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Thursday, September 24, 2009

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.

Thursday, September 10, 2009

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.

Friday, August 21, 2009

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.

Tuesday, April 07, 2009

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.




Thursday, March 12, 2009

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 20th 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

Thursday, February 26, 2009

April's Future – Renewing America





This last January a baby girl was born. Her parents named her April and hope mightily that the world she grows to know will be one of hope and prosperity. We can make it so for her and all our children.

That matters to me very personally because little April is my first grand daughter. Her mother looked just like her and worrying about April's future causes fractures in my heart. The world today is growing very personal, we are all frightened. As the meltdown continues we look into the eyes of our children and cannot help be that. And yet along with we are losing come gifts of enormous potential. Take a deep breath and keep reading.

America faces a challenge, one that has been rolling in like a tsunami for generations, unremarked because we accepted and trusted too easily.

The election of Barack Obama to the office of president provided momentary hope that is now fading as a night mist when sunlight breaks through to Earth. The integrity, good intentions, and decency of the new president have nothing to do with what is now hitting America. The flawed foundations on which we built our lives can no longer be supported by illusion. We believed a vision for America that disconnected us from our own substance and power. We believed tate power was elsewhere when it is in our own hands.

That illusion of America turned us from the values that made America truly great. We possess a heritage unique in human history. Our founding documents were written so that we could govern ourselves, not be governed. Small towns, communities of people who accept and embrace their power, learning how to use cooperation and persuasion instead of politics are the foundation on which America stood in 1775.

The vision of a mighty America striding across the world bringing peace and justice was fantasy. The reality is not flags waving in the breeze and hands on hearts pledging fealty to a piece of cloth but something far more profound. Americans must come together, doing what is necessary for ourselves, using the skills, values and knowledge that makes effective action possible.

We face problems. But this one is the most important. We must do it ourselves while understanding the heritage of individual power that made America possible.

Russia faced this in the 80s without the wealth of tools we have to draw from here in America. It is not military might that made America great. It was its people, communities that came together as those colonials who fought for their freedom with their own hands, hearts and will. What was so can be again. Coming together in community across the lines that divide is itself a healing. Our ability to trust in our values has been destroyed, kicked out from under us. We forgot about honesty, quietly doing right, the integrity of work done well. We accepted instead the excitement of greed and possessions. We allowed the values that matter to be disparaged and refuted by those who govern and the corporations for which they work. We accepted lies for truth and greed as good. In so doing we passively allowed the theft of all that matters.

Because of this we face what seem to be insuperable problems but those problems are also a gift. We were lost, wandering in a world without knowing the risks we faced. Now we do. Our challenge is to come together, heal ourselves, and demonstrate the God given power of love and community. A Man who lived two thousands years ago would tell you this is true. If you listen you can hear Him speak to you today. When you do the right thing security and prosperity will follow.

Know the truth and the truth will set you free.

Americans who trusted went to Iraq for freedom and were ordered to take actions that violated their core values. Most were young and vulnerable. Girls went clutching their teddy bears. Young men went who barely needed to shave. They are returning to us traumatized, and unable to function normally. The rate of suicide is increasing with many becoming rapidly homeless. They are our children and they need us.

We trusted too far. We were told to have faith in people who were picking our pockets and canceling the Constitution. By their actions we can identify them, ensuring that accountability is exacted. We must relearn discernment as the essential precondition to action and values. Returning to community means caring for each other, beginning with those treated as disposable.

The only effective treatment for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder begins with community and with the values that stand as a firm foundation for right and wrong, honor and decency. After idling and wasting money on drugs the authorities now admit this.

Over the last 200 years Americans have not been idle. We have built an infrastructure that can take action in every community and the tools needed to enact the needed changes. From every point on the political and spiritual spectrum the answers have come. Marshall Rosenberg originated Non-Violent Communication. In the fifties a group of individuals wrote the 12 step programs. These have enabled hundreds of thousands to reestablish themselves as happy and productive people. The effective tools are there to be used, the gift of those whose creativity was focused on providing them for all of us.

We add to this the thousands of ways now entirely available, by which we can live sustainably, lowering our need for money and leaving more time for those things that nourish our spirits. These things are the basis of the America we will leave our children.

For me, when I think about that future I see a young woman named April growing up fulfilling the full range of her potential. That future will have healed the wrongs done to all of us, women and men together. She will understand physics, see the glories of nature in all of their complexities, find a future that brings her joy. I hope she also knows the deep happiness of holding a child in her arms to love and mother. She will do that from a neighborhood that is secure, part of a community that understands real freedom.

