2:37 AM -:- Posted by Allen   0 comment(s)   View or Comment! -:-  

Big Day for CarTaxRevolt

Today is the deadline for the State of California to comply with the California CarTaxRevolt Petition for Redress of Grievances. That's the petition filed end of last week that demands the rollback of the illegally tripled car tax.

Project Director Greg Post and several members and other interested parties will be waiting on the West steps of the Capitol building in Sacramento to receive the government's answer (and apology). There are indications that they will be joined by at least one Member of the state Assembly.

California motorists must choose: join CarTaxRevolt or become a criminal...

I have posted a new article to the CarTaxRevolt website, "What’s Wrong With the Tripled California Car Tax". Sorry, no direct link, it's a frames-based site. Just click on Articles and then the title of the article and it will pop right up in the site's main window.

This article was written by request for the Los Angeles Daily Journal, a legal newspaper read mostly by lawyers and judges. It is iffy to get published before the election because of time constraints, and the issue could be moot after that. Which is why I have posted it to the website without waiting: it is crucial that the public understand the law behind what we're asking them to do.

Most important for California Motorists, my reading of the California Penal Code says that not only is the tax unconstitutional and not only is it being collected illegally, it is even illegal to pay the tax!

        10:43 PM -:- Posted by Allen   0 comment(s)   View or Comment! -:-  

More democracy than they can handle!

In a pure republic, the people elect representative to the next level up, then those representatives elect representatives to the next level up from them.

In the American republican form of government, there are two channels of representation. On the populist side, the people elect representatives to every level. On the sovereignty side, each political subdivision sends senators to represent it at the next level up.

Nowhere in either of these constructs is there direct election or decision of issues by the people acting en masse.

But the American form of republic is a true hybrid, wherein many states do allow direct decision in the form of Initiative and Referendum.

Initiative is where the people can force a question onto the ballot and then vote on it. Initiative is a device for getting around legislatures that are too controlled by vested interests or too entrenched in the political machinery to bother with what the people really want. At least, that's the theory.

Referendum is where the legislature passes a law back to the people for final ratification. For example, the Nevada State legislature can pass a proposed amendment to the Nevada constitution, but it must then refer that amendment to the people for popular ratification.

A pure democracy is where every eligible voter has the opportunity to vote on the issues of the day. In a pure democracy there is no congress or legislature, because the people legislate for themselves.

Democracies always become chaotic, what with everything changing as often as things can be gotten up for vote, and an emotional majority terrorizing a hapless minority. Which is why our Founders only allowed a little democracy within a predominantly republican structure.

The United States is not a democracy, therefore, but a democratic republic. It used to be mostly a republic, but the democracy part was vastly increased by the 17th Amendment, which replaced the appointment of senators with popular election.

Anyway, it is on the one hand a disaster for patriots to see the degradation of our republic that has resulted from the 17th Amendment. Deliberation has been replaced by the whim of the moment, and reason replaced by the mob. Where in times gone by the watch-phrases were 'eternal vigilance' and 'responsibility', the watch-phrases have come to be 'majority rule' and 'security'.

Yet on the other hand, now and then it happens that there is delightful vengeance is seeing the creature bite the hand of its Frankenstein.

I'm referring to the California recall, of course.

When the liberals here don't like an initiative passed by the majority (e.g., no welfare for illegal aliens), they run to a bleeding-heart federal judge and get the new law stopped ("It might hurt someone.") Or, as in the cases of affirmative action and bilingual educative befuddlement being stricken down, they simply ignore the court orders they dislike and carry on, saying, "It's for the children and the minorities and the women and anybody else who doesn't look like a dead white man, and all you who disagree with us are just plain mean at heart."

So when I see the people acting through the Initiative to throw out a democrat governor who hasn't served them well, I see democracy at work.

And when I hear democrats complaining that the recall is overturning an election, it makes my jollies tingle to think that these dolts are finally getting all the democracy they deserve.

        12:11 PM -:- Posted by Allen   0 comment(s)   View or Comment! -:-  

"J.C., meet J.t.B."

