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Links claimant in person: "The [right] against self-incrimination is neither accorded to the passive resistant, nor the person who is ignorant of his rights, nor to one indifferent thereto. It is a fighting clause. Its benefits can be retained only by sustained combat. It cannot be claimed by an attorney or solicitor. It is valid only when insisted upon by a belligerent claimant in person." 76 F. Supp 538 (pre-Miranda)
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Monday, June 30, 2003
8:09 PM
-:- Posted by Allen
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If Christians want to know why they face so much organized resistance these days, I can tell them: they brought it upon themselves. No, not all of them. Just the vitriolic ones, who write things like this: Ellen, my Dear Ellen, Now that's a fine Christian way to talk to somebody, isn't it? NOT! This little gem comes to us courtesy of one of our own, Rose Lear. Rose is taking exception to an article by Ellen Ratner in WorldNet Daily, where Ms. Ratner discusses a recent Canada Supreme Court decision sanctioning gay marriage, and the recent Lawrence v. Texas US Supreme Court decision striking down religiously-motivated laws that infringe on private sexuality. I'm with my favorite nitwit Bill O'reilly on this one: I don't care what people do so long as they don't drag me into it or shove it into my face. For example, I really don't give a darn if somebody wants to have sex exclusively missionary-style their entire life. Seems pretty wierd to me, but hey, to each her own, right? What's important to note today, re Rose and Ellen and WND is that what Ms. Ratner wrote did not fairly invite and does not excuse the uncivil abuse Mrs. Lear spits at her in this quote. That's easy to see if you just read Ms. Ratner's closing punch-line: Lawrence v. Texas is a long overdue ruling that finally boots cops out of the bedroom. And that's a good thing, because cops in bedrooms --now that's deviant! I am never more appalled at the bad behavior of so-called patriots and constitutionalists as when I see one of "us" screaming like a rabid monkey at someone we disagree with, attacking their exercise of free speech, or any other rights. American fundamentalist Christians too often appear to not really believe in freedom of speech or religion. They say they do, but they only act like it when it's their speech or religion being attacked. They certainly aren't acting like it while they are attacking the speech and religion of others. And they're not acting like it when they legislate their religious rules onto the rest of us. I don't care if they are the majority. I don't care if they can say that 75% or 92% of the people of this country, or of the civilized world, agree with thim. If they do say that, they are social democrats attacking the Republic, plain and simple. "Majority rule" is a fiction created in recent decades by socialists subverting our schools and press. The American ideal is no "rulers" at all. The American ideal is each person respecting the sensibilities of others, for whatever reason each one finds to be respectful. Yes, that may mean deciding not to walk naked down the street if you know there are hysterical blue-noses living there. But it also means staying out of other people's bedrooms, out of their marriages, and out of their choices. So if the people who want to walk naked all want to move to the same street, or build their own town, it's nobody's business that they walk naked down their own street. Mrs. Lear accuses Ms. Ratner of being a "sick, sick person". But I submit that it is Mrs. Lear who is sick, so emtionally unbalanced on the subject of sex that she simply cannot mind her own business, cannot help but spew forth her twisted religious vomit. I can't imagine a more horrendous scene than being caught forever between a pushy homosexual hell-bent on making sure I know he's gay, and Rose Lear on the the other hand preaching her irrational hate-based religious confusion. Mrs. Lear says she is not one to judge, but then has already judged without exercising discernment, and condemed without exercising compassion. And in conducting herself thusly, she has locked tight the door to reason. Rose Lear and her kind are a serious impediment to reconciliation. They are the reason we don't get any cooperation from other political groups. They represent a bastardized religion spun from their personal dysfunctions and advocate a mean and ugly version of god ripped from their most desperate nightmares. I can tell you that these are a religion and a god that I personally would rather suffer in hell than find favor with. And I can also tell you that I am embarrassed to be associated with such behavior. It is neither American, nor Christian. I've gotten weary of explaining such incidents away, of having to say, that's some of our group but not me. From now on I'm going to be repudiating it. I'll be saying something akin to what, I believe it was Justice Douglas, said: Yeah, there are some sickos in every bunch. But you have to take the bad with the good if you're going to have a free society. That even includes the whackos who unwittingly labor every day to destroy the very freedoms they pretend to love. Friday, June 27, 2003
8:14 PM
-:- Posted by Allen
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Man wakes up one morning with a simple plan for a simple day, eats a simple breakfast and gets along his way. There's a river near his home and on it lives a bird, whose feeding method is a kick, or so he's always heard. She's an osprey, she's a raptor, in her feet she has sharp claws, and she can turn her talons 'round about and get a grip that has no flaws. But what's so special is she flies down in beneath those waves, catching salmon from above, and for them there are no saves. He goes to the river and he sits down quiet on a stone, thinking only of the view and of the day and his new moment here alone. He's spent his years in desperate wonder and with speculations rife, searching always for that something that's been hid behind the strife. But for now he isn't busy with that quest he's held so long, he's only watching as the osprey takes her part in her nature's endless song. He isn't thinking of the answer hasn't questioned things today, he only plans to take a break and see an ordinary day. Still as he watches it's his nature that the beauty gets his eye, and then he's thinking once again about the pieces of the Why. The bird is hungry and the breeze is light upon the air, she drifts around with one turned feather and no scent of any care. He sees her purely and he lives her life from deep within his mind, and then he's taken up her place and now there's more for him to find. He turns in deeper, it's there waiting past the noise of all his reach, he finds the answer he's not looking for, and it's beyond his speech. The day goes on without him, he's not taking any part, as he now visits with the truth that always lived within his heart. He knows the answer but the question hasn't shown itself before, and as he turns to take it home he isn't asking any more. He sits the night out in his car, he isn't going anywhere, until the daylight finds him newer and equipped for different fare. He leaves the scene, he leaves the river, and he leaves behind the quest, he's got a message, a new wonder, How's he going to tell the rest?