From our churches, from organizations that work locally the healing can flow like a cleansing balm, bringing renewal. Let this be the beginning. Doing it ourselves, from the heart and from community is our salvation. If you want to help go to Partnering for Peace and Prosperity.

Friday, January 30, 2009

Karl Rove and Bill Postmus, Soul Mates?


Why we must demand accountability, objective standards, and absolute transparency


From Revolt in 2100 by Robert Heinlein


When any government or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, “This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know,”the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrawise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fusion bombs, not anything – you can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.”


Revolt in 2100 is about a revolution against an evangelical religious state that using disinformation, coercion, and deceit took over America. The good guys are pro-freedom and in the book you see them carry out the restoration of real American government. The bad guys use torture, absolute monitoring, and the force of a state that has rewritten history to control the American people.


Written in 1939 the book was read widely by those in now in the freedom movement, that movement from which such individuals as Karl Rove, Grover Norquist, Newt Gingrich, John Fund, among others originated. Heinlein was writing a juvenile science fiction yarn using elements he perceived as potential and threatening to our freedom. That take over worked. The elements present today with the attempted use of biometrics, as applied to the Real ID, the monolithic control reinforced by the evangelical no-think churches, and the routine use of torture and construction of American concentration camps are hauntingly like what you see in the Heinlein novel.


All of the individuals above grew up on science fiction. Heinlein, a libertarian, was the Grand Master of that genre. This is most probably the origin of the approach used to subvert power in America and hand control over to those who lurk behind foreign corporations tied to the military-industrial complex, banking, Big Oil, and Big Pharma. Those interests are the clients that Rove and these others named serve. Among those corporations are many that are closely and privately held. Instead of the transparency that, on paper, we as Americans were guaranteed, we see only lies and a closed door.


The individuals named took as their model what science fiction fans would call, “the forces of darkness.” Today they continue to work for the same employers as they continue to use the Republican Party to divide America.


The Republican Stimulus Package: War


On Friday afternoon, January 16th, at 1:30 p.m., Congressman Joe Baca (D-43) hosted the first coalition of its kind to respond to Obama's challenge to stimulate the economy. Baca invited elected officials from both San Bernardino and Riverside Counties to sit down and discuss how the funds could be used to rebuild the badly decayed infrastructure in their area. The two counties, also commonly known as the Inland Empire have been the most heavily impacted by the meltdown in California. Foreclosures, lost jobs and despair light up the phones of food banks and in the offices of public officials every day.


Of the five Republican congressmen invited, David Dreier (R-26), Jerry Lewis (R-41), Ken Calvert (R-44), Gary Miller (R-42) and Buck McKeon (R-25) not one attended. All voted against the Obama package.


The cost of the Obama Stimulus Packages is high. The President has asked that billions be alloted for projects that rebuild desperately needed infrastructure while providing jobs lost during the last administration. But the same congressmen supported war in Iraq that destroyed the infrastructure of that country and cost far more. They also supported the exportation of American jobs to third world countries, placing many Americans out of work. They oversaw the administration of Federal funds that paid billions to companies building infrastructure, here and abroad, that are failing. Accountability and quality control have been non-existent.


The bridge which collapsed on Interstate 35 in Minneapolis in Aug., 2007 is just one example of a [problem of which many remain oblivious. The accident in Minneapolis killed 13 people and sounded a wake up call focusing attention on deteriorating infrastructure which cost millions to construct and billions to replace. Accountability for faulty construction is non-existent. Across the country, contractors involved figure among those who donate to Congressional campaigns, either directly of through their agents.


Inland Empire Toasted by Postmus


Simultaneous to the debate on the funding of the Stimulus Packages the Inland Empire witnessed the exposure of Bill Postmus, San Bernardino County Assessor. Postmus has long been known to idolize Karl Rove.


Postmus faces felony charges of drug possession. The disgraced Republican is under investigation by the District Attorney's Office for political malfeasance. $250,000 has been budgeted to pay the law firm retained to conduct the investigation. A recall petition by a broad spectrum of individuals and organizations will file a "Notice of Intention to Circulate Recall Petition" at the San Bernardino County Registrar of Voters office on Fri., Jan. 30, 2009. There will be a press conference in front of the Registrar's office at 4:00 p.m.


Ordinary Americans are fed up with divide and profit politics.