I said early this morning in my last post, "Life is astoundingly simple." I also said, "Maybe you do it (life) more than once,..."

So?

So, what if we actually do? Do life more than once?

For reasons with the mass of which I don't want to clutter this post, and which I refuse to debate or defend, I see the likelihood that we do.

But I don't see that as complicated. As I said, it's, "...nothing more than doing stuff wrapped in entrances and exits." The song is not over, the paradigm remains the same.

Now, it is possible to take my earlier message as meaning that there is no meaning. And I do personally see the universe and existence as a zero-sum game: all things exist, all scenarios play out, and all roles are played. All in the eternal here-and-now, allthatis in the infinitely fertile imagination of The One.

Yet within all that, I do find reason to choose. Just because I see life as passing through infinitely reconfiguring chaos, does not mean I allow myself to be simply a leaf buffeted upon the waters by a fickle wind. Rather I should be the butterfly turning left instead of right as I flit down the Amazon, sending a little disturbance into the atmospheric cacaphony that will eventuate into a small hurricane over Jamaica in about 20 months.

Better I choose to do things consciously in the now, things that will make an affirmative impact later on my next who-knows-how-many lifetimes, if for no more firm reason than 'just in case'.

So I do go for walks in the park and sit on benches and dissolve into the minute, hour, or day. But in all that mist, I am dreaming possible and probable futures. And I do stuff. But I look for stuff that will make a difference, maybe small stuff with large impact, maybe large stuff that only adds a touch of flavor, but an accumulation of stuff evincing a design nonetheless.

I try to make the stuff I do be something, because I will be the receiver of the result. The beneficiary of the consequences, if you will.

I'm not talking about "karma". The truth is much more direct than that, but I don't have time for all that here, just now. I'll just say that since there is no time, there is no sequence, there is no good-deeds bad-deeds depository and retribution system. That's just an old wive's tale, made up (a) because kids wouldn't stop asking questions whose answers weren't known and somebody needed to tell them something to get rid of their annoying persistence, and (b) it's a tale that works really well to scare millions of people into being good, out of a belief that without threats, they won't behave themselves.

Anyway, Scattered through this post is why I do the projects I do.

Maybe I'm totally selfish.

I have no intention of coming back around into a communist or fascist America.

Is that too harsh?

What if you don't agree that we come back?

Well, then, do it for your grandchildren.

Don't even bother yourself that I might be among them.

No need to worry that you might be there too. No need to tell me or anyone else if you agree with my view.

Just choose to do the things now that will deliver the desirable then to those who live into it.

I can keep a secret, after all.

        2:59 AM -:- Posted by Allen   0 comment(s)   View or Comment! -:-  

Confused & Cluttered Minds

...are not proof that reality is complex.

We live in a matrix of lies made to fool us into believing that life is complex and that we can't live it without help, direction and rules.

Somebody else's "help", somebody else's direction, somebody else's rules.

Actually, life is astoundingly simple:

You get in, you do stuff, you get out.

Maybe you do it (life) more than once, but even that would be nothing more than doing stuff wrapped in entrances and exits.

Like a play. All pretend. Two shows a night, dark Mondays.

Curtain draws aside, lights come up. man sitting on a chair, blank set.

"Oooo, I just can't decide, blue or green, evening or afternoon, drive to the country or marry the bigmouth I met at the bar.... Life is so full of challenges!"

Give me a break!!!!!

You come around, you do stuff, you take off.

Often, while you're doing stuff, things get in the way.

Sometimes, you laugh about it, sometimes you get really pissed, and sometimes you don't even notice, you just take care of the glitch and proceed.

Because, after all, you're just doing stuff. Might as well include whatever comes up.

No need to be rigid.

"No, I can't do anything today, I've set this lifetime aside for a Special Purpose, and here I am, almost 40 and I am finally taking a day off to figure out what it was.

"Whaddy mean, why didn't I do that sooner, if the life was set aside? Whaddya mean, I've wasted half of it and what the heck was I doing?

"I was doing stuff, that's what I was doing. I was busy.

