Psychopath vs Sociopath

Psychopathy and sociopathy are both anti-social personality disorders. While both these disorders are the result of an interaction between genetic predispositions and environmental factors, psychopathy leans towards the hereditary whereas sociopathy tends towards the environmental.

Psychopaths are born with temperamental differences such as impulsivity, cortical underarousal, and fearlessness that lead them to risk-seeking behavior and an inability to internalize social norms. On the other hand, sociopaths have relatively normal temperaments; their personality disorder being more an effect of negative sociological factors like parental neglect, delinquent peers, poverty, and extremely low or extremely high intelligence.

Anti-social personality disorder results in extremely violent acts. Though psychiatrists often consider and treat sociopaths and psychopaths as the same, criminologists treat them as different because of the difference in their outward behaviour.

Comparison chart

Differences in Outward Behavior of a Psychopath and a Sociopath

Social Relationships

Psychopaths often live at the fringes of society. They often tend to be extremely disorganized and are unable to maintain normal relationships with family, friends or co-workers.

Unlike psychopaths, sociopaths can be almost obsessively organized and are normal in their social relationships, often forming symbiotic or parasitic relations. A sociopath would likely live an outwardly normal life and appear to blend in well with society; they may even be charming.

Career

Psychopaths often find it hard to maintain a steady job and home.

Sociopaths often have successful careers and try and try to make others like and trust them. This is because they understand human social emotions quite well but are unable to experience them. This allows them to be master manipulators of human emotions.

Violent tendencies

A psychopath’s outbreaks of violence are erratic and unplanned. After an erratic act, psychopaths can often be easily identified as they generally leave behind a trail of clues and a history of violent outbursts.

A sociopaths can plan acts of violence for years and may often be motivated by greed or revenge. Violent crimes by sociopaths are often controlled and often go undetected until after a sociopath is caught.

Video explaining the difference

Here’s a short video of HLN’s Dr. Drew explaining the difference between a sociopath and a psychopath:

 

Similarities between Psychopaths and Sociopaths

Sociopaths and psychopaths both face medical disorders that can be treated or alleviated if properly diagnosed. Treatment involves therapies and may involve proper medication. In fact, psychiatrists often don’t distinguish between the two based on behavior; instead, they label a person with ASPD a sociopath if their mental condition is a result of mainly social conditions like abuse during childhood and a psychopath if the condition is mainly congenital.

The symptoms in both cases begin to establish and surface at approximately fifteen years of age. The initialsymptom can be excessive cruelty to animals followed by lack of conscience, remorse or guilt for hurtful actions to others at a later stage. There may be an intellectual understanding of appropriate social behavior but no emotional response to the actions of others. Psychopaths may also face an inability to form genuine relationships, and may show inappropriate or out of proportion reaction to perceived negligence.

Source: Diffen.com

A Guide To Obama’s Sales Pitch For Corporate Profits – Or ReBilking America

The visual above is the short story. Barack Obama smooching Charles Koch, who with his brother, David, very much wants American taxpayers to pay for the XL Keystone pipeline, which will save them money and the trouble of redesigning their present refineries, deep in the heart of Texas. The Koch refinery is configured to take heavy crude, available only from Venezuela and Canada.

And along with the distasteful issue of going hat in hand to Hugo Chavez, and paying $100 (£64) a barrel, the oil the Kochs need is available far more thriftily from Canada, selling at around $67 (£42) a barrel. Even billionaires take thrift into consideration. Getting Americans, now struggling to feed their families, to pay doubtless stuck them as a much better idea.

You can’t say the Brothers Koch are not consistent. I coined the name, ‘Greedville,’ to ID them and their many co-conspirators. Together, they have been bilking America for years and have now formed a coalition with President Obama to Rebilk America using ideas which first say light of day in the unlikely environs of Libertarianism, for which I must apologize. I tried to stop them, but what do you do with a bunch of wild-eyed Randroids, including the ever avaricious Ed Crane?

Crane, and Cato Institute, eventually saw the full potential of privatization, borrowed from Reason Foundation.

Privatization, the lodestone of the Obama message, should strike horror into the hearts of an American. Privatization has grown our prisons into factories intended only to produce money through incarceration, many of these for crimes which are, arguably, not crimes at all, harming no one. The same “public – private” cooperation, also known as fascism, is steadily encroaching on every part of our lives and, sadly, can be credited directly to a Libertarian.

Dr. Robert Poole, who originated the idea of privatization in his 1975 book, “Cutting Back City Hall,” laid the tracks for the railroading Obama is ‘fast-tracking’ for the Kochs, who are large donors to Reason Foundation and actually founded Cato Institute. These supposedly Libertarian think-tanks have long since become the means of quieting objections from the ‘Right’ intelligent enough to understand what was actually going down.