The Stimulus Package meeting of January 16th was attended by local officials who represented both major parties. The focus of their concern was their district and the needs of their constituents. Former California State Senator Don Rogers, a respected member of the Republican delegation, said of the Postmus indictment, “We need to clean our own house first. The man should resign and other Republicans should make sure that happens.” Anthony Adams, Republican County Chairman for San Bernardino has joined the call or Postmus to step down and save the millions a recall will cost.


Calls to the DC offices of the five Republican produced five press secretaries who were out to lunch or otherwise unavailable. Of the messages left none has been returned.


Will Republicans become obsolete?


Since the November election Republicans have confronted the need to take back their party. Taking it back brings into sharp focus from whom, bringing us back to the names above.


Locally both Republicans and Democrats agree in large that changes are necessary. They know money is in short supply and should not be wasted. Paul Pugh, the COO of Sequoia Valley Resource Corporation, who has worked in the Inland Empire said, “Politics has no part in this kind of decision. We need objective standards. And we need absolute accountability. We have the products to do the job. They cost no more and give us the same number of jobs locally. The age of greed is over.” Pugh is a life long Republican who also expressed concern for the direction his party has taken over the last decades. H proposed the following standard,


Stimulus funds should be granted only to companies that agree to:

High standards for quality for project longevity and durability in accordance to the guidelines provided by studies of technologies now available across the world. Products exist and can be used that reduce the carbon footprint at least 25% during construction. Longevity for high dollar projects must use only products that extend longevity to a millennium.

Absolute transparency – no contacts with private corporations.


To ensure that happens it is reasonable to exclude from consideration companies who have previously done work that failed the new standards.


Much is in motion. Will the Inland Empire exact accountability from Bill Postmus? Will Republicans meet the challenge to come together, despite the Republican delegation to Congress? The answers are coming and Robert Heinlein would have much to say if he still lived.


Friday, January 23, 2009

Healing America



Update: Stealing Truth - The John Fund Back Story

The Attorney General of New York has received the complaint as well as the incoming US Attorney General.


At the stroke of noon on Tuesday, January 20th, America breathed a sigh of relief that echoed across the world. I say that and I am a registered Republican who understands the cost of blowing the whistle on Bush and his associates. Of the many things that George Bush destroyed the Republican Party was only one institution. The GOP, once the proud advocate of freedom, was destroyed, its mission extinguished. Our economy, our rights, the Constitution, and the respect America once held across the world are also dead.


The least important of these is, of course, the GOP. It is not political parties that matter, but people. From the streets of America, where veterans pick through trash cans and from Gaza where children are dying from head wounds inflicted by bullets paid for by US taxpayers, it is people who are dying without hope.


At one second past noon on Tuesday, January 20th, a new president took into his hands the power to enact change. People across the country wept tears of joy. In Santa Fe 40 children, young teenagers, held their own inaugural party, recreating the event. They will never forget that moment.


Barack Obama has began a task of daunting proportions. Along with accountability, and the President has said this is also coming, Obama is calling for stimulus packages. These will jump start the economy and put Americans back to work. Obama named as his first priority America's infrastructure. Our bridges, our dams daily grow more degraded and dangerous to all of us. Engineers hold their breath as they monitor the deterioration, knowing lives are at risk as we saw in Minneapolis on Aug. 1, 2007. In California fifty percent of bridges are unsafe and those in charge know this.


Our veterans, who fought a war both unnecessary and criminal, are returning to homelessness, afflicted with Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. We moved into the danger zone, unconscious of what was happening around us.


War was made on us by Bush and his predecessors, converting our governmental and economic infrastructure. Those who did this were motivated by greed. They intended to steal everything, including our future. What are bridges and dams but the visible part of the future we leave our children?


Romans built for millennia. Our bridges, dams and other public works projects were built to last just long enough for the politically connected contractors to cash their checks, paying off their political cronies.


All of them need to be held accountable. Go here to blow your whistle.


The problems we confront are enormous. By coming together we can solve those problems. Sharing information, identifying what works, and refusing to accept the status quo brings its own power. There was a time when families sat down together then Dad lost his job. They looked at the problem, deciding how to stretch the pennies. The president has given us such an opportunity. To use it effectively we, the people, need to ensure that the funds from the stimulus packages are used wisely. Those who will make those decisions locally and in Congress need to know the same old solutions from the same contractors cannot be trusted. These funds must be used to ensure rapid deployment of new technologies that last and provide jobs.


Paul Pugh, a long time environmentalist who owns Sequoia Valley Resources and has produced and tested many of the new technologies said, “Engineers realize now it is all about using the right product for the application. Archeology has part of the answer. We rediscovered how the Romans did it and went them one better. Pieces of clay pottery lasted thousands of years. Our products can do the same.”