"Besides, it takes money to do stuff, even a Special Purpose, so I had to get a job. And then I needed a car. And then I took up with the bigmouth I met at the bar."

"And now I can't decide, drive to the country or marry the bigmouth.

"Hey, I know, I'll do both. This afternoon.

"Whaddya mean, what about taking the day off to figure out my Special Purpose? Don'tya see I got stuff to do?

"Besides, there's always tomorrow.

"And not only that, but I really don't want to know. If I did, I'd have to stop it with all this doing stuff, and do something.

"I'm not ready for that.

"Not today."

        3:29 PM -:- Posted by Allen   0 comment(s)   View or Comment! -:-  

We're on Talk Radio!

Greg Post, CarTaxRevolt Project Director, will be on KFI Los Angeles this evening.

His segment is expected to go at about 6:15 PM, so tune in early and don't miss it!

and...

I just did a ten-minute recorded interview for The Carl M Show on ATW Radio in the UK! Just a little local program.

Boy was that fun! I'll probably be getting a visit from the Men in Black for that one....

--Allen

        11:40 PM -:- Posted by Allen   0 comment(s)   View or Comment! -:-  

CarTaxRevolt Press Release

CALIFORNIA CARTAXREVOLT SAYS, "JUST SAY NO! TO THE CAR-JACK TRIPLE TAX SCAM"

Dateline: September 16, 2003 ... Mountain View, CA
Contact Name: Greg Post or Allen Hacker, LawfulGov.org
Contact Phone: (916) 220-7678 or (650) 465-7387
Second Contact Fax: (650) 964-2090
Email: CarTaxRevolt@LawfulGov.org
or allen@lawfulgov.org
Website: http://www.LawfulGov.org/CarTaxRevolt

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA - September 16, 2003 - California CarTaxRevolt, a project of Citizens for Lawful Government (LawfulGov.org), a Mountain View-based public oversight organization, has kicked off its campaign to reverse the recently-announced tripling of California automobile registration taxes set to take effect on October 1, 2003.

"We will begin with a Petition to every relevant State official from the Governor down to the Director of the DMV, demanding that they cancel this ill-advised scheme," said Project Director Greg Post of El Dorado County. The project's website is set up to take "electronic signatures" from all over the State, which will be forwarded to the California Secretary of State to show that there is broad opposition to the tax increase. "We plan to wait on the steps of the Capitol in Sacramento on September 30th at 2:00 PM to hear the official answer to its petition," Post concludes.

If their demand is ignored, the group plans to follow up on their petition with a call for mass civil disobedience, asking California automobile owners to refuse to pay the extra two-thirds of the requested fees. "We're suggesting that they set that money aside, preferably in a separate savings account" says LawfulGov.org Chief Facilitator Allen Hacker of Mountain View. "This will be their proof that they're not just trying to save a buck at the state's expense. They will be making a dramatic political statement to demonstrate that the People have simply had enough and are not going to assist the government in their further economic enslavement."

The California CarTaxRevolt project will provide guidance and links through their website to specific instructions for every step of the way, so that people may take the protest as far as they like.

When asked about the potential accusation that this is a call to anarchy and lawbreaking, Post responds that the "car-jack tax is illegal in the first place, and therefore no one is required to comply with it." He explains that it is a firm principle in American law that an unconstitutional enactment or action creates no duty.

Hacker added, "As we get the word out about what is really going on here, we fully expect that tens of thousands of people will join this movement." He also points out that "this is just the beginning. This month, the car-jack tax. Then we'll be going after the entire fiscal shell game - a full-fledged California Tax Revolt. And in the meantime, we're available to help advise, organize and web-publish the several other car tax revolts going on in other states. From now on, our public servants are going to be reminded of their proper place every time they step out of line."

"We're definitely non-violent," Post points out, "but we're not going to be passive either. We're are totally dedicated to commit all traditional political action toward putting an end to this and all other rip-offs of the Citizens by their government."

