A horrendous switch

This is what has happened all over Europe and Canada and it is coming to the USA faster than you can imagine!

The following is a copy of an article written by Spanish writer Sebastian Vilar Rodrigez and published in a Spanish newspaper on Jan. 15. 2011. It doesn't take much imagination to extrapolate the message to the rest of Europe - and to the rest of the world.

THIS WAS IN A SPANISH NEWSPAPER:
"EUROPEAN LIFE DIED IN AUSCHWITZ "

By Sebastian Vilar Rodrigez

"I walked down the street in Barcelona and suddenly discovered a terrible truth - Europe died in Auschwitz ...We killed six million Jews and replaced them with 20 million Muslims. In Auschwitz we burned a culture, thought, creativity, and talent. We destroyed the chosen people, truly chosen, because they produced great and wonderful people who changed the world.

The contribution of this people is felt in all areas of life: science, art, international trade, and above all, as the conscience of the world.

These are the people we burned.

And under the pretence of tolerance, and because we wanted to prove to ourselves that we were cured of the disease of racism, we opened our gates to 20 million Muslims, who brought us stupidity and ignorance, religious extremism and lack of tolerance, crime and poverty, due to an unwillingness to work and support their families with pride.

They have blown up our trains and turned our beautiful Spanish cities into the third world, drowning in filth and crime. Shut up in the apartments they receive free from the government, they plan the murder and destruction of their naive hosts.

And thus, in our misery, we have exchanged culture for fanatical hatred, creative skill for destructive skill, intelligence for backwardness and superstition. We have exchanged the pursuit of peace of the Jews of Europe and their talent for a better future for their children, their determined clinging to life because life is holy, for those who pursue death, for people consumed by the desire for death for themselves and others, for our children and theirs.

What a terrible mistake was made by miserable Europe.. A lot of Americans have become so insulated from reality that they imagine America can suffer defeat without any inconvenience to themselves. Recently, the UK debated whether to remove The Holocaust from its school curriculum because it 'offends' the Muslim population which claims it never occurred. It is not removed as yet. However, this is a frightening portent of the fear that is gripping the world and how easily each country is giving in to it.

It is now more than sixty years after the Second World War in Europe ended. This e-mail is being sent as a memorial chain, in memory of the six million Jews, twenty million Russians, ten million Christians, and nineteen-hundred Catholic priests who were 'murdered, raped, burned, starved, and beaten, experimented on and humiliated.' Now, more than ever, with Iran, among others, claiming the Holocaust to be 'a myth,' it is imperative to make sure the world never forgets.

The EPA is KILLING this country

The unelected, overpaid, self-proclaimed, law enforcing treehugger crew, the EPA [Employment Prevention Administration] and their red-tape, over-regulating, business strangling ways are killing this country and any hope of a recovery anytime soon! Read this from fellow Blogger, Alan Caruba:

We are witnessing the destruction of the nation by the environmental movement and the EPA has just provided you with the most dramatic example of that plan

The EPA Wrecking Ball

The Environmental Protection Agency is using its power to advance the objective of the environmental movement to deny Americans access to the energy that sustains the nation’s economy and is using the greatest hoax ever perpetrated, global warming—now called “climate change”—to achieve that goal.

“This standard isn’t the once-and-for-all solution to our environmental challenge,” said Lisa Jackson, the EPA administrator, “but it is an important commonsense step toward tackling the ongoing and very real threat of climate change and protecting the future for generations to come. It will enhance the lives of our children and our children’s children.”

This is a boldfaced lie. Its newest rule is based on the debasement of science that is characterized and embodied in the global warming hoax. It will deprive America of the energy it requires to function.
Since the 1980s the Greens have been telling everyone that carbon dioxide was causing global warming—now called climate change—and warning that CO2 emissions were going to kill everyone in the world if they weren’t dramatically reduced. The ball was put in motion with the United Nations 1997 Kyoto Protocols when many nations agreed to this absurd idea and carried forward by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ever since.
The Environmental Protection Agency was created to clean the nation’s air and water where it was deemed that a hazard existed. Like most noble ideas and most Congressional mandates, the initial language was vague enough to be interpreted to mean anything those in charge wanted it to mean. Add in the global warming hoax and you have the means to destroy the nation.
Now it means that the source of fifty percent of all the electricity generated in the United States is being systematically put out of business and please do not act surprised; that’s exactly what Barack Obama said he intended to do if elected President.
This is evil writ large.
Shutting down utilities that use coal, an energy source the U.S. has in such abundance that it could provide electricity for the next hundreds of years, and ensuring that no new ones are built fits in perfectly with all the Green pipedreams about “renewable” energy. Solar and wind presently provide about two percent of the nation’s electricity and, without government subsidies and mandates requiring their use, they would not exist at all.

• How stupid is it to not build more nuclear power plants when this form of power doesn’t emit anything but energy?
• How stupid is it not to use coal when the U.S. is the Saudi Arabia of coal?
• How stupid is it to begin to find reasons to regulate and thwart fracking, the technology to access trillions of cubic feet of natural gas that has been in use for decades?
• How stupid is it to cover miles of land, far from any urban center, with hundreds of solar panels or huge, ugly wind turbines that kill thousands of birds every year?

