A Happy Mother's Day Greeting from Social Services

Arthur when he was 8 years old. For mothers they are always our children.

A CORRECTION AND APOLOGY - January 23, 2016. See the Correction on the reason Arthur and I were visited by authorities.  For a while I thought this was the work of Morgan Gell, my psychopathic oldest child, because this was typical of the kind of thing she did.  But I started a Time Line for one of their close associates, Robert Evan Hughes and it now appears he was the instigator.  My apologies to Ms. Hammond and Ms. Sears and also to Deputy Kemmerling.  I'm sure they were acting in good faith.  For more on what is happening visit:  Cedar Slope

Two women, Michelle Hammond, and Lynn Sears, accompanied by a sheriff, Deputy Kemmerling, drove up to the house in two white cars, one a patrol car and the other a government vehicle. They asked to see Arthur, my son. Arthur is 30, but disabled. Arthur had left to take a short constitutional after having lunch, he had then been gone for about 15 minutes. I told them he would be back shortly and went inside, leaving them to wait on the driveway.

The house is a cabin located in a small subdivision. Most of the cabins are occupied only on weekends as most owners only vacation here. We live here full time to save money and since Arthur needs full time care this is the only way I can provide that care and survive, and that just barely. I work from home doing free lance writing and an online radio show. The downturn in the economy has hit all of us.

I was informed that there had been an anonymous complaint regarding the care of my son. When I let them talk to Arthur out of my hearing I later learned from him that he was asked if I abused him. He was asked a series of questions that each served to demean me, prying into our personal lives in ways that clearly violate our rights. My son was asked if he used illegal drugs, among other evidently routine questions. It was manipulative, ignoring my son's Constitutional rights. This would have been true even if he was not severely disabled.

We are obviously being targeted. My son represents potential income to the system. Income that amounts to more than $400,000.00.

There was a time when being poor did not make you fair game to predators like the people from Social Services. That time is past. Having ascertained that Arthur is not abused; he was astonished at the suggestion, any legitimate inquiry should have ended. Instead they used intimidation as an opening wedge in an attempt to influence my son. Having listened to their blandishments Arthur told them that although he was sometimes lonely he preferred to stay with me. Arthur helps when and where he can; he knows families pull together. At that point they transferred their attention to me. Arthur had unwittingly thwarted their agenda.

There was a time when we all knew that the family was the center for our lives. Families stayed together, in good times and bad. Families were and are the kind of insurance that both protects and makes our lives whole. We are who we are because of our family; being a good mother, father, sister, brother, son, daughter carried us along with our faith in God through things that otherwise would destroy us.

Refusing to tell either of us who might have filed such a charge they demanded answers to questions that no part of government has a right to know under the Constitution. Arthur and I have a happy and amicable relationship having passed through much pain and adjustment; he receives all the care I can afford and participates in every event and activity possible. Hearing his voice makes the hardships of the last ten years unimportant. He has his own computer and spends time on line. He attends church and goes to Bible Study once a week. I drive him to events when possible but attend few myself since it is costly and interferes with my work. At our small church I usually read the weekly lesson.

The obvious thrust of the procedure the women followed was an attempt to get control of Arthur if money could be generated for their department. The presence of a deputy sheriff, although he said later he was only there to show them where I lived, was intimidating and embarrassing. I am nearly 60 and have suffered two heart attacks, I am no threat to anyone. Although the deputy then said he was only there to show them where I lived, the place is not served by the Post Office, he stayed, listening to what transpired making his explanation problematical.

Over and over Hammond implied that I was 'keeping Arthur away from his friends,' that he was not happy. They asserted that Arthur had a 'right' to make his own decisions regarding where he lives. If such a 'right' exists, and it is not included in the Bill of Rights, then most of us would choose to live in Beverly Hills. Arthur well knows that we live at the cabin because I do not have funds to live elsewhere.

These well paid government 'workers' assumed as a matter of course that Arthur should be receiving welfare or disability; he is not and never has. The distress on their faces was obvious. Immediately they wanted to know if I would apply.

There was a time when Americans stood tall, accepting help from friends and family in need. Government was not part of the equation. That was a better time for all of us. Why do those who make their living supposedly, making us safer, bring a message of fear? Why have so many families, already struggling, been forced over the edge from just this kind of predation from the agencies funded through our taxes? Why can they afford nice homes, goodies, and pensions when so many of us are struggling to stay off the street?

The answer is obvious.

Evidently during their time alone with Arthur they worked to persuade Arthur that he would be happier living elsewhere. It is hard to imagine that they could believe that a man who has had two major brain injuries is capable of deciding for himself that he is capable of making life-impacting decisions, or that they, having known him for around 30 minutes, were better qualified than myself to do so but this was, indeed, their attitude. It is amazing that they could, with straight faces and such fervor, maintain that it is appropriate to interfere with the most intimate choices a family makes. They showed no concern over the stability of any situation they might offer, simply rejecting the obvious fact that the economic meltdown every other part of America is feeling in the most visceral way could impact their small, ugly shake down.

With bright, glassy smiles, they asserted Arthur's right to be happy over any other consideration. But his wellbeing and happiness were not on their agenda.

They promised Arthur that he could go back to Santa Barbara, something I considered to be doubtful. They ignored his need for further therapy. There are many new approaches now coming into availability for the victims of brain injuries. They demonstrated complete ignorance and indifference about the facts regarding brain injuries. They told me I would let him go if I cared about him. They were insulting, demeaning, and verbally abusive to both me and to my son. That was the underscoring and the message received by me and by countless others who find such 'workers' on their door steps.

One wonders what any of the three would do if someone trying to make their quota in human flesh arrived at their door with the power of a holstered gun and tried to intimidate them into handing over their child. What do you say about the moral fiber of people who profit from such a system? Nothing is ugly enough.

Americans need to demand answers. Among others we need to know what bounty is being put on each child or disabled adult sucked into the system. We need to know what such 'workers' are paid. We need to know the specifics about their benefits. We need to know how many disabled adults die after being sucked into their system, how many children end up sold into sex rings or used for pornographic films. In case you were unaware that is all too often their fate. Children present many possibilities to the greedy.

Hitler also instituted 'homes.' Those received there were put to death under the same benevolent rhetoric I heard yesterday. The long dead Germans were also told they would be happier and better cared for.

There are questions that need answers and now is the time to demand them. The disabled adults and children, now far more vulnerable because of the incessant need to pump more funds into a system intended solely to profit those in power, needs to be stopped.

Government has drawn a bead on all families, yours included. Listen for the knock on the door.

Those in power need to be charged and sued for the damage they have done to lives barely started and at risk. As Americans we have a right to justice and the time for that is now.