The California CarTaxRevolt petition is planned to be filed on September 19th. It can be previewed and electronically "signed" on the group's website at: http://www.LawfulGov.org/CarTaxRevolt

        7:51 PM -:- Posted by Allen   0 comment(s)   View or Comment! -:-  

Exquisite Torment

I am not speaking of fate when I say that we have no choice in the matter of enlightenment. I'm only saying that no man knows the hour of his being chosen by lightning.

You might be walking down the street. You might be settling into the mail. You might have your headphones on, listening to music. You might have raged against the machine all your life, for centuries even, all the while demanding illumination, desperately seeking some semblance of the assumed comfort of understanding. You may have done all those things and come finally to be sitting on a rock watching a bird in the sky, holding no greater intention or desire than to be there doing the simple thing.

And there, in that simple moment, between any given pair of heartbeats, Heaven opens up and you are immersed in the magnificent terrible truth.

It's magnificent indeed. Beyond all you've ever contemplated, more immense than you can bear, more stimulating than you can contain, vast and intricate in its simplicity, fundamentally beyond anyone's normal vocabulary.

You run out the door (of your office or room or home), or you run into town from the field by the river where the angelic Susanne has just revealed to you not just her own perfection but the overwhelming perfection of the Whole Thing itself. You run to tell someone. Anyone. Everyone.

Why? Because you know that the world perishes for lack of understanding. You know that people live in misery and quiet desperation in their agony of ignorance behind a veil so thin that it can no more be perceived than the truth it hides.

And then you discover how terrible Truth is. No one wants to hear you slaver in search of any words at all that might begin to express what you've seen. And if you do have speech adequate to approximate your vision, they really don't want to hear it.

No one wants his cherished beliefs to drift away into the harsh light of day.

No one wants to face the humiliation of having to effect a complete change in lifestyle in order to come into consistency with Truth. No one wants to admit the inconsistencies, the pretenses, the doubts and the fear hidden behind a lifetime of energetic assertions made from complete and surprisingly embarrassing ignorance.

No one wants to hear that his fantasy is corrupt. That everything his cherished leaders and mentors have told him is wrong. That the world he lives in is not even an illusion.

Sure, people will walk around and speak sagely about the matrix, the lies of their political leaders, the corruption in the social system. But ask them to apply the same standards and suspicions to their priesthood and religion, and they'll strike you down before you can move.

They're fine with the idea of the matrix of lies, but only to the point that learning about it requires them to question the pavement upon which they stand. People will readily shed walls, but they'll cave right in at the thought of surrendering the floor too.

So you can't tell them the truth. Not because you can't articulate it, but because they can't hear it. Because they do amazing acrobatic tricks in their minds to avoid it. Or they simple can't see that far through their dark glasses.

But there you are. Maybe you see the answer to their misery, but you have to live with them in their misery because they will not risk their worlds to achieve freedom.

You say, "It's this!"

And they scream back, "NO! I can't have it be that! It must be something else; I will not consider what you say. I can't. I have too great an investment in the view I have and the world that I've built upon it."

They can't see the future your truth describes. So they fear it, they reject it, and they will try to destroy you for showing it to them while they can't see it.

And that's what you're up against when you try to tell them how the world really is, how the government has enslaved them, and how their mere existence as men and women of integrity depends upon their outright betrayal of a lifetime of disorientation.

That is also what I'm up against when I try to tell my Christian friends among you that there is a scriptural argument for the separation of church and state, that to attempt to legislate morality is blasphemy.

Shocked? Compelled to disagree? No longer listening?

See?

That's what I'm saying.

And that's why I'm not bothering just now to write it up.

Besides, I've already more or less said it, and not a single person has responded to the point.

And that, for me, the fact that not a speck of the argument against what I've said about Moore's rock has been on point, is the source of my personal torment.

It's not that I feel rejected, or superior but slighted. Because none of this is what I started out to say anyway. All this so far has been nothing more than approach, a setting of the table for my dark feast of truth, so to speak.