The sun does not shine all the time, nor does the wind blow all the time. In the event of overcast skies or a day without wind, traditional plants—those using coal, gas, nuclear or generating hydroelectric power—have to be maintained as a backup. Take away the coal-fired plants and there were be huge gap in the national grid.
Darkness will descend and Americans will begin to live with blackouts and brownouts that will undermine every aspect of our lives. It’s bad enough when a town or even a city briefly loses power because of a storm, but imagine that occurring on a regular basis because there just aren’t enough utilities generating power!
What kind of people stand by idly while its own government conspires to take away the primary source of energy that everything else depends upon? The answer? You. The answer is the many elected politicians that have done little to rein in a rogue government agency intent on undermining the nation by denying it the ability to generate power with the least expensive source of electricity, coal.
The EPA, an unelected bureaucracy, has just ensured that all Americans, industries, small businesses, and individuals will begin pay far more for electrical power.
Richard J. Trzupek, the author of “Regulators Run Wild” and an environment policy advisor for The Heartland Institute, said of the new rule, “With around 50,000 megawatts of coal-fired power set to be forcibly retired in the next few years—thanks to the draconian policies of Obama’s EPA—this rule ensures that no new modern, efficient coal fired power plants will be built to fill the gap.”
In a triumph of crony capitalism, Trzupek notes that “The big winner will be Obama’s good friend, GE Chairman Jeff Immelt. Since solar and wind cannot fill a 50,000 megawatt baseload gap, the only way to ensure continued reliability of the grid is to build a lot of natural gas-fired plants quickly. And who is the biggest supplier of natural gas-fired combustion engines? GE of course.”
If you think that environmental organizations like the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth, among many others, are seeking to “protect” the Earth, you are seriously mistaken. They have been among the leading opponents of coal and they have had allies in Congress such as the Majority Leader of the Senate, Harry Reid, (D-NV) who has said “Coal makes us sick. Oil makes us sick.”
NO! Coal provides the engine of our nation’s electrical power and oil provides the energy that fuels our transportation and is the basis for countless products that enhance and improve our lives every day.
We are witnessing the destruction of the nation by the environmental movement and the EPA has just provided you with the most dramatic example of that plan

obama and the price YOU pay for gas

If you can remember when Senator obama was running for President, one of his major campaign promises was on the price at the pumps! He said that gasoline at $3+ a gallon was seriously hurting American business and how he would change that. The fact that this, along with almost every other promise he made is and was a LIE, should come as NO surprise after seeing how low he has brought this country in 3 very long, financially draining years. 

Under Bush the average price of a barrel of oil was $35 a barrel and gas averaged $2.10  a gallon, under obama it is $96 a barrel and $3.52 a gallon! Now I know that the POTUS has minimal power over the price of oil [this didn't stop the dems calling for the head of Bush on a platter when it briefly went to $144 a barrel, nor did they give him credit when he brought back down to $33 a barrel BEFORE he left office] but he has gone out of his way to keep gas ABOVE $3 a gallon. 

His EPA and tree-hugger supporters have gone out of their way to shut down every refinery expansion, nuclear expansion, pipeline expansion and are now moving against natural gas, fracking, and shale gas/oil development. He and his cronies have lost hundreds of billions of YOUR tax dollars on subsidies for windmills and solar panels and bio fuels. If you took away the bio-fuel subsidies alone the price of corn [which is in 1/2 the food products in this country] would fall by half and the money he is taking from big oil to help pay for this would take a $1.50 of the price of a gallon of regular gas alone.

Not only did he say we have to stop relying on hostile foreign countries for our energy needs [another lie] by turning down CANADA, our biggest trading partner proves this, he is keeping the price of fossil fuels deliberately high by making our new #1 export, .....you guessed it [or maybe not] FUEL! Here is the latest from Yahoo News:

In a first, gas and other fuels are top US export

For the first time, the top export of the United States, the world's biggest gas guzzler, is — wait for it — fuel.

Measured in dollars, the nation is on pace this year to ship more gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel than any other single export, according to U.S. Census data going back to 1990. It will also be the first year in more than 60 that America has been a net exporter of these fuels.

Just how big of a shift is this? A decade ago, fuel wasn't even among the top 25 exports. And for the last five years, America's top export was aircraft.

The trend is significant because for decades the U.S. has relied on huge imports of fuel from Europe in order to meet demand. It only reinforced the image of America as an energy hog. And up until a few years ago, whenever gasoline prices climbed, there were complaints in Congress that U.S. refiners were not growing quickly enough to satisfy domestic demand; that controversy would appear to be over.

Still, the U.S. is nowhere close to energy independence. America is still the world's largest importer of crude oil. From January to October, the country imported 2.7 billion barrels of oil worth roughly $280 billion.

Fuel exports, worth an estimated $88 billion in 2011, have surged for two reasons:

— Crude oil, the raw material from which gasoline and other refined products are made, is a lot more expensive. Oil prices averaged $95 a barrel in 2011, while gasoline averaged $3.52 a gallon — a record. A decade ago oil averaged $26 a barrel, while gasoline averaged $1.44 a gallon.

— The volume of fuel exports is rising. The U.S. is using less fuel because of a weak economy and more efficient cars and trucks. That allows refiners to sell more fuel to rapidly growing economies in Latin America, for example. In 2011, U.S. refiners exported 117 million gallons per day of gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and other petroleum products, up from 40 million gallons per day a decade earlier.

There's at least one domestic downside to America's growing role as a fuel exporter. Experts say the trend helps explain why U.S. motorists are paying more for gasoline. The more fuel that's sent overseas, the less of a supply cushion there is at home.

Gasoline supplies are being exported to the highest bidder, says Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst at Oil Price Information Service. "It's a world market," he says.

Refining companies won't say how much they make by selling fuel overseas. But analysts say those sales are likely generating higher profits per gallon than they would have generated in the U.S. Otherwise, they wouldn't occur.

The value of U.S. fuel exports has grown steadily over the past decade, coinciding with rising oil prices and increased demand around the globe.

Developing countries in Latin America and Asia have been burning more gasoline and diesel as their people buy more cars and build more roads and factories. Europe also has been buying more U.S. fuel to make up for its lack of refineries.