Infrastructure built this way can be in use in the year 3000 for the same or less money, generating as many jobs now. These are technologies in use around the world. As Pugh says, “This is not rocket science.” Politics denied them to us before.


Changing how we build will change your own home. That home can become the heritage you leave your great-great grandchildren, it will need no energy for heating or cooling and generate all the power you need.


Returning veterans suffering from PTSD can restart their lives. Many see PTSD sufferers as permanently marginalized. Instead they can became the core for new ways to live well in community. All of us can and must do the same, we need to be open to new and better ways of living. If we take up that challenge we can build prosperous futures for ourselves as we rediscover what it means to be an American.


Michael Olson, the owner of Metrofarm and the author of the book of the same name has helped many begin making a living providing products close into urban areas, solving the problem of transport while providing healthier food options. Multiply him by thousands who have spent their lives on solutions that work. From transportation to communications there are solutions, not one but many. America Goes Home examines and lists solutions and you can find more yourself.


We can build bridges that span the centuries, leading to a sustainable future for our descendants.

NOW Indict George Bush, Indict Them All




UPDATE: Stealing Elections – The John Fund Back Story
January 16 – Nothing has been read from the District Attorney in New York. We now file the complaint with the Office of the Attorney General


American veterans are returning from Iraq to homelessness. As the economy melts down so do America's veterans. Tens of thousands who signed up to serve their country are now homeless, unable to function because of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or brain trauma Their condition was directly caused by the Bush Administration. They were told that war was necessary to our safety. It was a lie. Instead, it has lined the pockets of George W. Bush's core constituency.

Americans are struggling with conditions none of us ever imagined possible. Many are showing signs of PTSD themselves. They have never been to Iraq. The war came to them.

They used our banks, the stock market, the governmental agencies intended for our protection to allow them to put their hands in our pockets and steal us blind. By so doing they stole our homes, our retirement, our jobs, and all we need to survive. Then they put their hands back in our pockets and stole our future to reimburse their friends for the 'losses' they had suffered. Our veterans are victims of war, the war being fought not in Iraq but carried out against Americans in boardrooms, in Congress, from the White House, our courts, and through every institution for which we have paid.

If you follow the money you see who profited and who intends to continue being paid.

Last week I wrote an article about John Fund, pointing out how he abused the profession of journalism. Those who covered for Fund did so for profit. He went unpunished for the domestic violence he committed because he could and did use the power according him by the Bush White House and those who worked for them. A valuable operative, he was protected. That was one small story in a vast tapestry of action that has resulted in the present meltdown. But every story comes with links to other stories. George Bush did nothing alone. Every story will lead to others because, like Fund, few intend to go away as Bush will be gone next week.

The problems will still be with us until they are rooted out. They live lavish life styles. They intend to continue. Many of those whose direct action lead to the nightmare we are living are planning to spend June 7 - 19th on a cruise from London to Rome.

Dick Morris just announced in an email I received that, “John Fund, the famous Wall Street Journal writer and Fox News commentator will be onboard as well!” Morris goes on to say that, “John is one of the foremost pundits on economic and political matters. During today's turbulent economic times, he will offer you the insight you need.” and will be, “joining our roundtable as we discuss how to rebuild the Republican party after the 2008 disaster.”
The only disaster noted is their failure to continue in power.
While they cruise an 80 year old woman who a year ago lived comfortably in retirement will struggle to survive on the street. There are many like her. She was invested in Lehman Brothers. Close you eyes. Watch the lives of ordinary hard working people pouring into the pockets of men like Morris, Fund, Cheney and Bush.
We need the names, the facts, and the evidence. The men and women who caused the problems must be indicted along with Bush. We need to exact retribution or else it can and will happen again. Bad behavior always drives out good. When we see the guilty punished to the full extent of the harm done we will be on the way back to sanity.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Stealing Truth: The John Fund Back Story