1:24 AM
-:- Posted by Allen
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You didn't offend me about my religion, Doug. But you really do need to stop making erroneous claims about me. I didn't say I support RIAA. I do support their position on copyrights. But that's not blanket support. I oppose their profiteering, their enslavement of talent, and their fascism, the same way I oppose such things in all corporate monsters.
1:10 AM
-:- Posted by Allen
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My buddy Doug Kenline says, speaking of downloading music from the net without paying for it, I just don't see it as stealing or as murder or as dropping a nuke on Hiroshima. You have to look at the underlying principle. The line I kept repeating, the justification that just because you can do something, it's okay to do it. That's wrong. Truman didn't have to drop the bomb on people. He could have done a demo that stopped the world's heartbeat, and walked away the humanitarian of the century in the eyes of the entire world. I can kill your lover 50 ways before breakfast. Not one of those is a reason for doing it. That's the point. There are things we can do, and among those are the things we don't do. That's the principle in common, no matter how different the severity of each type of crime. The principle's name is honesty. And when I was a kid and I taped songs off of the radio was I stealing? In the most technical sense of the word, yes, but not quite breaking the law because you were taping for yourself and not reselling. The industry mostly looked away on that one. Of course, we must admit that one reason was that they knew they couldn't force an end to it even then. But here's the difference. You had to make a big effort to tape a song off the radio. You had to wait for it to come around, and then tape it live. Or you had to tape several hours of airplay and then sort through, and if you could manage it technically, copy the songs you wanted onto a second tape. The labels knew you'd never get the same quality that way, and they also knew that the hours you were scouting out the songs you wanted, you were also listening to other songs, adding yourself to the listener base of the radio station. That drove up the ad rates the station could charge its advertisers, and in turn, produced a higher level of revenue to be shared with the labels and their artists. So the labels and artists could hope to break even on your petty theft. And they got further around the potential of loss by buying into the companies that made adiotape and recorders. Sometimes they even got bought by those tape and recorder manufacturers. SONY comes to mind, a gadget-maker that bought the music and film makers. Certainly, labels and artists with brains should be buying into CD and CD-burner manufacturers. Although that won't help much this time around. Anyway, you were socially okay with the labels if you taped the songs for yourself. They saw it as small potatoes. But had you begun to make copies available to anyone who wanted one, and then all your friends started doing it too, they'd have taken notice, told you to stop, and then gone after you if you didn't. Of course, you never did that, because only the mafia could afford that much tape. So in the end, it was only organized and well-financed criminals who bootlegged music. And they did get sued, and sometimes went to jail. Now, enter the internet. No tape to buy. Don't even need a CD disc. Just whine at the parents how you need a multimedia PC with a huge hard drive "for school", and then rip all your CDs and start file-sharing with all your friends who do likewise. Instant no-personal-cost mass subversion of an industry. Mix in a situational-ethics anti-integrity educational system that has already produced its third dumbed-down generation, and you get a bunch of people who don't get it, unless it's being done to them personally. The result? A sudden visible reversal in the historical growth of music sales, and no way for the industry to compensate. Their only solution is to go after the file-sharing servers. No different than going after looters who give some of their goodies to the neighbors. That they didn't make money on the stolen goods is irrelevant. Napster was easy. They were making money off the illegal trade, even if indirectly from ads sold on the basis of visitors drawn in by the freebies. Distributed systems, however, where the network is the computer, each computer a node in a huge phantom server, will not be so easy. But answer me this one big guy. How are you going to stop it? By resuming the social drive toward civilization. By terminating government schools and all the other tax-sucking agencies that advocate for weakness, for theft of producers' wealth, and for codependence. By putting our arrogant self-centered youth earlier and earlier into the position of having to take responsibility for itself until it begins to comprehend that there is no free lunch and that if you don't cooperate with the hunting party you'll eat at the end of the line with the dogs. By prosecuting parents for their minor children's crimes. By prosecuting teachers for the crimes of their students, until the teachers stop trying to replace parents. By prosecuting government employees for the crimes of their wards, charges and parolees. By shunning people who are known to disrespect the rights and property of others. By publicly accusing criminality everywhere you find it, regardless whose feelings might get hurt, knowing that people will behave themselves to avoid humiliation when they won't behave for any other reason. By living as an example of astute judgement. By supporting and investing in and otherwise encouraging people who do the right thing. By continuing to work toward a non-coercive psychaeology that actually works, so that people can find their way home from confusion. By blogging with you. \;-)> Thursday, June 26, 2003
4:59 PM
-:- Posted by Allen
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Truman had a couple of atomic bombs. No one could stop him from dropping them on Japan. Wasn't necessary to obliterate major population centers, but he could. So he did. Doug Kenline's position says that Truman had no choice. He could, therefore he must. If I decided to go out and kill 5 civilians tomorrow afternoon (your choice of weapons, or bare hands only), no one could stop me. Come and get me afterward, exterminate me for it, but not stop me. Doug 's position is that I should. I could, so I should. Doug says that no one can stop music piracy, so we might as well all do it. Can't stop it equals okay to do it. Lot of dead people out there waiting to Happen, Doug. When I see them I'll make sure you're the one who argued for their demise. Doug adds in that musicians are profiteered by the labels. The labels make most of the money. The artists have to get by on relatively little. But that's a senseless and many-times specifically-untrue claim. It's Aerosmith suing the pirates, directly, not just their label protecting its own profits alone. And, lots of artists own their own labels. Not to mention that a lot of garage bands publish their own CDs and sell them at gigs and street fairs. No matter. The artists don't get enough of the money, so it's okay to steal their product. It's possible to rip and post the independent garage band's music too, so we should do it. And download it for free, too. Who cares that they'll soon have to abandon the garage for lack of rent, hock their axes for food, let their music die? Art belongs to the world! Oppressed consumers unite!!! Sure. That's the rational solution: the artists don't get enough, so let's make sure they get even less. Lot of starving musicians out there, Doug. When I see them I'll make sure to give you the credit for their hunger. Dammit Jim, it's about honor! There are no good reasons for criminal acts, just excuses and lies. But hey, in today's world, you can make the most of both: lie to yourself to create the basis of an excellent excuse. Never mind that it will seem excellent only in the eyes of the equally devoid.