Neglect Found in Residences for Disabled

Relight the Flame of Freedom in Denver - End WAR

First, I want to say how it warmed my heart to read the postings that accumulated on the article by Wayne Allyn Root, or WAR, as I think of him, on Third Party Watch. It was heart warning to see comments from so many people who understand what the Libertarian Party was intended to accomplish. Even better, one of the links lead to LP Radicals, a site that actually uses the phrase, “Radical Abolitionism.” That brought back a wave of nostalgia.

My great-great-grandfather, Benjamin L. Pillsbury, was a Radical Abolitionist and stopped attending his local church in Sandown, New Hampshire, because the pastor supported the 'law' on slavery and the Civil War. Neither he or his sons served in the Civil War, instead paying the fine to stay home because as radical abolitionists they did not approve of the use of war as a means for promoting Federal power. The Civil War, is more correctly called the Morell (Immoral) Tax War.

The Radical Abolitionists were pro-succession, demanding that the New England states leave the Union and so end their relationship with slave-holders. Parker Pillsbury, his cousin and a good friend of William Lloyd Garrison, frequently stayed at the homestead before and after their basement was used as a stop on the Underground Rail Road.

It is well to remember that our own generation is not the first to deal with “gradualists.” Using the cause of freedom the radicals of the Abolitionist Movement also found themselves sidelined by a campaign that used their rhetoric to establish a Federal State from which we are still struggling to escape.

They tried and failed. We need to keep their example in the forefront of our minds. As Libertarians we need to remember all the ways in which we are enticed to compromise. We need to remember that until the State no longer passes laws that truncate our freedoms, until we are sovereign on our own land and govern ourselves using only persuasion and consensus at the most local level, we are still serfs.

The Libertarian Party came into existence at a time when civil disobedience was understood and respected as a tool in the war for our freedom. We need to remember those lessons.

What you do to thwart the misused power of the state is honorable whether or not it defies statute. Benjamin L. Pillsbury and his wife Sarah Jane knew that and taught the lesson to their children. I learned that from my father. When a conflict exists between statute and the foundation of values for which the Revolution was fought the honorable individual finds the courage that creates the moral example others may follow. This can cost you in many ways but that is the direction for freedom.

That shines a light for others to see.

The Libertarian Party was founded to be that point on the horizon that lights the way to the vision that is still America. After more than 30 years of constant attrition on our freedoms, thanks to predatory opportunists such as Ed Crane, Bob Poole, Koch Industries, and their moral ilk, it is time to think hard about what we have tolerated. Why are we tolerating those who would impede our forward progress by using the rhetoric of freedom for their own ends? Freedom is not about efficiency or profits, it is the power that shines into the life of each individual as they determine for themselves their own course.

For Americans to find that direction for freedom we need to show them, not just talk.

Freedom is for all of us, every one; it is an absolute.

Our most dangerous enemies are those who distort what it means to be free, who seek to use the moral power of Libertarianism for their own profit. They are the enemy within. Such a one is WAR.

In his attempts to eliminate the most consistent voice for freedom available to us as a Presidential candidate, Mary Ruwart, WAR and his cronies have attempted to discredit the vision that a free people govern themselves. They instead assert that only government can protect children. The body of evidence to the contrary is well documented. We are not perfect, any of us, but those who are most likely to ensure the well-being of children are those who love them. A free world does not guarantee that we will all do the right thing, but by empowering the individual we make the right thing far more likely to happen. Look to the children stolen by the State of Texas, look at Waco. Remember Ruby Ridge and the bleeding body of Sammy Weaver, if you doubt.

If WAR thinks his local social worker is more fit, and he may be right, he should, forthwith, send his kids to the state.

As the mother of five, all now grown, who has done advocacy work for families, I can tell him that the individuals' right to self determination must begin early. It is best learned with love and discipline and by protecting children from those who would harm them. That power should always be with those who love, not those who would convert our children into profits.

When I was raising my kids deciding to give birth at home was often seen as child abuse, according to the State. I twice did just that because I knew otherwise. Children born at home, nursed immediately, and kept close, receive benefits you cannot calculate in whatever currency WAR uses in his business.

I, for one, am tired of hearing about WAR's children. I am tired of hearing about WAR all together.

But we should be grateful for what this has revealed. It does not matter that WAR did not write a word of what appeared under his name, he still told us who he and his supporters are. I agree with David Nolan that the letter sounds like Scott Lieberman or Aaron Starr. That makes perfect sense given their track records.

The WAR campaign doubtless held intensive strategy sessions that delved into possible issues and approaches to defame Ruwart. Hiding behind words is a favored strategy..

All those attempts tried to focus attention on what they present as an unsolvable problem without government, rejecting the idea that people can solve their own problems. These are the people working to continue the conversion of the LP into a tool that enriches them through hierarchy. They are using children to mask their intentions.

Government as it is today puts children, and us, at risk. It was the problem that brought the LP into being. Freedom is my right to live my own life, charting my own course without the interference of government. That is the issue.

Today government and their corporate partners are lurching towards the logical conclusion of viewing us as their property. Using Federalism, they have stolen the wealth that generations of Americans rightly earned, transferring that wealth into their own pockets. WAR and Co. want to pick up some pennies along the way.

WAR is just the latest in a long series of wanna-be power brokers who have tried to wedge themselves into a position that allowed them to profit from the essential truth of Libertarianism by selling our rhetoric in place of the reality of freedom. At best, they are Republican, or NeoCon-lite.

While there are still real 'conservatives,' the ideological position identified by Ron Paul, Goldwater, and Taft most recently, the present leadership of the Republican Party has long been non-ideological. Instead, the GOP focuses on how to position organizations to perpetuate an agenda intended to produce profits in place of individual happiness. Most particularly, they want to deflect attention from the unbridgeable chasm that exists between their own positions and those of a real Libertarian.

WAR and Co. want you to believe that government, Federal and State, are exercising power in the way laid out by the Constitution, that what we see today is in accordance with the vision that inspired the Revolution. They say that reforms are necessary but the system is essentially sound. Only through an ignorance two centuries deep could anyone believe that. The Constitution laid out a limited role for a Federal government, reserving the right of action directly to the people. In this way WAR would lead us to a perpetual serfdom because that is where his greed leads him.

The crew who have adhered themselves to the gravy train of a WAR campaign have an agenda. That agenda makes it essential that they persuade enough delegates that serfdom is freedom and WAR is peace. Therefore they obfuscate, position, and opine. They are all long practiced at the craft of deception by misdirection and fallacious argument.

Their hope is that jobs in the WAR campaign will be followed by jobs in the LP at the national level.