What happened to me a few minutes ago is what always happens. It's my curse. I can't just do the simple things, and go along to get along. Reality keeps revealing its unexpected self to me. Believe me, I wouldn't mind if that stopped. Many is the time I've seen that bumper sticker that says, "God said it, I believe it, that settles it!", or heard some dufus make any of a vast number of similar statements, and jealously coveted that mindless state of ignorant bliss. Yet, alas, that is not my destiny. I asked for enlightenment, and now I must live with the consequences.

And I secretly believe that every one of you reading this knows that pain exactly, because I don't think that any of you are as obtuse as all the rest of us think you are. I just think that I am the only one brave enough (or stupid enough) to lay such things bare.

Anyway, there is a destination to this journey.

I put on a favorite CD (Sixpence None The Richer's "Divine Discontent"), fully intending to take care of some overdue coding on a new website for a project you're all going to love (I'm just the mechanic, someone else created the project, so I can brag it up all I want),,,, and....

Wham!

I know why patriots, constitutionalists, truth-in-taxation people, (generally) fail.

It's because they're not on point. They can't stay on point when their lives depend on it. Not even when their country depends on it.

They're too busy fighting and drawing lines among themselves, over things that might be crucially important personally in the long run when you consider ultimate spiritual realities, but that are completely unnecessary to the immediate discussion regarding rights, property, freedom, the essence of America.

It doesn't matter where rights come from so long as we all agree that they are not created by the state. It doesn't matter what the nature of the creator is, so long as we all recognize that not a man or woman among us will agree that it is the state.

The state, that Frankenstein's monster our grandparents forgot to keep in its cage, that remotely-operated destroyer of all that is decent... IT is the enemy.

But it doesn't have to worry about us, because we're too busy arguing about whether God is in the government on the basis of somebody's religious icon.

I am supremely sorry to have to be the one to say it, but if you think that the absence of a material reminder is all it takes that god lives not in the hearts of the people who are the government, that the influence of the creator, be it God or be it some universal consciousness of which we are all parts, is not felt at the core of the universe within which the government lives unless it be through a rock or plaque or pledge, then it is you who is without God.

There is more divinity in the run-of the-mill agnostic than there is in any evangelist who needs an icon to anchor his faith.

And in the meanwhile, WTP and every other group that would do good in the world is losing members and being abandoned by donors and people who might have really made a difference, simply because the secretly uncertain are more concerned about proving their faith to everyone else than they are about resting quietly upon it.

Whether God is as you may say, a distinct in-the-image-of-man benevolent tyrant, lovingly allowing the destruction of his and our most grand experiments, or whether the creator is more in the nature of what I say, the subtle instantiating impulse latent within the very fabric of existence... Whether we are objects created by a paternalistic Other, or whether we are magnificent manifestations of the Thing itself... it does not matter.

Either way, it is you who must prove God who are without Him.

And it is posterity that will suffer the consequences of this folly.

        11:15 AM -:- Posted by Allen   0 comment(s)   View or Comment! -:-  

O Wee O Mongo on floor, LOL!

David Goodyear is too funny!

A true genuis. A truly unique persepctive, what he takes home from a story....

-0-

        8:48 PM -:- Posted by Allen   0 comment(s)   View or Comment! -:-  

O Wee O Wee O Wee O!

Most people tend to see the world and the events in it through their personal looking glasses, finding evidence of what they believe through a personalized interpretation of those events.

For example, the belligerent claimant in person. This is a guy who lives his rights and tolerates no infringement thereof without at least pitching a strenuous bitch. I'd really like to see him everywhere.

Meanwhile, I choose to think of something I saw the other day in my front yard as an example.

Our cat, Chewie (yellow medium-hair tabbie) is neighborhood-renowned as a master hunter. He catches everything from mice to squirrels, salamanders (foul taste, spits them out, snails too) to Blue Jays. Of course, he doesn't catch absolutely everything; he runs and hides from the hawk family from the next block over, and when a Great Horned Owl got sequestered in a birch across the street for an entire day by a murder of crows, Chewie turned into a wide-eyed scaredy-cat of the first degree. All that cawing, and the sheer size of the owl were simply outside his understanding of the world.