Using the fiction of ‘privatization,’ actually corporatization, corporations intend to own America’s entire infrastructure, mining it, and us with the cost-plus contracts for ‘rebilking’ which helped make the Kochs billionaires in the first place. I’m sure Bob Poole did well on the deal.

Bob retired to Florida where he spends his time playing with, would you believe, his model trains.

Obama’s pitch for corporate welfare can usefully be considered as two parts. The cake, which are the direct largess to be handed out to the Kochtapus and friends, and the frosting of promises, including “quality day-care,” which was to sugar-coat the impending flow of funds to Greedville with promises for programs which, if precedent is to be believed, are in reality intended to put ordinary Americans under tighter control and provide earlier access to children for purposes of ensuring they emerge from ‘schooling’ properly propagandized.

What any reasonable person would have asked is, “why not policies which return prosperity to Americans so mothers and fathers can raise their own children, instilling their own values?

Since such ‘policy reforms,’ as changes in student loans actually should address the fraudulent nature of the loans in the first place, why is an investigation into this by the DOJ not included? Answer: These loans resulted in enormous corporate profits.

Every proposal has the same unchanging outcome, increasing corporate profits while making it look like they are doing ordinary Americans a favor.

The gloss of frosting also included the continued demand for gun control, intended to leave Americans unable to defend themselves against this assault of fascism.

In fact, along with Obama’s use of ‘not for profits,’ and a steady roll of propaganda, there was not a leaf left out of the book also used by Karl Rove. Perhaps Karl loaned it to him.

When Obama uses the phrase ‘rebuilding America, he actually means rebilking America. The only solution is taking the power back, directly to the people. Get the real thing. Rebuild America, starting in your own local community by returning to our founding principles.

Instead of more bilking start rebuilding America for real.

The Declaration of Independence affirms the rights of all people to life, liberty, and happiness.

The Preamble to the Constitution says, “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

One of the first steps to securing the blessings of liberty and ensuring justice hinges on an electoral system which we can trust, the very thing Karl Rove has worked so hard to extinguish, with the help of the people named above, and many, many more like him.

Over the last decade a general agreement on several points has coalesced in the Election Integrity Movement.

First, we need to dump the voting machines.

Second, we need to return control of balloting to the most local level, voting on paper ballots, tallying transparently and openly at the precinct and then publishing the results.

To return power to the people we need to move the nexus of control closer to home.

We can also ensure states can bypass Congress by proposing Constitutional Amendments and ratifying among themselves, thus returning power to the states, closer to the people who are the government. The Madison Amendment.

We need to return representation of the people to the levels mandated by the Constitution, this being no more than 30,000 for a member of the House of Representatives and no more than 1,000 locally. Our present system violates the Constitution. This must be corrected. Doing so must take place through local organizing, original shoe-leather activism, which brings us together past the divisions politics has imposed.

Local organizing will also allow us to pass ordinances banning the use of drones, along with other essential measures for returning control to the people. Strong communities, concern for those around us, and individual initiative, made America a shining light on the horizon for people around the world once. We have it in our power to begin the world over again. The choice is each of ours make.

At Rebuild America, we supply information, tools, and a meeting point for sharing what works so local action can flower as the people do it themselves.

See you there, and then in your home town.

Americans Don’t Want Blanket Amnesty For Illegal Aliens

While Congress and Obama push for mass amnesty, the American people do not want to be flooded with 12 to 20 million more unskilled, uneducated people ushered into the United States.

The majority of law-abiding, taxpaying American citizens understand that legalizing 12 to 20 million illegal aliens will create a “Human Katrina Hurricane” flooding into the United States. Ironically, with 47 million Americans subsisting on food stamps and another 14 million unemployed Americans—it makes no sense to legalize a minimum of 12 million foreigners that will tap directly into America’s jobs, Social Security, health care, assisted housing, welfare and educational systems.

What irks me stems from the statement, “Our immigration laws are broken.”  Fact: our immigration laws have not been enforced for over 30 years. They crash our borders with impunity. They work illegally with immunity.  Illegal migrant employers like McDonald’s, Hormel, Tyson Chicken, Chipotle’s, Marriott Hotels, construction firms and more—get away with endless crime of forged Social Security cards, fraudulent cash payments and displacement of Americans citizens from jobs.

If Obama wins an amnesty, we all lose.  We lose because he won’t enforce any “new” immigration laws.  That will encourage millions of desperate people around the world to flood faster into the United States.  We are no longer a sovereign country, but a destination.

Not considered by Congress, that 12 to 20 million illegal migrants will be able to bring in at least 10 of their immediate family through “family reunification.” That will accelerate the flood of humanity into the tens of millions beyond the original amnesty.

The Center for Immigration Studies,  www.cis.org , announced the results of a national survey that found 52 percent of likely voters want illegal aliens to their home countries. Only 33 percent preferred they be given legal status. The results, which were published in a new CIS report, are based on polling conducted by Pulse Opinion Research.