And there's a simple reason why America's refiners have been eager to export to these markets: gasoline demand in the U.S. has been falling every year since 2007. It dropped by another 2.5 percent in 2011. With the economy struggling, motorists cut back. Also, cars and trucks have become more fuel-efficient and the government mandates the use of more corn-based ethanol fuel.

The last time the U.S. was a net exporter of fuels was 1949, when Harry Truman was president. That year, the U.S. exported 86 million barrels and imported 82 million barrels. In the first ten months of 2011, the nation exported 848 million barrels (worth $73.4 billion) and imported 750 million barrels.

Federal Judge: Montana blogger is not journalist-What?

SO, Land of the free? 1st amendment? Its a JOKE and all a big LIE! I have written on this before and it has reared its ugly head again. WE DO NOT HAVE FREEDOM OF SPEECH IN THE USA! It is only getting worse under this administration. 

They have already shut down whole servers running Blogs and now they are going after individuals! You are not allowed to express your feelings on the Internet unless you are an accredited Journalist or reporter and even then you might not be afforded any protection guaranteed to you under the 1st amendment, Check this out:

A federal judge in Oregon has ruled that a Montana woman sued for defamation was not a journalist when she posted online that an Oregon lawyer acted criminally during a bankruptcy case, a decision with implications for bloggers around the country.

Crystal L. Cox, a blogger from Eureka, Mont., was sued for defamation by attorney Kevin Padrick when she posted online that he was a thug and a thief during the handling of bankruptcy proceedings by him and Obsidian Finance Group LLC.

U.S. District Judge Marco Hernandez found last week that as a blogger, Cox was not a journalist and cannot claim the protections afforded to mainstream reporters and news outlets.

Although media experts said Wednesday that the ruling would have little effect on the definition of journalism, it casts a shadow on those who work in nontraditional media since it highlights the lack of case law that could protect them and the fact that current state shield laws for journalists are not covering recent developments in online media.

"My advice to bloggers operating in the state of Oregon is lobby to get your shield law improved so bloggers are covered," said Lucy Dalglish, executive director of The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. "But do not expect the shield law to provide you a defense in a libel case where you want to rely on an anonymous source for that information."

The judge ruled that Cox was not protected by Oregon's shield law from having to produce sources, saying even though Cox defines herself as media, she was not affiliated with any mainstream outlet. He added that the shield law does not apply to civil actions for defamation.

Hernandez said Cox was not a journalist because she offered no professional qualifications as a journalist or legitimate news outlet. She had no journalism education, credentials or affiliation with a recognized news outlet, proof of adhering to journalistic standards such as editing or checking her facts, evidence she produced an independent product or evidence she ever tried to get both sides of the story.

Cox said she considered herself a journalist, producing more than 400 blogs over the past five years, with a proprietary technique to get her postings on the top of search engines where they get the most notice.

"What could be more mainstream than the Internet and the top of the search engine?" she said.

Padrick, of Bend, Ore., was a trustee in a bankruptcy case involving Summit Accommodators, a company that helped property owners conduct real estate transactions in a way to limit taxes. Three executives face federal fraud and money laundering indictments.

The lawyer sued Cox for defamation, a legal fight that is typically difficult for plaintiffs to win. Public figures, for example, must prove the defendant knew the statement in question was false, and the statement must be matters of public interest.

The judge found that Padrick was not a public figure, and that the bankruptcy case was not in the public interest. The ruling opened the way for a jury to award $2.5 million to Padrick and Obsidian.

Cox said she didn't have the money to pay the judgment, and that she intended to keep posting about the Summit bankruptcy case.

"My intensions are the highest and best," she said. "I know I am sometimes over the top or a little bit vulgar. But I encourage people not to listen to me or him but to look at the documents and make their own decision based on that."

Padrick said the case showed how vulnerable anyone was to someone with a computer. He said he has lost business from potential clients who search his name and firm through Google and find Cox's postings at the top of the list, adding that he has no way to remove them.

"If anyone can self-proclaim themselves to be media, the concept of media is rendered worthless," Padrick said. "When everyone is media, the concept of media is gone."

The judge ruled that Padrick and his company did not have to seek a retraction, as required by Oregon law, before claiming damages, because a blogger is not on the list of recognized media, which include newspapers, magazines, television and radio news, and motion pictures.

Padrick said he did not expect to collect much of the $2.5 million jury award, or to see his business fully rebound. He said his only consolation was that all eight jurors who heard the case believed he had been significantly harmed.

Ellyn Angelotti, who teaches about digital trends and social media at The Poynter Institute, said the ruling was significant because so little case law has built up on online media. But she believed it would have little impact on bloggers in general until the U.S. Supreme Court takes up a case, or more federal courts rule.

Kyu Ho Youm, a First Amendment expert and journalism professor at the University of Oregon, called the judge's strict definition of a journalist "outdated" since so-called citizen journalists currently outnumber traditional journalists.

"When we talk about the shield law, we should pay more attention to the function people are doing than whether people are connected to traditional and established news media," he said.  

Should Software Companies be able to Raid Your House?

Well if you are still dumb enough to go along with the adage "with Liberty and Freedom for all" you ARE an idiot! We are so far down the list of countries that have free'r  societies than ours its time to change our anthems! obama is implementing 10 new regulations A DAY on us.  So far he has put in 112 major regulations at a cost of $100 MILLION each, not including the damage they have done to our markets and business'! Every time a new law comes into play it is taking MORE of your rights away! We are in a police state with an undeclared "Marshall Law" started by Bush but increased 10 fold since 2008! Now a self appointed group of thugs are now allowed to come into your home or office if they even THINK you don't have receipts for all your software! You had better read this:

Businesses have long lived with the possibility that their offices could be entered and searched for evidence that they’re using pirated software - not just by government law enforcement agents, but by a trade group called the Business Software Alliance, which represents the major software and hardware companies such as Microsoft, Apple, Adobe, Intuit, Symantec, Corel, McAfee, Dell, Intel and several more.