"But what about the hummingbirds?"

I did know that they are fearless in defending their territory and nests, and that with sabers right there on the fronts of their heads, they quickly teach other birds a lesson in the errors of trespass. But I never thought about a hummingbird beating up a cat.

Here's what happened.

Chewie was walking across the edge stones in front of the house, approaching the blue belles next to the porch. My hummingbird (well, an 'Allen's Hummingbird', anyway, the plain brown one with the irridescent green throat) was tripping from flower to flower, and Chewie noticed him as he came out of one of the flowers, about three feet away and less than two feet up.

"Easy prey," I heard Chewie think to himself, and he crouched slightly to begin the approach and attack.

That sudden crouch-move grabbed the humminbird's attention, and it jerked to the left toward the house, but then reversed to the right and flew out into the yard. Yet it didn't leave, it just parked there in the air about the same distance and height as before, but with nothing between it and Chewie.

Chewie turned toward the bird and re-crouched, but hesitated, maybe waiting for it to forget he was there. That's how cats catch most birds, and why they move in a bit and then stop and wait, then move in again, over and over: most birds can't see/detect animals that aren't moving or making noise. So the cat steals bits of ground over and over until it is too late for the bird because he's now close enought to make the dash before the bird can get far enough off the ground.

Sometimes, the cat is just plain brilliant. My brother's now-retired cat, Suxie, used to sit behind a mound in the back yard because she noticed that in the evening the birds liked to swoop down through the yard and up over that mound on their way to the dog's water dish (their party pool). She'd sit there, a bird would swoop down, glide up over the mound, and... slam right into her waiting mouth. Lazy b_tch!

Anyway, my hummingbird is fearless, no doubt about it. Everybody fears me (I've no idea why), but this little guy lands on me while I sit reading in the back yard, and actually pulls out my hair when he needs stuff for nest-building.

So about a second passes with neither of them moving, staring at each other. Then the hummingbird starts to swoop sideways slowly back and forth, taunting Chewie.

I'm thinking, "You really oughtn't to do that," just as Chewie pounces.

But the hummingbird must have had the same Tai Chi master I did; he flies in through Chewie's clasping paws, escaping capture.

And for good measure and just because he can, he stabs Chewie right between the eyes.

I'm impressed; Chewie can't believe it. And the humming bird comes back around, hovers into position, and starts the taunt again!

Chewie can't resist. After all, he is SuperCat, the greatest hunter who ever lived (on this block, anyway). No bird is going to humiliate him like that and not be morselized! So he pounces again.

Again, faster then lickety-split, the hummingbird is inside Chewies grasp, and... this time he pokes him twice in the forehead, rat-tat, so hard I could hear it. Chewie backed up so suddenly he was sitting on his ass looking cross-eyed at where the hummingbird had been.

But the hummingbird wasn't there any more; it was out in front once more, hovering, getting ready for the next round of taunting, etc.

But Chewie didn't crouch again. He just sat there in frozen stare until the hummingbird finally did forget he was there, at which point the hummingbird drifted off looking for some new interesting thing to do.

Yes, Virginia, the "little guy" can win!

        11:30 PM -:- Posted by Allen   0 comment(s)   View or Comment! -:-  

I'm Baaaack!

Look to the left, look to the right, see my images!

Oh Ye-e-ess!

(Don't ask me what happened! Just be glad it's fixed.)

        11:35 AM -:- Posted by Allen   0 comment(s)   View or Comment! -:-  

Look, I'm Invisible!

Look to the left, look to the right, my images are not appearing!

Oh Noooo!

It appears that the machine hosting the aescir.net supersite puked --lost all the files on itself, retaining only empty directory structures.

Wow. Like having skin and bones but no muscles!

Anyway, Thanks to Jim Paulsen for notifying me. It appears Gene Chapman noticed, too. Thanks, Gene, I do have a backup of the site. If the techs fail, I can override. Just gotta wait till they tell me where we're at. Need to know if it's an intrusion or a machine failure.

The techs are working on it....