“Poll wording matters. Most post-election polls on immigration policy have given the public the false choice of conditional legalization or mass deportations. This poll uses neutral wording that allows us to know the views of the American public,” said Dr. Steven Camarota, CIS’ Director of Research. “With border security and the enforcement of immigration laws being a key issue with legislators, the fact that 70 percent of those polled were not confident that immigration law would be enforced if there is legalization and 69 percent believed providing legal status to illegals would encourage more illegal immigration is a good indicator of public sentiment.”

Among the findings of the survey:

• Of those who want illegal immigrants to return home, 73 percent said that they felt “very strongly” about their view, while just 35 percent of those who support legalization said they felt very strongly about their view.

• One reason the public may prefer that illegal aliens go home is a strong belief that immigration laws have not been enforced — 64 percent said that enforcement of immigration laws has been “too little”, while just 10 percent said that it had been too much, and 15 percent said it was “just right”.

• When asked why there is a large illegal population, voters overwhelming (71 percent) thought it was because we had not made a real effort to enforce our immigration laws. Only 18 percent said it was because we didn’t allow in enough legal immigrants.

• About two-thirds of voters (69 percent) agreed with the statement that “giving legal status to illegal immigrants does not solve the problem because rewarding law breaking will only encourage more illegal immigration.” Just 26 percent disagreed.

• Only 27 percent of voters expressed confidence that immigration laws would be enforced in the event of a legalization, while 70 percent said they were not confident laws would be enforced.

• 53 percent said they would be more likely to support a political party that supports immigration law enforcement while 32 percent indicated that they would be more likely to support a party that supports legalization.

 

We Americans must ask ourselves if we want our country continuously flooded with an endless line of legal and illegal immigrants.   If we don’t we must take action.

You are not alone with your concern about America’s future. You can take action. Join www.CapsWeb.org ; www.CIS.org ; www.NumbersUSA.org ; www.Fairus.org

Bond Bubble Expectations

Bonds are loans that have the expectation of payback with interest. Government bonds are viewed as the safest financial instrument since the primary fiscal obligation of the state is to honor the terms of their own notes. However, in the fevered climate of currency wars among central banksters, the security factor of capital repayment is rapidly coming into question. As interest rates rise, the economic value of the bond diminishes. This inverted normal relationship is the essential dynamic of lending money with the purchase of Treasury Bonds. So what is all the talk about a bond bubble and likelihood that it will destroy your underwriting capital?

Bloomberg Businessweek warns in the article, The Rising Bubble in Bond-Bubble Chatter.

“An asset price bubble is when the expectation that the price can only go higher forms the only rationale for purchase,” remarked BlackRock’s (BLK) bond honcho Jeffrey Rosenberg Thursday at the CFA Society of Los Angeles’s Economic & Investments Forecast Dinner, at which the “wherefore bond bubble” discussion dominated. “But the main motivation of investors for buying fixed income is the opposite of typical bubbles—the fear of losing money rather than the greed of potential profit has fueled the historic shift of assets into fixed income.”

Just how safe is your money when you are holding T-Bonds? The U.S. Treasury wants you to believe that no other form of currency has the protection of first guarantee of the full faith and credit of your own government. Well, the mere questioning of this mythical assurance breeds deep distrust and instability of confidence into the entire fiscal system.

Morningstar offers an assessment in The Bond Bubble Threat, which on the surface is very sensible.

“To understand the implications of where we are, consider the history of the benchmark 10-year Treasury note. From 1900 to 2012, the average interest rate (yield) was 4.99% (often quoted as 5%). On Jan. 30, 2013, the yield was 1.99%, well below the long-term average. The prime interest rate, which the Fed has a role in setting, is 3.25%. It is the break-even rate for banks pricing loans.

When the performance of an asset class runs substantially above or below a long-term average, the odds increase that at some point performance will move back toward the long-term average. It may take a while for the interest rate on 10-year Treasury paper to re-approach 5%, but at some point, it will. As interest rates creep up, we see a shift away from fixed debt instruments to variable rate paper, stocks and various inflation hedges.”

Regretfully, when was the last time that economic fundamentals applied to the money debasement manipulations of the Federal Reserve? No doubt, a day of reckoning will come if market principles are allowed to work out their natural balance. However, the moneychangers design a fantasyland of monetary assessment that distort and prop up the price of the “Reserved Currency”.

John Plender writes in the Financial Times, Central bank hot air pumps up bond bubble, presents an analytical evaluation of worth in the current bond values.

“In the fixed interest sector something irrational is undoubtedly going on, but it is less a matter of exuberance than desperation in the pursuit of yield. In higher yielding parts of the market prices are out of touch with default risk.

