Turtle Soup for Tony Hayward

Endangered Species of Turtles being burned alive

(Well, perhaps not all of them.)

If Tony Hayward really said what he and his 'peers' thought:

Americans are so unsophisticated, they fail to see the big picture, becoming obsessed with minor issues. For instance, Kindra Arnesen, of Podunk Venice, Louisiana. Oh My Gosh, has she ever had to grapple with the complexities of multiple divisions, plunging stock prices, minor technical problems? No, all she thinks about is, “the people she cares about.” Really, as if a motley collection of fishermen and their ratty children and wives matter in the larger scheme of things. It was in very poor form for this wretch to speak of matters, such as the carefully crafted public relations work intended simply to assuage public fears. While we may, jokingly of course, refer to these as Balloon and Pony Shows, really, no intention to deceive is present, you have my word as a gentleman on that.

And finally, Kindra, this world was intended for us, the elite, not for such as you. This, my dear, is real natural selection. Get used to it. 

(To be includes in The Pillsbury Justice Cookbook - Cooking Up Justice for America)

 

British Prerogative Turtle Soup au Sherry

Turtle soup is a great delicacy everywhere, but especially today in Louisiana, at least for the select few. Rumor has it that Tony Hayward has a tureen especially made for him as often as possible, wanting nothing to go to waste. The flavor of the turtle meat is both delicate and intense, savory and piquant. Perhaps the touch of petroleum adds to the savor for Tony. Experts say there are supposedly seven distinct flavors of meat within the turtle which give this soup its evocative pungency, making it linger on the tongue and in the mind, as only the elite can appreciate fully.

But this special recipe you will not find in any of the famous eateries in New Orleans since turtle, and so many other things, are now off the menu. This is a very special preparation, its main ingredients not usually available. Dark, rich, thick, a stew-type dish, the barest whiff is redolent with all the things nature so generously provides. It can be a meal in itself for a busy executive like Tony Hayward, who, of course, has it specially made for his private delight.

British Prerogative Turtle Soup au Sherry

Designed for soon to be Knighted, Sir Anthony Hayward

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  10 ounces (2-1/2 sticks) unsalted Plugra butter

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  3/4 cup all-purpose Glad flour

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  1 pound turtle meat, fresh or slightly singed, cut into 1/2-inch cubes, from our private little supply

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  1 cup minced celery, add more if you like, it attracts women (4 stalks)

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  2 medium shallots, minced (2 medium)

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  1-1/2 teaspoons Allium sativum garlic, minced, the commonest variety, but best for taste and healing properties.

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  3 (Laurus Nobilis) bay leaves, I love the name!

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  1 teaspoon Spice Hunter Highland from Saigon oregano

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  1/2 teaspoon thyme, acquire it whole, assign a clean up worker to mince it.

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  1/2 teaspoon freshly ground Lampong black pepper,

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  1-1/2 cups tomato purée, start with a heritage variety, naturally, have one of those trusty clean up workers carefully prepare the puree.

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  6 cups veal stock from preborn calf, acquired from unsuspecting 4H member.

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    NOTE: If turtle bones are available, add them to the veal bones when making the stock for this dish

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  Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste, as needed

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  1/2 cup lemon juice, squeezed fresh by a convenient clean-up worker, tell him it is for the respirators.

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  5 hard-boiled eggs, finely chopped, boiled using the French technique from fertilized chickens

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  1 tablespoon minced Neapolitanum Danert parsley, remember, same technique for your fresh minced sprigs!

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  6 teaspoons Massandra Sherry, never skimp when it really matters!

Melt the 8 ounces (2 sticks) butter in a heavy saucepan. Add the flour and cook, stirring frequently, over medium heat until the roux is light brown. Set aside while you check on the present balloon and pony show being presented to credulous politicians and regulators.

In a 5-quart saucepan, melt the remaining butter and add turtle meat, even if the little bugger is still twitching, the recipe called for FRESH, remember. Cook over high heat until the meat is brown. Add celery, onions, garlic and seasonings, and cook until the vegetables are transparent, though we all know how much you dislike the word.

Add tomato purée, lower heat and simmer for 10 minutes as you, now annoyed, again tell you coterie of spin specialists BP CANNOT afford respirators for clean up crews. Add the stock and simmer for 30 minutes. Add the roux and cook over low heat, stirring, until the soup is smooth and thickened. Correct seasoning with salt and pepper to taste. Add lemon juice, eggs and parsley.

Remove from heat and serve. At the table, add 1 teaspoon sherry to each soup plate.

Remember as you take that first sip, you are rich, and getting richer. You deserve anything and everything you can get as you suffer through this ugly fiasco, which is just another normal cost of business to be borne by those who have so benefited by your past largess. What are a few small towns filled with bumpkins, anyway? Not even one of them is a stock holder.

Life is sooo unfair. You have put up with so much! Cherish this moment because sometimes we just need a tiny little thing to remind us how really special we are, right?

The CIA - Murdering the Truth

“A Terrible Mistake – The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments”

Question All Authority (Except Mine)

Or why decentralized forms of human organization will displace top – down hierarchies.

                           What I learned from 43 years of activism. Why I wrote this memoir.



When I originally became active politically I assumed others agreed with me on a common goal. For me it was very clear. Get government out of our lives. Affirm the Mission of the Declaration of Independence.
I was naïve, I confess it openly.
I assumed once freedom was firmly established we would fold up the then empty tents called political parties and go home to do something more productive. I was wrong. I discovered most people in the Movement did not connect words to reality. As time went on other alarming realizations came to light.
Disturbingly, few saw the LP as a strategic tool to be used to return power to individuals and then discarded. They had bought into the false assumptions shared by those who believe government is more than a means for a free people to handle a few commonly useful services. Many expressed the idea government, and not people, was sovereign.
To my horror, I confronted the expectation of loyalty to the organization. It was clearly the equivalent to pledging fealty to your plumber's helper, a touchy subject.

Other individuals focused on single issues. Gaining easier access to guns, pot, ending cultural standards for sexual behavior, all of these motivations were present. All other issues were irrelevant to these individuals, to be deep sixed if they proved bothersome.

“Freedom” for many involved perpetuating some benefit accrued through use of government. An example of this is the nearly universal hostility to ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment. Affirming previous injustice as “freedom” was all too common. This was not limited to the Libertarian Party.

As time went on the understanding of a term previously heard but dismissed finally sunk in. Psychopathy. It eventually dawned on me some people were more different than they appeared on the surface.

It was a clear case of Arrested Paradigm.

When this became clear to me I left and joined the Republicans. I began researching how a 'real' political or community organization looked from the inside. It was instructive.

This is a brief outline of what I discovered and finally my conclusions with suggestions on how to achieve the goal of freedom.


In September of 1955 I received my first political qua philosophical input a friend/cousin who was then 24. He and I were sitting in the back yard when he told me the story of Howard Roark from the Fountain Head. He did not tell me the names, or I did not remember. He told me about the integrity of living your life for your own purposes. It was, he said, a work of art which should reflect all you want to say about yourself. It should be lived, he said, with integrity. “Yours to live, yours to give.” His name was James Dean. It was the last time I saw him but everything he said stuck with me.