The BSA’s heavy-handed tactics have come under fire many times over the years, with accusations that the organization bullies small companies that lose the paperwork proving their legitimate ownership of software licenses and much criticism of the BSA’s offering of "rewards" to disgruntled employees who report their employers’ non-compliance. There are even attorneys that specialize in defending companies against BSA audits.

That’s bad enough, but it appears you don’t even have to be in business to get raided by a tech company, and you don’t have to be suspected of pirating software, either. It’s hard to believe this really happened in the U.S.A. "Apple Investigators" have done it again - searching the home of a man in San Francisco to look for a lost iPhone prototype. Oh, and they were apparently assisted by the local police (although there have been conflicting statements on that).
http://www.cnn.com/2011/TECH/mobile/09/02/iphone.5.prototype/index.html

Say what? Was this guy suspected of breaking into Apple headquarters and stealing the iPhone? Nope - an Apple employee left in a neighborhood bar. At the most, the guy found abandoned property and picked it up. Has Apple never heard of "finders keepers, losers weepers?" Of course, we don’t know if he ever had it at all, since the Apple employees who searched the house didn’t find anything. They also refused to file a formal report.

It’s not clear whether this fellow gave his consent, but the same thing happened last month to someone else, who did consent - thinking all the searchers were police officers. He said if he’d known they were from Apple, he wouldn't have agreed to the search. I don’t know about you, but I think this is downright scary. We already know the big software companies are capable of entering our computers and seeing what we have on our hard drives. But now they’re allowed to physically come into our homes and look around, too? Am I making a big deal out of nothing, or is this over the line? Let me know what you think in the Comments section 

Unions war with the Teaparty-Who stands for what?

On Thursday, union longshoremen closed a port in Longview, Washington, took security guards hostage, damaged rail cars, and dumped a shipment of grain — all because the owner of the terminal was using a contractor whose workers belonged to a rival union. Longview police chief Jim Duscha said, “A lot of the protesters were telling us this is only the start.”

Are these the tactics that Teamsters president James P. Hoffa had in mind on Labor Day when he called for a war? On Monday, Hoffa declared war on the Tea Party. Hoffa opened for President Obama by saying that the Tea Party has “got a war, they got a war with us and . . . we’re going to win that war.” He added, “President Obama, this is your army. We are ready to march. Let’s take these son of bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong.” [sic]

Hoffa’s declaration culminated weeks of attacks made by Democrats on Tea Party activists. On August 22, Rep. Maxine Waters (D., Calif.) told supporters in California (many dressed in purple SEIU t-shirts), “[As] far as I’m concerned, the ‘Tea Party’ can go straight to Hell.” Also in August, Rep. Andre Carson (D., Ind.) told the Congressional Black Caucus, “Some of them in Congress right now of this Tea Party movement would love to see you and me . . . hanging on a tree.” Vice President Joe Biden went so far as to compare the Tea Party to terrorists, and at a Labor Day speech he told a union audience that they are “the only folks keeping the barbarians from the gates.”

Neither Obama nor any major Democrat has denounced this rhetoric. On Fox News, Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz refused to condemn Hoffa’s statement.

This silence speaks volumes. How the unions and their allies fight their battles is indicative of whythey fight. Today, the political left and Big Labor constitute a coalition of takers. The unions’ war is financed by forced dues and the conscription of those who cannot say no for fear of losing their jobs. They want to take what is not theirs and redistribute it among themselves — in the case of unions, to an ever-shrinking number (11.9 percent of American workers, and only 6.9 percent in the private sector).

Government-sector unions want to confiscate more money from taxpayers to keep on paying for unsustainable pay and benefits. More government spending means more unionized government jobs. That translates into more forced dues for the unions to spend on electing politicians to vote for yet more spending, and the cycle goes on.

Labor bosses in the private sector want more members for more forced dues, never mind if workers want to join a union or not.

The Tea Party was born in reaction to this trend. Tea Party activists are motivated by the desire to keep what they have earned. They want to live their own lives and not be forced to pay dues just to keep their jobs. They know individuals can run their own lives better than bureaucrats in Washington. They do not consider their employers the enemy, and they seek to get ahead on merit, rather than on longevity because of collective-bargaining agreements. They want businesses to prosper thanks to lower taxes, less government, and less regulation.

The Tea Party has scored some major victories — most notably helping elect small-government freshmen to Congress and state legislatures around the country — so the shrill attacks from the left smack of desperation. Union bosses know they are losing. Their last hope was government unions, and now those too are under pressure as state and local governments across the nation face severe budget constraints — largely due to generous public-employee compensation under collective-bargaining agreements.

Interest groups that live off the government trough have a long history of organizing to ask for more. They offer politicians electoral victory in exchange for more taxpayer-funded kickbacks. Their biggest allies are elected officials who wish to control almost every aspect of other people’s lives, because it is in their best interest. So it’s no surprise that this takers’ coalition would be caught off guard by the rise of a countermovement asking for less government. That’s why their reaction has been intemperate, to put it mildly.

But it’s not just rhetoric, as the incident in Washington State demonstrates. It’s not an isolated incident. In Michigan, a business owner was shot simply because he owned a non-union electrical shop. In New York, vital emergency phone lines were sabotaged during a strike by unionized Verizon workers. What will happen when someone dies? Will Biden and Hoffa stand by their declaration of war?

