RIGHTS FREEDOM LIBERTY




Police State Tactics Employed at Republican National Convention Against Ron Paul Delegates


Police raided headquarters of RNC protesters in ST. PAUL, Minnesota. Police raided a rental hall used by a group organizing protests at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota, on Friday. Although no one was arrested, the group said police temporarily detained and photographed at least 50 people who were inside the building. As many as 30 police officers entered with guns drawn, according to witnesses in the building... complete article


Families Separated, Children Have No idea What Happened to Mom and Dad, Parents Not Allowed to Send a Message; Young Adults Who've Known No Other Home, Forcefully Relocated to to a Foreign Country Where they Don't Know the Language

The above could be a description of the Nazi deportations of the Jews or Soviet style domestic terrorism but it isn't. It' a description of the actions of the current United States Government. This occurs every day as peaceful, productive, hard working families are broken up and young adults who moved to the U.S. in the first two years of life are sent back to Mexico or wherever they came from.Forget about the allegation that they came here illegally. What difference does it make? Is this the way we want to treat peaceful people? See Issues: Immigration.


Government as a Business: Somewhere between the local Electric Monopoly and the Local Casa Nostra?

Sal Grosso is a hero! The City of Coral Gables, FL wasn't ready for what hit them when this retiree decided to move into their turf. He did a little snooping around and managed to uncover a massive web of corruption and complicity in city government. He started by focusing on the city water department and discovered that the water department couldn't account for more than ten percent of the water it pumped. Eventually it was discovered that certain large industries in the area were getting water at a flat residential (unregulated rate), and the elected officials of the city seemed to know, and not want it known by the public. Further probing found similar "inefficiencies" in other departments, and the same resistance on the part of those who were elected to protect public interest to protect such secrets instead. 

Sal Grosso has uncovered evidence of what most of us know at some level. Government is inherently incapable of running a business. That is because at best government is inclined toward incompetence, inefficiency, and bloat, and at worst, also corruption. The reason for this is simple. GOvernment has the legal authority to take money from you with no Sal Grosso looking over their shoulders in most cases to make sure they're using it appropriately. Government has a monopoly on everything it does, whether it be printing money (at the Federal level) or printing brochures advertising its own services.

Whether public or private, monopolies are known to exist to perpetuate themselves and enrich themselves. We normally think of monopolies in terms of business, but we don't realize that government, even on the local level, is primarily a business.

Whether it is a water system, sewage system, highway system, or fill in the blanks, a business (and if these are entities that create products, sell commodities or provide services, they are businesses)can only be run efficiently if there is an incentive to do so. Competition and free markets are required to create an incentive for efficiency. When government is also your water company, sewage and waste disposal company, utility company, streets and highway company, et. al., there is every reason to expect inefficiency, incompetence, inflated pricing, and most likely also corruption. The solution is complete privatization of all government operations and services except for a legislature (stripped of most of its staff and bureaucracy) and an executive branch (again stripped of most of its bureaucracy). Everything else should be privatized. That includes the justice and law enforcement systems. All we can trust government to do is oversight of essential services and upholding the existing laws and Constitution. Even then, we can't trust government to do the actual work, just monitor those who do (and even then I worry). --jwh--

The complete article on Sal Grosso at the Town Hall website.    


Facing Jail for Collecting Petitions?

Editor's Note: It's the kind of thing we all assume just doesn't happen in America. Paul Jacob, and two other colleagues, were under indictment in Oklahoma, and could have potentially spent ten years in prison. Their crime: for passing petitions demanding government accountabilty.

 

You heard it right. Gives the expression "Only in America," a whole new meaning, doesn't it?
Here's a message from Paul Jacob taken from his Common Sense blog.

The Oklahoma Three, Free at Last

It seemed hardly necessary. The handcuffs and leg-irons, I mean. I wasn't a threat to anybody. Neither were Rick Carpenter and Susan Johnson.

We had been charged with “conspiracy to defraud the state of Oklahoma” for our work to put a spending cap on the ballot.The metal constraints were for show — to intimidate us and to scare the good citizens of Oklahoma.The threatened penalty of ten years in prison was scary, too.

Being innocent, we defended our rights, even as the persecution dragged on for a year and half. Not even a preliminary hearing had been completed. Folks wondered if Attorney General Drew Edmondson was more interested in tying us up politically than in prosecuting us legally.

We never got our day in court; the Constitution intervened. Not only did we not break Oklahoma's residency law, the federal Tenth Circuit declared the law itself an unconstitutional violation of our First Amendment rights.

So, on January 22nd, the AG dismissed the charges. It was a great day — for all of us.

But the underlying mindset of the original law and prosecution remains. Legislators continue to enact unconstitutional impediments against citizen use of ballot initiatives and recall petitions. Too often, officials seek to punish citizens who assert their rights.

Citizens in chains cannot control their government. That's why, working with the group Citizens in Charge, I'll keep fighting.

If you'd like more details on Paul's story you'll find it at his website.