The history of the Freedom Movement as it exists today.
The wave of activism which resulted in the Goldwater Campaign began with folks, mostly women, going door to door selling cheap paperback books. Pausing on the doorstep, these foot soldiers for freedom provided information to ordinary Americans which resulted in the grass roots activism which became the modern Conservative Movement.
The Goldwater Movement was, arguably, the first spontaneous grass roots moment.
Women, active in politics, was a radical concept in the Western world. Alice Paul, following in the footsteps of Lucretia Mott, Quaker, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Susan B. Anthony and a host of others, finally achieved for women the right to vote in America with the passage of the 19th Amendment, ratified on August 18, 1920.
Women went on to reshape American politics from every political viewpoint. The Republican Party, which had sponsored suffrage, was a natural haven for women and in 1938 the growing number of Republican Women's Clubs were gathered in to become the National Federation of Republican Women, still the largest political organization in the world. Women were very much involved in the growing Conservative Movement forged by Goldwater, but the meaning of Conservative was about to change sharply under the influence of two men whose names today are synonymous with the word.

Neither Ronald Reagan or William F. Buckley, Jr., were Conservatives. Instead they rebranded the word to mean Big Government, corporate-friendly, make war for profit, and love your friendly, fascist state. While using the rhetoric both men associated the word, by usage, with a very different agenda

Reference: Rise of Big Oil, Rockefeller Group, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power, by Daniel H. Yergin, War is a Racket by Lt. General Smedley Butler

When the first grass roots revolution was taking place I was sneaking books from my parents cache and then into Goldwater Headquarters and continuing my own efforts to get people to read Conscience of a Conservative – or at least a piece of literature. No one takes you seriously when you are under 10 years old. I did collect some candy bars, however.
The surge of support for Goldwater, enthusiasm for the writing of Ayn Rand, fractured on the frustrations of Vietnam. Older efforts continued their work, the Liberty Amendment, the brain child of Willis Stone, promised hope of ending the Income tax, the Foundation for Economic Education, 1946 by Leonard E. Read, provided education on the free market. The work of Rose Wilder Lane and the Reverend James W. Fifield of the First Congregationalist Church of Los Angeles, continued to impact minds.

I picked up a copy of Atlas Shrugged and read it, riveted, around 1962. My mother later said she seriously considered forbidding my reading – but this would have conflicted with the family principle on self education, a principle in place since at least the early 1800s.
The John Birch Society withstood a serious take over attempt from Buckley in the 60s at the same time Reagan was beginning the run up to his campaign for the Governorship of California.

Soon Andrew J. Galambos was teaching his brand of individual property rights and volunteerism. A recent graduate from MIT who had been a leader in Students for Goldwater and Young Americans for Freedom married and moved to Denver Colorado.


ARTICLE NOW BEING WRITTEN – Take over of the Environmental Movement by elements including George H. W. Bush.
On August 15, 1971 President Richard Nixon went on live television and announced to the Nation his intention to institute Wage and Price Controls.

At that moment people across the country dropped their registration as Republicans. David Nolan, the former YAF member, MIT graduate, and Goldwater supporter, had just written an article, "The Case for a Libertarian Political Party,”for the Individualist, a libertarian oriented magazine.
In New York an attorney named Ed Clark called his wife, Alicia Cabo Clark, to vent his rage. Alicia, the daughter of a former Mexican Senator and the CEO of a multinational corporation, sympathized. One of the things that had brought them together was their shared belief in the ideas of freedom. The Clarks also left the Republican Party. Clark would become the third Libertarian candidate for President and Alicia would eventually serve as National Chairman.
Ron Paul heard the announcement at the same time, changing his own life course.
The Libertarian Party was founded in David and Susan Nolan's living room in Denver, Colorado on December 11th, 1971.
The article written by Nolan had called for the creation of a political party, not primarily to elect candidates, but to become a voice for the unadulterated ideas of individual freedom. Stated this way, starting a political party seemed like a good idea.

Wage and Price Controls would prove to be an absolute failure. The controls did not stem inflation and yet, with the logic of other government programs, continued to be used as a tool until 1980.

