"All truth passes through 3 stages. First, it is ridiculed, second it is violently opposed, and third, it is accepted as self-evident." - - - Arthur Schopenhauer, Philosopher, 1788-1860 Whatever the evil (poison) is, it must be presented in a mix of something good, or good for you. Rat poison is like this, 99.5% of the ingredients are tasty and nutritious for the rat (otherwise, they wouldn't eat it, would they?).  Only .5% (1/2 percent) is deadly.

of News, Current Events & Comment for October 2004  June 2004 July 2004 August 2004 September 2004 the URL for this page can be found by returning to the previous page (if a contributing editor, wishes recognition, they should so indicate with their submission) Best printing w/a black only printer is accomplished when your settings are for "black text and black lines"

To save on the amount of forced emails that consume MEGA bytes of HD space,  these pages are created for your convenience. Pictures can be saved by right clicking then follow the yellow brick road, and original of reports can be located by available links in the articles and saved as you would other web pages. I am reminded of Dad's special brownies.  It is the same truth.

click here to hear and/or download a short wav file of President Ronald Reagan telling the people about government being the problem.
 
 

[You do not have to have an opinion or position on something to entertain facts and someone else.  But, if the facts are not disputed, then what difference is your opinion.   --  Tribble]

"They (the Jews) work more effectively against us, than the enemy's armies. They are a hundred times more dangerous to our liberties and the great cause we are engaged in ... It is much to be lamented that each state, long ago, has not hunted them down as pests to society and the greatest enemies we have to the happiness of America."
   -- George Washington, America's first President, Maxims of George Washington by A. A. Appleton & Co.

This is my favorite part of the four-year Presidential election cycle:  with just a handful of days to go, the disinformation, rumors and conspiracy theories reach critical mass, exploding much faster than the eye can possibly follow:

Bush is going to invade Iran...Russia is sending a fleet with anti-ship missiles to sink the American navy in the Persian Gulf...Russia has supplied Iran with anti-ship missiles (presumably to sink the American navy in the Persian Gulf)...America's entire invasion force is about to be taken hostage in Iraq...Osama bin Laden, kept in hiding at Gitmo for so long, will be produced and claimed to have just been captured...Dubya will resign and Cheney will assume the Presidency, declare martial law and cancel the election...The draft is about to be reinstated...Women are being added to combat units in Iraq...Saddam Hussein is still alive and at large; we have one of his body doubles in jail...the concentration camps for American dissidents are being readied...Planet X is just rounding the Sun and all of Earth's volcanoes will erupt in unison, due to the massive gravitational pull...

What a distraction, huh?  That's probably why you missed the fact that, just a few days ago, both houses of Congress unanimously passed "The Global Anti-Semitism Review Act," which charges the US State Department with monitoring and combating anti-Semitism wherever it may occur, anyplace...that is, as in anyplace on the face of the earth.  No public input was sought.  No public discussion took place.  Unanimous.  As in every single one of those reprehensible boobs that we elected!  Yet another thing you should keep in mind while punching out those chads on November 2.

Now, it is bad enough that it has become official American policy to "combat anti-Semitism" anywhere.  But everywhere?  Sometimes, it seems like just a few of us are paying attention anymore.  Would you please increase my Thorazine drip, nurse?  I seem to be much too awake and the pain is more than I can bear.

Even the State Department itself opposed this legislation, which will come as a shocker to those who follow such things.  After all, the US State Department has been firmly in the grip of Jewish hands since before the time of Henry Kissinger.  The only rational explanation is that some Jews are becoming afraid of provoking a backlash as a result of the Zionist clampdown now taking place.  Be still, my beating heart.  If only...

However, I have learned to take my first position on anything these days by first determining how the Zionists feel (that's Jewish Supremacists to those who don't do shorthand - Supremacist as in feeling superior to all the rest of us and entitled to anything they want), then I just assume the opposite point of view.  Rarely do I have to change my outlook based upon further developments.  Therefore, I have decided that I support this legislation.  Why?  Because, like so many Jewish overarching and self-serving acts these days (like the Middle-Eastern War, for example), it is helping to create a backlash.

People are starting to wake up.  Hallelujah.  Ordinary people see something like this and say, "Wha?  Huh?  Where?"  Thus does enlightenment begin.  That is where we step in and supply the answers, all of which begin with the phrase, "The Jews..."

Like the Bride of Frankenstein, America lurches forward into the dark and stormy night, ready to do the bidding of its evil master (can you say, "Israel," boys and girls?).  Nearby, a cliff falls away into the darkness, with jagged rocks far below, beyond the visibility afforded by the gathering fog.  Meanwhile, the townsfolk (that's us, for those who just arrived) are starting to wake one another (more of us) and collect firebrands and pitchforks.

"She's Alive," gloats the evil Dr. Ariel Frankensharon, all the while gesturing meaningfully toward Iran.

Casting aside the broken body of the small child named Iraq, Frankenamerica mumbles, "I just wanted her to love me.  But she hated me.  They always hate me.  Why, Doctor?  Why do they always hate me?"

"Because you are so strong...so free.  They are jealous.  Now they must pay..." hisses the evil Doctor.

"I've seen this before," you might say.  Yes, sad to say, there is nothing new under the sun.  And it is the same evil Doctor that drove Frankenrussia to its death in times gone past.  For the same reasons.  Always, for the same reasons.

"Anti-Semitism," shouts the Evil Doctor, "It's always anti-Semitism.  Foist Egypt, den Goimany, now here.  Vhy oh Vhy do dey poisecute us so?  Git'em, Frankie.  Go git dem evil anti-Semites."  Dutifully, Frankenamerica sets its resolve (passing the Global Anti-Semitism Act) and shuffles off into the night, oblivious to the danger presented by the gathering townspeople or the cliff's edge to which, inevitably, they will drive the monster.

Why did this Act have to be passed?  Because of the outcry that has gone up about the obvious truth concerning both Afghanistan and Iraq.  Because of the growing awareness of the lie that 9/ll masks.  Because, already, it is too late for the Evil Doctor, who was just doing what comes naturally to Evil Doctors, after all.  Because people like you and I have awakened recently and taken up the cry.  We call to those still asleep, just over the rise.  The Evil Doctor thinks that, with Frankenamerica, finally he can conquer the world and put all his detractors to the sword.

Yes, we've all seen this before.  We know what happens to the witless monster.  We know that, once the evil monster's body lies broken on the rocks below, the Evil Doctor steals away into the night, to ready yet another cheap sequel...because that is what he does, you see.  That is what he does.  He can't help himself.

Over the top?  No, I can't say this loud enough.  In fact, I have been shouting about this danger loud and long.  See, for example:  Hate Speech - Anything Jews Hate to Hear, The Finlandization of America, Rhapsody in Blood, AntiSemitism is a Disease (You Catch It From Jews), The Synagogue of Satan, In Defense of Terrorism, Kill 'em, Kill 'em All!, Blame Israel, JEWS - JEWS - JEWS!!! There, I feel better already, Would You Like Fries With That New World Order?, I'm Mad as Hell, If You Want to Be Loved More, Be More Lovable, Know the Breed, Know the Dog, Elevators Smell Different to Midgets, Them vs. Us, Mutterings, It's the Jews, Stupid!!! and, my personal favorite, In Defense of Anti-Semitism.

Early in the evolution of a society, criminals lead to the making of laws.  Lawmaking is a perpetual motion machine, however.  Before long, it is the Lawmaking that is, itself, creating criminals.  America passed into this phase years ago.  With each of these laws comes more control, more restriction, all in the name of freedom and safety.

Pursuing safety, I say, is the worst thing we can set for a national policy.  Safety and freedom are incompatible.  Freedom requires lack of governmental control.  Safety requires total governmental control.  Besides, ask yourself (and answer honestly):  do you really feel safer than you did four years ago?

New America.  An idea whose time has come.
 
 

a r t i c l e   /   c o m m e n t a r y

Who Needs A Psychiatrist?
http://www.chuckbaldwinlive.com/chuckwagon.html
contributing editor to   - Viv

By Chuck Baldwin

Food For Thought From The Chuck Wagon
October 27, 2004

The mainstream press (and just about every prominent conservative in the country) has virtually ignored what should be one of this election year's top stories: the fact that President George W. Bush wants to have every American citizen, beginning with all school age children, examined by psychiatrists. However, a couple of notable personalities, Lew Rockwell and Howard Phillips, are attempting to alert the American people to this diabolical plan.

In his Issues and Strategy Bulletin (HPISB#750-September 30, 2004), Phillips quotes Rockwell as saying, "The New Freedom Initiative is a plan to screen the entire U.S. population for mental illness and to provide a cradle-to-grave continuum of services for those identified as either mentally ill or at risk of becoming so. Under the plan, schools would become hubs of the screening process, not only for children, but for their parents and teachers. There are even components aimed at senior citizens, pregnant women, and new mothers.