Despite the oft-heard central bankers’ refrain that bubbles are impossible to identify until after they have been pricked, historical comparisons leave little doubt that this is a bubble – one, moreover, to which central banks have contributed their fair share of hot air. It is rare indeed for investors to pay a multiple of more than 50 times for the income stream on a 10-year Treasury bond.”

Nevertheless, this inflated bubble just keeps expanding from the unlimited flow of repurchases by the Federal Reserve of Treasury debt. What else is left to do, when the global financial markets are reluctant to buy into the next round of T-Bill offerings? Indefinite aggressive QE is here to stay as long as the need to roll over the debt exists. This view is shared in the latest report, Treasury Bond Bubble Will Not Pop, Fed Will Simply Increase QE. Guru Jim Sinclair offers the conventional-politicized viewpoint that the printing press will just keep running.

“Essentially Sinclair is stating that interest rates will continue to manipulated at an artificially low level by uneconomic buying of T-bonds by the Federal reserve governor typing on a keyboard, and that the pace of QE will keep pace with the pace of the US budget deficit/ funding gap, until which point the US dollar faces a collapse in the confidence of the currency itself.”

Of course, the operative circumstance is when will the collapse of the Dollar currency come? The interest rates charged to purchase T-Bonds will rise, when the Fed decides that the underreported rate of inflation can no longer be concealed from institutional transactions. When the Street panics over, the artificially low levels on Treasury Bonds rates, and refuse further purchases, the international exchange rate of the Dollar will plummet.

The global rush to devalue currencies is in full force and over time will affect the options that the Fed has in their toolbox. This chicken and egg dilemma will test the legal tender equation to its core. While the government can coerce the acceptance of a failing currency to be used as money, the same cannot be inferred about the purchasing power of T-Bonds.

The linkage between the underlying capital used to purchase the government note and the final return received for holding the bond until maturity has a profound disconnect. Selling your T-Bonds is a wise practice even if an imminent bubble is not ready to blow.

The harm to the financial markets from another precipitated house of cards should scare everyone. Expectations have a funny way of influencing financial results more often than sound evaluations. The prospect of a default by the Treasury is embedded, even under synthetically low interest rates. Just how long will this anticipation hold true?

More Austerity Cuts Coming To The States

The Great Recession has quietly devastated public services on a state-by-state basis, with Republican and Democratic governors taking turns leading the charge. Public education has been decimated, as well as health care, welfare, and the wages and benefits of public sector workers. The public sector itself is being smashed. Since the recession began, states have made combined austerity cuts of at least $337 billion, according to the Center of Budget and Policy Priorities

The 2012-2013 budget deficits for 34 states resulted in $55 billion in cuts, according to the Center of Budget and Policy Priorities. The coming budgets for 2013-2014 that begins on July 1st is becoming clear as well, and the deficits are rolling in by the billions: Connecticut, Minnesota, Maryland, New York, Oregon, Washington, and many others have large deficits projected.

You’d expect after years of austerity cuts to public services, state politicians would think of new ways to raise revenue from those who can afford it — the wealthy and corporations. Not so. The cuts that began as a consequence of the 2008 recession are set to continue; raising revenue from the wealthy is “off the table” for Republicans and Democrats alike.

The pattern of budget cuts has revealed that the age-old distinction between Republican and Democrat has evaporated on the state level. The state budget trends — what’s getting funded and what’s not — are similarly aligned across the country. Both parties have merged their state-level agendas into a singular focus on “economic growth,” a bi-partisan euphemism meaning “corporate profits.”

Below is the bi-partisan funding trends for the states that began with the 2008 recession and continue to this day:

1)  The Attack on Public Employees and Pension “Reform”

It wasn’t long ago that everyone understood that the states’ budget crises was caused in part by the recession, itself caused by the big banks and greedy corporations, and in part by the politicians continuing willingness to lower taxes on the rich. Now the corporate media and politicians have re-written history: suddenly it’s “greedy” public workers and their “lavish” pensions that are bankrupting the states. Two years ago it was the health care of public employees that was bankrupting the states, which resulted in large cuts to workers in many states.

The pre-recession pension system was working fine, but it, too, suffered under the bank-caused financial crisis; pension returns sank and right-wing economists projected ruin for the states in the future (they conveniently assumed that recession era rates would continue forever, thus under-funding the system).

Democratic governors are now as eager as their Republican counterparts to destroy the pensions of public employees. Democratic politicians in Oregon, Washington, California, New Jersey, Illinois, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Maryland, Massachusetts, and several other states are leading the charge to erode the last bastion of retirement security for working people, while continuing to lay off public employees by the thousands. This national shrinkage of state governments is a long-standing right-wing dream: the smaller the state, the greater the “growth opportunities” for corporations that take over privatized public services and the lower their taxes since a smaller state requires less revenue for operating expenses.