For those who had hoped to move toward individual freedom it was a time of devastation. I, for one, had not heard of the Libertarian Party until after I read, “How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World,” by Harry Brown, published in 1973. I was pregnant with my third child and worried about the world I would leave them. The growth of government, the steady losses of our rights, were hard to contemplate. The LP came like a shock of new hope.
Similar scenes played out all over America as young people who had worked feverishly for Goldwater and burned their draft cards as members of the Libertarian Caucus of Young Americans for Freedom, began to coalesce into a group.
This was the second incidence of spontaneous grass roots action resulting in a wave of political action in opposition to the Corporate Group.
As Nixon settled into a grumpy retirement in Yorba Linda, California on August 8, 1974, the newly fledged Libertarian Party was experiencing a surge of growth and excitement along with internecine warfare. About that time I heard Toni Nathan on the radio. I sat there, crying and holding my baby daughter. Later that day I joined the LP.
The LP began as an organization that looked to individuals to take action themselves in accordance with their inherent, natural, rights, which pre-exist all government. This was the mission statement of the Declaration of Independence. As the structure of the organization congealed a conflict of visions began, pitting the top down style of traditional American political parties with the spontaneous, local organizing which characterized its first several years. The lack of formal structure and innovation fired ever more activism, a reprise of the Goldwater Movement.
Into this mix came a recent graduate of UC Berkeley, back in his hometown of Los Angeles and making his way as a financial adviser.
His name was Edward H. Crane, III. Crane was elected Southern California Vice-Chairman for the Libertarian Party of California. While doing research for this memoir I could find not one instance of local organizing or activism carried out by Ed Crane while serving in that capacity.
Crane was intent on moving up in the hierarchy of the Libertarian Party. To do that he needed to ensure one happened. A newly fledged financial planner, he came out of the office of Southern California Vice Chairman of the Libertarian Party of California and with the help of the man acknowledged to be the best floor manager for campaigns in recent history, John Hix, took the office of Chairman of the Libertarian Party at the Dallas Convention in 1974.
Crane's personal habits say a lot about who he is.
I was sitting on the floor with my daughters, Dawn and Ayn, ages 2 and 1, celebrating our success in qualifying Roger MacBride as the LP nominee for President in 1975 and fell into conversation with a woman sitting next to me. Her name was Maureen, as I remember. Maureen told me about her experiences in working for the LP and with Ed Crane. She said women were scheduled to come over to the 'office' every hour. The first half hour was spent typing. The second half hour in bed with Ed. As she left, the next woman was arriving. Nothing I later observed about Crane from that date to this caused me to doubt her honesty.
Beware those ambitious for fame, glory and sex and willing to deceive to achieve. They may be psychopaths.
Over the next years, under the direct management of Ed Crane, the Libertarian Party was converted into a top down organization, losing the networking, initiative, and innovation at the local level, which had provided its power. It would still retain its 'name brand power,' however, a value worth controlling.
One of the early respected leaders of the Libertarian Party was Roger MacBride. MacBride was the Elector from Vermont who bolted the GOP to cast his electoral vote for John Hospers in December of 1972. Roger, the adopted grandson and heir of Rose Wilder Lane, was well to do.
At first Crane sucked up shamelessly to Roger MacBride, according to those who were positioned to observe them. Then, after Roger introduced him to Charles and David Koch he transferred his allegiance. Talk of a think tank began almost immediately, rolling rapidly into fruition. Control of the formal structure of the Libertarian Party became the focus where before it had been local activism.
Roger's presidential campaign in 1976 had been very good for local activism.
William Hunscher, a successful entrepreneur and close friend of Roger MacBride's declared as a candidate for the Libertarian presidential nomination in 1978. Hunscher eventually spent a sizable chunk of money seeking the nomination, pledging to run a campaign focusing on encouraging local activism. Crane persuaded Ed Clark, Chief Legal Counsel for Arco, to run against Hunscher. Ed, highly respected for his good character, was a popular choice for those who had known and worked with him.
Hunscher was new to the LP and was far from being a perfect candidate. But he pledged to run full time for 18 months, a promise which weighed with activists.
To say it was a campaign of dirty tricks and payoffs understates the case. Crane, as Chairman of the LP used the resources of the LP for Clark, treating it as his personal property. In every way possible power was centralized under Crane.
The National organization, states and local groups, had a working arrangement whereby inquiries and donors were shared. The list of donors and inquiries were sent to National. National was to do the same. It soon became obvious this was not happening.
I had been elected Southern California Vice Chairman and noticed the names of large donors did not seem to be included on lists coming from the Headquarters in DC. I had a longish conversation with one woman, very well to do, who had lived nearby my family home while she and her husband were at UCLA. She had been told by the HQ, “there is no active organization in Los Angeles,” so she and other big donors, the names helpfully supplied to them by National, began organizing their own events. She was delighted to find us, but puzzled. For me the meeting was very illuminating.
Los Angeles was one of the largest local organizations, comprising seven local groups. This was not an oversight and explained many things which previously puzzled me.
Deviousness, I discovered, was the stock and trade of what we came to call the Crane Machine. To a person they reflected an attitude of arrogance, entitlement, and superiority entirely unsupported by their performance.
The Crane Group also issued White Papers for the Clark Campaign which repositioned Clark as a “Low Tax Liberal” while Ronald Reagan was explicitly using the rhetoric of freedom, rhetoric which Americans were hungry to hear, eager to believe. Using the rhetoric of freedom which originated in the Libertarian Movement, Ronald Reagan won the presidency, beginning the ongoing process of converting America to a fascist state while the Libertarian Party's Presidential Campaign said nothing much worth remembering.
Crane was responsible for the positioning of the Clark Campaign. He has never explained himself.
Reagan was personally charming, kind, charismatic. I first became aware of him through comments from my Father in 1962. I believe they met through the Republican discussion group my father ran at UCLA for many years. Father was asked to go to Sacramento with Reagan as governor and again to Washington when Ronnie was elected President. Father refused.
Reagan was not a Conservative. What happened to America happened to California during Reagan's two terms there as Governor. In 1975 United Republicans of California, UROC, had begged Americans not to support Ronnie if he ran for president or vice-president. No one listened. Here is the UROC Resolution. I rekeyed the last copy so you can get it online.
The Clark White Papers were issued to the media. Their message went along with the 'low tax liberal' positioning adopted by Ed Crane. Activists found it impossible to obtain copies. My own efforts to read them myself continued until 1984. I later learned from Bob Hunt, a long time Libertarian who lived and lives in DC, that piles of White Papers were still in their store room as late as 1999.
Even with David Koch on the ticket, Koch personally contributed millions, the 'big win' in votes or respect for the ideas of freedom promised by the Crane Machine died an ugly death, leaving the Clark Campaign in debt. Crane then abandoned the candidate leaving Ed and Alicia Clark to pay off the debt themselves.
The Kochs were not pleased either. Millions had been expended in large salaries, media, and for fundraising efforts which failed to break even. “Alternative 80,” a 'fundraiser' held which was to be, in effect, an early Money Bomb, both raising money and exciting mainstream interest, fizzled. The event linked events across the country which viewed the entertainment taking place at the Century City Hotel in the late summer, 1980. Phones were ready to receive the calls of eager donors. Calls did come in – but not enough for the event to break even.
I learned that even billionaires have limits in the elevator after the event. The doors opened and as I got in I recognized Ed Crane being quiet as Charles Koch expressed his unhappiness with the money spent, his commentary unimpeded by my rapt attention.
A subset of the Craniacs, organizing under Howie Rich, would become active in another deceptive and covert enterprise in the early 90s aimed at suborning the electoral process.
The names of contributors would be recycled into the Cato Institute. The only thing that surprised me was the cooperation Crane was receiving from Murray Rothbard, who was named to the Cato Board of Directors.
Rothbard was the only real Libertarian involved in Cato from my perspective. However, Murray was fey the way only a Jewish academic can be. He adored the mock danger of political battles but for the most part lived in the cerebral world of economic theory. After Ludwig von Mises Murray was The Free Market economist, clearly enunciating, despite his love of argument, the verities of a real free market.
About that time I sent a button to Crane at the Cato HQ in DC.On it was "Question All Authority (Except Mine)
I believed then, and now, when government is involved there is no free market. A free market defends our inherent rights as individuals by allowing each a 'Yes' to what we want and a 'No' to unacceptable choices. Where individuals are denied the exercise of their right to choose no free market can respond to provide the desired choices and there is no freedom, only privilege.
It was Rothbard's insistence on this position which, it was generally believed, caused him to be ousted from the Cato Board of Directors in early 1981. In the public eye he was replaced, as a spokesman for the “Free Market' by Milton Friedman. Friedman was no proponent of the free market, but a monetarist. Aaron Director, known for his integration of law and economics, married to Milton's sister, referred to Milton as, “his New Deal brother-in-law,” according to Butler Shaffer who knew Director well. Asked his opinion of Friedman on the free market Butler agreed, “as you cannot be a little bit pregnant so you cannot suggest withholding tax and call yourself an advocate of the free market.”
The Koch brothers were the major funders of Cato from its founding on. It was at the insistence of Charles Koch that Rothbard was thrown off the Board of Directors and denied compensation. By so doing the best defender of the free market was marginalized. The rebranding of the word, “Free Market,” followed.
Koch Industries advocated not free markets but markets manipulated to disallow choices which would not profit them and enforce choices which would. Koch Industries today profits from the Corporate War in Iraq with Halliburton as it did in Vietnam with Halliburton during the Vietnam Conflict.
One of the first acts of the Bush Administration in 2001 was to quash the nearly 400 major EPA violations enforced against Koch Industries.
Along with Phillips and TRW, Koch Industries shares a history of repeatedly violating workplace and environmental laws while being numbered among the nation's largest government contractors, according to Holding Corporations Accountable. The article on the Holding site originally appeared as US: Unjust Rewards, by Ken Silverstein, in Mother Jones, May 1st, 2002. According to the article, “the three corporations received a combined total of $10.4 billion in federal business-at the same time that regulatory agencies and federal courts were citing the companies for jeopardizing the safety of their employees, polluting the nation's air and water, and even defrauding the government.”
In August of 1996 two teenagers, Danielle Smalley and Jason Stone, both 17, were burned nearly beyond recognition in an explosion caused by the petroleum giant. “Koch officials conceded in court that corrosion control had been inadequate and that the company had not effectively distributed information to the public on how to recognize and respond to a pipeline leak,” the statement appearing on the site of the attorney who represented the grieving family, Jim Arnold Associates.