"In April 2002, President Bush established the New Freedom Commission on Mental Health to conduct a 'comprehensive study of the United States mental health service delivery system.' The commission issued its recommendations in July 2003, chief among them being that schools are in a 'key position' to screen the 52 million students and 6 million adults who work at educational facilities."

This Draconian federal program began in Texas while G.W. Bush was Governor. It was called the Texas Medication Algorithm Project as an alliance between the pharmaceutical industry, the University of Texas, and the mental health and corrections systems of Texas. Now that Bush is President, he has begun implementing the program at the national level.

Phillips also quotes Rockwell as noting that one pharmaceutical company that is set to reap a potential financial windfall from the Bush universal mental health screening plan is the Eli Lilly Company by saying, "Eli Lilly has multiple ties to the Bush administration. George Bush, Sr., was a member of Lilly's board of directors. Lilly made $1.6 million in political contributions in 2000, 82 percent of which went to George W. Bush and the Republican Party. President Bush appointed Lilly's chief executive officer, Sidney Taurel, to a seat on the Homeland Security Council."

A key component of the implementation of Bush's universal mental health screening plan was to pass Ted Kennedy's No Child Left Behind federal education bill, because one of the principle features of the NCLB bill is to "remove the emotional, behavioral, and academic barriers that interfere with student success in school."

Using the NCLB bill, Bush's plan seeks not only to assess youngsters, but "to expand school mental health programs and evaluate parents." This involves "psychotherapy and drugs" and "social and emotional check-ups." What this means is that "parents are supposed to be surreptitiously assessed for mental 'illness' every time they walk into their physician's office."

For anyone with even a modicum of history knowledge, this smacks eerily similar to Joseph Stalin's "psychiatric hospitals" in the former Soviet Union. This has also been a favored tactic of Chinese Communists. Under those regimes, anyone not agreeing with the political despots in power were determined to be "mentally ill" and sent off to "hospitals" for "treatment."

It is hard to imagine a more sinister and potentially dangerous plan than President Bush's universal mental health screening plan now being implemented. If Bush is reelected, this plan will certainly become accepted policy throughout the United States. This will result in pharmaceutical companies such as Eli Lilly reaping billions of dollars in profits and the American people being subjected to unimaginable abridgements of privacy rights and personal freedoms!

I submit that it is not America's school children who need a psychiatrist, it is the people who would elect any president who dares to implement such a Machiavellian plan!

© Chuck Baldwin
 
 

I N S I G H T

"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest for freedom, go home and leave us in peace. We seek not your council nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."

--Samuel Adams
 
 

a r t i c l e   /   c o m m e n t a r y

War and Men
http://www.strike-the-root.com/3/ogden/ogden1.html
contributing editor to   - Jeanne

by Jesse Ogden

No matter where you go, no matter what you do, they'll be there.  You'll find them in your schools, in your offices, on the radio, on television, in all the media, and sometimes in your own home.  They talk very loud and very ferociously, leaving no chance for civilized debate.  They're blind statist sheep.

In times of war, they'll support any war, no matter how unjust, no matter how much murder there is, they will always support the war, because that is what they have been conditioned to do.  Many of them have never had military experience, and yet they act as though they know war more intimately than those who fought it.  Those who have never fought but oppose war keep to heart the warnings of Major General Smedley Butler ("War is a racket!"), General Tecumseh Sherman ("There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all hell.  You can bear this warning voice to generations yet to come.  I look upon war with horror."), they are the people who refuse to listen to what Zinni and Scwarzkopf have said about this new state-sanctioned mass murder, they are the people who will not listen to what the Vietnam vets say about the war, the ones who will not hide behind the patriotism and will tell you exactly what war really is, the ones that everyone tries to silence because they themselves are afraid of facts.

Go to a government educational facility--public schools as they are more affectionately called--and take one hard look at the students who have chosen to fall in line and support war.  Look into their eyes and you'll see two things: the desire to be on those front lines, to be fighting for God, for country, for freedom, and for glory, but the other thing you will find is fear.  That fear they will always try to suppress, always try to destroy, but it's always there, and if you listen to the Vietnam vets who recount their tales of hell in the foliage, you see that fear too, that fear of the capabilities of people to senselessly murder one another, the capability of a few men hiding in a city who have the power to send many off to die and to shoot someone they don't even know, who has no personal quarrel with them.  It's this fear that everything they've been told, everything that they learned about not listening to those against war, is a lie.

And if you continue to walk in that facility, go to the ROTC, and look into those eyes.  They are the future military of this country.  But as you look into their eyes, you will undoubtedly wonder which of them will move on up through the system to cushy military jobs where they get to tell everyone what to do, and which of them will be sent to another country as a frontline living shield for the lucky soldiers in back and will be sent back home in a comfortable casket, or better yet, in one of many black body bags.

And it's not just the ROTC kids returning home in body bags that you'll wonder about, you'll wonder about the whole school as well.  You'll look around, and wonder how many of these kids, whose lives are only beginning, will be duped into military service for "the common good" and for nationalism.  How many fathers, brothers, sons, uncles, nephews, grandsons, and now, daughters, will be lost?  You would not be the only one who felt sick if you were disgusted by this wastefulness of life, as you wonder which ones walking in the school would have the chance for life and who would not.

Most people will oppose the war because they don't see it as one of "our" necessary objectives or maybe for moral reasons, but there are some who oppose it because they see it as only benefiting the state and the status quo, and they are the closest of all.  People just will not see the state for what it is, a liar and a murderer.  They have grown to use to what Orwell called Big Brother, what Washington called "a dangerous servant and a fearful master."   They have grown attached to the institutions that allow men to slaughter one another in the name of whatever reasons they invent, who will mass murder groups of people for various reasons.  They will support the downfall of one brutal regime while supporting a different brutal regime, unaware that their own home is no longer the same as what it once was.

These people who call for war, they will often call for it in the defense of freedom.  But they are foolish; no war has ever been fought for freedom.  Wars have been fought for independence, for self-government, for real self-defense, but no war has ever been truly fought for freedom.  These wars for freedom have achieved only one thing, to destroy one evil and prop up a new evil.  And many times, the new evil is a far worse evil than the old evil.  Look at the wars in a broad scope, you will see that when success seems to be imminent, their efforts turn out be for naught, as things get worse than ever before.

War is not simply a product of men with evil hearts, it is also a product of men who have weak hearts, who do not have the courage to stand up against everyone and say “no.”  Any man who simply goes along with things and does as he's told, if what he has consented himself to is evil, then he himself is also evil and a coward.

The duty of all individuals is clear then; let no man, let no individual, force yourself to consent to something that you know is truly evil.  Let no man who understands the devastation and uselessness in state-sanctioned murder be subject to conforming with those who accept it.  They who know that what the state does is tyranny and injustice, and that the wars that men fight will always be in the benefit of those who have the power to benefit from it, must do everything in their power to resist.  If they do not resist, then who will?

March 4, 2003

Jesse Ogden is a high school student in Michigan.  He does not support the government in any way, nor does he support the students that support the government in any way.

Jesse Ogden Archive
 
 

I N S I G H T

 

the offices of Dewey, Cheetum & Howe

GIVE ME LIBERTY, OR GIVE ME SCHOOL!
contributing editor to   - D & thanks to T.I.T. 10/17/04

Joshua Phelps, a 17-year-old senior at Pine Bush High School in Crawford, N.Y., was looking for an extracurricular activity to participate in to round out his college application when he spotted an ad for the school's Civil War Club. He signed up and spent a weekend in a mock battle against Confederate soldiers in a replay of the 1863 Battle of Chancellorsville. Back at school, a security guard noticed something in Phelps' car: a militia uniform, complete with a (gasp!) fake musket. The guard called police, who arrested Phelps on weapons charges. In addition to criminal charges, the school has suspended Phelps for five days pending an expulsion hearing for violation of its zero tolerance weapons policy. Police Chief Daniel McCann calls the bust proper. "The musket was found in his car on the high school grounds and could have been used," he says, perhaps to fire a small rock or something. (Middletown Times Herald-Record) ...Surely no one there has any spare rocks in their heads that he could use for that, though, right?

Costume gets kid cuffed Pine Bush senior had replica of Civil War musket for re-enactment
http://www.recordonline.com/archive/2004/10/13/musket13.htm
October 13, 2004
By Christian M. Wade Times Herald-Record cwade@th-record.com

Pine Bush – Last weekend, Joshua Phelps was fighting Confederate soldiers with a Civil War-era musket in his arms, re-enacting the epic 1863 Battle of Chancellorsville.