3:04 PM
-:- Posted by Allen
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What we have here is a failure to communicate! It is a grave mistake to assume that because I am not a garden-variety Christian, or that I am critical of church-fostered stupidity, or that because I oppose junking up a topical list with off-topic religion, I must be an atheist. Were I even slightly lesser a man, I would take great offense at someone referring to me as an atheist. So would my atheist friends, in that they would very likely be disgusted at being positioned with me. It's really a failure to differentiate. It's a truly lazy unthinking process called Either-Or that allows people to make what are, in all truth, proactively ignorant suppositions about each other: if you're not A, you must be Z; never mind that some people think there are 24 leters in between. I'll pick this up later, with an on-topic discussion about the generalized failure to differentiate and how it cripples our movement and the world at large. For now, I just wanted to dispose of the idiotic assumption that I am an atheist. Anyone with half a brian cell who had even tried to read my past writings with anything resembling a clear mind would know that I am a religious fanatic. I just don't look like the ones you see in the movies, and my religion doesn't look like yours (whoever you may be, odds are this is true). So I'm invisible to people who don't bother to look at reality for themselves. Have I made myself clear? Tuesday, June 24, 2003
4:23 AM
-:- Posted by Allen
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THis one is truly for the people. The leaders and their unknowing parrots won't like it a bit! An email-pal (electronic pen-pal) asks, as do so many of us, Wonder how the German people were made to accept the "final solution"? What "methods" were used to establish their approval to the actions their government was taking? Do we see any of that in the USA today? Ask the Dixie Chicks. For those of you who missed it, the Dixie Chicks, a primarily Country band, criticized Rex Bush and his warmongering. Now they're suffering the same fate as Sinead O'Connor did when she criticized the Pope, and as the Beatles did when John Lennon observed that they were more well-known world-wide than Jesus. Point to be made: It doesn't matter in such cases that what you say might be true. "Things" are set up in this world to destroy anyone who steps out of line. And there's no police needed to do it to the average person because his family, friends and neighbors will do it automatically. It's in the nature of their culture. Some eight months ago I mentioned to a neighbor that I had connected up with the WTP Congress (We The People, Bob Schulz). When I mentioned that they had a petition in to the government to clarify and maybe terminate local federal income taxes, he had a physical reaction and told me quite firmly that I was crazy and going to get myself killed. (Funny, I remember hearing the same thing almost 40 years ago from my high-school friends when I told them that I was going to undo the evil aspects of the establishment.) Of course, that's not the worst of it as regards my neighbor. The reason I had mentioned WTP to him was that I knew him to be a 'conservative'. The actual reason I went to see him in the first place was that I was considering running for City Council and I was gathering nomination signatures. But of course he couldn't sign my petition because he's not a registered voter! But I still haven't gotten to the worst part. The worst part is not that he isn't a member of the body politic. It isn't even that he functions within The Machine as an unconscious extension-terrorist. Those are just symptoms. The worst part is the cause. Brace yourself. My neighbor is a religious man. Not a fanatic, never talks about it. He and his wife go to church each Sunday, took their kids along all the while they were growing up, same as their own parents did with them. My neighbor believes. One of the things he believes is that salvation awaits him and the world through his chosen Intercessor. Part and parcel of that belief is that no man gets saved except through intercession. Trouble is, in his religion, that process includes a prophesied period of great tribulation first. He expects that those who are alive during that time will either be lifted up and insulated, or suffer dearly through it. He hopes to be (a) already gone before it happens, or (b) lifted up. But if neither, he is resigned to the potential suffering. He has faith that, either way, it all leads to heaven. My neighbor cannot conceive the world's cleansing happening any other way. To do so, he would have to repudiate his religion. And that's the problem, isn't it? Sure, he'll remind himself that his Intercessor helps those who help themselves, but he doesn't really believe that when it comes to the Final Destination. Do all the political and patriotic stuff you feel you must do, but in the end, it doesn't matter, that's just worldly distraction. It's been prophesied, can't be avoided. The disaster must happen. Will happen, so help him God. Meanwhile, in a society structured along religious lines, so long as there remains any surviving manifestation of the beliefs that founded it, no matter how bad it gets, the faithful will automatically defend that structure. Until they give up hope, they will demand allegiance to the structure without regard to the sordid details. They will attack the critics of the details as though those critics are attacking the structure itself. And in doing so they defend the corruption along with the corrupted. "Bush is better than Gore, so one must not criticize Bush lest one imply Gore would have been better." That's stupid pseudo-thought, it's completely devoid of logic, and it leads right back into the thing I mentioned the other day, that I will be talking about in Part Two as to what's wrong in the movement. But for now, I've caused enough trouble, pointing out that it is people's religions that move them first, last and, unfortunately, the most detructively. As in: The reason the German people accepted the 'Final Solution' is that they were set up for it by their apocalyptic religion and persuaded by their preachtitioners to "let it be".Nothing has changed. Despite the best efforts of the Founders, America has always been ruled by that same mindset. That's the worst part. Monday, June 23, 2003
3:07 AM
-:- Posted by Allen