If the media had followed the clear rules they had written for themselves, would we now be on the express down elevator to a meltdown of global proportions? Likely not. We would have problems, but we would have seen them more clearly. We needed the truth. We did not get it, for perhaps as many reasons as there are individuals in journalism.
The first problem was that journalists so blithely ignored the standards of their profession.
The Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) has established a code of ethics. The tenets of this code are short, clear, concise, and well-founded. But there is no means of enforcement. If journalists would follow them, we could trust the media. Today most of us do not. If a journalist ignores their ethical obligations, either from sloth or a desire to profit, nothing can be done. If raiding the cookie jar can be carried out with impunity, then there will be no cookies. I know this, having raised several children.
The SPJ has existed since 1909, four years before the Federal Reserve Bank came into being. Their founders could have included Ida Tarbell, the journalist who caused the break up of Standard Oil, though the site does not mention her – an indomitable truth teller. Tarbell told the truth, but a handful of years later the dispersed Standard Oil was larger than ever and still carried out the same exploitive pattern of business.
The takeaway: having the truth does not automatically solve the problem. You need to use the truth to build the cultural tools that enact accountability. We need that accountability today as the world melts down around our ears. Those responsible for the economic collapse are getting bailouts. Those who will be forced to pay are losing everything.
It was not just banks or oil companies or the "military-industrial complex" of which Ike warned us, though the sense of immunity to accountability these corporate-cultural structures enjoy is another part of the problem. Many individuals made decisions they knew to be wrong. Along with those heading corporations, journalists were a pivotal part of this failure. They had ample opportunity to act ethically and make a decision that would have influenced the values by which all of us live, building the world through those uncounted separate choices. Unfortunately, they chose unwisely and unethically – and their bad choices drove out the good.
Large media (and non-media) corporations have swallowed up newspapers and other media outlets during the last few decades with alarming speed, with the goal being the use of these outlets as an extension of their control. Individual journalists did not have to cooperate – but they did, in large part. The lack of dispassionate, objective reporting in journalism morphed the profession towards use as a perpetual public relations service for those in power. The question became not "What is the truth?" but "What do you want the truth to be?" Power and profit became the unassailable be-all and end-all of corporate journalism.
Consider, for example, the case of John Fund.

Sex, Lies, and Journalism

As a member of the Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal for 18 years, Fund was on a trajectory toward greater power in 1998, and that power provided him with a feeling of invincibility. Already accustomed to sexual access to many women who were attracted to him as a figure possessing power and money, he became accustomed to ignoring the consequences of behavior that was deceitful and ugly. He was also accustomed to lying politically. His personal and professional life matched. He knew no matter what he did he would be protected.
In October of 1998, he began a sexual relationship with the daughter of a long-time friend he had once dated. The woman's name was Morgan Pillsbury, my biological daughter. I had known Fund since 1980 when we met at a Libertarian Party Convention, where he came across as nerdy and bumbling but likable. The impression stuck. Over the years we kept in touch.
When I heard a rumor that Fund was involved with Morgan, I called him directly. He lied to me, telling me she lived nearby. He claimed that he had been feeding her cat for her while she had been away. I believed him. Having had experience with Morgan over many years, I knew she could be dishonest . She would need strong evidence to disprove Fund's claims to me. That is why the audio tape often referred to as the "Weaselsearch tape" was made. If you listen to the tape, it becomes immediately apparent that Fund did not want me to know the truth. He lied and pressured Morgan to lie about their relationship. There was no reason for this; if he had told me he was in a relationship with Morgan, I would have been surprised and appalled, but it had been many years since we had been more than friends. My time was occupied caring for my handicapped son and by my own health needs, not with his love life. And Morgan was no child. She was born July 5, 1967. John was born April 8, 1956.
If this had remained merely a case of a man lying about his love life, journalism would never have been an issue. But Fund wanted to continue the relationship with Morgan covertly so he could also have relations with other women. He did not want his professional life impacted.
Unfortunately for Fund, Morgan refused to be his dirty little secret. For much of the three years they were a couple, Fund used Morgan's computer for professional purposes, but also to receive personal e-mail. Why Fund would have overlooked the chain of evidence thus produced is perhaps explained by the fact that at that time he knew next to nothing about computers. During that time, Fund consistently lied about his relationship with Morgan and pursued other women. It was a strange relationship, and I do not pretend to entirely understand it. But at each point, I demanded proof from Morgan for just that reason. I talked to Fund over dinner, on the phone from the apartment the couple shared. I received e-mails from him and other proof that could not have been falsified, for instance this IM conversation on AOL between Matt Drudge and Morgan. Drudge had been IMing with Fund on Morgan's computer earlier. Fund went to bed, leaving the window up. And so Morgan continued the conversation.
Around January, 2002, Fund – despite claims to the contrary by himself and others – was fired from the Wall Street Journal, probably because of the scandal that exploded over his own behavior. Morgan told me he had battered her on multiple occasions, first in New Jersey and then after he stalked her back to Manhattan and insisted on moving in with her in her new apartment. I heard several of those incidents via phone – as did others.
She finally decided to file charges in both New Jersey and New York.
A letter from Fidelity Investments advised him to, "make a decision about what to do with the savings you have accumulated in your former employer's retirement plan." That employer was the Wall Street Journal. The letter is in Morgan's possession. Fund opened it in her living room and, as Morgan told me, left it laying on the floor.
The lies then escalated.
Morgan told me that Fund coerced a false confession from her to hide his acts. He used threats of violence to get the confession. Morgan sent this email to me and others immediately to refute what she had been forced to sign. Documentation exists to support the truth.
Fund solicited and received the cooperation of other journalists to spin what had taken place. One can only conclude that Fund was very willing to make it worth their while or misrepresent the facts. Evidence almost immediately surfaced that Fund was sexually involved with at least one journalist who then lied for him in print. Some journalists knew the truth. Others were clearly taken in by Fund's lies. All were guilty of a lack of due diligence. If they had followed the tenets set out for journalists today might be different for all of us.