When the Pine Bush High School senior was done charging around the grassy fields behind Montgomery's Brick House Museum, he tossed his musket, a bayonet and Union soldier's blue uniform in his car and forgot about it.

Yesterday, a security guard at the high school saw the butt of the musket.

He called the cops.

The discovery by the guard sparked a chain of events that got the B-average student arrested, suspended from school for five days and facing weapons charges. He could be expelled from school and even jailed.

Phelps, 17, was sitting in study hall when the security guard told him to come to Assistant Principal Aaron Hopmayer's office. When he got there he was told that a rifle had been spotted in his car.

He wasn't concerned. He knew they would understand.

"I actually thought it was kind of stupid, at first, when I heard it was about the musket," Joshua said. "I didn't think I'd get arrested over it."

He went with them to the parking lot and let them search his car. They pulled the musket from his back seat along with a uniform and Civil War-era accessories.

Minutes later, he was arrested by Town of Crawford police, handcuffed, and charged with fourth-degree criminal possession, a misdemeanor. The cops confiscated the gun.

His mother, Valerie Michaels, is outraged.

"They arrested my son for having a Civil War costume," she said yesterday. "The school district has blown this incident totally out of proportion. It's ludicrous."

The musket was part of the teenager's Civil War-era costume, which included his uniform – shoes, leather belt, jacket, hat, powder keg and a leather cartridge box.

Over the weekend, Phelps participated in the re-enactment of the May 1863 battle of Chancellorsville at the Brick House Museum, an annual event hosted by the 124th New York State Volunteers, the famed "Orange Blossoms."

 The re-enactors model themselves after the original regiment, which was mustered into action from Orange County in the summer of 1862. The unit would take part in the battles of Chancellorsville and Gettysburg the following year – key conflicts in the war.

Michaels said she understands how school officials would be concerned, in the post-Columbine era, after discovering the musket on school grounds. But she said once they learned the musket was a replica, they should have given him a break.

"I don't understand why the school wants to push this so far," she said. "There are bigger problems at that high school than this. It just doesn't make any sense."

Town of Crawford police Chief Daniel McCann disagreed. Replica or not, he said, the musket could have been used to fire a projectile, such as a small rock.

He said officers found 14 to 15 rolled cartridges with black powder, and a bayonet.

"I know this might appear to be a minor thing, but it's not," McCann said. "The musket was found in his car on the high school grounds and could have been used."

Pine Bush Superintendent RoseMarie Stark called yesterday's incident a "student discipline matter" and declined comment.

School officials say bloody massacres like the April 20, 1999, one at Columbine High School, have prompted state and federal governments to enact laws about weapons in schools.

Many states have a zero-tolerance stance, meaning a fake musket that fires blanks carries the same penalty as a loaded AK-47 assault rifle. In New York, each case must take into account the weapon, the circumstances and the student's history.

"There is a concern among school districts, even with replicas or fake guns," said David Ernst, a spokesman for the state School Boards Association.

In Pine Bush, the high school had recruited students to become involved in the Civil War re-enactors club.

Phelps, who joined the Civil War Club a few months ago, said he was looking to get more involved in extra-curricular activities, hoping it would boost his standing on college applications. He found an ad for the club in the school district's annual catalog.

After joining, the Orange Blossoms, who are affiliated with the club, gave him a uniform, the replica musket that shoots blanks, a powder keg and a Union soldier's uniform.

"If they [the school district] were really so afraid that a replica musket could be used to shoot someone, then why are they giving them out to 17-year-olds?" Michaels asked.
 
 

a r t i c l e   /   c o m m e n t a r y

Invisible Bar Code System Developed
http://www.theautochannel.com/F/news/2004/08/14/209084.html

[We reported on this last month, and here is a little more information.  --  Tribble]

Seoul August 14, 2004; Choi Kyong-ae writing for the Korea Times reported that Korean scientists have developed the world¡¯s first invisible and omnipresent bar code system.

After eight years of research, a team of Seoul National University (SNU) professors and chemists announced Wednesday the development of what is called the Nano DNA-Barcode System (NDBS).

``The novel system is literally `invisible but omnipresent.¡¯ Its invisibility prevents fabrications of barcode information such as password changes or nullification. This ensures a high level of security, whereas the system currently in use is open to fabrications,¡¯¡¯ Choy Jin-ho, who led the project at the SNU¡¯s National Nanohybrid Materials Laboratory, said.

NDBS works like this: First, DNA-encapsulated inorganic nano material is sprayed on or impregnated in products such as those of petroleum, paint, agriculture or livestock. The DNA is not damaged by enzymes or heat during a product¡¯s distribution, so information concerning a product can be obtained by extracting nano molecules through a method known as polimerase chain reaction (PCR).

``Organic vegetables and petroleum are encrypted with genetic codes that carry all information concerning a product, including its origin, quality details and suppliers. This allows a product to be identified and traced very easily. It can be used in the event of an outbreak of mad cow disease or an oil spillage,¡± said Professor Choy.

He added that the same technology can be used for a variety of purposes. One example is the identification of counterfeit bills if new bills are impregnated with an invisible inorganic DNA nanohybrid during production. The government should manage and monitor the system to ensure its wide adoption, he stressed.

Choy applied for patent rights on the DNA barcode system in Korea last year, having obtained patents for its stabilization process four years ago in the United States. His achievements have recently been introduced in Advanced Materials, a renowned materials technology magazine published in Germany.
 
 

a r t i c l e   /   c o m m e n t a r y

The Pension Catastrophe
contributing editor to   - D

http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north297.html
by Gary North

[Gary North may have lost some credibility with the Y2K matter, but even a broken clock is correct twice each day.   --  Tribble]

In 1950, free market economist Paul Poirot wrote a little book, The Pension Idea. For 31 years, 1956–1987, he edited The Freeman, a monthly magazine that promotes free market ideas. Through him, I got my first national audience, beginning in February, 1967. I helped support myself in grad school by writing for The Freeman.

In his book, he warned against trusting in anyone else to support you in your old age, especially the government. He also warned against expecting investments in private assets – stocks or bonds – to support you. Hope is fine, if backed up by wisdom. Confidence is foolish.

Why? First, because the government can tax bonds through inflation. Second, because stocks are threatened by the existence of pension guarantees for employees. There is no way to guarantee the future decisions of consumers, but they are the people who will determine the profitability of a company. To the extent that the government will enforce the claims of a company’s retired workers at the expense of shareholders, the shareholders’ claims are at risk. On page 48, Poirot offered this warning:

Does not investment in the stock of business corporations afford some security against the hazards of inflation? Ordinarily, one might think so. But today, it is pure speculation. It is speculation in the face of multiple taxation of corporate earnings. It is speculation as to how far the corporate management, willingly or under compulsion of government, may sacrifice the equity of stockholders in acquiescence to the demands of the leaders of organized labor. It is speculation as to how the courts will rule concerning priority of claims against company surplus. If the courts rule that employee pensions, for which contracts are already signed, shall have prior claim over the stockholders’ equity, then the stock of many corporations today is worth less than its current market price. Ownership of stock is an illusion in a company whose management has pledged to employees that future buyers of that company’s product will pay enough more for the product to provide pensions for those who have ceased producing. An all-powerful government, with the power to tax, is the only management which can claim that kind of control over the "buying" notions of its customers. When a private corporation undertakes to guarantee the future behavior of its customers, who are stockholders in the government, then that corporation is a sitting duck for governmental control.

Poirot is still alive. I call him every couple of years, just to see how he is doing. He lives on a pension. His employer, the Foundation for Economic Education, offered no pension plan. He made good decisions with his own investments. Most people don’t. Most people won’t.

THE ERA OF PENSIONS

He worked during the era that inaugurated the pension. In 1936, the Roosevelt Administration began Social Security. Under that Administration and under Truman’s, the idea spread to organized labor. The country was under wartime price controls, 1942–45. Truman kept them on until the fall of 1946. Under the rules governing wages, pension contributions were not counted as a wage. So, businesses worked out a mutually beneficial arrangement with trade union leaders. The leaders could announce to their members that the leaders had played hardball and forced management to hand over the money. The money came in the form of pension funding.

This was a good deal for workers, who under wartime controls were limited in what they could receive as wages. This was also a good deal for management, who would not have to fund these pensions 100%, even though the agreement was a legal document. It looked as though management was giving up a great deal, but management in those early years, like the Social Security Administration, did not feel the pain. The pain would come later, long after that generation’s retirement and internment.

The promise was great: guaranteed income apart from children’s obligations to support aged parents. Government pensions – minimal – had come under Bismarck in the 1880s. It bought him time. It bought him votes. It kept conservatives in power. Country by country, the idea spread.