Those who feel entitled to something — even when it’s the product of someone else’s labor — will fight tooth and nail to keep it, and that is what union bosses are now doing. To counter that, Tea Party activists and lawmakers committed to reining in the growth of government will need to stand firm by their principles.

Is Your Property Safe from Seizure?

Last week, The Wall Street Journal reported how federal agents seized about $19 million during a fraud investigation last year. That sum included $392,000 of cash belonging to New York businessman James Lieto, an innocent bystander who was not involved in the crime.

Mr. Lieto is just one among thousands of Americans who have been victimized by the federal system of “civil asset forfeiture.” This doctrine empowers the U.S. government to seize assets from innocent people never charged with any crime.

Over 400 federal statutes - double the number since the 1990s - have been buried in hundreds of criminal laws adopted by Congress during the last 25 years.

And as the example with Mr. Lieto demonstrates, police use and abuse of civil asset forfeiture today is very much alive in Police State America - and you and your property could be the next victims.

Property confiscation by federal, state and local police is now widespread, aimed not just at suspected pot-growers or even major drug traffickers, but in the majority of cases, at more convenient police targets - average people, many of them minorities, whose only "crime" is ownership of real and personal property.

In 2010, forfeiture programs confiscated condominium units, homes, cars, boats and cash in more than 15,000 cases, worth a combined $2.5 billion - an amount that has doubled in five years, according to the U.S. Justice Department.

How Civil Forfeiture Works...

The legal doctrine underlying forfeiture holds that property implicated in crime can be seized even if its owner is never charged or tried. In 80% of such cases in America, the property owner is never charged.

That is because the civil forfeiture law lets government and police take property that is merely suspected of having been used in orrelated to a crime. This legal standard is known as “probable cause.” Unlike criminal asset forfeiture, however, with civil forfeiture, a property owner need not be found guilty of a crime, or even charged, to permanently lose your cash, car, home or other property

Seizures can be based on mere rumor, gossip, a police hunch, or self-serving statements from disreputable people with an axe to grind like anonymous paid informants, accused criminals begging for leniency, or jailed convicts seeking early release.

The U.S. pays cash rewards up to $100,000 per assignment to informants out of the cash or property seized. Around $15 million is spent annually for this purpose by the U.S. Department of Justice.

Police at all levels of government have an even greater incentive than informants to seize assets - they get a large cut of the cash or they keep the cars and other property they grab. 

Under a 1984 federal law, state and local law enforcement agencies that work with the U.S. agents (i.e. FBI, Customs) on seizures get to keep up to 80% of the proceeds. Last year, under this "equitable-sharing" program, the federal government paid out more than $500 million, up about 75% from a decade ago.

Property Forfeiture is a Threat
to Innocent Americans

Forfeiture's unique police power depends on musty legal theories spawned by the petty tyranny of English monarchs. These ancient laws were refashioned by Congress to strip property from blameless Americans under the guise of fighting the “drug war.” 

Constitutional “due process” guaranteed in other areas of U.S. criminal law is virtually unknown in asset forfeiture cases. 

Procedure is stacked against an innocent owner and in favor of government. The basic presumption of “innocent until proven guilty” is turned on its head. The burden is on the owner who, in order to reclaim the property must prove a negative, showing it was not used in a criminal act.

Under threat of great financial loss, forfeiture law forces property owners to act as police agents and incriminate others. Innocent owners are defenseless unless they prove not only that the alleged illegal activity occurred without their knowledge or consent - but also they did all they reasonably could be expected to do to prevent the proscribed use of the property. 

Consider what this means... Owners who lease apartments, cars or boats risk losing valuable property because of renters' uncontrollable illegal conduct.

In unrelated Minnesota and Connecticut police actions, family homes were seized because a child or grandchild was found to have pot stashed in their room.

The home of an elderly widow in Montgomery, Alabama was confiscated even though she repeatedly reported to local police drug sales in and near her house by her own adult children.

Similarly, the government has been able to claim successfully that one illicit dollar deposited in a bank account along with a million other “clean” dollars taints all the money, subjecting it to forfeiture.

The 2000 Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act, or CAFRA, adopted protections for individuals and increased the government's burden of proof. But CAFRA also extended forfeiture powers to additional crimes.

What’s more, CAFRA's safeguards failed to win a broad guarantee that poor people would have access to a lawyer. “It isn't much good to say you have the right to get your property back if you can't afford a lawyer,” said the late Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.), a champion of forfeiture reforms. Unfortunately, after the 9-11 terror attacks many of the CAFRA reforms were weakened by provisions slipped into the 2001 PATRIOT Act with no notice.

It was my privilege to “ghost write” for Rep. Hyde, my good friend, a special Cato Institute report, Forfeiting Our Property Rights: Is Your Property Safe from Seizure that is still available online.

Is Your Property Safe from Seizure?

To this day, most Americans don't realize the U.S. government can take people's homes, land, cars, and money without charging them with a crime - and the reason could be as mundane as violating an outdated law.

As a Pulitzer Prize-winning series exposing forfeiture in the Pittsburgh Press so aptly put it: “The billions of dollars that forfeiture brings into law enforcement agencies is so blinding that it obscures the devastation it causes the innocent.”

One source of defensive measures against civil forfeiture can be found on the website of Forfeiture Endangers American Rights (FEAR), an excellent anti-forfeiture group founded by California attorney, Brenda Grantland. They also provide a list of forfeiture defense attorneys.

But the most effective way to keep your wealth out of harm’s way is to diversify your assets offshore. Stash your gold securities and cash in a safe deposit box in Switzerland or Austria... set up an account at a top private bank overseas... ensure your economic survival by acquiring a second passport... open a brokerage account in Hong Kong.