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"Free will, and the unquestioned right of every individual to make personal choices, without duress from anyone, are to be respected absolutely and honored above all purposes whatsoever, whether a particular choice is fully informed or not." -0-
2:25 AM
-:- Posted by Allen
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Doug Kenline said it well: from this point forward, death-fast threats mean nothing: nobody will believe it. Never liked the idea anyway. Saturday, June 21, 2003
1:56 PM
-:- Posted by Allen
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Let's never neglect the fact that in my most recent blogging (next below, of course), I refer to Doug Kenline as "my friend". I'm not perfect, and I don't expect my friends to be. I've been wrong lots of times, might even be again. Good intentions, intelligence, great advisors, none of these are gurarantees of rightness. It's okay for you to be wrong, Doug, as long as you are willing to face the music. :-) "For the People" by itself is not marxist. It's the context that decides. When it's Of, By AND For, with mutual respect, then it is libertarian. When it comes with a sense of entitlement and opportunism, and/or a disregard for the sensibilities of the creators and producers, then it becomes questionable. But even so, people can be wrong, make mistakes, even do bad things for good reasons. Doesn't mean they aren't still my friends, if they were before. Just means that they'll someday have to get through me. This leads to a short discussion of how to love your enemies. There's no need to hate someone just because he's destructive or even evil in action. In the final analysis, he's just disoriented, and probably has all kinds of ideas about how he's doing the right thing. You're supposed to forgive a guy like that, for he knows not what he does. Of course, you also kill him if you must. You just don't have to do it with malice in your heart. A guy appoints me his executioner, I execute. If I'm angry about it, I'm only angry that he put that burden upon me. But I do it, with an explanation if there's time. If he appreciates the feedback, then he's recovered his standing with me. That's his standing with respect to honor; he was never not my friend. 'I'm in you, you're in me, the Creator is in us.' And we're all in this mess together.
3:24 AM
-:- Posted by Allen
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I kinda like the idea of blogging. And blogging in support of the rights of the people is a really good idea. But "blogging for the people" is getting to sound a bit Marxist. My friend Doug Kenline Says to Neal Boortz & Bill O'Reilly, "Music is free now. Get over it. Evolve or die." Then a little later in the same post (June 21, 2003), he says, "Orrin Hatch is a fraud. The founding fathers wanted no part in popularly elected federal Senators. The so-called seventeenth amendmant was never ratified." Now, this is not the "darker something" revealed in Doug's earlier post that I promised to discuss in a day or two, it's a different one. But it too is common in constitutional advocacy, so it also bears discussion. And now is as good a time as any. It's the tendency to pick and choose among the various provisions of the constitution, advocating some and neglecting, or dismissing, or even attacking others. Leftists do this when they champion "free speech" (wonderful First Amendment) while screaming for "gun control" (awful Second Amendment). Doug is doing it when he complains about fraud in the election of US senators (17th Amendment) and then dismissing patent and copyright protections (Article I, Section 8, Clause 7). What makes this particularly ironic is that patents and copyrights are in the main body of the US constitution, not afterthoughts like the Bill of Rights. (Go ahead, misrepresent that, anybody who wants to say that I dissed the Bill of Rights as an afterthought. But admit it, it was. An essential and personally imperative one for me, yet not considered necessary in the original framing. Read the notes from the convention, read the Bill of Rights' own Preamble.) So here we have a person chatting up the constitution all day long, and presuming to tell all of the rest of us how to do it, and he's actually confessing to violating artists' constitutionally-guaranteed rights. Sorry pal, maybe it's inadvertent, but it is real nonetheless: can you spell "hypocrite"? Next, in another post (same day), Doug thinks that authors should just post their books to the internet and not charge, just put up a PayPal "tip jar". I did that with my first book. Sold for $7 a copy in the printed version at bookstores, faster than I could deliver it. I made about $1.38 per copy. I put it live on the internet (1995) because a bunch of first-generation "Build-it-and-they-will-come" net friends badgered me that it was more important that the book get out there than for me to be paid for every copy. Well, they were half-right. I built it and people came. The first couple of months it downloaded over 25,000 times. I quit counting at 40,000 in less than a year. In bookstores in printed form, that's me making a living at over $55,000 --enough to work full time on such things. But only ten people sent money, less than $200, not even enough to pay for the website. I spent the year pounding nails and getting nothing important done. The book is Mind Matters, and it's still up there, still downloading tens of thousands of times for years now, and I still get lots of email from readers. But in the past six years only one more person has paid for it. And I'm still pounding nails. This is no fluke. I tried it again with my Effectiveness Profile self-improvement diagnostic software. You can run it free of charge online at effectivenessprofile.com. You get a graph showing your weakness and strengths in 20 attributes across 6 categories. And the PDF version of what was an 80-page printed manual. Lots of people do it, sometimes hundreds in a month. It also asks for a donation in exchange for an interpretation if the visitor wants more detail. In over a year, THREE people have taken that step. Tells you how much people really value self-improvement. By and large, NOT. By inference, it also tells you that they generally aren't going to do any more to defend their rights than they will to better their situations. And still, I pound nails. But hey, that's just me, right? No. The fellow who wrote the wblogger blog-posting program uses Doug's model. You download and use the program for free, he