Of course, it was the productivity of capitalism that made this promise believable. Ever since the late 18th century, output in the West, even with its wars, has increased above 2% per annum. That seemingly slow rate of growth has been sufficient to pay off the dreams of retirees. A small percentage of the population has been able to retire in comfort because of government extractions, corporate growth, and their own wise decisions regarding investments.

But the pension idea has spread. It has spread to hundreds of millions of European and American workers, who have believed the promises of government, union leaders, and corporate management. They assume that those making the promises know what they are doing. And they really do know what they are doing: making self-interested promises today at the expense of managers who will come later.

The economy no longer grows sufficiently to make possible the pension dreams of the vast majority of these workers, especially with government-funded medical care siphoning off most of the money that would have gone to pensions. There are too many expectant beneficiaries, who think that they can get more, now, at the expense of others, later.

The day of reckoning will arrive within my lifetime, actuarially speaking, and surely yours. Most people will run out of pension before they run out of time.

MAULDIN’S WARNING

John Mauldin writes a weekly free email letter. You can subscribe here.

He is the author of a new book on investing, Bulls Eye Investing, which is high on the New York Times’ best-seller list. It is a very good book. It points out why it is unlikely that the stock market will perform well over the next two decades, given its above-average performance, 1982–2000. This book would not have been published in 2000. There is nothing like running into the brick wall of reality to create new markets.

In his weekly letter for August 13, he discussed the pension liability problems facing major corporations. Because John writes well, and because he is a numbers guy (he used to be my company’s manager), I will quote extensively from his letter. That’s because I can’t make the numbers any clearer. I assure you, no one in Congress is warning his constituents this campaign year about the numbers and the limits that they impose. They tell voters, "Vote for us, and you will get what you deserve."

They will, indeed. Mauldin writes:

Specifically, I want to look at defined benefit pension plans. These are pension plans which in theory guarantee a worker a specific set of benefits for his retirement years.

Let’s do a simplified analysis. Let’s say the pension of Company ABC has $1 billion dollars. The actuaries work to figure out what the fund will need in future years. The managers of the fund make assumptions about how much the fund portfolio will grow in the future from a combination of investments and more contributions by the company. Let’s assume Company ABC is going to need its investment portfolio to grow by 9% per year in order to stay fully funded. The more you assume the portfolio will grow, the less ABC will need to dig into its pockets to fully fund the pension plan.

Assuming a typical 60% stocks/40% bonds mix, what type of returns does the company need from its stock portfolio? Let’s be generous and project a 5% return from its bond portfolio over the next decade. That means it will need over 11% from the equity portion of its portfolio!

But let’s not be so negative. Let’s assume bonds will return more and increase our stock investments. Assuming an asset allocation mix of 70% equities and 30% bonds (yielding 6%), stocks would still have to earn 10.7% to attain a 9% composite return.

Is that attainable? My answer is, "Not really." Quoting from a private paper by Robert Arnott:

"Stock returns have only four constituent parts:

        1.5% current dividend yield * +2.5% consensus for future inflation * +0.0% P/E expansion (dare we assume more??)

* + ?? real growth in dividends and earnings

    "This arithmetic suggests that, to get to a 7 percent return estimate, we need a mere 3 percent real growth in dividends and earnings. We can do far better than that, no?

    "No. Historical real growth in dividends and earnings has been 1 percent to 2 percent. To get to the 3 percent real growth in the economy, we have turned to entrepreneurial capitalism, the creation of new companies. Shareholders in today’s companies don’t participate in this part of GDP growth. So, even a 7 percent return for equities may be too aggressive. To get 10.7 percent from stocks, we need nearly 7 percent real growth in earnings, far faster than any economist would dare project for the economy at large, let alone for the economy net of entrepreneurial capitalism."

Here we have the problem: management wants to minimize the deductions made from the pension system for its workers. Management, rewarded with stock options, prefers high returns on shares, which come from earnings after expenses. Expenses include the pension system.

To get a high rate of earnings (profits), management tells the actuaries to make the highest possible assumptions for the rate of return on portfolio investments. Because of the stock market boom, 1982 to 2000, high rates of projected return became commonplace. Actuaries were told to push the envelope by making the highest projections they could get away with. The Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation, a government agency under the ERISA law, which stands as a final guarantor of corporate pensions, allowed these high expected rates of return.

The problem has come since 2000. The stock market has showed a loss since then. Until 2004, dividends have been low – under 2%. This is beginning to change, slowly. A recession killed earnings until 2003. Everywhere management looked, there was a sea of red ink. Yet the corporate pension obligations for defined benefit programs kept growing at the pre-2000 rates of return, which the envelope-pushing actuaries had projected.

THE METER KEEPS TICKING

The obligations do not go away because the economy hits one of Greenspan’s "soft patches." It ticks away, night and day, day in and day out. Today’s management is trapped by the decisions of yesterday’s management, stretching back to World War II. The game went on, decade after decade: pushing the day of reckoning into the future. "Buy now, pay later" became the strategy. Buy trade union cooperation, buy workers’ loyalty, buy a higher rate of quarterly earnings by means of decades-long promises.

We live in a society in which this strategy has become business as usual in every area of life. We buy now and promise to pay later. When the bills ad up, we change the accounting rules. This is what Lyndon Johnson did with Social Security. He took it off-budget, then raided the income produced by Social Security taxes to reduce the official budget deficit. This scam is still in force.

The public is naïve. Nobody reads the fine print. The promise-makers are not the same people as the promise-keepers. There will be no promise-keepers. The government, with cheering from overburdened corporations, will get the Federal Reserve System to inflate the money supply, making more fiat money available to pay off the obligations.

Problem: that will kill the bond market.

Mauldin continues:

What if pensions start getting less return in their bond portfolios? It is tough to get 5 percent today without taking some real risk. To get to a 9 percent assumption in a 5 percent bond environment, and if you have 70 percent in stocks/30 percent in bonds, that 9 percent overall return assumes you are getting almost 12 percent returns on your stock portfolio. But what if the Dow drops to 6,000 as it might during the next recession and the NASDAQ goes to 600? What if your returns are negative for the next few years?

How much are you underfunded then, as your portfolio drops another 20 percent? The number becomes mind-boggling. If each of the S&P 500 companies lowered its expected rate of return from the current average of 9.2 percent to 6.5 percent, the total cost to earnings would be $30 billion, according to a report by CSFB. But if the Dow drops to 6,000 the number goes off the chart. Remember, the average drop in the markets is 43% during recessions.

Is it realistic to suggest we will not see a recession within a few years? I think not. As I demonstrated in my book and have written here many times, there has never been a period in history where the stock market has out-performed money market funds over the next ten years when valuations are at current levels (The core P/E for the S&P is around 21).

Everyone wants to beat the market. Hardly anyone can. If you wanted a secure retirement, you would have bought 100 shares of Berkshire Hathaway for $1,500 in 1965, when you heard that Warren Buffett had purchased control. You would now be sitting on a nest egg of $8.5 million. That’s a return of 24.82% on your money, give or take a decimal point. But you didn’t. Neither did I.

BAD MOON RISING

What has this got to do with where we are today? A lot.

The meter is ticking loudly, but hardly anyone pays attention. We have all grown bored with bad news. We have all grown used to the idea that the day of reckoning can be avoided. This mentality governed France in the 1780s. It hit the brick wall in 1789: the French Revolution, which began as a fiscal reform. Red ink went to blood red. Eventually the piper demands payment.

The piper must therefore be stiffed. Mauldin continues:

If we were starting from a point of strength, it might be less troublesome. But the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation notes that defined benefit pension plans are under-funded to the tune of $450 billion (the combination of single and multi-employer plans). But that is likely an understatement. How you figure full funding is actually quite flexible. It is an arcane art rife with assumptions and wiggle room. And employees are in the dark about how well their pensions are funded. As an aside, the Bush administration has proposals to require disclosure to employees, but strangely Congress has yet to act on this obviously common sense and long overdue proposal. Let’s make sure hedge funds are regulated (we gotta protect the rich), but let corporations hide their pension fund liabilities. I mean, you have to establish priorities.

For example, in its last filing prior to termination of its plan, Bethlehem Steel reported that it was 84% funded on a current liability basis. At termination, however, the plan was only 45% funded on a termination basis – with total underfunding of $4.3 billion. PBGC had to assume that liability. In Congressional testimony, PBGC notes:

"... in its last filing prior to termination, the US Airways pilots’ plan reported that it was 94 percent funded on a current liability basis. At termination, however, it was only 35 percent funded on a termination basis – with total underfunding of $2.2 billion. It is no wonder that the US Airways pilots were shocked to learn just how much of their promised benefits would be lost. In practice, a terminated plan’s underfunded status can influence the actual benefit levels."

