The Secret Life of Howie Rich and Ed Crane

Howie Rich is now famous; the very, very long time lynch pin of the Crane Machine was featured last Friday on the PBS news program NOW. He was not happy about the publicity.

Those ancient libertarian folks among us who remember the very old days know that it was Howie Rich who, with Edward H. Crane, III, took the LP from a movement that spontaneously organized itself across the country to a top down organization that limited information flow to a “need to know” basis. Local activism was sharply discouraged. This was so pronounced that after the Clark Campaign most local activists swore they would never support any national candidate proposed by Crane and Company again despite the seductive clink of Koch dollars.

There was a goofy software developer who wrote the following ditty on Cato Institute, which was the base of wealth around which the Crane Machine operated.

The Cato Song
(by what's his name)

Ed Crane is Cato's president. He keeps his standards high
He says he runs a trim, taut ship, yes, just like Captain Blight (pun)
The similarity is really nothing but a joke -
For they'll be no mutiny on the bounty of billionaire Charles Koch

(Ever changing chorus)
C – A – T – O, C – A – T – O
Aren't you glad their helping freedom grow?
They divide the labor equally, they lead and we follow for liberty!
The finest freedom fighters that we know.

(There are two ways of understanding the last verse)

Murray Rothbard plans the long range Cato strategy
And here is Murray's sage advice for friends of liberty
We must be more professional, we must be better lead
We need centrally planned anarchy if we're to forge ahead.

C – A – T – O, C – A – T – O
Aren't you glad they're helping freedom grow?
Our most prolific scholars worth their weight in fiat dollars
The finest freedom fighters that we know.

Bill Evers edits Inquiry, the Cato magazine
His footnotes all have footnotes to tell you want they mean
His annotated bibliographies have footnotes, too
Read Inquiry or stay ignorant, the choice is up to you!

C – A – T – O, C – A – T – O
Aren't you glad they're helping freedom grow?
They're short and tall and furry, their Bill and Ed and Murray
The finest freedom fighters that we know.

C – A – T – O, C – A – T – O
Aren't you sad they're letting freedom go?
They've lost their love of liberty,
They never knew how to be free
Our former freedom friends, C – A – T – O

That was written and performed around 1980 and reflected what most of us knew about Crane and Company; so while Ed and Howie and friends are older and saggier and Murray was given the bum's rush from Cato for having other ideas on economics in 1981, and Williamson Evers is now happily ensconced at Hoover Institute and attended the Bohemian Grove even with John Fund this year, many things have remained the same.

Libertarians should think hard about this. The expose has just begun, rumor has it. Many Americans are angry with what they view as deceitful behavior and are identifying Howie and his friends as Libertarians. There are political ramifications and even more profound issues to consider here.

You will hear the issue posed by the media as one of legality. Most libertarians will reject that argument. If the State is illegitimate then it has no right to make laws that limit the actions of individuals, especially if their actions are arguably self defense and intended to bring the State to its knees. But is this true? And will their actions result in more or less freedom for those impacted?

On the illegality issue, Howie and friends might have acted illegally, if not in refusing to report the source of their donations but in other ways. Some are saying they violated statutes on money laundering, though that remains for a court to determine. How do Libertarians view such actions? Are they allowable as a means of self defense?

On the argument of acting in their own defense did they have a right to meddle in the affairs of states where they do not live? Would these actions have been allowable by our standards if Howie had spent the money in New York? Since Libertarians tend to believe that self defense does not include harm to innocent parties any actions that resulted in such harm to those in the states targeted would not be defensible.

The facts indicate that they have acted covertly with intention to deceive. Those they deceived were those signing petitions who did not understand the proposed statutes. The PBS story mentions that multiple petitions for more than one initiative were offered deceptively.

They have undoubtedly caused to be created Astroturf organizations in around 24 states that have placed initiatives on the ballots in those states. They have worked to have it appear that those initiatives had local support when they did not in most cases. In each case where they worked to create an illusion of grass roots and encountered the argument of disclosure they repeated, like parrots, that they were following the law and had no obligation to disclose the origin of the funds used.

From that I deduce that the source is not Howie Rich, but someone with far deeper pockets, maybe even someone mentioned in the ditty above. But that is just me.

The core of the issue Libertarians need to consider is very different from those above, however. It is the same issue that caused Crane and Howie to run into opposition in the LP.

Are the actions of Howie and Friends forwarding or hindering the cause of libertarianism?

I think they are harmful, here is why.

America's structure of government is now fascist. To mount an effective opposition we need to focus on enabling local people to organize effectively and as far as possible, we need to enable local people to keep their money. Through mandates and taxation, direct and through the regulatory abuse of the nasty combination of government and quasi-governmental corporations, Americans are being bled dry. Debt is rising, 40% of American mortgages are now held by Chinese, and many states are nearly bankrupt, causing them to put additional squeeze on those living there.

We may need to fight a war. Americans today lack organization and resources.

Any effective resistance necessitates an alternative infrastructure for maintaining life while that resistance can work.

As was true in 1775, with the Powder Revolt, we need to ensure we have what is needed to do what must be done. Without supplies any army starves. Independent local organizations, cooperation, communication, and trust are essential to effective action. Building out that alternative infrastructure in the communities across the United States should be at the top of the agenda. But that is exactly what Howie and Friends have opposed, both historically and with their present actions.

Their strategy is flawed. This may be simple stupidity or lack of strategic savvy but their actions lend themselves to another less appetizing interpretation.

They appear to be living well, most of them within six blocks of a golf course. Most of them appear to be employed running these Initiatives, many of which have pulled in money from libertarians in addition to being funded by the corporations who traditionally fund Cato. For them as individuals this has been lucrative. Crane pulls down a half a million as Cato president every year not counting his other sources of income, for instance serving on various boards.

Go look over the names of those corporations and then examine the source of their profits. Koch Industries itself was in Vietnam with Halliburton and is today in Iraq as a working Halliburton partner. Think cost plus contracts, both there and here in America. Koch has never been an exemplar of accountability.

Now, no Libertarian minds profits. But honest profits do not come through government contracts or by using government as a tool of their corporate policy. Therefore Libertarians need to ask themselves what message Crane, Howie and friends are sending to us and to Americans and open the question of their real motives. Many of us became Libertarians not to find a job but to change the direction America was taking.

If they really thought in 1980 that their fellow Libertarians were too dumb to run their local chapters of the LP and Americans are incapable of self government then perhaps they should find a country that better suits them. Or perhaps they could all move to New York and live with Howie.

I sent this button to Crane in 1980. Questioning all authority means everyone. It is not the State that now betraying freedom, that already happened. It is our friends we need to scrutinize, now while we can still take action.

NEWS RELEASE: Hart Williams on BBSradio.com

Hart Williams, the journalist who broke the story on Howie and his friends through his blog and who was featured on the PBS show last Friday will be the guest on Melinda's radio show, the Spiritual Politician, next Friday at 4pm PDT, September 29th, at BBSradio.com.

Hart Williams grew up in Wyoming and graduated from Santa Fe High School in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He attended Texas Christian University and moved to Hollywood, California in 1976.

Mr. Williams has been a professional writer since 1976, published since 1973. He has written for newpapers and magazines from the Washington POST to the Los Angeles TIMES and FREE PRESS, The Kansas City STAR, Portland OREGONIAN, NEW WEST, OUI, Los Angeles Magazine, the Santa Fe SUN, and more. A published novelist and screenwriter, he lives in Eugene, Oregon with his wife -- a science fiction author in her own right -- her centenarian father and their Manx cat.