Black Box Road to the Rove White House

Fund's relationship with the Bush White House and the purpose of the book he was then writing, Stealing Elections, were less obvious in 2002. Fund has since admitted he has been routinely briefed by the White House, before and after he was fired from the WSJ. His road to being a willing tool of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue was long and, in many ways, meteoric.
Fund first worked as a political operative in 1979, according to Justin Raimondo. His services were secured to ensure the nomination of Ed Clark for the Libertarian Presidential Nomination for 1980 by Ed Crane. Far from having an interest in stopping voter or election fraud, Fund himself committed a curious specie of fraud by claiming to be a candidate by taking out papers that year but never turning them in while claiming to be running for office and getting 46% of the vote. Justin Raimondo characterized Fund as "an expert lying propagandist of the sleazier sort."
Never in all the years I knew him did I hear Fund express any interest in the issues of election or voter fraud. His political interests were more sensational; his personal interests run to Star Wars and Star Trek. If you really knew him, this sudden change in principal interests should have raised questions about his role with those associated with the administration. It did for me. The book he wrote is now considered by those in the clean elections movement to be a misdirective tool intended to muddy the water on the issue of voter fraud. It focuses in on purported fraud by individuals, ignoring the enormous issues of fraud now ascribed to such companies as Diebold and ES&S. Fund proposed centralizing control over elections as a solution – an idea completely in line with the big and well-connected "black box" mongers – and is nearly successful in undermining the issue by injecting his spin.
Bev Harris of Black Box Voting said of Fund's position, "It is amazing that this bogus solution is still being put forth. His solutions take us directly to ever more centralized control by a small group of insiders. What is needed is for the people to have local control and access to the results. Complete transparency."
Mark Crispin Miller was even more explicit, saying, "Despite his pose as an impartial expert on American elections, John Fund is in fact a dedicated party operative, who for many years has turned out rightist propaganda for the GOP. Specifically, he has abetted the Republicans' election theft by helping to promote the myth of widespread Democratic 'voter fraud'--a fiction that has been disproved by every reputable study, but one which Fund has pushed at every opportunity. And so whatever he may recommend to help 'reform' US elections should be rejected out of hand, as on this crucial subject he enjoys no credibility at all."
Vickie Karp and others involved in the clean elections movement also agree about Fund and his role as a propagandist and deceiver. All of the agree that Fund's "solutions," which provide cover for ever more centralization and displace real reform, are the opposite of transparency.
Inserting himself into that dialog would have been severely hampered had he been in jail for domestic violence. Yet Fund remains a high level political operative. Understanding how he accomplished his goals provides a clear understanding of the covert operation we know as the Bush Administration.