The deaths resulted in an award of “$296 million, the largest award for actual damages in a wrongful-death case in the nation's history. Koch appealed, then settled with Smalley.” The sum collected was between 25 and 30 million, which the family used to set up a foundation in their daughter's memory.
Rebranding is an obvious ploy once it is pointed out. The question must be posed to old timers in the movement as to why they did not speak out when the process was going on. Two other examples of rebranding which still haunt us are 'privatization' and 'deregulation.'
To privatize, used correctly, would be to return control to individuals. The correct word in this context is 'corporatize,' or 'converting the rights of individuals into commodified units, allowing these rights to be sold by government to corporations. This was true of garbage pickup, where your garbage became such a commodity in the 1970s. It is true of the toll roads in Texas today.
Deregulation removed limitations on the actions of entities who had abused the power they accrued through prior relations with government and in violation of both statute and common law. And example of this is Standard Oil, which profited from outright violent criminal behavior in establishing an effective lock on the market of oil. Other examples include power companies which received government subsidies in producing power generation or had those resources transferred to them and were classified by statute as 'semi-governmental entities' and excused from responsibility for their actions. The cancellation or limitation of liability is an intolerable interference with the market. Any limitation of liability makes a free market impossible.
Instead of regulating industries the solution was to ensure the legal system could assert accountability. In allowing corporations to exist the problem created with unequal parties in disputes was bound to occur, and did.
The 80's saw the continued conversion the ideas of Libertarianism to the use of ever bigger government and ever fatter corporations. The redefinitions of words, including 'free market, now installed in NeoConservatism as well, took place through the coordinated work of Ed Crane, Cato, and an array of think tanks and journalists who consistently used, and use, the words in their converted form.
Since most people pick up definitions by usage much of this would have been accidental.
Cato's assault on the Libertarian Party began when Alicia Clark was elected National Chairman in 1981. Alicia was a woman and had just experienced the ugliness of Crane's manipulations during her husband's campaign. The Crane Machine found a candidate for Chairman to oppose Alicia. He lost.
The Crane Machine immediately went into overdrive. The then Executive Director was ignoring orders from Alicia and spending hours on the phone with Crane, who was still in San Francisco at the time. Alicia fired him and changed the locks on the office, always a woman of decision.
At the moment Crane did not control the LP the Crane Machine began an overt drive to take Alicia out of office. It failed.
At the next presidential nominating convention the abrupt withdrawal of unopposed candidate Gene Burns, well known talk show host, just months before the nominating convention brought two candidates into the field. David Bergland had been the VP candidate for Roger MacBride in 1976. Earl Ravanel, the candidate fielded by Crane, was viewed as Crane's bid to rerun the Clark Campaign with Crane in control.
Crane and Ravenal lost. Crane and his cohort walked out, despite their promises to heal previous disagreements and work for the winning candidate. Immediately afterward attempts to destroy the LP began. Calls were made to valuable activists across the country urging them to leave the LP and reregister Republican. I received several such calls from John Fund who I had known since 1980.
After nearly a full decade the cadre of people around Crane, which was pretty much unchanged since their exit from the New York Convention in 1983, acquired a new toy. That was an organization the Koch Brothers had not been able to use effectively, the Citizens for Congressional Reform.
Acquiring this not for profit spawned an incredible proliferation of identical not-for-profit organizations, each dedicated to doing pretty much the same thing. Visually, their sites appeared to have been created by the same web designers. Each used a stealth approach to electoral politics, employing lavish rhetoric to justify using the initiative process to change the laws in states where this was allowed. This fit in exactly with the original game plan of the Crane Machine. Crane had always viewed local activists as an obstacle to action within the LP unless those acting locally were directly under his control.
In employing this growing collection of nonprofits Howie extended this approach to Americans as a whole. The first of these organizations, U. S. Term Limits, focused on limiting the number of terms for any elected legislator. It was followed by initiatives promoting an end to eminent domain, school choice, and spending caps by government and eventually measures such as legislation relating to end of life issues raised by the Terry Schrivo Case.
Many individuals in various states had worked for this kind of measure; the problem was not the use of the initiative process. The initiative was introduced by the Populists to allow local people to change government, making it responsive to their needs. The problem was who was using the tool.
The initiatives themselves did not reflect the will of those who had to live with the resulting law. Even more egregiously, the initiatives were deceptively run as 'grass roots' efforts to potential donors outside the state when they lacked support within the state. No minds were changed. No freedom happened. No body of local expertise or enhanced organization remained in Howie Group's wake.
It was a reprise of the Crane – Clark Campaign, this time run at a profit. Unused funds were, according to investigative journalists, transferred into the accounts of those who Crane and Howie had known and worked with since the 70s. At best the strategy came with the underscore, “Fool them into freedom.” But there was worse.
Worse than the misuse of the Initiative process was use of this tool for the profit of corporate outsiders to diminish control by local people.
In the original vision of American government the Founders had assumed that local towns and the people who lived in them would make their own rules in how they structured their lives. This could be seen as a multitude of small experiments in living, allowing for a learning curve, helping a free people to reduce conflict as they learned to live outside of a traditional hierarchy imposed from the outside.
In some cases the Howie Machine would outspend local activists six to one to get their measures passed into law. Eventually the left noticed through the research done by Hart Williams. William's work spawned a nonprofit which followed Howie's Group to some extent, focusing on the Ballot Fraud issue.
Howie's Group learned some things from their encounter with Williams and transparency. They now all blog.
During the time, 1990 – 2007, the Howie Business Plan was revving up there was another eruption of frustration which would reprise the early days of both the Goldwater Movement and the Libertarian Party. It started on Larry King Live with an interview of Ross Perot.
On February 20, 1992 H. Ross Perot said he was willing to run as an independent if his supporters could get his name on the ballot in all fifty states. Listeners liked what they heard. With a list of declared policies including balancing the federal budget, firm pro-choice stance, expansion of the war on drugs, ending outsourcing of jobs, support for gun control, belief in protectionism on trade, advocating the Environmental Protection Agency and enacting electronic direct democracy via "electronic town halls," he became a potential candidate overnight, soon polling well with the two major party candidates. The people wanted 'someone else.' Perot was someone else.
The next day people were opening campaign headquarters across the country. The leading expert in third party ballot drives, a Libertarian named Richard Winger, who runs Ballot Access News, was found and flown into the brand new Perot HQ in Texas. It could have been a revolution - but at the very least the people were flexing their muscles, finding ways to cooperate in pursuit of a common goal.
The Perot Movement was the third spontaneous political grass roots moment in the 20th Century. It resulted in the Reform Party.
Which brings us to the very unexpected outcome of Ron Paul's decision to run for president again and the eruption of the Ron Paul R3VOLution, the first grass roots action of the 21st Century.
Congressman and physician, Ron Paul had been around the Freedom Movement since the 1970s. His run for president as the LP candidate in 1988 was largely ignored by the public. After the 1988 campaign Paul returned to the Republican Party and again ran for Congress successfully. His campaign manager, Penny Langford, continued to run the Paul reelection efforts. As she describes it, these are highly decentralized and grass roots driven themselves. Ron, according to Penny, was never very involved in campaigning.
When Paul announced his candidacy at the Free State Project most old time activists doubted he would do more than use the opportunity to speak out on the standard Libertarian issues. They were half right. Ron was talking about the same issues. But now people were listening because of the Desperation Factor.
In any population 5% of the people will try new things, ideas, products, tools, with little resistance. These are first adopters. 15% will adopt a new approach, technology, idea, tool, if they are desperate for a solution to their immediate problem. 60% of the population will adopt as soon as it looks like everyone else is doing it or if someone they perceive as high status is using the new thing. We call them Ballast. The last 20% will die before they adopt something new. We call them Dead Men Walking.
From the first debate on the divergence between the official Ron Paul Campaign and the Ron Paul R3VOLution, so named by Ernie Hancock, owner of Freedom's Phoenix and a long time Libertarian, was palpable. Ernie began putting up bill boards promoting Ron's candidacy in February, 2007, even before the official declaration took place.
As in the early days of the Goldwater Movement, the Libertarian Party, and the Perot Campaign, the ones moving the action were volunteers. It was volunteers who hammered the Ron Paul HQ, insisting a check be cut so Ron could participate in the GOP debate in South Carolina. The fuel in the engine was always volunteers.
Many became active for the first time in their lives, leaving their jobs to work full time and unpaid for the candidacy of Ron Paul.
The Internet became the nexus point, allowing individual initiative and innovation to be multiplied many times over. Adoption of strategies became seemingly instantaneous, allowing a group of people who had never met to change outcomes which previously would have been impossible to achieve.
Media, unwilling to cover Paul experienced reports from their advertisers, concerned over the calls coming in to them from Ron Paul supporters threatening to boycott their products. Market pressures worked.
The power of the Ron Paul R3VOLution continued to build until Paul stopped campaigning. Looking for an outlet for frustrated energy other projects came into form. One of these was the Tea Parties, which may have been planned as a means for redirecting the energies of the grass roots into the GOP. If that was the intention it has not worked.
The Tea Party Movement was produced by the Ron Paul R3VOLution and the frustration all of us experience when no clear goals can be identified and we are facing disaster. But while the activities taken up were similar to those of the campaign they were, in effect, an after school program with rhetoric and signs and a tee-shirt. The people, hungry for real goals, are now again frustrated.
Electing Ron Paul was never really the goal. He only symbolizes the real destination which has always been a world where our individual rights are lived out peacefully, without war. Where prosperity follows honesty and hard work. Where we tolerate differences and build community.
This was and remains the vision of America which drew millions to a New World.
Which brings us to the series of articles now being written for Integrity, the newsletter for several related websites and organizations. Build a business for yourself putting the Grid out of business.