In his comment posted on the WAR article Stephen Gordon said that both he and Knapp are supported by the same organization. He provides a link to United Liberty. Notice that the site endorses Bob Barr for the nomination. Not only is Barr endorsed he is the only one with a listing. Look at the About US page. You will notice that the rhetoric is so bland as to give no one anything to think about. No solutions are suggested there. Now look at the 'solutions' suggested by Americans for Prosperity .

The whole site represents a strategy that deflects attention from the real issue, freedom. It talks about 'direction' but the direction is the same old thing, government. In the list of approved sites are five that are actually American Conservative Union, Americans for Prosperity , Cato Institute , Reason Magazine , The Federalist Society arguably working on enabling the NeoCon agenda through deflection from the real issues and ignoring the role of government in destroying the power of a truly free market.

David Koch is the brother of Cato founder Charles Koch. He is on the Board at Americans for Prosperity. When George Bush went into office in 2001 nearly 400 outstanding violations against Koch Industries were extinguished. The irresponsible behavior by the largest privately owned oil company in the US included a suit resulting from burning alive two teenagers. The company engineers admitted their gas lines were not properly maintained. The Koch and Bush families were linked by marriage at Camp David in 1992.

The issue for Libertarians is simple.

That remains a return to the Constitution, rescinding all statute, reviving the Common Law Court System, and allowing the people to take governance back into their hands at the most local level. Our rights are inherent, granted not by government but by God. Augments over legislation are pointless unless rescinding all law is the agenda.

Americans are daily more aware of their vital need for freedom. Starved of it, they can no longer ignore its absence. They are looking, desperate, ready to take the power into their own hands and live freedom. That is what we saw with the Ron Paul Revolution. Never have the prospects been brighter for relighting the flame of freedom so that its truth can take us home to the America that is yet to be. Go to Denver, relight the flame and extinguish the pretensions of such as WAR.

More WAR details. What other gamblers think of WAR. Where his donations go. Lieberman in 2006

2008, endorsed McCain and Lieberman.

Ron Paul and Victory in November with Mary Ruwart

The candidacy of Wayne Allen Root is yet another in a long line of attempts to use Libertarianism for purposes having nothing to do with the philosophy of freedom. What does he hope to gain? Notoriety to feed his gambling ventures? A well burnished ego? Does it matter?

His candidacy has reached depths previously unplumbed. Normally, ambitious and well-heeled wanna-be presidential candidates confine themselves to meaningless but entertaining flights of oratory. Since these platitudinous extrusions sell some extra packages we have long tolerated such ego indulgences. And Root followed the usual pattern – until Indiana. There things changed.

Using as his mouthpiece Mark Schreiber, a former LP employee whose debts to the LP were eventually written off, Root launched an obviously carefully planned attack on the most credible candidate opposing him, long time activist Dr. Mary Ruwart. Root stayed away from the Indiana LP Convention, letting Schreiber do the dirty work for him. At the candidate forum, in the morning session, Schreiber loudly accused Mary of approving of pedophilia. Mary produced forthwith her book that says otherwise. Later Schreiber blurted out that it would not have happened if Ruwart had agreed to accept the nomination for vice-president.

An honest moment in a campaign of lies.

It was an attempt at 'the big lie' that blew up in their faces. Anyone who has known Ruwart for very long knows the attack to be a complete slander of her personally and a misrepresentation of Libertarianism. The tactics of attack within political parties are not new to the LP, but never has the attacker been more plainly exposed.

The entry of Ruwart into the field of candidates provides the opportunity we have long needed, the opportunity to renew the original purpose for which the LP was founded.

The Libertarian Party was founded to advance the cause of individual freedom in the aftermath of the destruction of the Goldwater Revolution.

Ron Paul is a classical conservative in the Goldwater mold, a libertarian. Those who today use the word, 'conservative' are something very different.

In the mid 60s the word 'conservative' was hijacked through the efforts of people who were then called Rockefeller Republicans. Rockefeller Republicans were a small cadre of individuals who were using politics to ensure their continued subsidies through military adventuring by the US and a lock on the sale of gasoline. Their motivations were not ideological but to profit using any means necessary.

Today we know their replacements as NeoConservatives.

The Libertarian Party was intended to create the common ground for freedom between Right and Left, carrying the freedom message to the mainstream of America. Individual rights were our rallying cry.

For some of us freedom has been a life-long time issue.

As Libertarians what matters is making freedom happen. All too often in our movement words have been used to profit individuals who simply want to make a living in politics. We have accepted words instead of insisting on real change, real revolution. We need to become far more discerning. Just because someone has money and is willing to support a campaign staff does not mean they are a Libertarian.

Our movement started because of the yearning we felt to experience our own freedom back when the specter of the Vietnam War hung over America. We watched as Richard Nixon instituted Wage and Price Controls. We supported both civil liberties and economic freedoms. We left the GOP taking our power into our own hands, coming together locally to reach out to others with the message that they should be free – and settle for nothing less. Then, the freedom movement was local. Then, we did not sell the nomination to the highest bidder.

After listening to ad nauseum discussions over the years on various plans for fooling people into accepting freedom it was clear to me by 1988 that freedom was a condition that most did not understand. Before you can find something you need to know what it is you seek.

Yes, we started a political party. But our intention was never to make the existence of the LP an end in itself. We never intended to 'be a presence for the ideas of freedom.' We intended to enact freedom using the LP as our tool. The point of having a Libertarian Party was to fulfill the vision that made America a shining hope for the entire world. That vision still brings tears to our eyes, it remains the goal. We did not come together to make money, burnish egos, or make deals with politicians by selling the rhetoric and letting them use the 'brand' of freedom for their own designs.

Freedom is not rhetoric, it is the power to own your own life, make your own choices, discover the best in yourself and others. Freedom is crafting that life with the power God placed in your hands from birth. Freedom is an absolute. It is a whisper in your ear that says, take your life and live it, own it, make of it the glorious truth that speaks the best within you. The choices are yours as long as you do no harm. That was our joint intention when the LP was founded. But life happened.

We have taken wrong turns, compromised, sold out and bought in. All of that and more is true. But we can change direction, renewing our commitment, our party, and taking into our hands the work that remains to be done.

Root would have you view a life lived under the control of government as freedom. He is wrong.

Listen carefully to how he truncates the message, distorts what it means to be free. On every issue he plays false with what it means to live as a Libertarian.

Root has never understood that war is waged equally against those we bomb and on we who pay for the bombs. He does not feel the horror of honorable men and women, barely grown, who march off to kill for corporate profits. He sees 'terrorism' not for what it is, the newest boogie man used to frightened Americans into acquiescence and silence. Root also has failed to understand that a free market has never existed because the underlying freedom for each of us to choose has never been affirmed.