Call ins are welcome and in this case encouraged.

The Path to 9/11 Leads Through Disney to David Horowitz - and his NeoConning friends

The Path to 9/11 Leads Through Disney to David Horowitz - and his NeoConning friends

(Update not seeming related to this subject – go to http://www.howierichexposed.com/

for amazing insights that will prove to be very much connected to the NeoCon Cabal. One of the first Political Operatives to be hired on by Edward H. Crane, III was John Fund of the WSJ and Project Arkansas. No one could have invented this as fiction.)

September 14, 2006 -- When disaster strikes, you use the tool you know. Disaster is staring Bush and Co. in the face, hence the tool is the Disney Fantasy Extravaganza which just aired on September , 10^th and 11^th , to outrage and protest. The film may well backfire since the obvious disinformation included has energized many to revisit the evidence, and public interest has been reawakened.

What they thought would be their electoral salvation may well prove to be their downfall.

By planting Path to 9/11 as an obvious tool for reinventing facts Rove and Co. succeeded in advertising just how inept they are at everything except politics and propaganda. They may well have hitched their hopes of electoral deniability to "The Path to 9/11."

The moment is fraught with danger; indications are that plans may go past simple vote tampering and into areas that are new for any American government on our own shores. They are using the tool they understand – and they don't understand much.

Since politics and its accompanying tool, political propaganda, are the only tools they are competent to handle. Therefore, all problems appear to them through the lens of what they know. They need to be able to say they won and have enough people to believe them without sniggering to avoid overt challenges. It would be entirely pathetic if not for the fact that so many Americans seem unable to discriminate between fact and fiction. Since this is bound to come up over and over again it would be well to use this incident to demonstrate to the public the difference between the two. That is step one, which immunizes too credulous Americans when the other hob-nailed boot falls.

Knowing is the best defense; the people need to know and we can show them. Propaganda, challenged and used as a tool, can sputter and die in the face of the truth. According to reports, the movie has built not only on material from the official government 9/11 but from other sources, artfully spun to obfuscate the sheer incompetence of the Bush Cabal while injecting scenes featuring the salacious saga of Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. We should aim at having the Path to 9/11 bury them instead.

It is well to remember that there is no exit strategy, either from Iraq or the White House. Therefore they are desperate for the means of staying on in perpetuity, something elements of the military have let them know will not be tolerated. The overall effect aimed for here was one of "See? It could have happened to anyone!" and “Those news reports must have been wrong.!”

Those who did the writing were from Hollywood and connected with Youth With A Mission and other groups associated with David Horowitz. We know that is not true. It took amazing levels of incompetence to achieve 9/11. The Bush Cabal is desperately hoping this movie will allow them to segue past the election so that an exit strategy can be actualized, from the White House, not Iraq.

And why would Disney and ABC cooperate in this effort? We all know the answer. The centralization and consolidation of media in the United States makes this kind of thing a natural extension of the use of the political tools Rove finds familiar. They looked around and decided that this film could solve several problems if they avoided the bodice ripper-type fantasy they foisted on us with DC 9/11, trotted out for the 2004 campaign. That project did not work but evidently, they decided it wasn't the technique that was at fault but the way it was scripted.

That film, written by Lionel Chetwynd, lacked credibility and dropped through the cracks. This one will be a more polished effort. Therefore it needs to be challenged intelligently and point-by-point this can be done. What they wish to see as a drama on a huge and magnificent scale is actually pathetically small and petty when viewed from the front row. Putting together the whole story reduces it to a satire.

Let me share a few small items of interest that fill in some holes. I happened to talk to Lionel just before Air Force One picked him up for the purpose of working on the aforementioned film. I placed the call to ask about how it felt to be sued by David Horowitz for showing the bad judgment of helping David out. Those were, I think, my words, certainly now Chetwynd's. Lionel was, however, very excited about the ride on the airplane though, you could tell that. About the lawsuit, Lionel was just glad it was to be settled. The money was probably about the same but it took far less time.

Horowitz has been extremely helpful to the Neocons in several ways. I had noticed several of these suits involving Horowitz because I knew the people involved. Manny Klausner, for instance, an old chum of mine from the Good Old Days of early Libertarianism, was acting as Horowitz's attorney. I first met Manny when he spoke to the local LP region of West Los Angeles in my living room in 1975. We had intended to have the meeting at a local restaurant but the rowdy behavior of some of the non-libertarians caused the event to be relocated. I don't remember the topic, but Manny is always entertaining. So I saw Manny occasionally. When I was elected Southern Vice Chairman of the California LP in 1979 we had another encounter of note.

I had decided that what the LP needed was its own ACLU to focus on litigating freedom issues. Showing unusual initiative Manny called me, having discovered through a fellow attorney my intentions. Manny told me his Libertarian Law Council was handling that and so my efforts were unnecessary. I invite you to notice the number of cases the LLC has litigated in the last 28 years. The group exists; it is an adjunct of the Federalist Society in Los Angeles if you check out the Volokh Conspiracy blog.

Lists do not get much shorter. This might lead you to believe that no issues of individual rights have arisen in the last 28 years. But Manny is the head of the litigation arm for what is now called the David Horowitz Freedom Center, formerly the Center for the Study of Popular Culture. Check it out and you will find that one Manny Klausner is the General Counsel with 'affiliated attorneys' unnamed. The Freedom Center, which might fit neatly into Horowitz's bathtub, shortened its name and its focus. It is the Horowitz Group that co-sponsors what is called the Freedom Film Festival. Various groups from the Conservative Christian faction have decided to take on Hollywood, working to compete in sending their own message out into the wasteland of American values. Nothing wrong with that; honest messaging in values should be respected as the right of all Americans. Free Speech, you know.

But the operative word here is honesty in advertising. The storm of objections to The Path to 9/11 and related threatened lawsuits for a project that presumed to position itself as a documentary show two things. First, the truth is a slippery concept for anyone associated with the Neocons; reports on the content show the 'documentary' to actually be a carefully manufactured disinformation film that ignores facts only established after overcoming the full force of Neocondom. (Neocondom is the Official World of Neocons; information carefully covered with plastic, in case you did not know.)

Second, Liberals, at least the ones not presently serving in Congress, are still capable of ensuring their opinion is heard. Those Democrats serving in Congress evidently are nervous about the content of the tapes from the NSA, probably rightly so.

The story of how Manny acquired the IRF is also interesting and David Horowitz is, of course, involved.

In the early 90s, an attorney in San Diego named John W. Howard started doing individual rights lawsuits. The Individual Rights Foundation litigated issues unpopular with Liberals that found intense support among Libertarians and Republicans. The IRF was set up to do great things. Then fate in the form of David Horowitz, Manny Klausner, and John Fund's college roommate intervened.

Horowitz, that Pink Diaper Baby who has now worked his way through the Libertarian Party and into the Republican Party indiscriminately selling his books to everyone credulous enough to buy, had invited Howard to come on board with the Center for the Study of Popular Culture. Howard's IRF was doing great fundraising. CSPC was not. After an amazingly short period of time, Howard was out on his ear and the IRF had been stapled to the CSPC. The fundraising continued but the lawsuits petered out. However, within a remarkably short period of time the Institute for Justice had been founded and Clint Bolick, the previously mentioned Fund roommate, had been installed as its President. The IJ would go on to a career of lawsuits that were less than stellar but which raised and spent money, badly filling the niche for a much needed ACLU in Libertarian Land.