You may have read that US Airways now faces bankruptcy if it cannot get reductions in wages from the pilots’ union. The pilots are playing hardball with a company on the ropes. If the company goes under, the pilots will have to live on their pensions. Unfortunately, the company’s weakness is not limited to current income.

Who will foot the bill? You and I, of course.

The PBGC insures pension benefits worth $1.5 trillion and is responsible for paying current and future benefits to nearly 1 million people in over 3,200 terminated defined benefit plans. Benefit payments totaled $2.5 billion dollars in 2003. Benefit payments are expected to grow to nearly $3 billion in 2004.

The PBGC is also underfunded to the tune of $11.2 billion, up from a mere $3.6 billion last year. But buried in footnote 7 is a more ominous number. The PBGC makes an estimate as to what its liability in the future might be for companies which will go belly-up. The "reasonably possible" exposure as of September 2003 ranged from $83–$85 billion, up from $35 billion in fiscal 2002.

PBGC was set up by the government as an insurance program. Pension plans pay an insurance premium (currently only $19 per covered employee per year) to have their funds participate in the program. As recently as a few years ago, the fund was well in the black. But with the problems in the steel and airline industries, costs have simply gone off the charts.

THE STOCK MARKET

There have been many promises made. There has been insufficient funding to redeem these promises at full market value. This lack of funding has been across the boards – and boardrooms.

The PBGC insures $1.5 trillion in plans. That is $1.5 trillion that pension funds are assuming will grow by 7-9% over the next decade, depending upon how conservative they are. They are currently underfunded by $450 billion.

If I am right about stock market returns being well below 4% for the rest of the decade as we get further into a secular bear market, and given the clear ability of pension funds to overstate their funding positions, it means that companies are going to have to come up with a huge amount of money over the decade to fund their pension plans.

How much? If a pension fund assumes an 8% growth, your principal doubles in about 9 years. But 9 years at 5% is only a 55% growth. On the amount the PGBC insures, that would be a shortfall of about $650 billion, give or take a few hundred billion. That would be on top of the current $450 billion underfunding.

Now, spread out over 9–10 years, corporate America is easily making enough to fund that amount. But such a number would significantly eat into profits. Total US corporate profits (with the odd adjustments) are running north of $900 billion from all companies. How much of that is from companies with defined benefit pension plans? I can find no data to answer that question.

But we can guess where the bulk of the problem lies. It is in the 360 companies in the S&P 500 that have defined benefit pension plans. Credit Suisse First Boston (CSFB) estimates unfunded pension liability as of 2002 for this group was $243 billion. Morgan Stanley estimated $300 billion. The upshot is that companies with defined benefit programs are going to see their earnings under pressure as they will have to divert more and more of their profits into their pension funds.

His conclusion: don’t invest in companies that have offered their workers defined benefit pension programs. The problem is, that list comprises 72% of the S&P 500.

We are now facing the reality that Paul Poirot wrote about in 1950: the companies are legally owned by shareholders, but in fact are owned by the retirees, who have legal claims against the companies.

Many of these companies are essentially owned by their retirees, who are going to get more and more of the profits. This is not going to be good for shareholders in the company, or for S&P 500 index mutual funds. During the next recession, these companies are going to be required to make up the underfunding in their plans at a time when their earnings will be down. The projected growth in their investment portfolios will be hurt because they will have so much money invested in large cap companies just like themselves who are facing underfunded pension problems.

The problem facing every company with a defined benefit program is that current pension obligations must be factored into retail prices. Consider the auto industry.

In a study by the FDIC, we note that: "The U.S. automobile industry shows the effects of higher pension costs on the bottom line. The results of a Prudential Financial study state that pension and retiree benefits represent $631 of the cost of every Chrysler vehicle, $734 of the cost of every Ford vehicle, and $1,360 of the cost of every GM car or truck. In contrast, an article in the Detroit Free Press reported that pension and retiree benefit costs per vehicle at the U.S. plants of Honda and Toyota are estimated to be $107 and $180, respectively."

They later casually note, "GM recently has used about $13 billion of a $17.6 billion debt offering – the largest ever made by a U.S. company – to help close its pension gap. On average, GM will pay a 7.54 percent yield on the debt, and hopes to earn 9 percent on the proceeds contributed to its pension fund. While cash flow requirements have been eased for now, if this long term expectation regarding returns proves problematic over time, GM will need to find other sources to pay their obligation."

But costs do not determine prices. Supply and demand determines prices. If a new supplier comes along who is not burdened by past pension fund obligations, this supplier can undersell the firm that made such promises. For American and European firms, the four-letter word that confronts them is "Asia."

Asians, Japan excepted (an American satrapy, 1945–55), came to capitalism late. Their governments, not being democratic, did not pay off trade union members with special legislation, unlike Western governments, beginning with Bismarck. The least democratic nation of all, The Peoples Republic of China, has no pension obligations, only state-owned factory obligations, which the government is shedding. As state-run factories go the way of all flesh, China will compete without one arm tied behind its back: the arm of past promises.

CONCLUSION

The lessons are simple:

    Read the fine print of your pension program.
    Assume that your future is not guaranteed.
    Your past employer regards you as a liability.
    It is easier to create money than to create wealth.
    The government is not your friend.

August 18, 2004

Gary North [send him mail] is the author of Mises on Money. Visit http://www.freebooks.com. For a free subscription to Gary North's newsletter on gold, click here.
 

Below are four (4) questions and a bonus question.  It is suggested you answer them instantly. You can't take your time, answer all of them immediately.  But, I bet if you take a little time your results will be telling.
OK?

Let's find out just how clever you really are.

Ready? GO!!! (scroll down)

First Question:

You are participating in a race. You overtake the second person.
What position are you in?
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Answer: If you answered that you are first, then you are absolutely wrong! If you overtake the second person and you take his place,you are second!
 

Try not to screw up in the next question.
To answer the second question, don't take as much time as you took for the first question.
 
 
 

Second Question:
If you overtake the last person, then you are...?
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Answer:
If you answered that you are second to last, then you are wrong again.
Tell me, how can you overtake the LAST Person?
 

You're not very good at this! Are you?
 

Third Question:
Very tricky math! Note: This must be done in your head only.
 
 

Do NOT use paper and pencil or a calculator. Try it.
 
 

Take 1000 and add 40 to it. Now add another 1000. Now add 30.
Add another 1000. Now add 20. Now add another 1000
Now add 10. What is the total?
 
 
 

Scroll down for answer.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Did you get 5000?
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

The correct answer is actually 4100.
 
 

Don't believe it? Check with your calculator! Today is definitely not your day.
Maybe you will get the last question right?
 
 

Fourth Question:
Mary's father has five daughters: 1. Nana, 2. Nene, 3. Nini, 4.Nono.
What is the name of the fifth daughter?
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Answer: Nunu?
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

NO! Of course not.
Her name is Mary. Read the question again
 
 

Okay, now the bonus round:
There is a mute person who wants to buy a toothbrush. By imitating the action of brushing one's teeth he successfully expresses himself to the shopkeeper and the purchase is done.
 
 

Now if there is a blind man who wishes to buy a pair of sunglasses, how should he express himself?
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

He just has to open his mouth and ask, so simple.
 
 

To whom are you sending this?
 
 

[This is yet another example of someone looking for trouble.  The 2nd & 3rd paragraphs from the article are VERY telling of the ignorance of the complainants and how they are simply looking for a reason to gripe.  They are showing their ignorance.  The 2nd paragraph says [Sunday] .. "It's a day for the good Lord, not for the devil,", which shows they think Sunday is the Lord's day.  Then they continue by saying the little demons should be out "on Saturday instead".  Then in the next paragraph, they say they are offended by demons "ringing their doorbell on the Sabbath".  It is painfully obvious these complainers do not have a clue that the Sabbath is what they call Saturday and NOT what they call Sunday.  --  Tribble]

NEWNAN, Georgia (AP) -- Across the Bible Belt this Halloween, some little ghosts and goblins might get shooed away by the neighbors -- and some youngsters will not be allowed to go trick-or-treating at all -- because the holiday falls on a Sunday this year.

"It's a day for the good Lord, not for the devil," said Barbara Braswell, who plans to send her 4-year-old granddaughter Maliyah out trick-or-treating in a princess costume on Saturday instead.

Some towns around the country are decreeing that Halloween be celebrated on Saturday to avoid complaints from those who might be offended by the sight of demons and witches ringing their doorbell on the Sabbath.

Others insist the holiday should be celebrated on October 31 no matter what.

"Moving it, that's like celebrating Christmas a week early," said Veronica Wright, who bought a Power Rangers costume for her son in Newnan. "It's just a kid thing. It's not for real."