2) Education Reform

The National Governors Association (NGA) spoke for both political parties when announcing a renewed focus on education funding for the states during the annual “state of the states” address. The funding is necessary because schools across the country are expecting an influx of students, while school districts everywhere have been starved funds by the ongoing austerity cuts; the system has been literally crumbling. But the new funding is to be used for the undermining and destruction of public education, since it is based on Obama’s pro-corporate Race to the Top education “reform” where charter schools replace public schools.

Democrats and Republicans are in complete agreement over Obama’s education policy, which closes “failing schools,” (those in poor neighborhoods), opens privately run, non-union charter schools, and fires “bad teachers,” (typically those who teach poor students). The whole system is based on standardized testing, which poorer students will spend most of their education preparing for, (those who don’t drop out from sheer boredom). Bi-partisan education reform targets teacher unions while privatizing education — the Democrats have adopted the ideas from the right-wing think tanks of the 1990′s.

3) Raising Revenue – But Not From the Wealthy or Corporations

Many states have implemented — or are planning to implement — a variety of taxes that disproportionally affect working and poor people, including increased sales taxes, alcohol, tobacco and other “sin” taxes, not to mention increases in different fees, from state parks to driver registration.

At the same time that these taxes have been upped, a consistent clamor has been raised by the media and politicians to lower the taxes for corporations, give them new subsidies or “freeze” their already-low taxes so that future tax increases will be impossible. In Oregon the Democratic governor declared a “special session” emergency in order to ensure that NIKE’s super low tax status would be frozen in place for decades, outside the reach of the public, which might want to raise corporate taxes to fund public services.

Democrat and Republican controlled states are equally competing for the adoration of corporations by lavishing a never-ending flow of taxpayer money on them, while “guaranteeing” them “investment security,” i.e., promising low taxes and an open spigot of taxpayer money. This is the basis for several states implementing “right to work” laws that target unions for destruction, while also attempting to “revamp the tax code,” which is a euphemism for lowering corporate taxes.

4) Welfare Reform: Attacking the Safety Net

Waging war against the safety net is like picking a fight with road kill — the states’ safety net is already disfigured beyond recognition, but the bi-partisan assault nevertheless continues. Bill Clinton started welfare “reform” as president, and the 2008 Great Recession accelerated the attack on those in poverty. The year 2011 was a devastating one for welfare, now called Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF).

According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:

In 2011, states implemented some of the harshest cuts in recent history for many of the nation’s most vulnerable families with children who are receiving assistance through [TANF] … The cuts affect 700,000 low-income families that include 1.3 million children; these families represent over one-third of all low-income families receiving TANF nationwide.

But these TANF “reforms” continue, to the detriment of the neediest. Newly released budgets in several states — including California and Oregon — further tighten the program, a relentless boa-like constriction that’s already suffocated millions of the country’s poorest citizens. Typically TANF reform either lowers the monthly payment, shortens the time one can receive benefits, or raises the standards for staying in the program.

Before the giant TANF cuts in 2011, the program was already shrunken such that TANF only assisted 28 families for every 100 in poverty — the ludicrous definition of “poverty” being a family of four that makes only $22,000 or less.

There is a direct link between the assault on TANF and the rising poverty levels in the United States. Cutting TANF in a time of mass unemployment means consciously consigning millions of families to grinding poverty, hunger, homelessness, and the many other barbarisms associated with extreme poverty.

Conclusion:

It wasn’t long ago that the Democrats understood that the government can and should create jobs, especially during a recession. But now the Democratic Party has fully adopted the economics of Reaganism. As a result, the only “job creators” now recognized are the corporations. This bi-partisan agreement not to tax the rich and use the revenue for public spending to create jobs — hiring more teachers, firefighters, roads and parks workers, etc. — is unnecessarily prolonging the job crisis, ensuring more years of deficits and a deeper gouging of the public sector.

These cuts are having a devastating effect on public sector unions, the last bastion of union strength in the country. These unions are being weakened to such an extent that stripping them of their right to collectively bargain — the nail in the coffin — becomes a real possibility. No state is safe from this threat.

If unions don’t unite with community groups to demand that public services be fully funded by taxing the wealthy and corporations, the cuts will continue, communities will feel helpless, inequality will continue to spiral out of control, and working people will be further subjected to the policies of the 1%, now implemented in chorus by Republicans and Democrats alike. But, of course, this means that the unions will have to break with the suicidal strategy of relying on the Democrats for handouts. Time and again the Democrats have demonstrated their willingness to sacrifice the needs of working people in order to curry favor with the rich and corporations, their greatest benefactors when it comes to election campaign contributions.

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=711

http://www.nga.org/cms/stateofthestates

http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3498

Low Interest Rates Impoverish Savers

Even the most ardent optimist has to confront the consequences of low interest rates. The macro analysis of ivory tower academics seldom reflects the struggle of ordinary consumers or retirees. One such pinhead is Ben Bernanke. Back on October 1, 2012 at the Economic Club of Indiana, the Federal Reserve Chairman employs sophistry of a major order. Such confused and twisted logic defies common sense and real world finance. Robert Romano writes in the article, More monetary alchemy from Bernanke: Low interest rates help savers.