I got an amazing insight into Horowitz around 1999 when my daughter Morgan attended the Horowitz wedding, hosted by Arianna Huffington as her home in Beverly Hills. Morgan and her then-boyfriend, Eugene Volokh, had arrived early and Morgan wandered off in search of entertainment. She found Arianna's two daughters galloping their Breyer Horses across the carpeted pastures of a bedroom. As a child, Morgan had a collection of around 1,000 Breyer horses her self. So Morgan was cantering a diminutive mare across the carpet to the barn when two loud and very distinctive voices approached and entered the room next door. Arianna had offered to hostess the event; Horowitz was responsible for food and beverages. What David had brought, mostly bagels and a few scant accompaniments, might have been fine for a hasty nosh after picketing but certainly was not for an event at Arianna's home. Arianna filled out the menu to be offered. As soon as Horowitz ascertained that he would not be paying he was happy to concede.

Obviously, Horowitz is used to getting other people to pay. By all reports, it was a nice event. We can hope that David and his lovely bride were properly thankful to Arianna but given David's behavior with those who offer their help to the CSPC of him personally perhaps Arianna should be grateful she was not sued.

It is just amazing how connected the Bush folks are with those with whom I once rubbed elbows.

Manny was also an attorney involved in the notorious Sidney Blumenthal. Matt Drudge lawsuit. In case you do not recall, Sidney Blumenthal, effectively accused of spousal abuse by Matt Drudge, sued to establish his innocence. This became a cause célèbre among Libertarians and Conservatives, with funds flowing into the coffers of the Drudge Defense Fund—to the immediate benefit of Manny Klausner and Matt Drudge. Unfortunately, it was all too true: Drudge had conspired with John Fund to put out the story in yet another Arkansas Project-related smear, in a textbook example of how you can libel someone and profit simultaneously—all the while doing the job that pays to fill up the offshore account.

Not that I liked Sidney especially, but the truth is the truth. John babbled the truth about how the abuse story had been orchestrated when he was well into his cups the evening the suit was settled. Even Fund worries occasionally that justice might unexpectedly prevail. I had discerned the outlines of the Arkansas Project, funded by Richard Mellon Scaife, by the mid-1990s. It was the story about the tattoo of the flag on Clinton's privates that did it for me: I wondered how Fund had managed to see that for himself!

On his blog on Professors, Horowitz had placed an article about a teacher who burned the American flag as a demonstration of free speech. Evidently, in the world of David Horowitz, such an act is a Bozo No-No. Curiously enough; I did not see any mention of the even more frightful situation that confronted parents and children in the mid-1990s at Hillsdale, the college that supposedly loved liberty and free speech. Of course this was not an errant professor. It was the administration.

My daughter, Ayn, called me from the school one day, terribly upset about a situation that had shocked her. Now, at this point you might think I am referring to the suicide of Lisa Roche, who shot herself because of her longtime lover and father-in-law, George Roche, who was then Hillsdale President and the man who nearly single-handedly turned the faltering college serving about 1,000 students around into one of the best-endowed institutions on the face of the Earth.

Roche had recently divorced his wife and married another. No, that was not it. Ayn was shocked because two students at the college had been expelled for (gasp) daring to put out an alternative newspaper. Imagine that, thinking they had a right to pay for their own free speech! I immediately informed my old friend John Fund about this. Naturally, he did nothing, having assured me he would take action. John was routinely paid huge amounts of money to speak at Hillsdale, by the way. I really think David should note that all idiotic behavior does not involve Liberals. There is more than enough stupidity to go around.

So what do we do about the Disney Extravaganza? For one thing, stop going to Disneyland. Also, notice that Disney may be involved because the copyright on Old Mickey is about to run out and rumor has it that they want Congress to extend this as a sort of special favor. That coud explain a lot.

The Intended use of Path to 9/11 as a tool for disinformation. The film clearly is intended to provide the justification for arguing that the November election, now well on its way to being stolen using the layers of techniques perfected by the Neocons, could arguably have been won by NeoCon friendly candidates like Lieberman. Have no doubt: that is what is happening right now.

I have an old friend in Fresno, California who has been living and working in the same place for most of his life. He is a retired journalist who rarely strays far from home but when he went in to vote in the primary, surprise, he had become unregistered. This is happening all over the country, especially in target states that include California, Ohio, Florida, New Mexico, Arizona, and Montana. Lots of techniques will be used. These will include the already mentioned unregistering of long time voters, 'purging' the rolls, intimidation at the polls, and the trusty Freedom Dies Machines you encounter in the polls themselves. Those can handily provide whatever outcome you want, like the CPA's employed by the Mafia.

There is a solution.

If you are registered Democrat or other leftish party, go out and reregister Republican. If possible find one of those tables personed by the National Federation of Republican Women and get them to register you. They will be delighted to greet you as a fellow Republican. These are very nice ladies, I know because I am a member. If they understood how they are being used by the Neocons it would make them very sad so don't tell them.

How you are registered does not really much matter; both major parties are corrupt and changing that is not on the immediate horizon. But how you are registered can confuse them.

Then make sure you go into the polls to vote on Election Day. Sow confusion to all enemies of freedom—especially the realm of Neocondom

Family Fascism: The Destruction of American families

What the NeoCons (and all those in government) have wrought

Today we are becoming used to the tapes on line that show grieving relatives holding up the body parts of tiny children, killed in a war thought up by Bush and Company as a means of securing the untapped oil supplies from around the world that their Core Constituents have not managed to acquire by other means.

Human life means nothing to those in power. Divorced from human emotion in their insular and privileged world, they can look at 'populations' and determine how people can best be used to help power their policies and profit. Using the medium created through 'family law' government, and through them the same Core Constituencies, have asserted ownership of our persons and our children. Families all over the United States are struggling to fight back.

Greg and Melissa Pound live in Largo, Florida in a four bedroom, two bath house. Their children used to live with them; no more. The Pound's children were happy and healthy before DCF entered their lives. On a day more than two years ago now an accident took place. It could have happened to any of us. That accident was reported in an article written by Robert Hurt, a local man who has become involved in their cause.

“Greg’s sister Diane had come to visit and brought her white German Shepherd-like dog. They kept the dog outside, but Diane brought the dog inside to escape the rain. Greg had taken the 3 older children with him to run some errands. Melissa had lain their two-week baby on their large bed, left the room, and closed the door behind her. Greg’s sister went into the bedroom a few minutes later to check on the baby, then left the bedroom, leaving the door ajar. A few minutes later Melissa went into the living room and found the baby lying on the rug, with the dog lying in front of the baby. The baby was not crying.”

The baby had not been attacked; the dog was evidently trying to protect it but in carrying it had left teeth marks on the baby's head. Horrified, the mother called the paramedics, something that any of us might have done. But in this case and in increasing numbers of cases across the country, what plays out is a clever means for converting a cost center, social services, in this case DCF, into a profit generator.

American children and their families are being converted into cash. The means used by the ugly combination of government and corporate (corporament) interests is called by various names across the country, but in Pinellas County, Florida, the violations of America's original vision for the autonomy of individuals comes from the Department of Children and Family (DCF), with such as the Pinellas County Sheriff’s Deputies, helping the Pinellas Court there converting the DCF into a profit center that steals, maims and kills.

The Pounds have struggled for over two years to get their children back. They are not alone. All over the country parents are fighting a war that gets as little publicity as the one being waged on returning American service people, the war on the environment and the war on our right to free and open elections. This goes to the principle of war that says you should divide the potential opposition and make it impossible for them to unite and fight back.