Iraq was not a mistake. It was a crime carried out by this administration at the behest of and for the benefit of the Bush 'core constituency.'

The rapacious greed of those who would put our money and lives into their own pockets kept that from happening. Divided we can be controlled. United we can win through to freedom.

Root and his ilk ignore the fact that until each of us is free of the limitations imposed on us by statute none of us are free. Laws that limit our rights violate the Constitution and bring moral bankruptcy. Freedom is the one thing in life you will never have until you give it to everyone.

Root has been critical of Ron Paul, attacking the Congressman fo lacking eloquence. What Root actually means is that Dr. Paul is uncompromising on freedom. Paul's words and obvious sincerity, not polished and deceptive delivery, are his strength. Paul simply says what he means and what he has lived.

Such as Root are incapable of understanding that in the cantankerous physician from Texas we see the essence of Libertarianism lived out through the life of a man who, understanding the principles, exemplifies the courage of his convictions. It is easy to speak the words of freedom, hard to live those words, transforming them from words into a consistent record that says, 'yes' to freedom in the face of sneers and contempt. Ron Paul has done that.

Root is a retread of past candidates who believe that we need a messiah to lead us. Look in the mirror to find the one you should follow. Look into your heart and mind and say YES to a campaign that delivers the reality of freedom. We hold the power in our own hands to live our own lives in community with others. That was the original Revolution, that is the essential lesson repeated when the LP was founded and most recently by the Ron Paul Revolution. Now we can take the Revolution home to America and finish the job we began in 1971.

The Ron Paul record of commitment galvanized the Ron Paul Revolution. It has created the opportunity of the campaign to come. But Ron will not be on the ballot this November. We need a candidate who is, like Ron, themselves the message.

Americans are ready for freedom, hungry for it, despite the dangers we face today. And there are dangers and problems to be overcome. But it can be done.

Freedom brings no guarantee of anything but the right to seek your own happiness and fulfillment. Freedom promises us nothing - but is everything. Such as Root sneer at absolutes but freedom is just that, an absolute.

Go to Denver and choose freedom, nominate Mary Ruwart. Renew and affirm the mission we took up in 1971. America is hungry for hope, ready to be free. This November, if you choose right, our candidate can give Americans what they so desperately want and need. If victory was ever possible this is the time.

Growing Carrots for Freedom and for America

Carrots can fight back. I remember when my youngest daughter, Ayn pulled out one carrot and it suddenly let go after resisting. Plump, she went right on her bottom, looking surprised. Then she started to laugh, still holding on to that carrot. Then she ate it. It was a long time ago.

Back then I tried to grow all of our food because I knew it was much healthier. Also cheaper. That meant time in the garden with the kids. Those were good times that still make me smile. Such are the moments you treasure, along with the luminescent expression on a child's face when they figure something out. Like how to tie their shoe or get the kite up by themselves. What we remember through a glaze of tears are the things that last.

I can remember when I was little myself. Sitting in the backyard of our house on Colby Avenue in West Los Angeles I would listen with fascination to Mr. Bell, my friend Alan's grandpa, from across the street, tell me about what it was like to be a Pony Express Rider. He remembered the sound of the wind, the feel of his horse, sweating as the sun fried his face even under his hat. He told me the elation he felt when he arrived yet again unscathed. Listening still connects me to him and to the history of the country I love.

Most of us today are hungry for that sense of connection and for more things in our lives that are worth remembering; the things you take with you no matter what else happens. The good news is that we can have them. The bad news, if it is bad, is that we will have to give up on piles of things that we don't remember and on working hard to have nothing much worth the effort.

We need to give up on the idea of being a world power, having our children go off to die in wars that are about corporate profits. And, finally, we need to remember the vision that is still the America we love. That vision drew millions to the promise of what could be when a people were free to live their lives for themselves, in community with others. Close you eyes and see how it was for them. It was never about wealth, it was about hope, security, watching your children grow up strong and free. It was about realizing the best in yourself and showing respect for others. It was and is about community; looking into the eyes of people and finding those connections that last a life time. It is about doing the right thing because you know it matters. Each of these involves a choice. Each of those choices take us back to the freedom that makes human relationships work. When you choose right everything else falls into place.

America is the place where freedom was first recognized as an inherent part of our nature; a gift of God existing before government. Then it was understood that government had no rights, being a simple organizing tool to be changed at our will. That was the real Revolution, the change of ideas. We need to remember that truth.

When you stand on a firm foundation of values, honesty, integrity, community, you do not need to be afraid. Today we are just that, afraid. In this America we have learned to fear things that would have astonished our parents.

Today we worry when we see a police car; we worry about the steady increase of executive orders that ignore the Constitution. We see the direction of an administration that does not even bother to pretend it is acting within the law. We stand at risk, the stark reality of a police state staring us in the face. Shaking out heads we wonder how we arrived at this insanity.

America is now looking at a projected minimum of two million foreclosures in the coming year. We are watching with horror and disbelief as the economy melts down into a sizzling puddle of unidentifiable goo and tent cities spring up to hold the dispossessed. An unsettling rumor is now circulating that in early May the Amero will begin circulating. The Trans Texas Corridor continues to be built, eviscerating our nation, the product of that ugly union of government and corporations. And none of it was an accident. Each step followed the logic of greed, using deceit as its tool and concentrating power as its means.

The steady trend over the last 200 years has been to a centralization of power that allows the extinguishing of the rights of individuals and evasion of accountability for those in power. Each of these changes over time have resulted in the conversion of our institutions to the control of corporations and those who hold power through government.

We are now clear about what does not work. It is time to hit the reboot button.

America began with a Revolution that was organized from the small towns across the colonies. They had reached a common understanding of the rightness of their cause from the Internet of the day. That was the Committees of Correspondence and the letters outlining the issues that were passed from hand to hand among a population that was highly literate and had, for generations, participated in militias that were sponsored by towns, most of these less than a thousand individuals. They were a people who knew each other very personally. Men brought their own guns and ammunition to the Commons. They knew that duty demanded they be ready to act. Community mattered and the tool for decision making was not the vote, it was persuasion and consensus. This ensured that all were heard and all were respected. It built and reinforced strong community values. The solution is a return to community and the values that made America possible.

We can take back America building from the county level and stopping right there. Let the rest wither away as an unwatered weed.

For us the target unit of action should be the county. The sheriff of your local county is the top law enforcement officer, entitled to order out or arrest those who violate the rights of residents. There are men and women who are not afraid to speak the truth and for the Constitution. Sheriff Richard Mack, the proponent for the Mack – Printz Decision that overthrew the Brady Bill and affirmed the wisdom of the Constitution, stood tall when he said NO to the Feds. Other sheriffs can learn to stand tall, too. We can help them understand what their oath means.