It is an especially sensitive issue for authorities in the Bible Belt across the South.

"You just don't do it on Sunday," said Sandra Hulsey of Greenville, Georgia. "That's Christ's day. You go to church on Sunday, you don't go out and celebrate the devil. That'll confuse a child."

In Newnan, a suburb south of Atlanta, the City Council decided to go ahead with trick-or-treating on Sunday. In 1999, the last time October 31 fell on a Sunday, the city moved up trick-or-treating to Saturday, which brought howls of protest.

"We don't need to confuse people with this," Councilman George Alexander said.

In Vestavia Hills, Alabama, a suburb of Birmingham, a furor erupts every time Halloween falls on Sunday. Local officials decided not to take a stand this time.

"About 15 years ago, we decided to have Halloween on Saturday instead. People went crazy. We said, 'Never again,"' recalled Starr Burbic, longtime secretary to the mayor. "It messed everybody up to move Halloween. Some people don't like having it on a Sunday, but we just couldn't find a way to make everyone happy."

The patchwork of trick-or-treat zones could work to children's advantage: Some might go out on both nights to get all the treats they can.

With so many towns split over when Halloween should be celebrated, many are going with a porch-light compromise: If people do not want trick-or-treaters, they simply turn off their lights, and parents are asked not to have kids knock there.

"Most people don't have a problem with it. It's a pretty universal compromise, so that's what we go with," said Grand Rapids, Michigan, police Lt. Douglas Brinkley.
 

the offices of Dewey, Cheetum & Howe

Now, track your kid through mobile (and who is tracking you)
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/869493.cms
contributing editor to   - D

[Does ANYONE believe this will stop with tracking children?  Of course, this only tracks the telephone.  But, with the way young folk look like they have telephones growing from their ears, it might work well.  But, the next step is something like RFID's or DNA bar codes, both of which have been reported in previous issue of .]

ANI [THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2004 07:39:55 PM ]

LONDON: Your mobile can now help you to keep a track of your kids, all thanks to the London-based communications firms mTrack, which has come out with this technology recently.

The system called `kiosk service' uses `location-based tracking' to pinpoint the position of a youngster's phone and by a simple touch of a button, parents can open a detailed street map on their phone's screen showing their child's location within a kilometre.

The users who have handsets, which do not have picture facilities, will be sent a detailed text message instead.

The system is being touted as a breakthrough as far as child safety is concerned, because experts feel that it can prevent or reduce sexual attacks on kids.

"Parents will have greater peace of mind when their child agrees to be located by his or her mobile phone. In some cases, a child location service may actively reduce the risk of a child being abused or abducted," Michele Elliot, director of child safety charity Kidscape, was quoted by The Daily Mail as saying.

The service is available to subscribers of Vodafone, Orange, O2 and T-Mobile and parents can register with the service on the KidsOK website at www.kidsok.net or at selected mobile phone stores for 39.99 pounds a year.

"Many children dislike the embarrassing intrusion of a call or a text when they are with friends. But research shows they like the idea of parents being able to know where they are and will in most cases participate willingly," the paper quoted Richard Jelbert, the co-founder of KidsOK, as saying.

New mobile service 'key to keeping children safe'
http://edinburghnews.scotsman.com/scitech.cfm?id=1140292004
http://news.scotsman.com/scitech.cfm?id=1140292004

Wed 29 Sep 2004

A MOBILE phone service which pinpoints a child’s location has been hailed as a useful way to protect youngsters from paedophiles.

Adults will be able to see the location of their child to within a kilometre on a detailed street map sent to their mobile phones.

The KidsOK service uses mobile phone masts to trace the whereabouts of a child.

The service is available to Vodafone, Orange, 02 and T-Mobile customers, although the master mobile must be a picture phone in order to receive the full map service.

But mobile phone users who do not have that facility will still be able to receive detailed text messages.

The technology takes advantage of mobiles communicating around every minute with the nearest mast regardless of whether a call is taking place.

An adult texts the word Ping and then a secret user name to the KidsOK service, which then asks the service provider for the map co-ordinates of the last mast a child’s phone communicated with.

A detailed circular map showing roads, railway stations and green areas within one kilometre in towns and 15km in the countryside is then sent to the user.

Michele Elliot , director of child safety charity Kidscape, said: "Parents will have greater peace of mind when their child agrees to be located by his or her mobile phone.

"In some cases, a child location may actively reduce the risk of a child being abused or abducted."

Richard Jelbert, co-founder of KidsOK, said: "Many children dislike the embarrassing intrusion of a call or text when they are with friends.

"But research shows they like the idea of parents being able to know where they are and will in most cases participate willingly."
 
 

a r t i c l e   /   c o m m e n t a r y

The Worst Way to Fight Terror
by Rep. Ron Paul
contributing editor to   - D

The 9/11 Recommendations Implementation Act (H.R. 10) is yet another attempt to address the threat of terrorism by giving more money and power to the federal bureaucracy. Most of the reforms contained in this bill will not make America safer, though they definitely will make us less free. H.R. 10 also wastes American taxpayer money on unconstitutional and ineffective foreign aid programs. Congress should make America safer by expanding liberty and refocusing our foreign policy on defending this nation's vital interests, rather than expanding the welfare state and wasting American blood and treasure on quixotic crusades to "democratize" the world.

Disturbingly, H.R. 10 creates a de facto national ID card by mandating new federal requirements that standardize state-issued driver’s licenses and birth certificates and even require including biometric identifiers in such documents. State driver’s license information will be stored in a national database, which will include information about an individual's driving record!

Nationalizing standards for drivers licenses and birth certificates, and linking them together via a national database, creates a national ID system pure and simple. Proponents of the national ID understand that the public remains wary of the scheme, so they attempt to claim they're merely creating new standards for existing state IDs. Nonsense! This legislation imposes federal standards in a federal bill, and it creates a federalized ID regardless of whether the ID itself is still stamped with the name of your state. It is just a matter of time until those who refuse to carry the new licenses will be denied the ability to drive or board an airplane. Domestic travel restrictions are the hallmark of authoritarian states, not free republics.

The national ID will be used to track the movements of American citizens, not just terrorists. Subjecting every citizen to surveillance actually diverts resources away from tracking and apprehending terrorists in favor of needless snooping on innocent Americans. This is what happened with "suspicious activity reports" required by the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA). Thanks to BSA mandates, federal officials are forced to waste countless hours snooping through the private financial transactions of innocent Americans merely because those transactions exceed $10,000.

Furthermore, the federal government has no constitutional authority to require law-abiding Americans to present any form of identification before engaging in private transactions (e.g. getting a job, opening a bank account, or seeking medical assistance). Nothing in our Constitution can reasonably be construed to allow government officials to demand identification from individuals who are not suspected of any crime.

H.R. 10 also broadens the definition of terrorism contained in the PATRIOT Act. H.R. 10 characterizes terrorism as acts intended "to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion." Under this broad definition, a scuffle at an otherwise peaceful pro-life demonstration might allow the federal government to label the sponsoring organization and its members as terrorists. Before dismissing these concerns, my colleagues should remember the abuse of Internal Revenue Service power by both Democratic and Republican administrations to punish political opponents, or the use of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act on anti-abortion activists. It is entirely possible that a future administration will use the new surveillance powers granted in this bill to harm people holding unpopular political views.

Congress could promote both liberty and security by encouraging private property owners to take more responsibility to protect themselves and their property. Congress could enhance safety by removing the roadblocks thrown up by the misnamed Transportation Security Agency that prevent the full implementation of the armed pilots program. I cosponsored an amendment with my colleague from Virginia, Mr. Goode, to do just that, and I am disappointed it was ruled out of order.

I am also disappointed the Financial Services Committee rejected my amendment to conform the regulations governing the filing of suspicious activities reports with the requirements of the U.S. Constitution. This amendment not only would have ensured greater privacy protection, but it also would have enabled law enforcement to better focus on people who truly pose a threat to our safety.

Immediately after the attack on Sept. 11, 2001, I introduced several pieces of legislation designed to help fight terrorism and secure the United States, including a bill to allow airline pilots to carry firearms and a bill that would have expedited the hiring of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) translators to support counterterrorism investigations and operations. I also introduced a bill to authorize the president to issue letters of marque and reprisal to bring to justice those who committed the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and other similar acts of war planned for the future.

The foreign policy provisions of H.R. 10 are similarly objectionable and should be strongly opposed. I have spoken before about the serious shortcomings of the 9/11 Commission, upon whose report this legislation is based. I find it incredible that in the 500-plus page report there is not one mention of how our interventionist foreign policy creates enemies abroad who then seek to harm us. Until we consider the root causes of terrorism, beyond the jingoistic explanations offered thus far, we will not defeat terrorism and we will not be safer.