The children taken from homes ring the cash register for such as Tom Delay, who was an early investor in “foster homes” in Texas. Children from such homes can disappear, never to be seen again. The lucky ones are sold to adopting families who really want them. The fate of others we may never know. How the money is generated is efficient and clever.

Foster children are scheduled for appointments with physicians and other professionals who file paperwork to be paid while the services are never rendered. Children in foster care experience increasing health problems. Greg and Melissa's kids, healthy when they were taken, supposedly taken to doctors 70 times now suffer from neglect, ringworms, lice, and numerous other complaints.

The kids in Iraq and Lebanon died quickly, for the most part. Our children are dying slowly. Those that survive will come out of a shattering childhood largely uneducated. Their likely career path will be into a militry that will then be dependent on the draft, now beginning, or into the criminal justice system, which is itself yet another profit generator for Corporament. Some will escape, through change, sheer ability, or luck. Most will not.

Tomorrow, September 7th, the Pounds will be back in court struggling to keep their parental rights intact. Representing themselves, they will most likely lose that battle as well.

Fascism is the merger of corporate interests with government. We can thank the NeoCons for the latest incarnation of that system here in America, but for the appetite and habits that grew it to its present size we can thank both major political parties. The NeoCons optimized the efficiency of the system; liberals birthed it with the best of intentions. If one of them had done the right thing with the power and resources with which both were entrusted today our families would not be at risk and the world would not hate us.

The road to Hell is paved with good intentions; greed just paints the line down the middle.

We need to understand the full extent of the problems, see the common strategy that optimizes the profits and control for the Corporament, and take the necessary steps to return to America's original mission statement, never yet realized.

The mistake took place at the time the US Constitution was written and ratified. The Founders did not have a right to compromise on the very simple guidelines laid out. Those were:

“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. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed...”

Personally, I hereby withdraw consent. These people are not acting for me, not in Pinella, Florida and not in Iraq. Now, how to build out an alternative infrastructure.

Many Americans have confronted problems and accomplished amazing things in the face of untenable conditions. Government, the tool that does not work, has many alternatives.

The Children's Aid Society was founded in 1853 by Charles Loring Brace and a group of social reformers at a time when orphan asylums and almshouses were the only "social services" available for poor and homeless children.

It worked. Today Corporament would make sure it did not happen. The Corporament assets that families, and children, belong to them. That needs to be changed.

Family law can be moved back into the control of individuals. By doing so most of the problems will be solved and the costs drastically reduced for all of us. Many good, decent people are moving in that direction spontaneously. One of those people is a Catholic law professor, the father of seven, who believes in what he calls True Marriage.

Stephen Safranek believes in his mission, which is to return control of marriage to those marrying. That is one of the battles that must be fought.

The bottom line is individuals deciding for themselves, taking the responsibility and being accountable. That was the original Mission Statement.

We need to do this for children here, children in Iraq and Lebanon, and children yet unborn who will come into this world to suffer only death if we delay.

The Pounds in Florida and other families across the country are ready to take action. David Griscom in New Mexico is fighting for clean elections as is Sophie di Vries in California. Stephen Safranek is fighting for our rights through the courts. Soon, Americans will be fighting a draft that will take their children to fight corporamental wars across the globe.

Instead of ghettoizing the arenas where each of us is fighting to retain or restore a small part of our inherent rights, we need to come together; know what is happening and why so that everyone we talk to can see and understand the larger picture.

Anyone fighting the Corporament is fighting for all of us.

Are you ready? Together, we can do anything. Time to reboot starting where ever you are today.

Stephen Safranek will be a guest on the Spiritual Politician this coming Friday at 7pm, EDT. Access the show through BBSradio.com.

Coalition: Cooperation: Respect, a direction for concerned Americans

After the piece above was published in oped news I received several comments that could be categorized. One type of comment went to the viewpoint that children are less important than (fill in the blank) the specific depended on the particular interest of the responder. Most of these were individuals focusing on issues that did not impinge on family at all.

Another responder thought that unless the focus was not on children but on the adversarial rights of parents it was irrelevant. Each perspective went to the needs and desires of the responder. Each assumed I had written the article because I had not thought about the other issues. They were wrong. I have thought about all of them.

The message I was trying to convey is that while each arena matters most to some number of us the problem we face is systemic. I spent many years working as a libertarian activist for causes in which I had no personal investment. Although I dislike drugs I worked for drug decriminalization., for example. I also worked for the freedom of business to avoid the regulatory interference of government while assuming the justice system would reliably handle where the cases where liability should be exacted. I was wrong about that. Time, if we pay attention, will heal the breeches in our understanding. The lack of liability for big business is one of the weapons converting America into a third world country.

The legal system is entirely corrupt today and that is one of the issues we need to keep in mind. When Wally Olson and I came up with the first deregulation organization, S. O. U. R., Stamp Out Unfair Regulations in 1975 it never occurred to me that absolute accountability would be left off the agenda.

Somehow accountability was pushed overboard. I suspect Ed Crane might know who thought that would be a good idea. See the Hart Williams articles on this.

The whole system, political, judicial, and executive, has been converted from one originally intended to provide services to one that generates monetary benefits of other considerations for those who are supposed to be providing services. Pedophiles are an immediate example of non-monetary beneficiaries of the family law system, for instance. Presumably, Tom Delay is just in it for the money but I have an open mind on that issue.

To successfully displace the present power structure all of the means for conversion must be taken into account and the means targeted for change. It is sheer stupidity to fight a war that fails to deal with the same weapons being applied to different populations. It is also inhumane. All decent people are being harmed. Gloating when others are suffering is just plain nasty.

My suggestion is that someone or several people track developments in each of these arenas, noting the means and so providing better and more informed means for response that keeps in mind the growing general realization that people are best able to make their own decisions and we need to stop using government as a means of using force against each other at second hand.

The original vision was for a people who governed themselves. The unspoken assumption was that we would not be grabbing up guns or laws to force others to conform to our ideas.

Both the Left and Right have continued to bicker about which ideas will be forced down the throats of other people. It is time to stop bickering and move towards a realization of the Mission Statement, allows people to choose for themselves. Americans have proven over and over that this is entirely possible. The government is just people, and generally those in government are less than sterling examples of personal ethics anyway.

Notice the effective responses to Katrina, 9/11, and major emergencies through our history. People dropped what they were doing and responded, doing the right thing without any studies, mandates or guidelines. Life is not rocket science.

Notice that when things do not work the reason is very often those in power who have their own agenda. That agenda usually goes to control, not to real relief.

Instead of the delight of inventing more arrangements for the deck chairs in the Titanic I suggest we be practical.

Whatever government we end up deciding we need should be subjected first to impact reports and experiments on the most local level. If you want to get people to adopt a program prove it works first, for gosh sakes. If it does not work in Podunk, Arkansas why would you want to force it on everyone? Personally, I think we matter at least as much as an endangered species and should be granted the same consideration.

Otherwise let's change our species affiliation to something endangered.

Left and Right is not the issue here, the issue is freedom and accountability for each of us. Coalition at this point is a simple matter of survival.

The original vision for America is still valid. That mission statement is:

“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. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, —

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

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 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. “

Time we started heading in that general direction.

The Oil Plundering Act, The Sheehan – Rockwell Affair, and Targeting British Petroleum

“Mom, when did Congress pass the Oil Plundering Act?”

Arthur surprised me while I was busy at the computer with the above question. I paused. I had been wasting a moment reading the posts on the purported affair between Lew Rockwell, and Cindy Sheehan. Libertarianland is a small world where everyone pretty much knows each other.