asks for financial tokens of appreciation. How's he doing? Can't afford to spend much time doing support for the program, still has to do "real" work. It simply isn't true that people will pay on the honor system. Hell, they won't even pay for music when they know there's a price and the copies they're downloading are illegal. (Right, Doug?) But that's way of Marxism and all such "theories" espoused by people who live in fantasyland and have never worked both sides of the issue to learn the truth. Oh, and excuse me for misquoting --Doug wants $10K a week, not per month. No problem, projections indicate that this will take six or seven months instead of four or five. Only now I'm worried. If Doug is so misguidedly arrogant while he's making a mere living, how misdirectingly dangerous will he become when he has money? Will he still be telling people to sacrifice their creativity "for the people" when he's banking seven figures? Will he use his suddenly-found money to expand his meta-message, that it's okay to take from others and expect more? Will he put his money where his mouth should be, in positive support of constitutional advocacy? Or will he just keep on nitpicking his estimations of other people's imperfections, all the while ignoring the redwood tree in his own eye? At least he'll have to tell people where he got the opportunity --recruiting is still the only way to grow an MLM business, even if it's all automated except for incidental contacts. OK. I still plan to do the other analysis I promised. Only it won't be centered so much on Doug. I don't plan to spend any more time arguing with him. He's reminding me too much of the early taxpayer-supported internet denizens in the universities who spent hours a day "trolling", baiting people just to get a rise or something out of them for entertainment sake alone. I'm a little too dedicated to getting a result to waste that much time. Friday, June 20, 2003
1:06 PM
-:- Posted by Allen
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Doug Kenline is a harsh taskmaster! First he wants me to blog for the people, and then he says he wants to find a way to bring in $10K a month. So I tell him I'm working on the side to develop a way to do earn that money and more, using MLM but without the problems of old-style MLM that he so rightfully objects to, and what is his first response? There is a true leader. Working for the people on the second most important problem in life for them. This is true leadership in it's purest form I believe. Thank you Allen Hacker. Blogging for the people on the most important issues. -June 20 '03 As if suddenly that is the only thing I am doing! Yes, he does say that he will keep an open mind. And that he might take the gamble. I give him that. And that really is something --I personally shied away from MLM for maybe 25 years myself. But I think the internet changes all that. If I'm right, and IF I make it work, then we'll all be able to sing a different tune, maybe change over from lament to aria. But there's something even darker than a little tolerable sarcasm that is revealed in the remainder of Doug's blogpost. I'll discuss it in more detail in a day or two because it's a very common problem and is the source of most people's inner conflict. -0- Monday, June 16, 2003
12:57 PM
-:- Posted by Allen
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Well, now that Doug Kenline has let my cat out of its bag, I'll have to share a little info. I have been working as a hobby for a couple of years now, to find a way for patriots to stop being broke. We are powerless in today's world without money, yet patriots too often find themselves without monetary inflow --usually because they, as Larken Rose puts it, "jump off cliffs". And in the process, shoot themselves in the financial foot. One of the ways they do this is by rashly teminating their use of an SSN (Social Security Number) without a plan and then being unable to get paid or have a bank account. Note that I am not commenting here on the validity of avoiding the SSN --I believe SSN is wrong, and that it is illegal to discriminate against someone who doesn't have or won't use one. And that there is no law requiring anyone to have one. Okay, so I did comment on it, but that's not what this discussion is about. Anyway, it has always been obvious to me that a business salvation for patriots would have to be an arrangement that didn't require an SSN. And, since patriots are stuboorn opinionated people, they are generally unable to tolerate corporate working politics. Therefore, the best solution would center on self-employment, or at the least, independent contracting. Of course, there's still the problem of getting paid by a corporation whose brainwashed personnel think you have to have an SSN, and whose ignorant financial-software programmers make their programs dependent on an SSN, so that those companies couldn't pay you or even hire you without an SSN even if they wanted to. Not to mention that the IRS, which defacto owns every corporation in the country, has told them that they can't classify you as a contractor if you are in an employment-styled 9-to-5 type of position. So let's see.... an opportunity that is a true independent contractor position... requires no SSN... leaves you free to work when and from where and how much you want.... Doesn't exist in the corporate world. Oh yes, wouldn't also be nice to have some sort of medical plan without spending close to a thousand a month out-of-pocket to cover your entire family? In my quest for this solution, I looked at all sorts of businesses, and at the internet. And over time, I believe I have found it. An internet-based combination of three multilevel organizations, none of which requires an SSN, tied together into a neat little package by an integrating website. A less-than $1000 initial commitment that doesn't all have to be spent at once, and the potential to better than break even in three months or less without any difficult effort. How is that possible? One of the MLMs is a phenomenal leads source that delivers to your email box 150 people a month who have explicitly asked for information on exactly this type of opportunity. Exclusive leads that no one else will ever see, so they'll only hear from you. Recruit just 2-5 of them each month and you're successful. And you can do that using the integrative website and automatic email, so your labor investment is going to be only about 3-5 hours a month. All at once, once a month. Over the