With some exceptions most counties in the US are small enough to be reformed, their offices filled, through the concerted efforts of a small group of determined individuals who win election to essential offices. The excess infrastructure of the county should be pruned. During the coming readjustment we will need cutbacks that place the nexus of control firmly in the hands of the people who will handle those services they still deem to be necessary themselves.

It will be a time filled with challenges and changes. We will each of us grow with it.

Food grown locally will ensure it is there to nourish us and lower the need for oil. Locally grown food helps local small farms survive and provides excellent nutrition that builds our ability to flourish. Good nutrition is the too long ignored essential to simple good health and factory food is devoid of essential value. Medical bills will decline. Local food also provides the possibility of new local business as our values shift to those things that last, that are worth remembering.

And Americans will rediscover their ability to innovate. Energy, transportation, our spiritual foundations; each is ready for many changes. Expect surprises that remake the world. We will live differently and better, finding the things that convert hope to reality.

In the end America can emerge from the fire reborn for a freedom that is newly understood and vastly more valued. America is still the unrealized vision, the hope for all our tomorrows.

And a new generation of Ayns will learn to eat carrots that they have watched growing and smile when the carrot pops out of the soil, ready for the eating.

Bob Poole and Privatization, Enemies of Freedom

Terri Hall founded TURF, Texans United for Reform and Freedom, to fight for the rights of all Americans. She along with other Texans had been shocked at the move to turn the highways paid for by tax payers in Texas over to corporations, to be operated for corporate profit, on a lease that would last longer than most Texans expect to live. Located in San Antonio, Terri and TURF continue their battle against the looming specter of what is variously known as the Trans Texas Corridor, the North American Union, and the Security and Prosperity Partnership. By any name this long term grab for corporate hegemony over the whole of America by foreign based corporations is simply another form of fascism. We see fascism everywhere today.

Now, TURF and Terri fight continuously just to hold on to what Americans have always believed was theirs by right. Their enemy was spawned by our own movement. America is being 'privatized' out from under Americans, sold in plain sight to foreign corporations.

There was a time when the term, 'privatization' was thought to mean a return of control to individuals. Today those who have long been involved in the Freedom Movement are learning that it is something very different. How do you react to betrayal that is decades long? What do you say when suddenly you see the logic of a line of action that you once supported? That is the question that now confronts all of us who understand that the foundation on which the Revolution stands is the sovereignty of the individual and the individual's right to exercise power over their own life. Freedom does not equal efficiency. Corporations are not individuals and have no rights.

We have been betrayed by the familiarity of those who we trusted. The reasons for that betrayal are profit and ego; they go deep into the history of our movement and even deeper into the emotional investment that those in positions of power come to feel in their own work, even when that work is revealed to be the antithesis of everything they, and we, profess to believe.

No one involved in the original Freedom Movement would have expected that one of their original heroes would be haunting the offices of state legislators in a vigorous campaign to see this naked grab for profits by corporations installed in Texas and throughout America. But that is exactly what Terri has witnessed. Over and over she heard the word, 'privatization' used to describe what she well knew was actually the corporatization of assets paid for by people like herself, hard working Americans who now would be expected to pay in perpetuity for something financed through taxes that grow ever higher.

The Security and Prosperity Partnership is one component of a larger plan by global interests. It is represented by the Bush Administration, intended to convert America into one large plantation filled with serfs. We, the serfs, are intended to be virtual slaves. There is no need for direct ownership because everything we do can be monitored and controlled by the same corporations who, through the Real ID, will own the very information that determines who we are. Under the SPP we move under the control of corporations and effectively outside of the Bill of Rights. The Real ID, reinforced by biometrics that were fraudulently sold to Congress as reliable, are the lynch pin of the plan that is now reaching its full fruition. All of this is being rapidly brought on line.

The man appointed by Governor Rick Perry, the man who coined the word, 'privatization,' and founded Reason Magazine and Reason Foundation is Robert Poole. If you have been in the movement for very long you know his name. Once, Robert Poole was admired for his work, looked up to as a hero for freedom. Today he is on the other side, opposed by the out-gunned and indomitable activists like Terri Hall. Terri, the mother of five children, is fed up with all forms of government. She also chose to home school her children. For Terri freedom is personal.

Most people who knew Bob through the last decades would not have believed this possible. But it is the voice of Bob Poole that you hear advising the frustrated Texas Senate Committee on how to evade the law after they spent the 2 – 2 ½ hours discussing the Federal prohibitions for the kind of agreement Poole urged be adopted. This happened in the afternoon of February 5^th, 2008. Terri reports that she often saw Poole talking to legislators there, working to persuade them to pass into law a measure that their constituents begged them to stop. Poole, who retired to Florida some years ago to play with his model trains, has been very busy, using the respect according him to sell fascism in Texas.

That outcry began as soon as the public learned what was being considered. The legislature reacted by hiring lobbyists, another move that was clearly proscribed by Texas law. The original law enabling the grab, HB 3588, was passed by the Texas legislature in 2003.

In Texas the legislature meets only every two years for a few months beginning on January 1^st and continuing for around four months. When the ordinary people found out there was hue and cry you could hear across the state. Immediately people like Terri became active. A new generation of freedom fighters launched their own battle. Their activism resulted in a measure, HB 792, in 2007. But according to Terri Hill that was at best a partial victory. While hundreds of thousands of Texans emailed and called to complain what was achieved was a partial moratorium, a measure that leaves Texas, and America, vulnerable today.

What Poole is promoting is called a Comprehensive Development Agreement, or CDA, a measure that, if not defeated, will result in the conversion of the entire infrastructure of government to the control of corporations, control that cannot be ended by a vote, even if such was possible given the presence of Diebold's Vote Stealing Machines. Such agreements allow corporations to control and profit from their contracts for fifty years with another fifty years available at their option.

What this provides to corporations is a safe haven for their money, money stolen from Americans that is then 'invested' through bonds that protect their ill-gotten gains for another four generations.

Bob's motivations are clear. This phase of 'privatization' is a natural extrapolation of his previous work, begun in the early 1970s with his book, “Cutting Back City Hall.” Then, we believed that freedom, not fascist profits and efficiency was the point of the exercise. Seeing the ugliness of the truth takes a special kind of courage, a courage that few possess. Over the last thirty plus years Bob has been heaped with honors, lauded and celebrated as a defender of freedom. It would take a better man than Bob Poole to acknowledge his mistake. That is why the biggest lies die last.