I’ve been helping people take these simple steps to protect their property for over two decades. It’s the only way I know to truly safeguard your assets from government seizure.

Get started with your own contingency plan here.

Mum & Pop, small business, under the NLRB!

Well I can't find a better definition for FASCISM than the way this gov,  has circumvented Congress and Courts than this. For you want to be history buffs, "Whats the difference between this and Germany circa 1933"? Keep in mind YOUR votes and Tax dollars pay for this!

Picture a local "Mom and Pop" store in your area.
The business is a staple of the community. The owners know every customer's name. The employees love their jobs.
The company has never broken the law. It's never even been charged.
None of this matters to President Barack Obama's National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
The NLRB -- far exceeding its authority -- is now forcing its way into private-sector workplaces nationwide, even if workers don't want to labor under union-boss control and if the company has never been accused of an "unfair labor practice."
Mom and Pop shops, small businesses, larger companies -- even some religiously-affiliated organizations -- are now under the Obama Labor Board's microscope.
The NLRB implemented a new rule this week to require as many as SIX MILLION private-sector employers to post biased notices about the National Labor Relations Act that effectively serve as a roadmap to unionization.
After the outrageous complaint against Boeing and the proposed ambush elections scheme, this latest Obama Labor Board move may be its most pernicious yet.
You see, the NLRB has two chief functions.
First, it administers union certification and decertification elections. Second, it adjudicates cases when workers, employers, or union officials file unfair labor practice charges against either unions or companies.
But now the NLRB has invented out of whole cloth a new unfair labor practice without Congressional approval. No other federal agency has ever made it unlawful to fail to post a notice that wasn't required by Congress.
Any job provider that fails to post the biased notice could find itself forced into a lengthy and costly legal battle.
Mom and Pop can't afford that.
What makes the new rule even more troubling is that anyone can file the unfair labor practice charge -- not just the company's employees.
The new rule hands aggressive union organizers another weapon in so-called "corporate campaigns" in which they drag a business through the mud in the media with frivolous accusations of employer misconduct.
Union bosses only back off after the business agrees to throw its employees under the bus and let the union launch an abusive "card check" organizing campaign.
This "top-down" union organizing strategy frequently involves a team of union agents showing up at workers' homes and browbeating them with misleading statements, outright lies, and even intimidation until the worker agrees to sign a so-called "union authorization card" instead of a secret-ballot election.
Meanwhile, experts believe the NLRB is scheming to impose card check "neutrality agreements" on businesses found to have committed labor law violations.
Media reports in the Boeing case revealed that the NLRB's Acting General Counsel tried to force Boeing into a settlement to let union officials gain monopoly bargaining power over employees through card check.
This latest power grab is yet more evidence of its desperate desire to pay off Big Labor before the next election, and it's an invitation to Big Labor to run card check campaigns everywhere in America.
Moreover, the posting's pro-forced unionism bias couldn't be clearer.
No mention of workers' right to decertify an unwanted union.
No mention of workers' right to demand a secret-ballot election if aggressive union organizers try to strong-arm their way into a workplace.
No mention of workers' right to divert forced union dues to a charity if they have a conscientious, religious objection to union membership.
No mention of workers' right to refrain from financially supporting union-boss politics or, if they work in a Right to Work state, to opt out of paying any forced "fees."
Federal labor law is supposedly intended to help workers protect their rights.
The biased and ideologically-charged Obama Labor Board, however, has turned into an organizing tool for Big Labor.
And it's all designed to give union bosses and unelected bureaucrats even more power over workers and job providers alike -- at a time when our economy continues to languish.

California Unions Intimidate Voters to Maintain Power

California’s initiative process has long been a thorn in the side of the state’s labor unions and their allies in the Democrat Party. While they have occasionally utilized ballot measure to coax more money out of taxpayers, overall progressives have viewed ballot initiatives as the one aspect of the state’s government that they cannot fully control.

Their stranglehold on the legislature and deep pockets for election spending ensure their domination as California’s most powerful political influencer. For besieged conservatives and businesses, bypassing the union-controlled legislature and appealing directly to voters has been a saving grace and has slowed, if not halted, the state’s drive off the economic cliff.

Since the passage of Proposition 13 and its property tax protections in 1978 as part of the storied California tax revolt, unions and Democrats have sought to curb the influence and freedom of the initiative process. In the last few years alone, a dozen legislative bills have tried to wrest control of the initiative process from the people and place it within the capitol.

From disallowing payment for signature gathering (a necessity in a state as large as California), to increasing the number of voter signatures required, to mandating all initiatives receive two-thirds approval from the legislature, every angle has been played in curtailing the people’s ability to vote on measures via the ballot box. But none of these attempts have been as devious or anti-democratic as the latest union tactic.

Radio listeners were recently bombarded with ominous-sounding ads warning them against signing any initiative petitions for fear of their identity being stolen. These ads feature a husband admonishing his wife for submitting to the “pushy” signature gatherers outside the local grocery store, and warning her that they will have to watch their credit reports now because of her carelessness.

Examined for their veracity by newspapers and political professionals, the ads were deemed laughable and erroneous. They were simply designed to scare voters into bypassing signature gatherers and therefore torpedo the chances of their petitions qualifying for the ballot. For decades the initiative process has allowed the gathering of voter signatures and the information collected on petitions is no different than that already public in voter registration records.

There are a number of petitions currently in circulation trying to get on the June primary and November general election ballots in 2012, so at first it was unclear who was running the ads and to what end. The radio ads identify themselves as being paid for by “Californians against Identity Theft;” an altruistic-sounding organization, right? But the vast majority of voters are cynical or wise enough to know that those benevolent-sounding groups sponsoring political ads are usually a front group for the same old powers that have always run things.