Declaration of Independence – America's Mission Statement
Constitution – First try.
        Problem: Ignored the Mission Statement.

Other Terms:
Free Market – Exchange taking place when recognition of the inherent rights of all individuals allow their choices to drive market response.
Privatize – The act of selling off small slices of the rights of individuals to corporations. Properly: Corporatize
Deregulate – Ignoring prevailing conditions of injustice masked by statutes previously passed into law and removing statutes passed to mask the original problem.

Sociopaths: They See You as Prey

He constantly asks for sympathy, takes risks , lies to you and when caught shows no remorse. It is unsettling, frightening. Somehow it is your own fault. But what or why would anyone do these things? There is an answer.

The terms, "psychopathy", "sociopath," "sociopath," and others refer to individuals who look human but, in elemental ways, are not. They harbor a condition which cuts them off from us. Their automatic emotional reactions, foundational to limiting wrong behavior, do not exist. These individuals emulate compassion, concern, affection, kindness and love – only to further their purposes. They feel no compunction about stealing, lying, or committing crimes to achieve their goals. They consistently demand sympathy, knowing perfectly well they deserve none.

They do not want or need sympathy. But they do need you to feel sorry for them, to want to help them. It is all manipulation, emotions emulated to get what they want. They know we feel sorry for them and project the existence of emotions they never feel, just another lie.

People catching their eyes report feeling a chill of fear, as if looking into the eyes of a predator. Psychopaths are predators among us. The pain and suffering of those around them mean nothing, is pleasure to them. Their motivations seem inexplicable to the emotionally normal, who comprise 96% of the population.

Psychopaths have no conscience.

Where before little was written on the condition outside of professional journals, now much more is known. This is changing.

The evidence, now mounting, indicates the condition has a genetic element which becomes activated when combined with the conditions in the life of the individual. The last few years have taken understanding of the condition known as 'psychopathy' to new levels.

While only 4% of the population have the condition Martha Stout, PhD., points out in her book, The Sociopath Next Door, you are likely to have contact with psychopathic individuals on many occasions during your life time. You therefore need to understand the danger signs.

Experts in the field of psychology have been researching the problem since 1980. Much is now known.

In 1999 Robert D. Hare, Ph.D. published Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us. Today, thanks to Robert Hare, David Kosson, Pd.D, and others, the means exist to reliably diagnose the condition. The test, carried out by qualified professionals, allows us the tools needed to understand and to take steps to help victims. The test, known as Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (PCL-R) and the Hare Psychopathy Checklist when used by qualified professionals makes available the means to identify those with the condition. As with other tests it, presumably, will soon be commonly used in court proceedings.

Hare's new book, Snakes In Suits: When Psychopaths Go To Work, written with Paul Babiak, Ph.D., and published in 2006, opens the issue of the impact of the condition on the workplace, including large corporations.

Since psychopaths live and work in every part of our culture we must consider this issue. How many sociopaths have worked their way into the management structure of corporate America? Estimates vary widely and lacking documented evidence all numbers are open to question. However, the behaviors associated with psychopathy, lack of conscience, lack of concern for the well being of others, a pattern of blatant lies, and others, strike many as strongly present in corporate culture today. Both the recent banking and mortgage implosions are evidence of this conclusion.

What if the present meltdown is partly due to a growing presence of psychopaths in upper management? Disturbingly, this may well also be true in higher levels of government given the massive cross over which exists at the highest levels of each. Logic supports the theory.

The test originated by Robert Hare has proven to be a valuable tool both to help victims and, increasingly, to open the door for victims to find justice. The work of Hare and his associates may, possibly, be used to the benefit of business and politics as well.

Psychopaths can impact us from every direction. For individual victims there is also hope.

Through the Aftermath: Surviving Psychopathy website victims participate with clinicians, therapists and others to move on with understanding. The site provides a Forum for victims, clinicians, and therapists for discussion and could well become the hub needed to generalize understanding of the condition in the general public.

Reading books on the subject, such as the excellent work by Martha Stout, Ph. D., The Sociopath Next Door, provide tools and tests which you can use personally. Dr. Stout, a practicing psychologist and clinical instructor in the department of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, warns the reader to beware of those who fail the simple tests she outlines. Three lies and your out, is one of simple suggestions she proposes.

In dealing with the overall problem Stout raises other questions which are profoundly on point for all of us today.

On the question of war: Should sociopaths be tolerated as useful in time of war? Are we intentionally allowing psychopaths into the military? Perhaps recruiting them?