“Many savers are also homeowners,” said Bernanke, adding, “indeed, a family’s home may be its most important financial asset. Many savers are working, or would like to be. Some savers own businesses, and — through pension funds and 401(k) accounts — they often own stocks and other assets.”

Bernanke explained, “Only a strong economy can create higher asset values and sustainably good returns for savers… [and] [t]he way for the Fed to support a return to a strong economy is by maintaining monetary accommodation, which requires low interest rates for a time.”

He said home values would collapse without Fed support, unemployment would rise, and asset values would plummet and “[s]uch outcomes would ultimately not be good for savers or anyone else.”

So, admittedly, the Fed’s easy money policies do not in actuality directly help savers. But they will increase home values, asset prices, and create jobs for savers, Bernanke claimed. Okay, but is that even true?”

Such deceptive dishonesty that the Fed fosters beneficial monetary measures, which encourage job growth and a vigorous housing market, defies evidence. The saver watches the evaporation of their money, while prices jump at rates far in excess of the official CPI. This is a fact. This construct is the legacy of the intentional 2007 Wall Street meltdown.

The inability of distinguishing between illiquid assets and the need to pay for cost of living expenses must be a trait that only financially – cash flow secure – magicians master. The perception that the masses benefit from central banking driving down and suppressing interest rates to negative levels is patently absurd. Negative Interest Rates and the Impoverishing of America by Michael R. Winther sums up the self-evident.

“Don’t forget that consumers pay income tax on interest earned regardless of whether real interest rates are positive or negative. The result is that many Americans are paying income tax on a negative real interest rate! This discourages savings and investment, but even worse, it steals from our citizens.

Negative real interest rates hurt all savers, but these rates are especially damaging to the elderly and those on fixed incomes. It is no longer possible for senior citizens to live on the interest of their savings and investments. In fact, our negative interest rates result in a situation in which our seniors must rely on the depletion of their principle for all of their living expenses.”

The net effects of an inflationary depression require that privately saved capital must be used to pay for the continued increases in basic costs. It is not just the retired person that is shafted from zeroing out the money market. Anyone who attempts to devise a budget that sets aside a portion of cash flow understands that there is no return on banking funds.

How long will people accept this thief? The options to parking cash in hand with a FDIC insured institution seems worth an examination. However, few alternatives for working class savers exist. Surely, this occurrence is intentional because the real objective of the “New Normal” is to bankrupt Middle America. What other conclusion makes sense?

Designed lowering of our standard of living is visible at every turn. The money-centered banks recapitalized their balance sheets at the expense of the passbook accounts customers.

The recent implementation of approving an extra fee to credit card purchases is outrageous. The NY Daily News reports the example of allowing “MasterCard and Visa credit card users might see a surcharge of up to 4 percent on their receipts. Merchants are allowed to add an extra fee to credit card purchases starting Jan. 27.”

The besieged consumer gets another whammy from a banking system that thrives on charging usurious fees, while paying you near zero on your saving accounts. With the execution of the Bernanke rescue strategy, the prospects of personal or consumer loans are virtually non-existent. In Helicopter Ben speak; “maintaining monetary accommodation” just does not filter down to the common- man.

While the concept of interest often confuses some Christians, Gary North offers a scriptural analysis in Usury, Interest, and Loans: A Brief Summary of Biblical Teaching, which asks:

“If charging interest were not legitimate, why would Jesus have used the example of money-lending as a legitimate way to increase capital? Why would He have attributed to God such words of condemnation for not having lent at interest?”

The tangible injustice is that the saver is especially screwed by the moneychanger system.

When you strip away the banking veil of trickery, what remains is a stash of greed, built on a hoard of distrust and deception. Few financial policies have been more destructive for the depositor than low interest rates. Siphoning off purchasing power is a perfect method to impart a fiscal squeeze, hard to rebound for any depositor. Everyday your cash lingers in money interest limbo is another diminution in your net wealth.

How can a society encourage saving under these circumstances? Apparently, the plan for depleting the economic assets of workers or investors is well underway. The notion that investing is feasible in this environment borders on delusional.

The submissive banking customer needs to take a hard look on continuing their depositing relationship with the commercial saving establishment. The endless gimmicks and get rich schemes that proliferate might seem attractive to desperate people. Yet, when you operate on parallel tracts, separated by a wide gulf of moneymaking returns, the definitive result is that treasure ends up in the accounts of the banksters and favored insiders.