“What did you say?” I was sure I had misheard him. When I am reading I have been known to ignore earthquakes, even when it isn't gossip about someone I know. I got to know Lew when we were both on Libertarian National Committee in the 80s.

“The Oil Plundering Act. You said that Lloyd's of London had canceled the insurance for every country that had oil under its borders because of the potential liability.”

The memory returns, oozing back into my mind from a great distance.

“Oh yes, I said that – but I was joking. Sort of.”

The conversation in which this snippet was embedded took place recently over a dinner of Enchiladas Rancheras, one of my specialties. Given the interest this administration has exhibited in Venezuela and Mexico, among other nations, fortunate or unfortunate enough to control large reservoirs of oil, the remark had been not completely intended to be funny.

The remark lead to a longer discussion over the same savory dish as to how Lloyd's of London insures against risk. Private investors guarantee the policy, paying off in the event that becomes necessary. You could certainly see how Lloyd's might decide to end coverage in countries which, for this administration, are sitting there like big, succulent chocolates nestled down in their gold box. Certainly the lusting eye of Big Oil is a risk in the world today and it therefore follows that those factors would have to be accounted for by the Lloyd's actuarial specialists.

This lead to a discussion of the specific nations that therefore might be at risk, a respectable total, and the viewing of the website on where known reserves of oil are located.

That lead to a call to a good friend of mine, a petroleum engineer, who told me that the largest reserves of oil on American soil are those in Alaska.

As we know, these are now shut down due to the condition of the oil pipe line. What I did not know was that for at least the last ten years whistle blowers have been telling everyone in Washington and everywhere else they could think of that the noncorroding chemicals that should have been happily flowing through those pipes, preventing the slip last year of 1,000,000 barrels of oil and the close down this year were never used. One could suppose that the thrift of saving on the cost of the noncorrosive additives seemed like a good idea at the time to those in charge of the pipe line. That was, in care you did not know, British Petroleum.

At this point the pipe has corroded to the thickness of 1/100^th of an inch. So maybe it was thrift - but my friend had another explanation.

Back to the insurance issue. BP likely has insurance, probably with Lloyd's of London, that immunized them from loss every day the pipeline is not in operation. So they get paid for ignoring the need to add the noncorrosive chemicals. Perhaps the whistle blowers should have been calling Lloyd's, humm? Perhaps Lloyd's should look at the fine print, hoping that there might be a way out. Perhaps they could consult FEMA.

British Petroleum seems to get some amazing deals from government, especially for a foreign corporation.

British Petroleum, who controls the pipeline in Alaska, was the entity who was to have been given the right to drill for oil in the Alaskan Wildlife Preserve as well. I guess we can hope that this latest fiasco ensures that Congress will see that they are not a good choice. Of course, considering the make up of Congress we can not be sure of that either, can we?

British Petroleum came up just a few moments after these epiphanies when another friend called me and mentioned that they were comparing the solar panels produced by British Petroleum (expensive and inefficient) with another technology (cheap and reliable). Why was I not surprised? After all, for BP to produce an efficient technology would not put money in their pockets.

The whole thing just fit together so perfectly I was amazed.

The Administration allows BP to have a sweetheart deal in Alaska and hands them the right to drill in the Alaskan Wildlife Preserve. BP, showing the same good judgment we have come to expect from all government decides not to use the noncorrosive additives knowing full well they will not lose thereby. Their friends in Washington, look for more oil fields, which will also benefit BP.

I could just see the bulls eyes painted on the world map in the White House. Americans should really make up their minds to target Rove-Bush-Cheney for removal instead. Also, get ready to buy the units that will really minimize the purchase of oil.

My friend is about to start producing units that will eat BP alive. That is a meal America, and the world, needs.

So, after all of those entertaining moments I sat down and wrote this. I told Arthur that Congress did not actually pass a bill called the “Oil Plundering Act.” It just seems like it, given Iraq and the lustful eyes this administration is casting on Syria and Venezuela. But Lloyd's of London should consider canceling those policies or even going into another line of business.

And thanks to Lew and Cindy for light moment. However, we all know that old people don't have sex. What could Melanie Morgan have been thinking?

Saving Our Elderly: Off the Grid NOW

John Cadwalder has a solution that costs little, takes practically no upkeep, and makes America secure. Cadwalder has answers you need to know – for all of us.

Last winter nearly a million and a half homes in California went without electric power for as long as two weeks.

The cost of electricity rose steadily because of the policies adopted by the present administration. Today, the cost of electric power in the United States is tied in to the cost of oil like two Siamese twins joined at the hip and head.

Last month California was hit by a wave of heat that killed the elderly. I In California the total was one hundred and thirty. The mostly elderly died at home, some of them had air conditioners that were kept turned off. The elderly, on fixed incomes, could not afford the cost of the electricity to run their units. These elderly and not so elderly died along with their pets.. It was an ugly way to go.

Bodies were stacked two to the gurney because the hospitals could not handle the numbers of dead.

A few days ago, Americans who finally managed escape from Lebanon are trickling back home. Americans were last out because our embassy there ignored their need while such countries as England, Italy and Japan made free emergency transport available for their citizens. Our country had to be dissuaded from charging Americans fleeing for fear of their lives. This also delivered a very different message than we as American expect to hear from those in government.

Your electric company will be quick to tell you they are not liable, and they will be right. Government allows electric companies quasi-governmental status because it deems their interests as superior to those of the people. Government accepts no liability itself and extends that benefit to its friends.

What you demand from your house cleaner or your contractor you cannot get from those who are assumed to supply the needs that, gone unmet, will kill us. That is fundamentally wrong but at this point in time it is impossible to change.

We have learned that it does not take foreign terrorists to put us at risk, our government has done that themselves. We are vulnerable, and as was the case in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, the real answer is not government, it is facing the problem as they exists and solving them ourselves from within our communities, churches, and civic organizations.

There are many problems but at the top of the list is energy dependence, especially when the lack of affordable energy kills. Those most on the margin are at risk of their very lives.

We need to get serious about getting off the grid and ensure that our energy needs are met not through this system of tenuous and vulnerable cables but through the means now available that both lowers the cost and secures our continued needs over time. The technologies to accomplish this exist today, they are available as well as affordable, thanks to American innovators and inventors.

You will hear those in authority say this cannot be done, but notice whose interests they have been representing over the past months and years. The emergency infrastructure in New York on September 11th, 2001 completely broke down. It was volunteers who brought relief and ensured that what needed to be done was accomplished. As Californians we have seen this over and over as emergencies bring us together to ensure that our families and communities survive.

It is not rocket science, it is simple common sense to use what is available even when those who would profit from the status quo try hard to dissuade us.

The essential solar and cell technologies have come a long way since they were originally produced in 1900. My own family installed a system for heating water in their home in Hollywood in 1901. It worked perfectly. Today, the application of far more advanced technologies has made our present system a dinosaur as outdated as the levees that held the water back from New Orleans, another governmental program that cost lives because of the false sense of security that lulled people into inaction.

We expected solar to become standard in the 70s. We are still waiting – and now the costs are bankrupting ordinary Americans and our elderly are dying.

More than eighty-one of our elderly died just in California. Grandmothers, grandfathers, Uncles, Aunts, people we knew, with whom we worshiped and lived. We can not bring them back but we can make sure it does not happen again.

This is a problem that the powers that be have ignored because it does not augment their income. It is a problem that we need to acknowledge because it can kill us or those we love. Getting off the grid matters, not just to save money, but for that, too. It matters because we need to know we are caring for our own, being responsible, and loving each other as Christ told us to do.