Has our toleration and ignorance smoothed the path for ugly behavior in other parts of our culture? What would a psychopath do, if elected to office? If they were the determining factor in deciding what matters, their profit or your health?

Have we considered the dangers the unchallenged presence of psychopaths present when combined with the tendency in most of us to defer to authority?

If winning is the only thing that matters there is nothing you will not do. Recognizing no limits, psychopaths ignore the damage to others. As any small, determined group can change the world for the good, as Margaret Mead said, so a small number of individuals could destroy it. We need, therefore to limit the access of psychopaths to power while identifying them to the public.

A short tour through the books and the Aftermath: Surviving Psychopathy site raise questions which may well open up new understanding of ourselves. As individuals, parents, activists, and businesspersons, as Americans, we need to know.

This is the first in a series of articles about psychopathy and how we can solve the problems it presents by the author. Thanks to David Kosson, Ph.D., for his help in generously providing information and for his editing. - MP-F

Truth: You need it to survive meltdown

War is a Racket by Major General, Smedley Butler

This book is essential to your survival.

As the world melts down around us we look for answers. The media provides only spin. This book, by a man dead since 1940, provides to you the through line of action. Read it. It is free online. The first chapter delivers a message Americans need to understand. This message needs to sink in past the patriotic fervor and spin that sends our sons and daughters into ugly death and destroys other people, for the profit of corporations, around the world.

The real explanation for war and the devastation we face today here in America is written in the ugliness of greed and the ability of the greedy to persuade by the use of disinformation, stealth, and by using our own love of country against us.

War Is A Racket

WAR is a racket. It always has been.

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.

In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.

How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?

Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are victorious. They just take it. This newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few -- the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The general public shoulders the bill.

And what is this bill?

This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations.

For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it. Now that I see the international war clouds gathering, as they are today, I must face it and speak out.”

Smedley Butler died in 1940. Many believe he was assassinated while in the hospital. Smedley Butler was the most popular military figure in America when he was asked to carry out a military junta on behalf of wealthy businessmen. The planned coup d’état failed because Butler exposed them. Variously known as the “Business Plot,” the “Plot Against FDR” and the “White House Putsch” took place in parallel with Hitler's move towards power in Germany.

Imagine a group of the corporate greedy, many of whom like the Bushes, have investments there, seized with the excitement of emulation. Greed begets more greed, as we have learned to our sorrow.

The corporates have not changed, but they have become more efficient, skilled and organized in planning their disinformation campaigns and in their abuse of power.

Today you see Newt Gingrich posturing . Standing with the woman he finally married, seeing their happy smiles remember the woman Newt abandoned to die of cancer, the mother of his children who made his career possible. They want to tell you how to be a Christian. Does this seem odd? Samuel Adams was not the last of the Puritans, those who saw the real vision of Christianity, the coming together as one people. Descendants of the Puritans brought you the Abolitionist Movement, the Suffrage Movement, and today continue to work for peace, justice and care of the Earth. I know, my family was there, not selling supplies to the British.

The list of those employed by the corporations to pull the wool over your eyes is long. How they spin the world into cotton candy by Monsanto to destroy your health, steal the power of the people, and convert our institutions into tools of oppression is both complex and simple. But once you see it, you are immunized against their lies.

Read this site before you consider having a vaccination. Think about the motives and methods of those who would force you to comply.

Read the book, visit the links, your survival depends on it.

Survival Values - And a cheer for Joe Wilson!

Get the Tee shirt and show your own balls






Yesterday in the grocery store the checker commented on having sold her cell phone. She had to. She could not afford the monthly expense and the phone itself had cost her $250.00. She sold it for $210.00 to a friend with a better paying job, at least for now. The checker, Emily, had had it for 3 weeks.

Tightening the belt is the theme of a rising consciousness around our nation. It is not all bad. The clerk, and many others, are beginning to focus in on what really matters.

Yesterday my email box was filled with comments about the coming address by President Obama to Congress about health care. Driving past the County medical facility I saw the many people waiting there. All looked Hispanic. I sighed. I was born in the middle of the 20th Century and I've had my fill of wars and taxes and tickets that never end. I'm tired of feeling trapped by government. Everyone I know feels pretty much the same.

The 20th Century was heady but it was more like a drug than reality.

Sex and power were the aphrodisiacs of the 20th Century. We were seduced by greed, consumed by needs that were seemingly without end. The high is fading now, leaving us with withdrawal pains and increased awareness.

Today as we face the meltdown of the American Empire we have the opportunity to consider what really matters, I know I am. I have grandchildren who are excited about starting school. I want a future for them.

As we peer into the unknown future we should take time to consider the rich potentials that still await us as well as the dangers we must confront without the familiar placebo of government as we knew it in the 20th Century.

Big government, top down structuring, did not work. We will of necessity return to local governance, low in cost and allowing the people to choose.

Big government can't work. The final test was the 20th Century. Big government was the dumb idea that's time has gone.

The concept of beta testing, produced by edge technology in the 20th Century, is one we need to take seriously right now. If a policy has not been beta tested DO NOT INSTALL!

Now, we need to consider what once worked for America as we face what more big government and corporations have in store for us and determine how to resist.

Local government, controlled directly by the people, works because the surveillance is built in and costs nothing. The eyes of the people should be enough, if government is local. When you have to sell your ideas to people who know you can't keep your own grass cut with your own lawn mower it cuts wanna be politicians down to size.

Ideas, especially ideas which reorient ownership of what once belonged to all of us, are dangerous. Someone should have put a warning label on Big Government.

Allowing anyone to patent DNA was dumb idea. Buying and selling water, the oceans, the air we breathe and the land which received our dead. These were dumb ideas. The Inventor made the Earth a Commons, thus negating anyone owning what is needed for us, and all life, to survive.

The number of Seniors now identifying as Democrat is dropping like lead balloons. All of us are worried. Last night a guy from South Carolina spoke out. It resonated. He was rude, rude, rude, and personally I loved it.

Last night no one could get on Joe Wilson's website. It was jammed. No one wants to be vaccinated so Big Pharm can improve its bottom line.

A big cheer for Joe, the rude guy with the balls. But the issue is larger than any one person – and smaller.

People, not profits, come first. It isn't 'stuff' that matters. It is the things that do not become obsolete. Ever.

The future will be about reinstalling values. Coming generations will refocus. As they do so individuals will connect with each other and the Earth of which we are a part. Not that it will be easy. We all know the months and years to come will be tough. But we shall overcome and we shall survive.

Thanks to Joe for a moment of spontaneous sanity. Go local and stay there.

The New Economy - A Modest Proposal for Building Community

America is shifting. Most view the present trends in the market as destructive and with good cause. Banks are closing, sometimes several in a single day. Businesses going bankrupt are leaving the main streets of many American cities and towns mottled with boarded up store fronts. Families and individuals are canceling vacations, reusing items that formerly they would have replaced, shopping in department stores is down, replaced by shopping used stores and garage sales.

Refocusing gives you the opportunity to consider what really matters. Are you doing that now?