County Sheriff: Power To Protect

The local FOX affiliate in Salt Lake City, Utah, has reported that the Utah Sheriff’s Association has written a strongly worded letter to President Barack Obama regarding any potential federal laws that would restrict the citizens of the State of Utah from practicing their Second Amendment rights. The letter was signed by every sheriff in the State of Utah except one. The letter reads in part:

“With the number of mass shootings America has endured, it is easy to demonize firearms; it is also foolish and prejudiced. Firearms are nothing more than instruments, valuable and potentially dangerous, but instruments nonetheless. Malevolent souls, like the criminals who commit mass murders, will always exploit valuable instruments in the pursuit of evil. As professional peace officers, if we understand nothing else, we understand this: lawful violence must sometimes be employed to deter and stop criminal violence. Consequently, the citizenry must continue its ability to keep and bear arms, including arms that adequately protect them from all types of illegality.”

The letter also states: “We respect the Office of the President of the United States of America. But, make no mistake, as the duly-elected sheriffs of our respective counties, we will enforce the rights guaranteed to our citizens by the Constitution. No federal official will be permitted to descend upon our constituents and take from them what the Bill of Rights–in particular Amendment II–has given them. We, like you, swore a solemn oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, and we are prepared to trade our lives for the preservation of its traditional interpretation.”

In addition, Utah Representative Brian Greene, R-Pleasant Grove, has introduced legislation that asserts State power over federal power regarding gun control. Rep. Greene’s bill “would go so far as to allow local police the authority to arrest federal agents should they try to seize any firearms.”

The report added: “‘Acting upon those will be a third-degree felony in this state, punishable by up to one year in jail and a $5,000 fine,’ Greene said.”

See the report at:

Proposted Legislation Asserts State Power Over Gun Control

Tim Mueller, the sheriff of Linn County, Oregon, has also written the White House a similar letter. Mueller’s letter said in part, “Any federal regulation enacted by Congress or by executive order of the president offending the constitutional rights of my citizens shall not be enforced by me or by my deputies,” adding, “Nor will I permit the enforcement of any unconstitutional regulations or orders by federal officers within the borders of Linn County, OR.”

Read the report and Sheriff Mueller’s letter at:

Second Sheriff Refuses To Enforce Gun Confiscation

Several sheriffs in the State of Oregon have followed Sheriff Mueller’s example and issued similar statements: Sheriff Jim Hensley of Crook County, Sheriff Larry Blanton of Deschutes County, Sheriff Glenn Palmer of Grant County, Sheriff Craig Zanni of Coos County, and Sheriff John Hanlin of Douglas County.

In fact, sheriffs from all over America have begun taking similar stands. One of the first was Sheriff Denny Peyman of Jackson County, Kentucky. Also add Pine County, Minnesota, Sheriff Robin Cole. Sheriff Cole said, “I do not believe the federal government or any individual in the federal government has the right to dictate to the states, counties or municipalities any mandate, regulation or administrative rule that violates the United States Constitution or its various amendments.” The sheriff said that the right to bear arms is “fundamental to our individual freedoms and that firearms are part of life in our country.”

A news report on the story noted, “The Sheriff said he would refuse to enforce any federal mandate that violates constitutional rights, and that he would consider any new federal regulation on guns to be illegal.”

Also include Madison County, Alabama, Sheriff Blake Dorning; Smith County, Texas, Sheriff Larry Smith; and Martin County, Florida, Sheriff Bill Snyder to the list of sheriffs who are vowing to protect their citizens from the unconstitutional overreach of the federal government.

See the report at:

Many More Sheriffs Vow Not To Enforce Federal Gun Control Laws

This is exactly the kind of response that is needed! No law enforcement action of any kind (county, State, or federal) can take place without the approbation of the county sheriff. Constitutionally, he is the highest law enforcement officer of the county. This is why I have repeatedly said that ultimately our freedom will be won or lost at the State and local levels.

Big Government toadies love to quote the so-called “supremacy clause” in Article. VI. Paragraph. 2. of the US Constitution. It reads, “This Constitution and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof . . . shall be the supreme law of the land…” This clause, they say, gives carte blanche to federal lawmakers to usurp, negate, or expunge any local or State law–or even the Constitution itself. Such an interpretation is absolutely ludicrous!

Notice that those federal laws that are considered to be “the supreme law of the land” must be made “in Pursuance” of the existing Constitution. Nowhere is it written that federal laws that contradict the existing US Constitution are to be considered lawful. In fact, just the opposite is true. Laws, even federal laws, which contradict the Constitution, are deemed to be null and void.

In the Marbury v Madison Supreme Court decision (1803), the Constitution was firmly established as the “supreme law of the land”–not legislative acts which contradict the Constitution. In the landmark ruling, Chief Justice John Marshall, writing for the majority, said, “So if a law be in opposition to the constitution; if both the law and the constitution apply to a particular case, so that the court must either decide that case conformably to the law, disregarding the constitution; or conformably to the constitution, disregarding the law; the court must determine which of these conflicting rules governs the case. This is of the very essence of judicial duty.