It will not be easy, but it can be done if we face this together and take action. We need to do it now so next summer no one is at risk.

My father was a practical guy. If there was something that needed doing he would dig out the information and get it done. He would listen to people telling him it was impossible very politely. Then he would just do it. We can do that, too. Like I said, this is not rocket science. We all know many people who have installed their own entirely independent energy systems, either spending a lot or nearly nothing. Finding the best technology means being discerning and asking hard questions.

Americans have always been the kind of people who innovate and, when the chips are down, do it for themselves. America was built on that kind of creativity and initiative. We had it once; we still have it.

Many of those technologies we heard about in the 70s did work. They could have been used. Many patents for those technologies were, surprise, bought up and sat on by petroleum companies. That weren't a conspiracy, just market manipulation; easy for those who control the markets and government to carry out. This is an obstacle we can overcome because when you understand how it happens it can be avoided.

In the Spiritual Politician we hear from Americans with answers, from those people who find profit in taking the work of Jesus into the world through invention, business, and social action.

John Cadwalder is a good man who has an answer that solves this problem. John has spent his life studying the work of Tesla and other greats and has found solutions overlooked by industries who focused on selling petroleum products. He wants his technology used first to help the elderly and needy. There are lots of people out there who, like John, want to do the right thing and enact change for all of us. John, unlike other Americans, can tell you how we avoid the pitfalls placed by corporations. This is a program you need to hear.

John Cadwalder will discuss his new technology and why other similar technologies have not been available before now, and how these can save all of us on the Spiritual Politician, Friday, August 11th, at 7pm EDT at BBSradio.com t 7pm EDT at BBSradio.com

To Contact us e-mail: the.melinda@yahoo.com

Founder and president of the Arthur C. Pillsbury Foundation

Books by Melinda: Links to Melinda's sites:

How the NeoCons Stole Freedom

Shards of Verse Melinda's Poetry

Seventh Voice

Greed: The NeoConning of America

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A Republican Woman asks why Democrats do not demand Impeachment

“The tea was held upstairs, past open doors that held the portraits of First Ladies and mementos of previous administrations.”



I wrote the above to appear in a newsletter for the National Federation of Republican Women soon after the tea. I had gotten my invitation to the White House Tea as a Regent for NFRW and because I had donated to No Child Left Behind. The sandwiches were delicious – but subsequent events have persuaded me that to remain loyal to America I need to ask that Laura's husband be impeached. Since it is clear the Republicans are not going to clean their own house I am urging Democrats to act now and remove both President Bush and Vice President Cheney from office.

As a long time Republican, who worked for Barry Goldwater, I have watched with dismay as events play out in the Administration of George W. Bush and Richard Cheney. The reasons grow more compelling every day.

It is not that our military are dying in a war, but that the war was sold with lies and that the real reason over 2,500 Americans and God knows now many Iraqis have been killed is to stop the flow of oil to France and Russia. Those countries had just signed an oil deal with Saddam Hussein when the war began.

As events played out it became gut wrenchingly obvious to me that Bush and Cheney had not just overlooked their oaths of office; they had shredded the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, documents that any American should respect. Torture in the name of freedom? Taping Americans in the name of security? Someone has obviously lost their mind or is following an agenda that has nothing to do with their rhetoric.

I understand why Republicans can't take this necessary step; the Republican Party was quietly taken over by the NeoCons who run the Bush Administration, starting a while ago.
In California they marched into the Republican State Convention several years back and just took over, overthrowing leadership that really represented the grassroots. Exerting control happens in many different ways and Rove most probably made sure of that first.

Republicans, the kind of people who believed and lived the ideas of Barry Goldwater, low taxation, local government, and individual rights, have been marginalized throughout the Republican Party. The only people left in positions of authority, for the most part, are either NeoCons or NeoCon sympathizers. Long time organizations like the Republican Assemblies, the John Birch Society, and the newly formed Republican Liberty Caucus despise Bush and understand that we stand on the brink of fascism. They do nothing but wring their hands, unfortunately. Some of that is probably fear; some comes from the Republican Command, “Thou shalt not speak evil of another Republican.” I disagree obviously.

I have always felt that political parties are just tools used to work for an agenda agreed on by those who are active. If we owe loyalty to anything it is to the principles for which America was founded. Today we have confused the word, 'rights,' with 'privileges.' Rights are not a list of specifics, they are the acknowledgment that each of us is born possessed of inherent rights to act, own the property we earn, and to be free in our own persons. That is Jefferson's, “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Converting those God given rights to privileges made all of us subject to government when the whole idea was that our freedom existed before any government we adopted as a tool for ordering our human world.

Loyalty to a political party should never be stronger than your loyalty to that original vision of a people coming together to govern themselves, using persuasion and consent. Members of Congress should burn their party membership cards before being sworn. It is as if you felt loyalty to your hammer, a tool, instead of to the family you love who live in the house you built using that tool.

I have been wondering for a long time why Democrats have not taken action. John Conyers has proposed a censure, a good start. Others outside Congress are talking about impeachment. But nothing happens.

Why is the Democratic faction of Congress tip toeing around, pretending that all is well in Congressland?

I have a nasty streak of cynicism so answers did occur to me. I hope I am wrong, but my reason says I am dead on.

The Democratic contingent of Congress spends its time watching the steady roll of fascism through America's Institutions, silent where you would expect outrage, because they are all too aware that if they speak out their own dirty laundry will be dragged out for examination. They watched the appointment of federal judges carefully steered through the process of ratification through the system who had been solicited by the Federalist Society. Founded in 1982 by Republicans and Libertarians that organization had an agenda that includes lofty rhetoric that states, “ that the state exists to preserve freedom, that the separation of governmental powers is central to our Constitution, and that it is emphatically the province and duty of the judiciary to say what the law is, not what it should be.”

That is what they say. One wonders if they ever read it. This is one of those times when rhetoric is used as cover, I suppose. The actions of the Federalists included placing judges with a political agenda who do as they are told. Clarence Thomas was their shining moment and the destruction of Anita Hill business as usual. Time and several thorough books have determined the truth of those questions.

I think it likely that Democrats serving in Congress cringe at the idea of an investigation into matters they know will not stand the light of day in a court overseen by one of these Federalist graduates. The meaning of 'is' does not even come close to not being able to see the difference between the separation of the branches of government and the monolithic state that confronts our eyes today.

Remember the downcast eyes of Teddy Kennedy during the Clarence Thomas hearings. There is a reason that Democrats are afraid to speak out.

Democrats are vulnerable and they know it. Some of them probably wonder what the NSA picked up in its tapings or what kind of home movies Bush gets from his operatives and if they played starring roles. Not all of them have that kind of worries; I am sure there are good, decent, honest Congressmen on both sides of the isle. But there are enough to make it impossible for any counter move to be successful. Enough is all the NeoCons needed.

If an individual Congressman has dirty laundry he is vulnerable. He can be depended on to be quiet on those issues that really matter and the censure and impeachment matter. If this Congress fails we will lose more than the illusion that the Democratic Party is at least marginally competent as a tool of political action.

I used to believe that there was a vast Left-Wing conspiracy! Ha! A conspiracy implies effective organization.

Impeachment matters; removing this administration is essential if America is to reclaim the vision that summoned it into being, if it is to again be the means by which a people govern themselves.

No president has ever violated the Bill of Rights, the Constitution, and the other tenets of American thought as thoroughly as the weedeating wonder who occupies the White House today.