internet, from anywhere. The next MLM is a dietary supplement package that is better than coral calcium (and unlike coral calcium, still on the market and not under FTC and FDA attack), completely natural digestive and metabolic supplements that become part of your diet, and in my case at least, proportionately reduce your food spending because they (1) replace some of the food you're already buying, and (2) reduce the need for so much food by filling in the blanks and thus making your digestion and metabolism more efficient. The third MLM is just a bonus: a set of complete no-previous-condition-restrictions family medical/dental/alternative health plans, from $39 to $129 per month. Average savings over the totally uninsured is approximately 25%; on specific items it can be over 60%. Not too many months ago one of our own coordinators' son had a mishap on a trampoline and destroyed his mouth. The bill was projected to run upwards of $25,000, maybe a lot more. Our friend had to go begging to the internet lists he was on for donations, and what he received didn't come close. Imagine if he'd had a plan that allowed him to take the boy to the HMO of his choice, choose the surgeons he wanted, and got him a 25% or more rate cut? Sure, it's not full insurance, but at 1/5th to 1/10th the cost, it's wayyyy better than nothing. So I'm the one putting together the integrative website to pull these three businesses into one compounded and reinforced business. But it's not quite ready, so I can't tell you where it is just yet. Need about another week --had to take some real work to pay the rent, so.... I really believe this is what we all need. But you each have to look at it for yourselves. And each of us has to get past whatever aversion society has given us about MLM. You know, the old idea that it's just a pyramid scheme (all busines is, in the final analysis, so the question is only whether or not it's an illegal pyramid, and it's not). I doubt that many of us would worry too much about what our acquaintances think of us being in an MLM, since we already live on the fringe! Unless they fear we will bother them the way all MLMers have done to their families and friends in the past. But that won't be necessary with this setup becuase the only people you'll be telling about your business are the leads you get in the email. You don't even have to tell your friends or family what you're up to. You can wait for them to ask you why you're not broke any more. Sorry, that's all I'm saying for now. I don't mean to tease, but as I said above, I'm only saying this much because the cat got out of the bag. Not to blame Doug, though --I didn't ask him not to say anything, and I had hoped to announce it by now anyway. -0- Tuesday, June 10, 2003
12:23 PM
-:- Posted by Allen
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Today Rex Bush formalizes the "No Child Left Behind" treason. This calamity occurs today because today the last of the 50 States and DC & Puerto Rico submitted their proposed compliance plans to the mandates of the Act. Think about that first: the States had to volunteer into this Act before it could become effective. The lesson? The feds don't have jurisdiction over many things, unless you opt in. Thanks to your State education establishment, acting through the various top State "education officers" (Bush's wording), you have surrendered your children and grandchildren to a humanist insectiod future. This is your vote (or failure to vote) in action. One of the things this program brings is a requirement that children "matriculate" (choose their life's career) in the 8th grade. Before they've even learned who they are, or had enough life experience to make such a decision --in fact, years before they are legally competent to contract-- children will choose a career and then be railroaded into a rut that won't provide the option of changing their minds later. How is this possible? People can always change their minds, can't they? Not if they can't consider options. Once your daughter decides, simply because her Aunt Faye is beautiful and is a hairdresser, that she too might like to become a hairdresser, and matriculates into cosmetology, everything she is taught will be slanted toward only what she needs to know to do that work. Any chemistry she learns will be limited to whatever is necessary for cosmetology. Any history she learns will feature the history of beauty fashion and related matters, but not the general history of the nation or world. In short, when she finishes high school she will be excellently prepared to be a cosmetologist but completely unable to see life and the world from any frame of reference other than that of a cosmetologist. She will think cosmetology, she will speak cosmetology to her children, she will vote cosmetology, and she will marry a boy who can live with all that, perhaps himself one who thinks, speaks, votes and lives auto repair or bus driving. And their children will therefore be programmed from birth to see themselves as skilled-labor faimily members, already slanted towards cosmetology and auto-repair or bus-driving careers before they ever fall first-hand victim to the edustablishment. This will create a far more "stratified culture" than any "classed" society that the Marxists ever complained about, yet it is their program. And why not?! Marxists never tell the truth-- not about what they are doing, not about reality, not even to themselves. One of the reasons this will over-classify society is that the Act reflects the new idea among corporate-pimped educators that there are 80% too many college graduates and not enough workers, so there will be less and less college enrollees. This will be guaranteed by the fact that any child who does matriculate into a job-track will completely lack the general educational foundation to meet college-entrance requirements. The alarm against all this has been being sounded for years, even decades, but the general public, unwilling to be concerned about anything much beyond its stomach and genitals, hasn't been listening. And so-called patriots have been too busy splintering over religion and gurus to unite against it. The two best resources on the web for further info on this "non-conspiracy" education racket are John Taylor Gatto and Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt, whose excellent "The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America" can be obtained through the CT (Connecticut) Homeschool Network. It's not too late for the united States, but it's close. We still have one more election. Get over to Lawful Government and read the article, Our Proposition. And get on the bandwagon. Now, before it really is too late. -0- Saturday, June 07, 2003
