attack on the St Patrick’s Day peace marchers

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Statement regarding The City of Colorado Springs’ responsibility for its police attack on the Saint Patrick’s Day peace marchers
 
As has now been widely reported, the citizens that decided to march in the peace section of the city’s Saint Patrick’s Day parade were violently dispersed by city police officers. Many of us received no notice at all to disperse, let alone a reason for why the already paid permit for was being declared invalid. What process or procedure was there in place for revoking this permit, other than the police telling us to get off the city street in an abrupt manner?
 
Our only ‘notice’ for most of us, was actually to turn and see some of our friends and companions being manhandled by police officers, wrestled brutally to the ground, and threatened with tasers and choke and pressure holds. Most of the officers involved gave no verbal identification of themselves, and it was hard to see any name tags in this abrupt melee instigated by city police officers.

The City of Colorado Springs police acted in reckless disregard to our rights, our health, and appeared to relish the opportunity to stick peaceful people in a heavily tax subsidized city event, with criminal charges, instead of engaging in trying to resolve an issue in a way where nobody would be hurt.

What was especially egrarious to us, was the fact that officers in their 20s and 30s were assaulting people principally in their 60s and 70s, in front of children, some below the age of 10. Why was this done? What real and solid rules had been supposedly broken by us? Why the millisecond notice and in this rough a manner?

Afterwards, some of us made efforts to look for the rules we had been charged in the media with breaking. We looked for literature and we looked for web sites that might fill us in with info and guidelines for participation about this event? What we found was nothing. We wondered how was it that in such an unclearly organized event, with an unclearly identified organizer, the police moved in on us like a hurricane?

What we discovered is unsettling. The press afterwards repeatedly declared that police were asked to remove us by ‘event organizers’. Such was the story that city police spokepersons gave. So the search began to find and identify the ‘event organizers’, and to try to find their relationship to the city itself. What we came up with, was that a rather shadowy company called O’Donnell and O’Donnell, Inc had declared themselves the private party involved. They were in charge of issuing the permits. So we wondered, just what were the costs involved, and did the city itself pay much of the cost of Saint Patrick’s Day? And we also wanted to find out what other events were organized by this company?

What we found, is that the organizers, that call themselves a private company, were not really the priciple oraganizers of events they are involved with in this city at all. In fact, other events supposedly ‘organized’ by O’Donnell and O’Donnell, Inc were actually mainly organized by the US military, plus local Colorado Spring’s city officials in many different municipal departments, using both federal and local tax monies.

In short, that O’Donnell and O’Donnell’s principle role other than passing out permits, is mainly to pose as private organizers of what are really heavily publicly subsidized events in our area, promoted mainly by government agencies, and having largely a pro-militarism message. In short, O’Donnell and O’Donnell, Inc. is nothing much more than a small outsourcing of city and federal organizing projects, events oftentime more paid for by the tax monies contributed by all the citizens of the community than by the few few dollars picked up these hidden individuals posing as private organizers.

For an example of how this operates, ‘The Welcome Home Parade’ ‘organized’ by O’Donnell and O’Donnell, Inc. in 2004, was actually paid for almost entirely by city and federal government moneys, and in fact, like the Saint Patrick’s Day parade itself, was heavily slanted to being pro war/ pro uniform/ pro we support the troops (read war) message. As to taking no ‘social stands’ in public parades , the O’Donnell and O’Donnell, Inc ‘private’ ghost front for the city actually does take political stands, and that has been consistently pro war, pro militarism, pro military industrial complex.

To give another analogy, O’Donnell and O’Donnell, Inc operates with the public citizens of Colorado Springs, much in the way that Halliburton and other Pentagon fed private contract operators do in US occupied Iraq. Just as Halliburton is nothing more than an extension of US government operations in that country, O’Donnell and O’Donnell, Inc. is little more than an outsourced extension of the government of the City of Colorado Springs. In fact, the City of Colorado Springs was more the public provider of where to go for permits, than O’Donnell and O’Donnell, Inc was themselves. Part of the city building of this celebration, was merely privately outsourced to O’Donnell- O’Donnell, Inc., that’s all.

In short, we reject the legal fiction that the police were responding to a private call to eject ‘gate crashers’ at a private event when they attacked us. We have a right to these public streets, too, especially when an event is in actuality more a municipal government operation than not. And the Saint Patrick’s Day parade is just that.

We demand that the city fully disclose municipal costs for this public event, and disclose publicly how much of the entire bill was paid by the city, and how much was paid for this shadow operation calling itself, O’Donnell and O’Donnell, Inc? Further, we believe that the city has a duty to fully publicize the regulations for participating in an event subsidized by tax dollars.

If guidelines are hidden from easy view, then how can the police ask citizens to abide by rules that have not actually been seen? It is not enough to just have permit purchasers to see, one time in small print, what others cannot ever see for themselves. We are not our brothers keeper, and if a guideline is only shown to one person out of say a hundred, this is not full disclosure of the regulations. Instead of hiding in the shadows, the municipal government of the City of Colorado Springs has a duty to admit its fundamental role in the organization of this annual parade. This they are not yet doing.