Any Democrat who asked to be re-elected to Congress without having signed on to the Censure by Conyers, promised to work for it, and then put his or her name to a bill of impeachment is a traitor to freedom and to America. I am a Republican and I am telling you the truth. I wish those in my own party would step up to the plate, but I do not expect it.

Our lives and the future of our country depend on taking action. Now.

In 1776 a group of men, supported by their wives who would also suffer, pledged, “Their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor,” on a venture that looked impossible. The world expected us to fail; instead we won the Revolution and then lost the battle for freedom with the Great Compromise that ignored the inherent rights of blacks and women.

I suspect that the Founders know that now and hope that we will do better.

The Founders were mostly well off or at least middle class. Life and doing the right thing is about risk and they understood what they could lose. Life is temporary, honor is forever. They were imperfect and so are we. They had the courage to do what had to be done. Do we?

If the Democratic Delegation to Congress is afraid they should remember that the Constitution and Bill of Rights is precisely what they are sworn to protect. If doing that means they risk having their sins exposed to public sight then they should remember that the only two people who matter already know; they themselves and God.

Speak out, act, risk what is only yours on trust anyway. The courage must come, as always, from individuals. For a moment imagine what might be possible. What if those who are controlled by guilty secrets came forward and simply admitted what has been hidden? What if these with guilty consciences offered to make amends for any wrongs they have done?
Confessed to those they had harmed? Asked forgiveness? That would be a powerful statement that would leave them feeling better about themselves and on a firmer footing with everyone around them – and with God. Their fellow members could support and encourage them. Many would find that much would be forgiven them. It would be a revival of American trust, something much needed by all of us today.

America, needs clean, open, politics and the means for ensuring that the government we pay for does not become the government that owns us. Impeachment is necessary; impeachment is appropriate.

I suggest that the Democrats in Congress get off their duffs and get started. Forget your favorite entree in the Congressional Dining room; forget that plush retirement; forget the junkets and perks. Your country needs you NOW. Time is short and should not be wasted.

A Republican woman told you so.

How New Yorkers can stop the NeoCons

Matthew 7:5 - “You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.”


New York State is legend for the corruption of its government. Some New Yorkers might prickle at that but they know it is all too true. In some instances in other places corruption is incidental, arising from one individual or a small number of individuals who abuse their power.

But in New York the story is more complex. That corruption has been enabled by the political structure built mostly by those who identify themselves as Democrats. The abuse of power in New York City, through the court system, legislatively, and woven into every other imaginable avenue, is just a part of life there.

It was not always this way; and many good people have worked to change this from all political perspectives, but they have failed. The power that comes with corruption, like a gold ring grabbed from a wooden horse on the carousel, became an accepted part of life in the Big Apple. No amount of clean up by either party has done much to change that.

Corruption is everywhere government touches the lives of the people, placing all of us at risk both by that system and even more gravely by those who are taking advantage of the opportunities such corruption makes possible.

What starts in places like New York; ends at the doors of the White House and Congress. The NeoCons are the most efficient crooks but New York lead the way.

The Garson case in Brooklyn revealed not just one case of judicial corruption but a system of corruption that tied back to the appointment of judges by, surprise, the Democratic Party. Not a NeoCon was in sight – but the reliance of women and children on a dispassionate and judicial oversight for their lives had been converted to a market in pull. The tapping of a judge, carrying on business as usual by extorting cash from a desperate mother, was carried out by one courageous woman, Frieda Haminov. She had been discouraged and threatened by authorities and carried out her expose despite the official hostility. Her acts resulted in one cover up after another; little changed in spite of the overwhelming evidence.

Good people are still at risk when circumstances force them into the court system.

The legislature is no different. Ada L. Smith, Democratic State Senator for Queens, continues her battering and vitriol, showering abuse down on her office staff while she continues to rake in the monetary benefits from her position. No NeoCon handed her the phone she flung at her last victim.

New Yorkers know their system is corrupt. In New York there is nothing that is not for sale from the bench or the legislature. But there is nothing that the people can do to enact change as things stand today. Systemic corruption means that those in control have become part of a system that uses the government to funnel wealth into their own pockets. Greed trumps goodness every time.

Those elected to Federal office from New York came up through that system and to succeed played that system successfully, thus picking up the same nasty habits and destructive values that hopefully will limit Old Ada's career. The most successful of these go on to Washington D. C.
Therefore, those who secured their power in New York now serving mostly themselves in Congress, are not, shall we say, the kind of people who can afford to throw stones at the NeoCons.

Congress is a glass house.

If the Democratic Party is to save itself and offer a solution to the growing Nazism of the NeoCons Democrats with the balls and determination need to take action and the first item on that agenda should be cleaning up their own house. They need to change the Democratic Party. Do they have the courage? The jury is out; Las Vegas might refuse to make odds on that one.
Corruption in one place transfers everywhere.

There is a reason why the Democratic contingent of Congress spends its time watching the steady roll of fascism through America's Institutions, silent where you would expect outrage. Several generations of stealing less and a solid addiction to the benefits of power has made them vulnerable to the charges that would be leveled at them if they dared speak out. Some of them probably wonder what the NSA picked up in its tapings or what kind of home movies Bush gets from his operatives. Not all of them have that kind of worries, but enough to make it impossible for any counter move to be successful. Enough is all the NeoCons need.

If an individual Congressman has dirty laundry he is vulnerable. He can be depended on to be quiet on those issues that really matter. Otherwise he is free to benefit from his position. The NeoCons don't mind a little sharing.

At an elemental level this is not a partisan problem – but the divides of politics have worked well to build that perception.

There is no question that Republicans also need to act; they need to clean up their own party as well. But for them this is far more difficult. None NeoCons lack any control over their political infrastructure, Many of them, now still stuck in denial, are experiencing a deer-in-the-headlights moment. The Democrats, on the other hand, must deal only with the more mundane, garden variety kind of corruption. Sort of homey after watching the NeoCons operate, isn't it?

Are Democrats up to that challenge? Their grass roots, peeling away just like many Republicans, are giving up hope. The courage must come, as always, from individuals. For a moment imagine what might be possible. What if those who are controlled by guilty secrets came forward and simply admitted what has been hidden? What if they offered to make amends for any wrongs they have done? Confessed to those they had harmed? Asked forgiveness? That would be a powerful statement that would leave them feeling better about themselves and on a firmer footing with everyone around them – and with God. Their fellow members could support and encourage them. Many would find that much would be forgiven them. It would be a revival of American trust, something much needed – and not just in New York.

New York, and all of America, needs Clean, Open, Politics and the means for ensuring that the government we pay for does not become the government that owns us.

Clean, open, politics is not rocket science. In fact, it need not be difficult. During the last two hundred years Americans have created all of the tools needed to accomplish that goal. Those tools are the accountability and enforceability we expect from insurance agents, dog walkers, house cleaners, brokers and other professionals. We trust those elected to legislatures and courts with things far more valuable than entrusted to any house cleaner. Why do we fail to ensure they are bonded? When elected officials steal, either directly or by holding a garage sale on our rights as Americans, there must be accountability.

We, not they, have the rights recognized by the Declaration of Independence. We, not they, are sovereign.

A bond should cover the cost of removing them from office by recall or other ethically appropriate method. If you lie you leave should be a basic assumption of accepting political office, and not just the next term, immediately. Tom Delay should not only be gone he should be bankrupted by liability and now working at MacDonald's.