This is what Bob Poole has done with the trust invested in him. He either failed to see, or seeing, could not confront the contradiction lacking the courage. The failure to acknowledge mistakes when the emotional investment extends across an entire lifetime is, perhaps understandable. But it is cannot be overlooked. This is the failure to objectively see and acknowledge that drove Ignaz Simmelweiss, an obstetrician in Vienna in the middle 1800s, to infect himself with child bed fever. His fellow butcher – surgeons refused to follow his example and save lives by simply washing their hands because to do so would leave them with a monumental burden of accountability. Too many had died for them to see. Ideas are powerful. Because they are powerful those who build new institutions bear a terrible responsibility. Along with the praise and profits they must bear the consequences and shoot their own dog when it proves to be rabid, which 'privatization' has proven to be.

Poole has long been associated with those we now understand to be the architects of fascism, “Robert Poole founded the Reason Foundation in 1978, and served as its president and CEO from then until the end of 2000. He was a member of the Bush-Cheney transition team in 2000. Over the years, he has advised the Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Clinton, and George W. Bush administrations on privatization and transportation policy.”

Next time you get a fund raising letter from Reason Magazine or Reason Foundation remember who is supporting the Trans Texas Corridor; remember to look more closely at all of the ideas they have spawned, including another Poole brain child, the right to pollute. If the idea does not return control to the individual, affirming that inherent autonomy, ask yourself who is receiving the profits.

Terri Hall and TURF will continue their fight for freedom. They must. Freedom is the one thing you do not have until you give it to everyone, now and always and they see and understand what freedom is.

Why You Should Nominate Mary Ruwart

If the Heartland’s 5-state straw poll is any indication, the LP has sadly lost its way and forgotten the core values that brought it into existence nearly two generations ago now. Some few of us still remember the tears that welled in our eyes when we came together to work for the vision that is America. Like no other nomination in our history this one matters and this is why.

The original idea was freedom for all of us, man and woman, every race, every kind and part of that cantankerous collation of living, beating spirits who comprise humanity. We felt that in those opening days, saw ourselves as new revolutionaries fighting a new battle for a war never truly won. It was all about the individual; it was never about playing into the frame of corporate glitz that is strangling America today. Now, at a time when the make up of those seeking our nomination clearly indicates that American politics faces a realignment of political parties, we need to choose for principle. This is the time for which we have been waited so long. Everything tells us so.

No one anticipated that a cantankerous family doctor from Texas, his words ignored for so long, would become an icon. But it happened. It happened because America is ready to hear the truth about freedom from the Party that made freedom its unifying goal. Dr. Paul gave Americans the thing for which they most hunger, hope and the promise of a renewed freedom. That ground swell awakened hundreds of thousands of Americans to the reasons America lost its way. War, corporate greed, rapacious government, the strangling of hope from all sides. Some among us decided that efficiency was a greater virtue than individual rights. Some of us came with only one issue clutched to our heart, the other issues we shrugged off as irrelevant. Too often we ignored the always present truth that until all are free no one is.

In all of these ways we went a long way down the path to losing everything that really matters. Now, we can redeem all the errors. This is the moment when we rediscover freedom for ourselves and help all Americans find it for the first time. We need the right candidate, and when you finish reading this the right candidate will be obvious.

To be a Libertarian is to understand that the people must govern themselves. To be a Libertarian is to know, down to your innermost being, that you own yourself. When you realize that you stand up a little straighter, feel the ease of tension across your back.

We have settled for words, rhetoric, that while well honed, was empty of the truth found only in action. It is actions, not words, that matter. True liberty is what we live. Ron Paul's message resonated because his actions, a full measure, speak his truth. That is the message for which Americans hunger; Not words but a life-time of proven truth.

We need a candidate we can trust, who understands us because they have withstood the terrible temptations of power. We need a candidate with honor we can take to the bank, not just another practiced salesman with eyes on the potential for publicity this nomination could bring. Most of all, we need a candidate who understands what it means to be a Libertarian.

And because this is a realigning campaign we need a candidate who can do the job if elected. If we ever had the opportunity to smash the two party system this is the moment. To grasp that opportunity we need a candidate who has been a consistent Libertarian and who can bring into their campaign people from both Right and Left. By so doing we could, finally, elect a Libertarian president. That is not an opportunity to be wasted.

That said, these are the candidates who offered themselves.

Wayne Allen Root, who received 22 votes is a polished speaker. He has practiced speaking the words of freedom. But what does his life say to us when examined? His professional association is with the gambling industry and he intends to recruit on-line gamblers who are angry with the government for Internet restrictions on their favorite pastime. Root has been a LP member for only a short time and has no record of activity with his state party. Root’s presidential run is his first LP campaign ever.

Until late February, Root told delegates that we needed to be in Iraq, but has recently changed his tune. Root uses his initials (WAR) proudly all over his web site. Root has been getting prime radio spots and some TV exposure because of his reputation in the gambling industry. Root might play well in Nevada, his home state, but how is the LP going to play to the public with a gambler at the top of our ticket? For years we’ve fought the image of gun-toting pot heads who advocate prostitution. The kind of media coverage we’re going to get with Root may brand us for decades. It will speak a powerful negative to our allies in the anti-war and peace movements.

The candidate is not words. The candidate is the message Americans will hear.

Next in line was Bob Barr, who has not formally announced his candidacy, but is expected to do so shortly. A former Republican congressman, Barr’s reputation as a drug warrior, Patriot Act supporter, and homophile have all been well-documented. Barr converted to the LP a couple years ago and currently serves on the LNC.

Barr probably has the most name recognition of any candidate, except Mike Gravel. He also has the most checkered past. Barr is actively hated by the gay community for his authorship of the Defense of Marriage Act, which denies the federal benefits of marriage to same-sex couples. The LP will alienate the gay community, one of the LP’s strongest support bases, with Barr.

But that’s just the beginning. Barr is also the author of the legislation, which has effectively ended the possibility of medical marijuana in DC. The MPP recently paid the newly-reformed Barr big bucks to unsuccessfully lobby against his own legislation. Barr is likely to alienate yet another of the LP’s staunchest allies, those who want to end drug prohibition.

Barr now regrets his support for the Patriot Act, as do many others. I realize that he says he has had a change of heart and I am thrilled to have Bob in our party. However, we all must live with the consequences of our actions. Bob voted for the most egregious piece of legislation to pass through Congress in our lifetimes without even seeing it. He has been a typical Republican for many years, and only flip-flopped to the LP recently when the Republicans no longer had any use for him. His candidacy only serves to divide this party.

This background gives the media carte blanche to blacken the LP’s name. I can just see the headlines now: “Drug Warrior Receives LP Presidential Nomination.” “Patriot Act Supporter Nominated by Libertarians.” “Author of Marriage Defense Act to head the Libertarian ticket.”