2:22 AM
-:- Posted by Allen
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Some of my friends (you know who you are) have been asking me to comment on issues regularly. I appreciate the compliment. But one or two have become a little too enthusiastic in that request, inadvertently (I'm Certain) degrading it into a demand, complete with specifics on detail. manner and frequency, that that is absolutely unacceptable. It smacks too much of (a) I am someone's property, to be defined and deployed at their will and not my own, and (b) "...from each according to ability...." I like blogging, actually. And I plan to do more. I like the suggestion of one friend that I shoot for a topic a week. And I invite topical suggestions via email. It's more fun for me if I can imagine an interested person who might benefit from my effort. allen@lawfulgov.org But I do not respond well to chiding and criticism, and I really am unconcerned about what people think of me. (You, who also knows who you are): when you say you are doubting that I am the leader you thought I'd be, you should more honestly be saying that you doubt that I will perform as the leader you want me to be instead of whatever type of leader I may be. I suggest you open your mind to surprise. So let's keep it respectful, and I'll play. Thanks! -0- Tuesday, June 03, 2003
12:33 PM
-:- Posted by Allen
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CAFR -- Hidden Loot? Doug Kenline and others have asked my opinion on CAFRs -Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports. As requested, I looked at Walter J. Burien, Jr.'s site. I noted the rather sensationalist headline right away: "The Biggest Shell Game For Theft In This World's History!" But then I did see that the tag line, "Organized Government at all levels holds back it's [sic] Financial Statement from the people of America for over 50 years!", which implies serious wrong-doing and promises to justify the headline. Ultimately, although a couple of interesting questions are raised by the subject in general, the sensationalism and professed outrage of the site in general are not justified. Overall, the thrust of Burien's argument is, in his own words, "There is enough aggregate wealth owned by our government agencies to abolish ALL property and income taxes TODAY." That's not exactly true. We must understand what a CAFR is and is not. True, all government financial info should be public. And if you know how to find it, it is. But I must admit, when you consider that there are people like Burien out there who will twist and exagerrate things all out of proportion, I can understand why this information can be kept hard to find. Allow me to illustrate. Suppose you had a few stocks and bonds set aside for your retirerement. And a partial investment in a small real estate syndicate that builds and manages local strip malls. And let's suppose that you have a loser cousin who lives by "borrowing" from the rest of the family, seldom paying back more than a few pennies on the dollar. You also have a monthly budget. Into it go all your earnings, and from it you pay all your bills and make a small deposit into your savings account. Whenever your savings account gets big enough, you move the money into stocks, etc, hoping for a little extra growth in your retirement fund. (You really must do this if you understand the econimics of our world; otherwise inflation will eat away at your nest egg through the years and it could be worthless when you get to retirment. So you put it into appreciable investments: stocks, interest-bearing bonds, and real estate.) Now your cousin comes a-beggin' for $100 to tide him over until the next big thing falls into his lap. You show him your budget for the week and how there's not enough coming in compared to what's going out to leave room for you to skim a hundred off for him. He notices that you have $25 earmarked for savings, and he asks for it, 'cause it would help some. You remind him that you've done that 5 times already, and that you told him last time you wouldn't do it again because he never repays, and you refuse. He goes away upset. Your cousin gets to thinking about your budget. First he's just jealous of how much you make, but after a while, he gets to that "savings" item. And he realizes that it's always been there whenever you showed him your budget while he was asking for money. In fact, he actually has benefitted from that item 5 times in the past, and then it clicks: you set aside $25 a week, every week! $100 a month! And you've been doing it for years! B.S. you don't have any money! You must have a fortune under your mattress. How dare you deny him in his time of need?!!! {Yes, I know, we tax saps are not the errant cousin, and tax money is technically our own, but please bear with me while I make my point. Then we can discuss the merits of Burien's argument.} So your cousin snoops around. He has an alcoholic girlfriend at the local real easte office, and she mentions that you invest in a real estate syndicate and that it is worth millions. And his buddy the janitor at the bank has seen you coming out of the local stockbroker's office more than once. And it hits him: you're not saving the money, you're spending it on stocks and real estate! Your cousin comes back to you spouting accusations of lying and deceit, saying you've been buying up real estate and playing the stock market, and that you could have helped him many times over if you only wanted to. You try to explain that it's your retirement money and it's invested. You don't own any yachts, you're not a member of some golf club, and you don't play among the jet set. You're just making sure that when you get to retirement you won't be a beggar too. Your cousin asks you a few questions about your investments, and you explain it all to him, thinking that maybe finally he'll come to an understanding of what it takes to get by in the real world. You show him how the insurance guys say that you'll probably live 27 years after you retire; it will cost you $23,000 per each of those years in today's dollars, and you now have, halfway through your working career, 15 years covered in your security plan to have 30 years retirment money. You point out that you're getting it done right at the wire, that