Among the most ill-considered foreign policy components of H.R. 10 is a section providing for the United States to increase support for an expansion of the United Nations "Democracy Caucus." Worse still, the bill encourages further integration of that United Nations body into our State department. The last thing we should do if we hope to make our country safer from terrorism is expand our involvement in the United Nations.

This bill contains a provision to train American diplomats to be more sensitive and attuned to the United Nations, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) - which will be in the U.S. to monitor our elections next month - and other international non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Even worse, this legislation actually will create an "ambassador-at-large" position solely to work with non-governmental organizations overseas. It hardly promotes democracy abroad to accord equal status to NGOs, which, after all, are un-elected foreign pressure groups that, therefore, have no popular legitimacy whatsoever. Once again, we are saying one thing and doing the opposite.

This bill also increases our counterproductive practice of sending United States' taxpayer money abroad to prop up selected foreign media, which inexplicably are referred to as "independent media." This is an unconstitutional misuse of tax money. Additionally, does anyone believe that citizens of countries where the U.S. subsidizes certain media outlets take kindly to, or take seriously, such media? How would Americans feel if they knew that publications taking a certain editorial line were financed by foreign governments? We cannot refer to foreign media funded by the U.S. government as "independent media." The U.S. government should never be in the business of funding the media, either at home or abroad.

Finally, I am skeptical about the reorganization of the intelligence community in this legislation. In creating an entire new bureaucracy, the National Intelligence Director, we are adding yet another layer of bureaucracy to our already bloated federal government. Yet, we are supposed to believe that even more of the same kind of government that failed us on Sept. 11, 2001 will make us safer. At best, this is wishful thinking. The constitutional function of our intelligence community is to protect the United States from foreign attack. Ever since its creation by the National Security Act of 1947, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has been meddling in affairs that have nothing to do with the security of the United States. Considering the CIA's overthrow of Iranian leader Mohammed Mossadegh in the 1950s, and the CIA's training of the mujahedin jihadists in Afghanistan in the 1980s, it is entirely possible the actions of the CIA abroad have actually made us less safe and more vulnerable to foreign attack. It would be best to confine our intelligence community to the defense of our territory from foreign attack. This may well mean turning intelligence functions over to the Department of Defense, where they belong.

For all of these reasons, I vigorously oppose H.R. 10. It represents the worst approach to combating terrorism - more federal bureaucracy, more foreign intervention, and less liberty for the American people.
 
 

the offices of Dewey, Cheetum & Howe

Judging Judges
A Few Pages from The Mirror of Justices (c. 1290)By PETER LINEBAUGHhttp://www.counterpunch.org/linebaugh10162004.html
contributing editor to   - D

With the Supreme Court nicely toying once again about who is to live and who is to die as it considers the death penalty for juveniles and as the American casualties in Iraq yesterday included three teenagers, it is well past the time to chop legal logic, or merely vote for the dime's worth of difference between Bush-Kerry troop levels.

Turning a forgotten page from the annals of time, let us review a selection from the thirteenth century London fishmonger, Andrew Horn, whose underground classic, The Mirror of Justices, was not printed until 1642 nor translated until 1646, those revolutionary years preceding the beheading of the sovereign.

Though written in French, the language of the feudal masters, Andrew Horn praised King Alfred whose chagrined submission to the scolding of the housewife, after he forgot to take the bread out of the oven in time to prevent its burning, endeared him to successive generations of cooks, bakers, and humble folk. (What was he doing in her kitchen in the first place? Apparently, he was in hiding having run away from battle.) Horn brings forth other reasons why this monarch, bad baker and reluctant soldier though he was, alone among all England's kings and queens, is called great.

F.W. Maitland, Horn's Victorian editor (Selden Society Publications, volume seven, 1893), noted his "curious leanings towards liberty and equality." He argued that Horn's understanding of the memory of Alfred among the indigenous English was a "daring fable." As reasons, Maitland sees circumspection in the naming of the judges, and surely the names are weird, not the kind of names that we recognize as normal, like Thomas, Scalia, or Rehnquist.

Horn attributes to Alfred the policy of lex talionis which in our day has become a sly accompaniment to prosecutorial blood-thirstiness, sadly saying that capital punishment is part of the 'grieving process' for the victims of violent crimes. Slay the young: that the old may 'move on.'

So from Book V of The Mirror of Justices here is abuse number 108 (pp. 166-9).

"It is an abuse that justices and their officers who slay folk by false judgments are not destroyed like other homicides. And King Alfred in one year had forty-four judges hanged as homicides for their false judgments.

"He hanged Watling, for that he had judged Sidulf to death for receiving Edulf his son, who was afterwards acquitted of the principal crime

"He hanged Signer, who had judged Ulf to death after a sufficient acquittal.

"He hanged Eadwine, for that he judged Hathewy to death without the assent of all the jurors when he had put himself upon a jury of twelve men; and because three against nine were for saving him, Eadwine removed those three and put in their stead other thjree, upon whom Hathewy had never put himself.

"He hanged Coel for judging to death Yve, who was a lunatic.

"He hanged Malmere for judging to death Prat, who, when desperate, had made a false confession of felony.

"He hanged Athulf for hanging Copping, who was under the age of twenty-one years.

"He hanged Markes, for that he judged Duning to death upon the verdict of twelve men who had not been sworn.

"He hanged Oscelin, foR that he judged Seaman to death under a vicious warrant founded on a false suggestion, which supposed that Seaman was in prison before that he really was so.

"He hanged Billing, for that he judged Lefston to death by fraud in this manner. Billing said to the people, ëSit down all of you who did not kill the man;' and then, because Lefston did not sit down with the rest, he commanded that he should e hanged, and said that he had made a sufficient confession by not sitting down.

"He hanged Sefoul, for that he judged Ording to death for want of an answer.

"He hanged Thurstan, for that he judged Thurgnor to death on a verdict taken ex officio on which Thurgnor had not put himself.

"He hanged Athelstone, for that he judged Herbert to death for a sin that was not mortal.

"He hanged Rumbold, for that he judged Lifchil tto death in a case that was not notorious, without appeal or indictment.

"He hanged Rof, for that he judged Dunston to death for escape from prison.

"He hanged Freberne, for that he judged Harpin to death when the jurors were in doubt about their verdict, for in case of doubt one should rather save than condemn.

"He hanged Sibright, for that he judged Athelbrus to death for that he would not execute on of his (Sibright's) false mortal judgments.

"He hanged Hale, for that he saved from death Tristram the sheriff, who had taken wine for the king's use, because between taking what is another's without his will and robbery there is no difference.

"He hanged Arnolt, for that he saved bailiffs who robbed folk by color of distress, some of them by alienating naams and others by extortion of fines, because between the extortion of a fine for the release of a naam and robbery there is no difference.

"He hanged Erkenwold, for that he hanged Franling for no other cause than because he taught one whom he had vanquished in battle to say the word ëcraven.'

"He hanged Bemond, for that he had Garbolt's head cut off by a judgment given in England on an outlawry in Ireland.

"He hanged Alkemund, for that he saved Cateman, who was attainted for hamsoken, by treating it as a mere case of disseisin.

"He hanged Saxmund, for that he hanged Berild in England where the king's writ ran, for a deed done in a part of the same land in which the king's writ did not run.

"He hanged Alflet, for that he adjudged to death a clerk over whom he could have no cognizance.

"He hanged Piron, for that he judged Hunting to death, because he caused a judgment to be executed before the fortieth day, pending an appeal to the king by writ of false judgment.

"He hanged Dilling for hanging Edous, who had slain a man by misadventure.

"He hanged Oswy, for that at night time he judged Blithe to death.

"He hanged Osbert, for that when not in a consistory he judged Fulcher to death.

"He hanged Horn, for that on a prohibited day he hanged Swein.

"He hanged Bulmer, for that he judged Gerent to death for the larceny of a thing that he had received by bailment.

"He hanged Thurbern, for that he judged Osgot to death for a deed of which he had already been acquitted as against the same plaintiff; and Osgot offered to aver the acquittal by a jury, and Thurbern would not receive the allegation of acquittal because Osgot did not offer to aver it by the record.

"He hanged Wolfston, for that he judged Hubert to death at the king's suit for a deed which Hubert had confessed, whereas the king had pardoned his suit; but Hubert had no charter of pardon, but vouched the king to warranty, and in addition offered to aver the pardon by the enrolment in the chancery.

"He hanged Osketil, for that he judged Culling to death on the record of the coroner, where an allowable replication was not allowed him. The case was this: Culling was taken and tortured until he confessed a mortal sin, and this he did to be quit of further torture; and Osketel [sic] judged him to death on his confession made to the coroner, without trying the truth of the allegation as o the torture and the other facts.