Fund's "Nuts and Sluts" Strategy

Fund solicited several articles attacking both Morgan and myself.
Eric Alterman, a New York based writer known for his partisan political writing, generally perceived as on the left, authored an article for the May 15, 2003 edition of The Nation, Who Framed John Fund? Morgan and I attempted to contact Alterman. On Mother's Day morning, June 11th, Morgan received an email from Alterman urgently requesting a response to a list of questions. Alterman received her response within three hours. He used none of the material supplied, did not call to follow up on her reply, and did not ask for the further documents that Morgan had offered. On June 25, 2003 a response from another liberal, Mark Crispin Miller, was published with another from Alterman in The Nation. The exchange is titled, 'Ugly Tactics Make for Ugly People.' Alterman sent Morgan a dismissive e-mail on July 4th.
According to Fred Brown, vice chair of the ethics committee for the Society for Professional Journalists, many journalists would pause before writing an article requested by someone in Fund's circumstances. A journalist who followed the tenets of ethics would also be careful to ensure that all principals had fully aired their cases. Alterman violated every tenet of the code as outlined by SPJ.
Fund was at that time working to have the charges against him in New York dropped. To accomplish that, he had been told he needed to destroy our credibility – Morgan's as the victim and my own as a witness. Along with soliciting journalists with whom he had relationships or could compensate in some way, he solicited libelous letters from at least two individuals, each with a motive for wanting either myself or Pillsbury silenced.
A perfunctory search of the journalists involved also leads to linkages between journalists to be pointed out. Alterman states in articles he has written that he is a friend of Katie Rosman, about whom you will read more below. A Google search of their names shows they often appear at the same events and cite each other. Alterman "adores gossip," by his own report, and admits to being an avid reader of Page Six, a gossip column run by Richard Johnson with associates such as Doug Dechert. Dechert was a regular attendee at the Fabiani Society, which meets the second Tuesday at the Princeton Club, a place where Fund also regularly showed up. The first time I was introduced to Dechert at one of these events, he asked me for $10,000 to be in Page Six. I did not know what Page Six was and would have declined even more rapidly if I had known. Selling print in this fashion is not news, it is not journalism, and it is not public relations, a profession having its own tenets for ethics. Discussing the matter with Fred Brown, we agreed that the term "Slime Journalism" worked to describe it (with apologies to slime, which is an important part of the ecosystem). Reading Alterman's enthusiastic reports on the operation leads one to believe he expects dishonesty and scandal as standard. Certainly that is how his reports read.
The Fabiani Society is jointly sponsored by two NeoCon think-tanks, the Cato Institute and the Manhattan Institute. The speakers usually represent the opinions marketed by those institutions. Many come only for the opportunity to network or the excellent canapés and ample bar.
Fund sent this email to Morgan at the same time these articles would have been in the works, once again demonstrating his lack not only of professionalism but maturity.
An article solicited by Katie Rosman, then at Elle, in the autumn of 2003 presents a strategy also intended to silence us using another tack. We met with Katie Rosman at a coffee shop in Manhattan where she asked for an exclusive on the story. We agreed. Soon her contact with us became sporadic. The story was stalled for months, during a critical time period, and then quashed (see correspondence). Rosman received a job offer at the Wall Street Journal simultaneous to the article being dropped. Rosman is still working at the WSJ and is a friend of Eric Alterman's, according to Alterman.
Fund solicited a woman law professor, Gail Heriot (who was having a sexual relationship with Fund) to assist him. The site, John H. Fund, was originally registered at her address in San Diego, 4830 Hart Drive, San Diego, CA 92116. That has now been changed. Heriot put herself in the category of journalist when she wrote to Gene Gaudette, the editor of APJ, with a letter she sent across the Internet, effectively publishing it. Its content is libelous. (You can read that e-mail from Heriot to American Politics Journal and their demolishing response here).
Heriot had written an email to Fund on January 13, 2002 that reveals the source of her support for Fund: at that time Morgan and Fund were still living together she wrote, "So allow me to introduce myself. I am Gail Heriot, the woman whose hotel room you've found yourself in a few times over the last six weeks." See the full letter here.
Fund solicited other attacks. Wendy McElroy, who wrote "False Rape Charges Hurt Real Victims" for FOXnews.com (published July 22, 2003), also violated the tenets of journalism, evidently profiting thereby. Journalists are required to ensure the principals are heard. McElroy failed to call either Morgan or myself. Since I had known her personally since the 1970s, this was a shock. Instead of carrying out her ethical obligation to seek the facts she wrote the article exonerating Fund and was within weeks hired at FOX News, a media outlet long associated with Fund and his fellow NeoCons. McElroy has made her living for decades writing effective spin for niche groups that want to hear justifications for their positions. These include why women need pornography and why women are as likely to be batterers as men, among others.
Fund was offered support from a female journalist with whom he was evidently conducting an affair at Christian Broadcast Network. Her name was Christine Hall-Reis. Here is a semi-nude photo of her that she sent to Fund, which he downloaded to Morgan's computer and became her property. Fund and Morgan were living together at the time the photo was sent along with the accompanying email.
One can reach no other conclusion that each and every one of these articles was clearly solicited by Fund.
One also has to relish the irony of Fund using women with whom he was intimately involved to deploy a "nuts and sluts" smear campaign.
Fund also received help from individuals hoping to benefit from the opportunity presented who were not compensated. Two such individuals were Eric Garris and Justin Raimondo, now of Anti-War.com. Both individuals had known Fund and myself for many years. Both were members of a small but self-consciously radical group associated with the Libertarian Party and Murray Rothbard, a highly respected free market economist who died in the 90s. I made a call to Eric Garris in 2002 asking for help. Morgan was in hiding, in fear of her life. Fund was using every avenue to destroy my reputation and credibility. Eric refused to help. In 2006 Justin Raimondo wrote this article that appeared on Anti-War.com. I responded in 24 hours with this article.
Soon afterward I talked to Lew Rockwell, who employs Eric Garris as a webmaster. Eric had read my assertion that the hit piece on Fund was motivated by the realization neither he or Raimondo would never profit by covering for Fund. Lew told me he talked to Garris right after he read my article. Eric, he said, affirmed I was exactly right.
Among journalists on the right, the left and the libertarian realm, Fund had succeeded in persuading journalists to write in his defense.
In each instance they ignored the truth.
In all cases they hoped for some benefit for themselves.