Since Barr got 19 votes, when not even present, he could possibly, according to the straw poll, be the LP’s leading contender. The LP should welcome former evil-doers with open arms once they sincerely reject their past. Should they become the LP’s standard-bearer, when that same past will alienate large segments of the LP? Isn’t that a steep price to pay a little more media exposure, and potentially damaging exposure at that? We have fallen for the promises of big money and huge media attention before, and what did it get us? Nothing! It is time we stop believing in empty promises and select the best Libertarian nominee we can. We should have a messenger at the top of the ticket that we can be proud of, not one that we will have to make excuses for during the whole campaign!

Does Barr send a message that says NO to the concentration of power in Washington DC? Ask yourself and be honest.

Placing third was former Democrat Gravel, party member for all of 7 days. Gravel supports universal health care, a subject which he carefully avoided during the debate. As stated in the debate, he wants to replace the income tax with the Fair Tax (which appears to be about the only thing he and Bob Barr agree upon), rather than do away with it altogether. Two-time LP candidate Harry Browne used “eliminate the income tax and replace it with nothing” as his signature issue. Republican candidate and former LP nominee Ron Paul garnered a lot of support pledging to do the same thing. Will Libertarians back off from their “taxation is theft” stand in the hopes that Gravel’s, or Barr’s, name recognition will garner them a few new votes?

And what about Gravel’s signature issue, total democratic referendum, where every piece of legislation is passed not by Congress, but by direct vote of the people? The Constitution is out the window if a slick ad campaign can convince a majority of the voters to do so, an easy sell in the days of public education. Ron Paul has demonstrated that a large segment of our population is set on fire by the Constitution, but it looks like the LP is ready to throw the Constitution to the flames in the hopes for a bit of media.

Mike Gravel has done heroic things for America – but he has not even begun to understand freedom.

Running fourth in a field of over a dozen candidates is Dr. Mary J. Ruwart, long-term libertarian author and activist. Ruwart, a cancer survivor, has claimed for years that she would rather write than campaign. She has lived freedom, showing her courage in quiet ways that last, speaking loudly to those who know her. Eloquent and yet able to touch her audience, she is the author of Healing Our World, Short Answers to the Tough Questions, and an Advocates for Self-Government web-column. Through a career decades long she, like Ron Paul, has stayed on message in her own life as well as in what she says.

No other candidate has campaign books while Ruwart has a comprehensive libertarian primer and a short version for our public school graduates. Her life proves that what matters to her is freedom. She is one of the few who have extended the reach of the freedom message to the Left, and there she also has a following.

Ruwart decided to run not because one person asked her but because many veteran LPers asked saying they desperately needed an experienced, principled candidate. Ruwart, a veteran of close to a dozen state and local races, garnered one of the first major news endorsements (The Detroit News for State Board of Ed).

You may well be one of the many she has brought to the LP.

Ruwart brings the people together. She sees every person is a potential libertarian because everyone benefits from liberty and her fervor is tangible. She not only explains Libertarianism, she has lived it. When someone sits down with her to listen they understand our message from both heart and mind. They learn the same things by watching her live her own life. Man, woman and child, they get the message.

Mary is what we need. We must stop acting out of desperation. We must never fear that Americans cannot understand that vital, inner need to be free. The Ron Paul Revolution has proven the opposite to be true. Self doubt has made us weak just when we most need to be strong.

Go to Denver and nominate Mary Ruwart as your candidate for president. Give Americans the opportunity to see what freedom means when someone has lived it all of their life, in every way. If you really believe in freedom then believe in Mary.

Mark Lerner is going to stop the Real ID. Now.

Mark Lerner is on the road nearly every moment he can find the money. His time is spent in appointments with legislators, sitting down with them to discuss the Real ID. When Mark starts talking they are polite, but not particularly interested. They think they know what the Real ID is about. But when Mark is finished they are worried and asking questions. Mark is the whistle-blower who brought the fraud by biometrics companies to the attention of the Securities and Exchange Commission only to be ignored for nearly two years before he went public. The silence from the SEC continues today. Mark is no longer silent. He is desperate to stop the Real ID because its implementation will hand over the most personal information and the biometrics of all Americans to the use of corporations and governments globally.

Americans have no idea what they are facing. Mark is determined that they be awakened to the their danger. The danger lies deep in plans long in place, from such innocuous agencies such as American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, AAMVA currently has an alliance called the DLC (Driver's License Compact) All but a few states belong to it. AAMVA recently forged a new alliance called the DLA, (Driver's License Agreement) Under the section entitled, “Jurisdiction,” within the DLA, it states that the United States, Mexico and Canada, will be under one umbrella of jurisdiction to share citizen's of each country's information contained in DMV data bases.

The Department of Homeland Security calls the AAMVA and its network, referred to as AamvaNet, the “Backbone of the Real ID Act,” meaning it is the essential system that will allow data bases to be connected and information shared. That includes all information garnered about Americans from all sources. AAMVA has introduced a new alliance between states and territories and countries. Those countries are the United States, Canada and Mexico. This is the precursor, what is needed, for the establishment of the North America Union, the Security and Prosperity Partnership.

This ties together the Trans Texas Corridor, Homeland Security, and the issuance of the Amero to replace the U. S. Dollar, along with and the most ominous branches of the United Nations with the corporations that now take for granted that their profit agenda should control the world.

“If you stop the Real ID you throw a major monkey wrench in their plans,” said Lerner for this interview. That is why Mark stays on the road talking to legislators who have been blinded by the carefully orchestrated half-information provided to them by the Real ID 'opposition' that either focuses on only one issue, for instance Cato Institute with privacy, or by those who simply cannot understand the scope of what is proposed.

Mark also spends his time in briefings with ordinary Americans and activists who come away shocked and appalled that the measure could have come so far and remained under their radar. One recent participant from a conference in California said, “I am numbed; shocked, I had no idea.”

Mark is used to that. His own participation began on the other side of the issue. Determined to do something about security in the wake of 9/11 Mark became a confident of Chairmen of the Boards, CEOs, and other senior officials in the Biometrics Industry. He learned all there is to know about the technologies and about the potential for profits that made those technologies the focus of excitement for billionaires across the globe.

Yet for Mark the focus remained not profits but security and between 2003 – 2004 he realized that for those investing it was profit and not security that was driving the testing. Over two years, he said, he realized that the technologies did not work as presented and the people involved were not to be trusted. Tests were manicured so that outcomes showing an effectiveness of 45% appeared as 90%. Alarmed and unable to get those falsifying results to stop Mark informed the SEC. He was told an investigation was underway. He waited. Then, Congress funded those same technologies.