there won't be any extra at this rate, should you lose your insurance or live longer than 30 years you could still get into trouble. You hope that he will see that, given the long view, you really can't afford to toss away any money at all. But all your cousin sees is the money. "15 years at 23K," he says to himself... "why, that's over $300 thousand!" You're rich! And selfish. And shortly after that is when you get the shock of your life. Instead of educating this dimwit, you've given him just enough information to be dangerous, but you never got enough wisdom through his thick skull not to be dangerous. Two weeks later you find out that he's been telling everybody he knows that you're walking around with $300,000 and won't lend him a dime. And now you understand why every salesperson and con artist in town has suddenly started calling you. What's my point? Most of what's in CAFRs is committed money that isn't part of today's budget. It's an allocation from years past, set aside for years ahead. It's the transportation fund we voted in six years ago to build a new bridge over the river to the next town. Sure, the bridge has already been built, but we did that by floating a ten-year bond. And when that bond comes due in four years, we'll need to have the money on hand to redeem it, with interest. How else did you think we built a 16 million-dollar bridge and only raised your taxes $23 a month? It's the building maintenance fund for the school district, because we're planning ahead for a total remodel in five years when the building codes will change and the building itself will be old enough to need sevral renovations anyway. It's the retirement fund for everyone who ever worked for the city: part of our promise to them that if they'd give up the option of ever becoming billionaire CEOs, we'd take care of them later if they'd make sure our streets stayed paved and our kids were safe and our houses didn't burn all the way to the ground in a disaster. {Yes, I am talking about the ideal here, not the real-world that has come to be, but then, I haven't given up on getting it back.} In short, those items in the CAFRs are not money we can just pull out and spend. Not if we want our long-term municipal (or county, state and federal) projects to be funded. And not if we don't want to rip off our hard-working dedicated civil servants. {Okay, okay... a little joke now and then is a good thing!} I've looked at the 2001 California CAFR page, accessible through Burien's site. At a glance you can see that what I'm talking about is true. Most of the money is past investment in future obligations. My impression? Mr Burien hasn't thought this thing through. He is saying that we should just go out and spend all this money, put an end to taxes. But if we do, we'll suffer horribly later when our construction bonds come due and we have to massively self-assess to pay in a single chunk what we used to cover with a savings account. And our public retiement obligation will become just another unfunded liability like social security, and we'll have to tax ourselves even more heavily as more and more public employees retire and these's no fund set aside to take care of them. Every time we need a new fire truck or police car we'll have to hold a bake sale, just like they did a hundred years ago. And Mr. Burien is not being very bright when he accuses the government of "spending" the money on real estate and such. Like your fictional cousin above, he just doesn't get that it's not spending, it's investing, and that the interst he's so jealous of has been figured into the calculation of how much to tax now against probable need in the future. However, having said that, it is true that some CAFR funds are discretionary, and a few are actually nothing more than buffers and rainy-day hide-aways. But if the're there to cover disaster stuff, like bulidings damaged in earthquakes and hurricanes, roads damaged in earhtquakes and floods, and other unexpected things, then that is not spendable money either. Not that there is no problem at all. These funds do get raided now and then. And there might be even better ways to accomplish what these funds were set up to do. See Catherine Austin Fitts for more on that. My Conclusion: There's not much here wheen you get right down to it. The government isn't keeping double books. It has a budget, and a liabilities-investment portfolio. We should all be so diligent in securing our future. -0- Monday, June 02, 2003
2:32 AM
-:- Posted by Allen
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Hey, Doug! Nice to see you bothered to work your way to my article. I only teased the blog with the first paragraph because as you mention, it's a long diatribe and I don't see the sense of dumping the entire thing. Yes, the lawfulgov.org site is frames-based, so you can't click-through directly. That will no doubt change when I have the time to play with it. Why is the article important? Because there are too many people calling each other traitors and other nasty accusations that keep us divided when it is the accusers causing all the problems and disrupting our hopes of sticking together to get the task done. There aren't many things that get me breathing heavy, but integrity problems is a big one. There's little that steams me more than someone pretending to be a constitutionalist and turning out to be nothing more than one more single-issue fanatic who's using the movement to his own narrow ends. -0- Sunday, June 01, 2003
9:27 PM
-:- Posted by Allen
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Of Course There Were Deists! May 31, 2003 Commentary on a Media Bypass Article "Deists Don't Appeal To God... Founders Were Not Deists" So is entitled a truly disgusting and substandard article on page 20 of the May 2003 Media Bypass, by one Mike Smith. This article is worse than just one more tired attempt to recast the past in favor of the sick pseudo-Christian fantasy that the united States is a Christian nation, that the Founders were all Christians, and that nobody of any other religion deserves to be here; it is among the least scholarly and most offensive of its ilk. Media Bypass should be embarrassed to have published it. As a person with strong Deist leanings myself, I have decided to challenge these ignorant lies and insults. It is fitting that I initiate the balance by taking up this particularly horrific piece of work. Read at LawfulGov.org. Click on Editorials.
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