"And besides this, the coroners, officers, assessors, and those who tortured folk, and those who could have disturbed the false judgments but did not do so, were hanged whenever the justices were hanged, for King Alfred hanged all the judges whom he could attaint of having falsely saved a guilty man from death, or falsely hanged folk against law or in the teeth of a reasonable exception."

Peter Linebaugh teaches history at the University of Toledo. He is the author of two of CounterPunch's favorite books, The London Hanged and (with Marcus Rediker) The Many-Headed Hydra: the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic. He can be reached at: plineba@yahoo.com
 

duh

I cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdgnieg
contributing editor to   - D

THE PAOMNNEHAL PWEOR OF THE HMUAN MNID

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy,  it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm.  Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.

Amzanig huh?
 

http://www.fs.fed.us/gpnf/volcanocams/msh/
http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Volcanoes/MSH/Images/MSH04/
 
 

Candidates arrested at debate
Libertarian, Green party nominees tried to serve commission
Posted: October 9, 2004 1:00 a.m. Eastern
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=40843

© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com

Two third-party presidential candidates were arrested at the presidential debate in St. Louis when they tried to serve the debate commission with a show cause order.

Michael Badnarik of the Libertarian Party and David Cobb of the Green Party were protesting their exclusion from the debate between President Bush and Democratic Party nominee John Kerry.

Just as the debate began, the two candidates purposely crossed a police barricade and were arrested.

The debate took place at Washington University. The campus was alive with protesters and backers of both major-party candidates.

Protesters had no direct path to the school's athletic complex, which was converted into a red-white-and-blue television studio for the 90-minute debate between Bush and his Democratic rival.

Cobb said his purpose was "to expose the undemocratic nature of these debates, this election and our government. These are not debates, these are infomercials."
 

I N S I G H T

You are a Sheeple and Fear Us Sheepdogs More than the Wolves
contributing editor to   - Bob

This is reported as being from Blackfive.net:

On Sheep, Sheepdogs, and Wolves
By Dave Grossman

One Vietnam veteran, an old retired colonel, once said this to me: "Most of the people in our society are sheep. They are kind, gentle, productive creatures who can only hurt one another by accident".  This is true.  Remember, the murder rate is six per 100,000 per year, and the aggravated assault rate is four per 1,000 per year.

What this means is that the vast majority of Americans are not inclined to hurt one another.

Some estimates say that two million Americans are victims of violent crimes every year, a tragic, staggering number, perhaps an all-time record rate of violent crime. But there are almost 300 million Americans, which means that the odds of being a victim of violent crime is considerably less than one in a hundred on any given year.

Furthermore, since many violent crimes are committed by repeat offenders, the actual number of violent citizens is considerably less than two million.

Thus there is a paradox, and we must grasp both ends of the situation: We may well be in the most violent times in history, but violence is still remarkably rare. This is because most citizens are kind, decent people who are not capable of hurting each other, except by accident or under extreme provocation.  They are sheep.  I mean nothing negative by calling them sheep.

"Then there are the wolves, and the wolves feed on the sheep without mercy".  Do you believe there are wolves out there that will feed on the flock without mercy?  You better believe it. There are evil men in this world and they are capable of evil deeds. The moment you forget that or pretend it is not so, you become, or affirm that you are, a sheep.  There is no safety in denial.

"Then there are sheepdogs and I'm a sheepdog. I live to protect the flock and confront the wolf."...

If you have no capacity for violence then you are a healthy productive citizen, a sheep.

If you have a capacity for violence and no empathy for your fellow citizens, then you have defined an aggressive sociopath, a wolf.

But what if you have a capacity for violence, and a deep love for your fellow citizens? What do you have then?  A sheepdog, someone walking the hero's path.  Someone who will walk into the heart of darkness, into the universal human phobia, and walk out unscathed.

Here is an expansion on this old soldier's model of the sheep, wolves, and sheepdogs. We know that the sheep live in denial, which is what makes them sheep. They do not want to believe that there is evil in the world. They can accept the fact that fires can happen, which is why they want fire extinguishers, fire sprinklers, fire alarms and fire exits throughout their kids' schools.  But, many do not readily accept that there are people who will set some fires.  The idea of someone coming to burn them, or their things, is just too hard, so they chose the path of denial.

The sheep generally do not like the sheepdog.  He looks a lot like the wolf.  He has fangs and the capacity for violence.  The difference, though, is the sheepdog must not, cannot, and will not ever harm the sheep.  Any sheepdog, who intentionally harms the lowliest little lamb, will be punished and removed.  The world cannot work any other way, and especially in a representative democracy or a republic such as what ours is supposed to be.

Still, the sheepdog disturbs the sheep.  The sheepdog is a constant reminder that there are indeed wolves in the land.  The sheep would prefer that the sheepdog didn't remind the sheep of the wolves.

Here is how the sheep and the sheepdog think differently. The sheep pretend the wolf will never come, but the sheepdog lives for (anticipates) that day.

The sheep would much rather have the sheepdog cash in his fangs, spray paint himself white, and go, "Baaa."  --  until the wolf shows up!  Then the entire flock tries desperately to hide behind one lonely sheepdog.
 

You should understand there is nothing morally superior about being a sheepdog; it is a choice, whether consciencely or non-consciencely.  Also understand that a sheepdog is a funny critter, he is always sniffing around out on the perimeter, checking the breeze, barking at things that go bump in the night, and yearning for a righteous battle.  That is, the young sheepdogs yearn for a righteous battle.  The old sheepdogs are a little older and wiser, but they move to the sound of the guns when needed right along with the young ones.

There is nothing morally superior about the sheepdog, but he does have one real advantage. Only one. That is, he is able to survive and thrive in an environment that destroys 98 percent of the population.

If you want to be a sheep, you must understand the price you pay. When the wolf comes, you and your loved ones are going to die if there is not a sheepdog to protect you. If you want to be a wolf, you can be one, but the sheepdogs are going to hunt you down and you will never have rest, safety, trust, or love.  If you want to be a sheepdog, then you must make a conscious and moral decision every day to dedicate, equip and prepare yourself to thrive in that toxic, corrosive moment when the wolf comes knocking at the door.
 
 

LIFE WITH BIG BROTHER
Lawmakers consider 'smart' driver's licenses Computer chip's signals allow data to be read from a distance
Posted: October 7, 2004 - 1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=40796

contributing editor to   - D

[Are you getting concerned yet?  Be afraid, be very afraid.  --  Tribble]

A controversial technology already planned for tracking consumer products could be used to create "smart" driver's licenses that emit signals readable from a distance, according to federal and state government officials contemplating ways to fight identity fraud.

Radio frequency identification, or RFID, could help thwart terrorists who use falsified documents to get around, say Virginia lawmakers who will hear testimony on the technology's uses, reports Wired.com.

As WorldNetDaily reported, a Johnson & Johnson executive recently told industry leaders that in the future, the RFID chips will be "on everything from diapers to surgical instruments."

On the driver's licenses, the computer chips would emit a radio signal bearing the holder's unique, personal information. Virginia is considering adding biometric data such as fingerprints and retinal scans to the RFID tags.

But privacy advocates fear government could use the technology to spy on citizens and believe it could make identity theft even more complicated.

Government agents could, for example, easily identify large numbers of protesters in a march, and crooks could mine personal information from the wallets of passersby on a street corner, Wired.com said.

A government also could track the movement of its citizens by coupling global positioning data related to satellites with information from card readers that translate the signals.

Advocates of the technology insist, however, the fears are exaggerated.

"Putting a chip or biometric data on a driver's license doesn't change one iota the rules under which that information can be used," said Robert D. Atkinson, vice president at the Progressive Policy Institute, according to Wired.

But Virginia lawmakers say they need to be convinced the technology cannot be easily abused.

"I can't see us using RFID until we're comfortable we can without encroaching on individual privacy, and ensure it won't be used as a Big Brother technology by the government," Joe May, chairman of the Virginia General Assembly's House Science and Technology Committee, told Wired.

Some privacy advocates worry about the capability of reader devices to sense signals from a distance. Tests have demonstrated broadcast ranges of up to 30 feet.

Opponents also point out federal legislators could require states to conform with uniform "smart card" standards, effectively turning the licenses into a national ID that could be read anywhere in the country.

But costs will be a factor as states face the burden of complying with the federal standards.

"It could easily become yet another unfunded federal mandate, of which we already have $60 billion worth," said Cheye Calvo, director of the transportation committee at the National Conference of State Legislatures, according to Wired.

Previous stories:

Tiny tracking chips will be 'everywhere'

Fears of national ID with driver's licenses
 
 

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