Mark presents the documentation to anyone who questions his experience. A methodical and careful man, he kept the records, the same information he presented to the SEC.

Today he continues his battle saying that to be truly defeated the Real ID Act must be challenged and brought down simultaneously from three different directions. First, he calls on the grass roots, people, he says, must know and take action. When he speaks he asks them to tie up the phone lines of legislators who support the Real ID; to become informed on the Act, and to ensure that more people find out what is going on under the radar. Then he lays out how the Act can be challenged at the state level and federally. So, he says, “the wolf does not come back again dressed in the skin of yet another sheep.”

To date, Mark has spent four weeks giving evidence to several different committees of Congress in Washington D. C. He has spent weeks on the road, sitting down with legislators in Oklahoma, California, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Kansas, and other states. Every day he or his one occasionally paid staff person hear from activists or legislators in another state who now are beginning to realize what is really in store for Americans. A month ago the ACLU and ACLJ came together for the first time to help Mark in fighting the Real ID Act.

Typically, Mark stays at the cheapest possible hotels. Motel 6 costs less and so keeps him on the road to the next state. He eats fast food; it is cheap and filling. It is a far cry from the kinds of places he stayed while giving advice to the heads of the Biometrics Industry. Asked what others can do to help he responded for this interview, “We have a button on the site if you can spare anything to help. If you have no money we also accept frequent flyer miles.” He evidently means it. Major contributors to the effort have been few and the money tight. The money is so tight his group, Stop The Real ID Coalition, is just a blog that costs them nothing. Mark says that every penny counts.

And Mark, like the energizer bunny, just keeps going and will not stop, he says, until he has driven a spike through the heart of the Real ID because, as he said, “our freedom and the Constitution are in danger and I am an American.”

Mark Lerner is going to stop the Real ID. Now.

Mark Lerner is on the road nearly every moment he can find the money. His time is spent in appointments with legislators, sitting down with them to discuss the Real ID. When Mark starts talking they are polite, but not particularly interested. They think they know what the Real ID is about. But when Mark is finished they are worried and asking questions. Mark is the whistle-blower who brought the fraud by biometrics companies to the attention of the Securities and Exchange Commission only to be ignored for nearly two years before he went public. The silence from the SEC continues today. Mark is no longer silent. He is desperate to stop the Real ID because its implementation will hand over the most personal information and the biometrics of all Americans to the use of corporations and governments globally.

Americans have no idea what they are facing. Mark is determined that they be awakened to the their danger. The danger lies deep in plans long in place, from such innocuous agencies such as American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators, AAMVA currently has an alliance called the DLC (Driver's License Compact) All but a few states belong to it. AAMVA recently forged a new alliance called the DLA, (Driver's License Agreement) Under the section entitled, “Jurisdiction,” within the DLA, it states that the United States, Mexico and Canada, will be under one umbrella of jurisdiction to share citizen's of each country's information contained in DMV data bases.

The Department of Homeland Security calls the AAMVA and its network, referred to as AamvaNet, the “Backbone of the Real ID Act,” meaning it is the essential system that will allow data bases to be connected and information shared. That includes all information garnered about Americans from all sources. AAMVA has introduced a new alliance between states and territories and countries. Those countries are the United States, Canada and Mexico. This is the precursor, what is needed, for the establishment of the North America Union, the Security and Prosperity Partnership.

This ties together the Trans Texas Corridor, Homeland Security, and the issuance of the Amero to replace the U. S. Dollar, along with and the most ominous branches of the United Nations with the corporations that now take for granted that their profit agenda should control the world.

“If you stop the Real ID you throw a major monkey wrench in their plans,” said Lerner for this interview. That is why Mark stays on the road talking to legislators who have been blinded by the carefully orchestrated half-information provided to them by the Real ID 'opposition' that either focuses on only one issue, for instance Cato Institute with privacy, or by those who simply cannot understand the scope of what is proposed.

Mark also spends his time in briefings with ordinary Americans and activists who come away shocked and appalled that the measure could have come so far and remained under their radar. One recent participant from a conference in California said, “I am numbed; shocked, I had no idea.”

Mark is used to that. His own participation began on the other side of the issue. Determined to do something about security in the wake of 9/11 Mark became a confident of Chairmen of the Boards, CEOs, and other senior officials in the Biometrics Industry. He learned all there is to know about the technologies and about the potential for profits that made those technologies the focus of excitement for billionaires across the globe.

Yet for Mark the focus remained not profits but security and between 2003 – 2004 he realized that for those investing it was profit and not security that was driving the testing. Over two years, he said, he realized that the technologies did not work as presented and the people involved were not to be trusted. Tests were manicured so that outcomes showing an effectiveness of 45% appeared as 90%. Alarmed and unable to get those falsifying results to stop Mark informed the SEC. He was told an investigation was underway. He waited. Then, Congress funded those same technologies.

Mark presents the documentation to anyone who questions his experience. A methodical and careful man, he kept the records, the same information he presented to the SEC.

Today he continues his battle saying that to be truly defeated the Real ID Act must be challenged and brought down simultaneously from three different directions. First, he calls on the grass roots, people, he says, must know and take action. When he speaks he asks them to tie up the phone lines of legislators who support the Real ID; to become informed on the Act, and to ensure that more people find out what is going on under the radar. Then he lays out how the Act can be challenged at the state level and federally. So, he says, “the wolf does not come back again dressed in the skin of yet another sheep.”

To date, Mark has spent four weeks giving evidence to several different committees of Congress in Washington D. C. He has spent weeks on the road, sitting down with legislators in Oklahoma, California, Pennsylvania, Missouri, Kansas, and other states. Every day he or his one occasionally paid staff person hear from activists or legislators in another state who now are beginning to realize what is really in store for Americans. A month ago the ACLU and ACLJ came together for the first time to help Mark in fighting the Real ID Act.

Typically, Mark stays at the cheapest possible hotels. Motel 6 costs less and so keeps him on the road to the next state. He eats fast food; it is cheap and filling. It is a far cry from the kinds of places he stayed while giving advice to the heads of the Biometrics Industry. Asked what others can do to help he responded for this interview, “We have a button on the site if you can spare anything to help. If you have no money we also accept frequent flyer miles.” He evidently means it. Major contributors to the effort have been few and the money tight. The money is so tight his group, Stop The Real ID Coalition, is just a blog that costs them nothing. Mark says that every penny counts.

And Mark, like the energizer bunny, just keeps going and will not stop, he says, until he has driven a spike through the heart of the Real ID because, as he said, “our freedom and the Constitution are in danger and I am an American.”