John Fund: Above the Law?

The criminal case to be heard through the District Attorney was still hanging over Fund's head. He needed the charges to be quashed. Photographs of the injuries had been taken by the police. I had given testimony on what I had witnessed. Documents proving that Fund had systematically lied both to many women and to other journalists for years existed and were available, freely offered as proof. Instead of looking at all the evidence, the focus was placed solely on Morgan's veracity. Fund had solicited letters that perpetuated statements that were provably libelous and untrue. He had cooperation from the DA's office in Manhattan to ignore all of these forms of evidence.
When the DA replaced the first ADA assigned to the case, Eric Arnone, with Bonnie Saar, it was clear that the investigation would be neither fair nor thorough. Saar spent hours hammering Morgan with questions as if she were the perpetrator, ignoring the laws and practices usual with victims of domestic violence. Morgan was not even allowed to see her own case file, and that is another violation of existing law and practice. Through a back door into the DA's office, we learned that the letters were from my former husband, Craig Franklin, and one Eugene Volokh, a former boyfriend of Morgan. Both men had reasons for wanting to destroy either Morgan's or my own credibility, and those motives can be documented. In one case, the motive was to cover a felonious fraud amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars.
But that is another story for another day.
Fund's motives were more obvious and also deeper. For years I had been questioning Fund's actions. Beginning with obvious issues, for instance how Hillsdale College used its large endowment, I asked questions. I moved on to research Fund's associates. As the Arkansas Project unfolded and the bizarre information I heard from Fund grew, I began to ask more questions as I observed the NeoCon strategies for winning. By 2000, the issue of election fraud was very present in my mind. During a conversation Fund, Morgan and I had at dinner in 2000, Fund told us that writing the book on elections was his "consolation prize" for not getting the job as Bush speechwriter. He might have been lying, but that is what he said. I was surprised, and said so. Fund shrugged. In what had already become a pattern of "Wingnut Welfare" for the NeoCon right's roster of propagandists, the book would be financed, published and promoted – that was what mattered.
Destroying my credibility along with Morgan's accomplished several goals, for Fund and others. Fund knew I was researching him. The conversation we had had regarding Hillsdale had told him I doubted his stated motives. His lack of action on these issues decreased the frequency of his calls to me from 1996 on. Over the years I continued to write about Fund and his connections, branching out from there into the impact on the economy, on our institutions, and on the future.
I had told Fund in 2001 that his highest purpose in life was as an example of what is wrong with journalism. Fund has illustrated in thorough detail what needs to change. Journalism is not spin provided to sell a political agenda. Journalism is a trust essential to ensuring our continued freedom. The public must have the facts, the truth, and the means to decide for themselves.
It is time to start in that direction.
This week a group of journalists will be filing a FOIA demand for the information long withheld by Morganthau's office in Manhattan. Ethics matter. Doing the right thing matters. The file on the case against John Fund for domestic violence may clarify issues. It may raise issues yet unknown. But it must be public. The victim is willing to have you see it. This case can tell us what went wrong with the courts, with the police, with journalism and how political figures and corporations distort and use each of these. This case leads you down the rabbit hole.
No matter who is impacted – just plain folks, social elite, poor or wealthy, black or white, gay or straight – the truth matters. The sign of a healthy society is a system that does right by everyone. A working media, courts that deliver justice, and communities of people who handle things for themselves give us the means to know we are secure.
Concern is growing and some are already taking action. On the Internet and elsewhere, people are looking for solutions. We need to find what works. The Madoff fraud has awakened many to the need for action.

There are many today, for instance Dan Rather, who understand what it means to go through the crucible of fire for truth, emerging on the other side. We need those who were willing to speak out and we need to listen.