After some careful sleuthing, it was discovered that the labor union State Building & Construction Trades Council of California was actually behind the ads. In fact, the Sacramento Bee interviewed the union’s president, Bob Balgenorth, who admitted that he was part of the cabal that devised this deceptive scheme to deter voters from signing any and all petitions.

“I’ve long been concerned about the whole ballot initiative process, the fact that it’s not regulated as much as it should be,” Balgenort told the paper. Not regulated as much as it should be? What he really means is not regulated by the unions as they want it to be.

So what would cause the unions to launch this campaign to frighten and intimidate voters? A new initiative, the Stop Special Interest Money initiative, would stop union and corporate paycheck deductions for political spending. Unions and corporations would be banned from confiscating money from members’ or employees’ paychecks and then using it to support candidates or causes that actually undermine their personal beliefs. The initiative has been successfully gathering signatures and will most likely appear on the June 5, 2012 primary ballot.

Unions should be scared. The Stop Special Interest Money initiative has an estimated $1.5 million in the bank and public sentiment is turning against the unions’ insatiable greed for tax dollars regardless of the damage to the private sector.

Unions claim to stand up for the little guy and protect the average Joe against powerful special interests. So how ironic that they are now engaged in a campaign to prevent the very people they purport to protect from exercising their constitutional rights.

It’s no wonder unions are willing to thwart democracy and intimidate voters with such detestable scare tactics. But it shows just how far unions are willing to go to maintain their power—they would even deny the fundamental democratic process and citizens’ right to participate in it if it means unions can keep their power.

Meredith Turney 

The Department of Energy-What it costs you!

If you want this country to stop the spending spree and start to pay down the debt and not just pay the minimum due each month, I would get rid of a few very useless departments of government. I would abolish Housing and Urban Development [HUD], Dept. of Education, Dept. of Agriculture, Health & Human Services, The Federal Bank, ACORN, US Chamber of Commerce and many more. All of these were brought into being by the DEMOCRATS! Lets just look at another waste of taxpayer money. The Dept. of Energy:

The Non-Energy Generating Department of Energy and the Smart Grid

- Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh 

If you ask Americans what the Department of Energy does, the majority will tell you, they are tasked with generating electricity and other forms of energy. The real mission of the DOE is quite different.

The Department of Energy was formed after the oil crisis on August 8, 1977 by Jimmy Carter who signed The Department of Energy Organization Act of 1977. It began operations on October 1, 1977. The DOE operates 34 science laboratories.

As part of the $789 billion economic stimulus package in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, Congress provided DOE with an additional $38.3 billion for fiscal years 2009 and 2010, adding about 75 percent to Energy’s annual budgets. Most of the stimulus spending was in the form of grants and contracts.

According to their website, “The Department of Energy is the single largest Federal government supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, providing more than 40 percent of total Federal funding for this vital area of national importance. It oversees, and is the principal Federal funding agency of, the Nation’s research programs in high-energy physics, nuclear physics, and fusion energy sciences. Such a diverse research portfolio supports tens of thousands of principal investigators, post-doctoral students, and graduate students who are tackling some of the most challenging scientific questions of our era.”

I would like to translate this into simpler English, the Department of Energy does not generate directly or indirectly one watt of electricity.

Under Science and Technology, the DOE spends our tax dollars, on pure research:

Research and Development

“DOE manages fundamental research programs in basic energy sciences, biological and environmental sciences, and computational science and is the Federal Government’s largest single provider of funds for materials and chemical sciences.”

Ensuring the supply of radio isotopes

“Radio Isotopes have become key agents in the diagnosis and effective treatment of various cancers, heart disease and other medical problems. DOE programs ensure the availability of an adequate supply of medical and research isotopes, which is essential to the Nation’s health care system.” Like most Americans, I was unaware that the DOE is concerned with our health and medical research.

Research in environmental sciences

“The Department conducts research in climate change, geophysics, genomics, life sciences, and science education, as well as scientific research in the areas of fossil energy and environmental science.” This is strange since EPA concerns itself with these very same issues.

A diverse research portfolio

“DOE sponsors research at universities located in 49 states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia. These efforts support tens of thousands of principal investigators, post-doctoral students, and graduate students who are tackling some of the most challenging scientific questions of our era.” This is fine, but is it the job of the Department of Energy to provide grant money for university research?

The DOE is interested in the “consequences of energy production, development, and use, investing in basic research on global climate change and environmental remediation.” I thought Al Gore’s global warming schemes had been debunked a long time ago. His Nobel Peace Prize for the bogus Power Point Presentation should have been rescinded.

Few people know that the DOE has founded and plays an important role in the Human Genome Project in 1986 and “invests in basic research on global climate change and environmental remediation.”

Microbe research “will play an important role in helping solve DOE’s mission challenges in energy production and environmental cleanup.” How is that possible to have a mission challenge of energy production when you are not producing one watt of electricity, you are just a bureaucrat headquartered in Washington, D.C.?

Carbon sequestration is another research mission of the DOE “to reduce the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.” The Department of Energy “strives to deliver fundamental knowledge of biological systems that can be used to address DOE needs in clean energy, carbon sequestration, and environmental cleanup.” How does the DOE have needs in clean energy, carbon sequestration, and environmental clean up? Is the EPA not tasked with environmental cleanup? Does the free market not decide the needs in energy? Now, all of a sudden, by fiat, the DOE is going to decide our needs (demand) for energy by forcing the installation of Smart Meters into our homes? Obviously, the DOE does not supply energy at all.