Concerns over police violence are increasing even while the actual incidence is dropping. Officers live in the areas where they work. Many are appalled at the violations of rights they have witnessed and are questioning what they have been taught. “The County Sheriff, America's Last Hope,” by Sheriff Richard Mack, is experiencing a steady rise in sales. Mack, the first of several sheriffs to file against the Brady Bill in the early 90's is constantly on tours. Quietly people gather to listen, both local law enforcement and ordinary people

Concern over forced vaccinations is rising. New Jersey passed an injunction to be followed by Washington State. California is expected to weigh in within the week. Across the country people are raising their voices in objection to the present trends.

Gardens are popping up in the inner city of Detroit on vacant lots where before only trash blossomed. Interest in bartering and trading, garden grown food for services and other necessities, is working its way through neighborhoods as families look for ways to survive the loss of jobs. Instead of viewing this as a short term survival issue see a transition taking place. We are moving from the Corporate Economy to the New Economy in small, incremental steps.

The Corporate Economy sucked us dry. Money and all we created was funneled through huge, impersonal corporations, banking, oil, pharma, big food etc, to accumulate in the coffers of a few individuals. They knew exactly what they were doing. It was fraud on a massive, global scale.

In ten years this period will be recognized as 'the shift,' the time when Americans began to change focus, seeing themselves differently. More families every day confront the need to make the mortgage payment, keep the lights on, put gas in the car, and exchange with those around then without that paper folding stuff PFS pronounced, “peefs”) or credit cards. Seeing yourself differently reveals unexpected strengths, as our ancestors could have told us.

Currency comes in many forms. The original idea for money as 'currency' was to facilitate the flow of exchange, a form of mutually beneficial cooperation. Many barter – trade and script alternatives are now springing into existence. What once was was can be so again.

One of the bills you get every month you must pay in the Corporate World (CW, pronounced ceeew) is your bill for electric power. The technology has long been available to move from centralized (on the CW model for money) to the decentralized local generation for power. It could have always been decentralized. That did not happen because corporations saw the opportunity for continuous income with little effort. Most people think decentralized power is too expensive. They are wrong and their wrong belief causes them to ignore a way to put people back to work, reduce the sucking of corporations, and at the same time make all of us more secure.

Centralized generation of electricity was promoted by government and corporations to provide regular income to them. Ignoring the decentralized model came with costs paid by ordinary people above and beyond that monthly electric bill, which is steadily rising.

Today many are out of work, small factories are closed We need jobs. All of us need to lower costs to ensure our own survival and choke off the flow of our lives to the corporations who continue to suck us dry.

The raw materials and components for wind turbines and other energy systems are surprisingly inexpensive. Parts could be produced locally, the designs are available on the internet. By cooperating locally we can ease our jobs problem and at the same time lower our costs for electric energy. Nearly every community in America has the resources to carry out this project.

Americans have taken on larger projects before, fighting wars far from home. This project refocuses our attention to the source of American greatness, caring for each other in absolute alignment with the mission laid out by one man who died for us 2,000 years ago. We begin and end in our own communities, growing to know each other better.

Existing organizations, the Elks, Veterans of Foreign Wars, the PTA, churches of all kinds, anyone could participate. They can machine, construct, take orders, schedule. There will be much to be done.

There are many designs for wind turbines that are highly cost effective. We can share designs, again through the internet.

Those out of work can earn their own installations through sweat equity. Those who have the money can pay, ensuring their energy needs are met. And we can make sure the needy, the elderly, never want for energy, staying warm in winter and comfortable through the summer. Central Valley of California lost 130 elderly to heat two years ago. It must have been a horrible dying for each of them.

Power lines are all too fragile, starting fires for which the corporations deny accountability and costing all of us while destroying billions in property. There are reasons going beyond the shut off notice so common today. The notice should be enough if we care about each other as that one man intended.

Count up your own reasons for change, practical or spiritual.

The Barn Raising, the Turbine or Solar Party. I can smell the big, steaming pots of chili and soup, almost taste the home-made garlic bread and salads fresh from the garden. When you walk away from illusions, like the corporate reality now receding into history, we may well find unexpected moments of grace in a new America.

Springtime in America

We came so close to losing it all. Day to day we have been hearing the stark predictions of famine, want, civil unrest. We see the Google maps of FEMA camps and the 1984 redux of control, reflected in the simple minded fascist edicts, for instance the Missouri Directive, issued by the of small minded bureaucrats of that state. These still have the power to shock us.

But if you really watch you will see the unfurling of freedom happening like the springtime, blossoming out from every tree. Across America something profoundly wonderful is happening. People at the most local level are taking action to return the power of governance directly to the people. Without noise or the flurries of big fundraising and from both right and left people are coming together to say NO to a government and corporate presence that is out of control.

The Feds do not want to believe it. It has put a crimp in the plans of such figures as Arnold Schwarzenegger, who still wants to be president. But it is happening.

America is returning to its roots.

Progressives and leftists are teaching classes on the Constitution, Home Rule. The Community Environmental Defense Fund offers classes on these and more. In North Carolina the Citizens College provides seminars that put county officials together with citizens so that the reasons for their decisions can be explained and questioned. Coming at the issues from very different points each step on the way is changing how Americans view the tool we know as government.

It has been a long time coming and, as Thomas Jefferson put it in the Declaration of Independence,

“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”

But Americans have had enough suffering. As Americans wake up things will change fast. Today we understand how close we have come to losing what matters most.

Left and Right, the consciousness that corporations are fictitious constructions of government and greed is now moving into the mainstream with a revulsion that will eventually cause them to fold their tents and retreat to places unnamed. The rules and law are about to change as the Constitution is restored to use as originally intended. That will include the cessation of the fiction of corporate personhood and accompany a slap down for wrongdoings over the last two centuries of greed.

Standard Oil. Look out. Southern California Edison, your time is coming.

As the battles to fight off the confiscatory practices of corporations gain ground and the people take back control those responsible will learn what accountability means.

Over the last years corporations have moved to buy up everything we need to live, water, power, food, transportation, and health care. Americans are taking them back and will not take no for an answer.

Government got the idea it could sell off everything we own. You see that if you study your electric bill.

Most of the power generation facilities built were financed by government and then given to corporations who then charged us, arguably the real owners, for our power. Tax payers pay, the government turns the potential for profit over to their friends, and we pay again every month. This is why the fact there is no Statute of Limitation on fraud is a good thing.

Roads, water, your phone, your television, your automobile, the schooling your child receives that is actually propaganda, the health care that kills you but costs every cent you have. The list is seemingly endless. Add to that laws that stopped the growing of such robust and versatile crops as industrial hemp to make cotton growers happy. Government and corporations believed that absolute control was within their grasp. They were wrong.

“...when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. ”

Springtime is renewal. Let this one take us back to community as we find the freedom for which our spirits truly hunger.

Earth Day 2009 – Be The Change

The Earth Society Foundation
cordially invites you to participate in the celebration of the

39TH ANNUAL UN PEACE BELL
CEREMONY ON EARTH DAY

on Friday, March 20, 2009 at 7:44 a.m. EDT (Equinox)

I first met Helen in 2000. The friend who introduced us warned me we would agree on nothing. I am a Republican and then was very active in the National Federation of Republican Women. Helen Garland is a Democrat and very liberal. She personally put together the people who founded Earth Day, introduced Margaret Mead to environmentalism, and has spent her life working tirelessly for peace, justice, and care of the Earth. That is the motto of the organization founded in 1968 that is the real originator of Earth Day, the Earth Society

Helen and I agreed about everything, including how the freedom movement and the environmental movement had been taken over by big corporations. Helen watched it happen in the 50s. I, in the 70's. I've written about my own movement and how it was rendered incapable of enacting change, instead becoming a money machine for such as Cato. But next week the world will tip towards what we know as the Spring Equinox in the Northern Hemisphere as the Southern Hemisphere moves towards winter.