We ask that all charges against particpants in this event be dropped, and that the city government fully disclose its financial involvement with O’Donnell and O’Donnell, Inc. Who pays for the policing of this event, the legal procedures against any of those charged with crimes due to this event, the publicity, the office space to issue permits, the costs of interrupting the normal routine of the downtown area, etc.? Certainly it is not the price of the permits paid by participants that does so alone. In fact, in large part, it is the municipal government itself that does, and that’s what makes this more a public sponsored parade than a private one.

Contrary to what some of the media have charged, those pro peace people in our city would no more crash a private event than the overwhelming majority of other Colorado Springs citizens would do. But the Saint Patricks Day parade is hardly much of that, and politicians tooting their own horns, mini-military squadrons of little kids draped out in olive green military fatigues, corporations advertising their commercial products, and all the other manifestations of people making a multitude of ‘social statements’, only underlines the reality of our argument.

This is in fact a public event in large manner publicly funded, and the city police should not try to hide their abusive actions against some participants behind the skirts of a pretense that they were mereley urgently mobilized by a private sponsor that the city government really had mainly outsourced the giving out of participant permission slips to.

Further, we would ask that the individual owner of the shadow company O’Donnel and O’Donnell, Inc., come forth, and together with us and the city government make some small effort to keep this conforntation from becoming a permanently embedded confrontation within our community. What could well have been a small problem solved via a short discussion with the parties involved, now risks becoming yet another permanent festering sore inside our diverse city. There is still time to stop this from happening if there would be the will to do so. The police should drop the 7 charges filed against the pro peace participants, and let us all move on with our lives without further bitterness. We are all deeply divided in how we feel about this war, and we don’t need to add further to that if we can avoid doing so.

The Department of Energy and Environmental Sustainability

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There are 15 Departments of the federal government, but there is no Department of Energy and Environmental Sustainability. We do without, but the question is WHY? Both our national and planetary environment are headed towards providing only a hellish future for our children, even as we run into the advancing depletion of the world fossil fuel deposits that have been so central to the development of industrialized society.

Plus, our corporate and government misleaders are bankrupting our country in pursuit of a war to seize major world oil supplies, yet we have no Federal Executive Department that would or could formulate a strategy to deal with these related problems in any coordinated and purposeful manner other than war, and erecting a police state worldwide.

We do have a Department of Energy, and there are several other semi-related Federal Executive Departments, too. All are run by the corporate section of our society, and conservation is a minimal concern to these folk. Making profits is what gets them motivated. For example, Mobil Exxon is a big player with the Department of Energy bureaucracy, and as we all know by now, this huge company has been spending a small fortune in trying to misinform the public about the reality that humans are heating the planet up. We just cannot expect a government strategy that mandates less use of gas and petroleum coming from these people.

A simple strategy to reduce energy consumption in the US is simply to lower the speed limits. Yet neither the Departments of ‘Defense’, National Security, Energy, nor Transportation seem to have the willpower to come up with this simple energy saving remedy! These are not stupid people, so it is not brain power that is lacking, but willpower.

Similarly, there is no willpower to zone and design our streets and thoroughfares in a more energy efficient manner. How many times do we enter into neighborhoods, shopping malls, and highways that are so designed to make us drive many extra miles than what is actually necessary? Everywhere we drive, it seems, incomprehensibly bad planning and zoning by developers has put into place cul-de-sac after cul-de-sac that force us into wasting energy. Nobody cares. especially not the corporate sector of our wasteful capitalist world. Would it take so much effort to achieve savings of energy by having a federal department in charge of enforcing some much needed planning and zoning regulations? The answer is NO.

How about a simple regulation requiring fast food places to serve the food in less than one minute while the cars idle, or have their customers come inside and order? Millions of barrels of oil could be saved easily enough by such a simple measure, but the political willpower is not there by the corporate sector. The government can make individuals do all sorts of burdensome measures, but when it comes to asking for some small changes from the corporations, the government is paralyzed. Look at the lack of implementation, by the corporate and government sectors, of bottle laws and paper recycling projects for examples of their behavior. But now, we are actually struggling for survival of the human race when it comes to energy conservation worldwide.

Much stricter measures of conservation are actually needed, and this is what paralyzes the corporate controlled governmental sections from blocking even the most easily done and painless measures from being proposed and started. To implement them would alert the public to how much more is actually necessary to do to deal with these major problems that are beginning to crush world civilization at this moment. So instead of doing at least a little, they do nothing.

Energy and environment conservation now combine with pure support for justice for the working class to be reasons to look for something other than a capitalist society in the future. Profit making and corporate greed are just not going to get the jobs done that the world needs done. Meanwhile, we at least need to push out American government to add a 16 th Federal Executive Department of Energy and Environmental Sustainability. Or better yet, defund and eliminate entirely the Department of Homeland Stupidity and Hysteria, and replace it with what is actually needed, a Department of Energy and Environmental Sustainability.