Personal surveillance device

Smart Meters are digital electricity consumption readers that are installed under the guise that the old ones are either cracked or not reading properly. Most people acquiesce, without realizing that they have just allowed the installation of a personal surveillance device.

This device will tell a distant data server to whom they do not have access, how many watts they consume, when they turn off and on every lamp in their home, how many computers they have, electric gadgets, when they sleep, when they are on vacation, when they are not home, their living pattern in general, basically a search of their life and home without a warrant.

The information recorded can and will be sold to anyone who is willing to pay. Pirates can intercept the wireless signal and constant data streaming from your home. The one-watt licensed by the FCC device will aid and abet the punishing of people for doing things in the privacy of their own homes, big brother watching all the time. Furthermore, electricity can be cut off from a remote location during peak usage time, middle of summer and middle of winter.

Tapping into someone’s home is illegal in all 50 states and federal territories. The DOE affiliates use “implied consent” when they change the meter. People should be aware and send notices that they do not wish to have their meters changed, the old ones work just fine.

The energy sources listed are wind, solar, renewables, oil, nuclear, natural gas, hydropower, hydrogen, geothermal, fusion, fossil fuels, electric power, coal, and bioenergy. Yet the DOE focus is on “clean fuel initiatives” none of which are cheap or cheaper than fossil fuels.

In modernizing our energy infrastructure, think Smart Grid, the focus is on our “planet’s environment.” Limiting environmental impact, “advances in wind, hydro and geothermal energy allow us to take advantage of clean, abundant energy.” Has anybody seen cheap and abundant energy coming from wind mills or geothermal? I do know that California is turning theirs off when winds are higher than 23 mph because they are so noisy, yet windmills work best in winds 30 mph and higher.

The DOE seems preoccupied with “establishing the safety, reliability, and efficiency of energy supplies in a global marketplace.” There seems to be almost an obsession with coordination with the global environment and Agenda 21 stewardship as if we already live under a one-world government of the United Nations.

Under Energy Efficiency, the DOE wants to protect the environment, reduce carbon emissions, and spread the wealth through the Weatherization Assistance Programby making the homes of “disadvantaged” more energy efficient. All of a sudden, the 47 percent of our population that pays no income taxes have become “disadvantaged” and are in dire need of assistance at every level possible at the expense of the tax-paying, hard-working middle class.

The DOE recommends that every American needs to learn how to make every dayEarth Day and save money and energy at home by using mercury-laden, energy-saving bulbs. It does not matter that it takes 30 minutes to dispose of such broken bulbs or that they explode from time to time, sending toxic mercury throughout the house, and requiring temporary evacuation of the premises. Thomas Edison would be turning over in his grave for the disservice they are doing to his incandescent bulb.

The DOE must protect the environment by disposing of nuclear waste properly, safely storing radioactive waste, and protecting the environment and the public. Should this not be the job of the EPA? Is this not a duplication and waste of taxpayer dollars?

The Department of Energy also provide prices and trends in areas such as petroleum, gasoline, 18-month forecast on oil, gas prices and supply, historical energy data from 1949-2004, and a primer on gasoline prices. All of this information can be obtained from other sources.

Under National Security, the DOE claims that it provides “cyber security protection, operations security, and prevents the spread of weapons of mass destruction.” I am sure, all of us can sleep better, knowing that the Department of Energy is in control of our national security.

Finally yet importantly, “the safety of our workers and the environmental responsibility to safeguard our natural surroundings are integrated management practices throughout DOE.” I may be mistaken but I thought that is why we had OSHA and the EPA.

The $29.5 billion DOE funding includes a 12 percent increase over the 2010 enacted levels. Clean energy, nuclear security, research and development are priority areas. “Savings are achieved through cuts to inefficient fossil energy programs.“New grid technologies and systems will help Smart Grid and improve energy transmission efficiency.”

Baltimore Gas & Electric (BGE) was denied an application by the Maryland Public Service Commission on June 22, 2010 to deploy smart grid infrastructure because it is cost effective or serves the public interest. A customer surcharge would have appeared on the bill even before the infrastructure was in place. Nobody seemed to address the issue of invasion of personal liberty and the illegality of tapping into someone’s life without a warrant.

Ten states are leading the national effort to deploy the smart grid. They have been awarded 42 percent, or $1.9 billion, of the $4.5 billion earmarked for the smart grid in the stimulus named the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. According to Greentech Media Research, these states are “laying the groundwork for market development of the smart grid.”

• California ($303.4 million)
• Colorado ($24.1 million)
• Florida ($467.2 million)
• Massachusetts ($28.29 million)
• New Jersey ($212.4 million)
• New York ($232.2 million)
• North Carolina ($403.5 million)
• Ohio ($142.4 million)
• Pennsylvania ($466.3 million)
• Texas ($285.6 million)

About 5 percent of Americans were equipped with some form of smart grid technology by the end of 2009. That number was forecast to increase ten-fold over the next five years.

In accordance with the President’s agreement at the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh, fossil fuel tax subsidies will be phased out for fossil fuel producers so that we can “transition to a 21^st century energy economy.”

DOE will “unleash a clean energy revolution” and “educate the next generation with 21^st century skills and create a world-class workforce.” I thought we did have a world-class workforce, we just lack the jobs Obama promised. Would that energy economy involve involuntary black-outs since a lot of our electricity is produced with fossil fuels?

The Department of Energy is an arm of the federal government, run by career bureaucrats who march in synch with United Nation’s Agenda 21 goals of “sustainability,” does not produce any energy, subsidizes for profit university and laboratory research with our taxpayer dollars, and wants to implement smart grid technology in order to control 24/7 our daily lives. Is it a good idea to allow them into our homes to install Smart Meters?