It is time for installing Accountability 101 in government. While the Democratic Party starts looking for the rags and cleaner for that housecleaning job on itself Americans need to dig in and ensure the job gets done in every possible way. Coming clean is one way, the other is coming together. We must close the political divides between right and left, keeping in mind that we are one people.

Some of us are already working on that.

Coalition for Clean, Open, Politics, a growing group of fed up Americans is forming, determined to return control to the people by exacting accountability for those in government. Promises made must be promises kept. To do that we need to extract enforceable promises from hopeful candidates and we need to bond them, ensuring the means for removal are available.

When real control is again vested directly in the people the moral hazard of government as it is today will be less of a temptation to the ethically challenged, and that will be a good thing.


Co-chairs, Mike Hersh Mikehersh@mikehersh.com, Dem.; Melinda Pillsbury-Foster the.melinda@yahoo.com, Rep.; Robert Hughes, vanhighz@gmail.com, Rep.

John Fund and the Truth: On Trial in New York

On Friday morning, in the Superior Court of Manhattan, John Fund will face the consequences for his own actions. John Fund lied, slandered, libeled, and used his power in concerted attempts to destroy those who refused to be silenced. He is practiced in the skills of deception having studied under a master of that political art form, Karl Rove.

Our trust in justice does not die all at once, it seeps out through hundreds and thousands of small wounds over a long time.

The process of Justice in America has not been swift; it has been four long years. It is not certain; Robert Morganthau refused to prosecute the criminal case without explanation.

But in this case the victim has finally managed to have her day in
court.

John Fund is being sued for battery, theft, and other causes; not the kind of action one generally thinks of politically relevant.

The victim of his violence and lies is Morgan Pillsbury Gell. Morgan, now married, is near term with her second child.

Traveling to New York for the trial was not easy for her – but she was determined. Mrs. Gell went on with her life through a battery of slanders and libels extruded by John Fund and his friends. This moment of hope may be short-lived. No one in the media much cares; no one seems to see how this case highlights the problems we confront with the whole of politics in America today.

She is just another battered woman. This is not important. Or is it?

Civilized people need to know there will be justice for all.

Justice is something we often misunderstand. It is not about vengeance, it is about restoring balance, about affirming the sense that we can trust the world to be reasonable, if not always kind.

Jesus said that none of us are asked to carry burdens that are too heavy for us to bear; a system of justice should ensure that we carry only the burdens we have created and not the burdens imposed by others by deceit, coercion, and violence. Four years is a long time to wait.

Justice is important to us as individuals and to America as the nation of which each of us is a part. It is something for which we hunger today because it has never been harder to come by.

On Tuesday, John Fund refused to participate in arbitration; a few minutes later he, the attorneys, his victim, and the judge were seated in a courtroom and potential jurors were filling out the forms that will help determine if they will be empaneled to hear the case. Wednesday empaneling was finished; the trial started.

John did not think he should have to be bothered with a trial. After all, he is routinely briefed by the White House. Important people cannot be held accountable -- at least that is what Fund believes, and he has his reasons for holding such a belief. This is what our present administration has taught him by their own behavior.

For Important People there is no accountability.

John thinks he cannot be held accountable for his lies because he an essential cog in the slick machine of the Bush Administration and the Neoconservative movement. He is, after all, briefed by the White House.

Important people are different; we should all see that. Important people hold a little card that says, “FREE LIE,” to be used at will as often as necessary. They are printed on a special press by Karl Rove and handed out to all the Important People.

Fund has seen George W. Bush evade responsibility for far larger lies with bluster. He has seen Karl Rove evade facing justice for an arguable act of treason with a smirk and a gloat. So John has reason for his beliefs. Our political system affirms his right to lie as necessary so that he can continue to work as a political operative for this administration.

“Important people, ” what we used to think of as “public servants,” view themselves differently today. Not for them a simple transparent honesty, not on the national level and not on the local level in New York, the same state that has ignored the violence done by State Senator Ada L. Smith. Smith has thus far evaded justice on the charges she has battered a growing number of her office staff over the last several years, the last one just a few weeks ago. This Administration may have fine-tuned lying and evasion to a science but they are not the ones who wrote the book.

The deceptive practices are the same in every case. Lie, use larger lies, stifle the truth through threats, financial pressure; Destroy reputations, kill trust. As long as you win it does not matter. The core players wrote the rule book and all are briefed by someone.

John has been briefed since before George W. Bush was 'elected' president in 2000. He was being briefed when he put out the rumor that John McCain had a black love child, the rumor that killed the McCain candidacy in South Carolina. When John McCain burst into the Wall Street Journal to exact some retribution, John hid under his desk. Fund does not like physical encounters with people who are larger or stronger than himself. Morgan is just over five feet tall. John is around six feet three.

Fund's whole ego and being is tied up in being an Important Person, briefed by the White House. He worked hard to get where he is today.

John's first article sold for $3,000.00 to the Reader's Digest around 1982. He used the anguished confession he received from a woman who was working at the Reagan White House to buy his ticket to the East Coast. She thought he was her friend. In Washington D. C. he began working for Rowland Evans and Robert Novak; today Novak remains his friend and mentor. That article destroyed the woman's career; Fund said that what she had told him was just the truth; he had done nothing for which he needed to apologize.

For a long time John's favorite saying was, “The truth will set you free.” Fund does not say that anymore. That FREE LIE card changes your outlook.

In the beginning John had other ways of evading accountability. Then he just broke down in tears and cried, eliciting sympathy. This was his reaction when Eric Garris confronted him on the lie he had run successfully for school board in Sacramento. In fact, he had never been a candidate and had reported someone else's race as his own. Found out, he cried and begged Garris to conceal the truth. Garris did that until just a few months ago, an act he now regrets.

John went on to a rich career at the Wall Street Journal and, after the sordid details of his affair with Morgan became public, OpinionJournal.com. He never gave Eric Garris another thought and certainly never helped him. Fund was going to be Important.

Being a political operative means that lying, planting false information, and such are just part of your routine work. That is work that came very naturally to John Fund.

Americans have seen the same deceptive practices used in the Valerie Plame case, with the claims that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, the claim that took us into a war that has killed over 2,500 Americans, uncounted Iraqis, and is costing trillions of dollars that flow night and day into the corporate coffers of Halliburton through no bid, cost plus contracts. Nice work if you can get it.

The same deceptive practices that dragged us into war were used in a case of domestic violence in New York City to bail out a man whose start up the ladder of 'success' came at the cost of another person's career. That and the tears have really paid off for John. He still cries as necessary.

Don't expect to see much about the Fund – Pillsbury Trial in the mainstream media. Notice who pays those media salaries. America's media has slowly over the last decade been acquired by the same corporate interests who funded the Bush campaigns. The American media is, in fact, a significant segment of the Bush Core Constituency.

Journalists may want to cover it but doing so could cost them their jobs.

So In New York, the city that witnessed the trial of John Peter Zenger in 1735 and so gave us the First Amendment, the issues of honesty by those entrusted with power is yet again on point. Honesty, integrity and simple justice are things all of us ordinary, unimportant, people grow hungrier for every single day. We know we are unimportant, we are not briefed by the White House.

When will Americans be ready to demand the honesty and justice for which we pay so dearly? When will New York weep for the honor and courage lost to the past?

I think that day is coming sooner than John Fund, Karl Rove, or George Bush realizes.

John was right about one thing. If you know the truth it will set you free.

Get off the Grids; Organize Locally; Build Coalition – and remember that honesty matters, Jesus, an person not briefed by any White House, said so.