Celebrate Earth Day March 20^th at 7:44 am.

That Friday a figure will step up to the Peace Bell at the United Nations and a sweet chime will ring out into the early morning, lingering for all gathered to hear. At the same moment across the world other bells will ring, a symphony of sounds that speak a long and patient dedication to “Peace, Justice, and Care of the Earth.”

It was not political when Helen began putting it together. Everyone wanted clean air and water. There was not a controversy in sight.

You were had if you celebrate Earth Day in April.. That is Oil Day, surrounded by far more noise but dedicated to the motto of, “Profit, Power, and Exploitation of Earth.”

Lose your illusions because, now, today, they can kill you. A year ago I wrote urging you to get off the grids. I have been doing that for years now. (2008) (2007) (2006) I urged you to begin a garden, start a barter trade group, get active in your community, and lost your illusions.

Today Congress is preparing to vote to end the local growing of food. Co-ops. Private clubs for buying organic local food are being targeted by sting operations. You are looking at a world where the paraphernalia for growing marijuana out of the sight of authorities may be necessary to feed your family.

Today, getting off the grids is more important than hoarding gold or politics at either the State or Federal level. Go local now and lose your illusions about partisan politics.

Along with getting off the grids we must come together across the artificial lines that have been used to isolate us, Right, Left, Man, Woman, age, ethnicity, spiritual path. If you are a Conservative, hug a Liberal. Together we can get the needed traction to stop the manipulation that is killing our economy. Our illusions will have killed the future for all of us.

If you drop your illusions you can see who is profiting from the direction of all administrations for the last several generations. Each of us needs to take immediate action to get off the grids. It is the grids, installed by that ugly concatenation of government and corporations, that caused the problems and divided us. The people of greed need our lives and money to survive; you can stop them by climbing off the grids.

Take this simple yes – no test to find out just how entrenched you are in the grids.

• Do you pay a mortgage every month?

• Do you pay an electric bill every month?

• Do you pay to put gas in your automobile?

• Do you have car payments to make every month?

• Do you pay every month for cable television?

• Do you pay for your Internet access?

• Do you pay for your phone service?

• Do you pay taxes, not fees for essential services?

• Do you pay every month for the water you drink? Use to wash?

• Have you ever paid a traffic ticket?

• Do you pay for tags on your car?

• Do you believe politicians are telling you the truth?

• Do you believe that the media is unbiased and reports honestly and completely?

• Do you think that elections accurately reflect the votes cast?

• Do you know where the food in your refrigerator was grown?

• Was your food grown within just a few miles of your home?

• Do you know, for sure, that Monsanto had nothing to do with producing the food you eat?

• Do you take dietary supplements in hopes of being healthier?

• When you become ill, do you go to a physician?

• Do you take prescription drugs?

• Do you have investments in the stock market that you depend on for income?

• Are you dependent on a pension that is invested in the stock market?

• Do you have a credit card with an unpaid balance?

Count up your “YES” answers. If you answered 1 - 4 questions in the affirmative, you are on a grid, but you are close to being free; good for you. With 5--11, you are Grid Challenged; time to exit. If you scored 12--18, you are Grid Entrenched: you need serious help to extract yourself. Anywhere above 18, you are totally Grid Locked.

Unlock your life. The means are there. All you need do is reach out and pick them up.

You can change your situation, for yourself and for your children. At the same time, you can build a life that is filled with the things that bring solid community, real happiness, and the leisure to enjoy them. You can get off the Grids and be free to enjoy your life, to find those things you never had time for and which, on your current path, will never be yours.

Most of us work ceaselessly to have the time to do what we love. If you reduce the cost of just surviving, your life is effectively longer because you are spending it in ways that make you happy.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness...”

Happiness is getting off the Grids. Happiness is greeting your neighbors with delight and knowing you matter to them, that you are respected. Happiness is knowing you and your family are safe. Happiness is caring for others and feeling your own life extended through strengthened relationships. Happiness is having the time to make each moment worth remembering.

This can be your future.

You can wake up in a home that you know will be there for your great-grandchildren. It keeps you cool in the summer, warm in the winter, without effort or cost: it is designed right. All energy is generated right there. You never worry about losing your electricity. This technology is available today.

You get up and go out to your garden to pick berries for breakfast. They are natural anti-oxidants, the kind of food your ancestors took for granted, that kept your great-grandparents healthy. Much of your food you grow yourself or get from local sources. You can see it growing, so you know it is being done right. The food is delicious, it makes your mouth water and satisfies you: you do not hunger for sweets.

Once, you worked in an office building. Now, you own your own business, which you run out of your own home. You could have chosen any of a dozen things to do, but you picked the one that you find most satisfying. You earn less in money, and much more in satisfaction. Your kids are doing the same; the whole world is their school now. They mastered physics by the time they were 14 or so, and now they are taking time to decide what they want to do. No one you know is worried about money.

All the money is local. Your local ‘bank’ is something you can visit online, but you don’t have to give it much thought. You know who runs it, the woman who used to be your son’s 4th grade teacher. She handles that part time, when she is not teaching weaving. The Board meets occasionally, and you were on it for a while before you cycled off. It is simple, transparent, and therefore impossible to steal.

There is little theft now. Honesty is reinforced by practices, all common law, that make stealing unprofitable. There are no big concentrations of money, no easy way to use power to steal. Those who thought otherwise have found out that it would not work and that trying was not a good idea.

There are not many elections: your community handles matters in your local town meetings. There are no standing armies: the rest of the world has followed the example of the Second American Revolution. Everyone you know can explain the principles contained in the Constitution. Your county went local early and you were right there speaking out and helping others to make their own transition to real freedom.

You are healthy; you stopped taking supplements years ago, after the Change. You have discovered the ways of healing that the Grids had worked to keep from you. Physicians earn less, but they now feel better about their craft because they are now assisting people to actually become healthy.

For you, the moment of change might have been when you discovered that the cancer that was killing your wife, could be cured. Or it may have been when they turned off your electricity. Or when your 19-year-old daughter came home from Iraq, the victim of rape that was ignored. She hanged herself from the tree where you had built her tree house back when she was 7. We all had that moment, one when we saw what was really happening.

None of us looked back.

Today, you love your life; you love waking up every morning because life today is exactly what nourishes your spirit and brings joy.

You are looking forward to being a grandfather. Your automobile uses no gasoline, and you know you can replace any needed parts yourself at low cost yourself. You have come to expect these qualities in all things. The furniture in your home will last for generations. The former attorney down the street built that furniture in the shop you helped him set up. We all changed, and it was a good thing.

Welcome to the real America – Celebrate Earth Day. Be the Change.

Melinda is now working on her new book. “Real Freedom.” Visit America Goes Home and Partnering for Peace & Prosperity