“If then the courts are to regard the constitution; and the constitution is superior to any ordinary act of the legislature; the constitution, and not such ordinary act, must govern the case to which they both apply.

“Those then who controvert the principle that the constitution is to be considered, in court, as a paramount law, are reduced to the necessity of maintaining that courts must close their eyes on the constitution, and see only the law.

“This doctrine would subvert the very foundation of all written constitutions. It would declare that an act, which, according to the principles and theory of our government, is entirely void; is yet, in practice, completely obligatory. It would declare, that if the legislature shall do what is expressly forbidden, such act, notwithstanding the express prohibition, is in reality effectual. It would be giving to the legislature a practical and real omnipotence, with the same breath which professes to restrict their powers within narrow limits. It is prescribing limits, and declaring that those limits may be passed at pleasure.”

The decision concludes, “Why does a judge swear to discharge his duties agreeably to the constitution of the United States, if that constitution forms no rule for his government? if it is closed upon him, and cannot be inspected by him.

“If such be the real state of things, this is worse than solemn mockery. To prescribe, or to take this oath, becomes equally a crime.

“Thus, the particular phraseology of the constitution of the United States confirms and strengthens the principle, supposed to be essential to all written constitutions, that a law repugnant to the constitution is void; and that courts, as well as other departments, are bound by that instrument.”

See the Marbury decision at:

MARBURY v. MADISON

How could this decision be any more clear? The US Congress has no authority to pass laws, and the President has no authority to execute laws which contradict the US Constitution, and any such laws that are passed should be considered null and void.

In addition to the Court, the founders also expected that the states would serve as a check and balance on potential encroachments upon the people’s liberties by the executive and legislative branches of the federal government.

At this point, allow me to quote my constitutional attorney son, Timothy Baldwin:

“One of the constitutional tools by which socialist and nationalist ideologues have incorporated political principles of centralization and state annihilation is through the ‘Supremacy clause’ of the U.S. Constitution, which states, ‘This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land.’ (USC, Article 6) To many people, this phrase has been construed to mean whatever laws and treaties those in the federal government pass, execute and uphold are binding on the people of the states and their respective governments. Admittedly, this concept has taken a stronghold in America and has been treated as the accepted principle of constitutional law for generations. Undoubtedly, every law student attending an ABA accredited law school is taught this as fact, just as I was when I attended Cumberland School of Law at Samford University. Not everyone agrees with this construction, however.

“Big-government and monarchist himself, Alexander Hamilton sheds light on the error of this position in 1787 when he addressed the concerns of those Americans who rejected the U.S. Constitution because of the fear that the expected effect of the ‘Supremacy clause’ would be to subvert the sovereignty of the States to govern themselves according to their constitutions. Hamilton attempts to calm their fears, saying, ‘It will not follow from this doctrine [of supremacy] that acts of the large society [i.e., the union] which are NOT PURSUANT to its constitutional powers, but which are invasions of the residuary authorities of the smaller societies, will become the supreme law of the land.’ (Federalist Paper 33) Perhaps everyone in America would concede this, but what is not agreed upon is what the States can and should do about those laws that are NOT PURSUANT to the constitutional powers of the federal government. Many place the burden of correcting that grievance on the U.S. Supreme Court, as if a body of nine judges appointed by the executive of the federal government are an adequate remedy for the machinations of that distorted philosophy broadly accepted by those in federal office. Contrarily, those who believe in the principles of a federalist system should recognize that each unit of the union (i.e., States) have the duty to do what Hamilton suggested in response to those laws contrary to the constitution: ‘These [laws] will be merely acts of usurpation, and WILL DESERVE TO BE TREATED AS SUCH.’ (FP 33, emphasis added) These laws should be treated as no law at all, and moreover, as attacks on liberty, and should be resisted on every level of the union, from federal to state to local governments, as well as individuals.”

See Tim’s website at:

LibertyDefenseLeague

Sheriffs Mueller, Peyman, Cole, et al. are dutifully fulfilling their oaths of office and are exemplary examples of what it means to be a constitutional sheriff.

I strongly urge readers to take a copy of Sheriff Mueller’s letter to the White House to your own county sheriff and ask him where he stands on protecting your Second Amendment liberties. And if your sheriff balks at his duty of standing firm for your liberties, vote him out of office as quickly as possible and replace him with a true constitutionalist sheriff. Remember, without the approbation and cooperation of your county sheriff, no federal police agency has any ability to implement Senator Dianne Feinstein’s semi-automatic rifle ban or high capacity magazine ban, should Congress pass such a ban.

Sheriffs are not elected to be paper pushers or attend Rotary Club meetings or a hundred other mundane tasks; primarily, sheriffs are elected to protect the liberties of the citizens in his or her county–even if that means defying unconstitutional laws handed down from Washington, D.C.

Kudos to the sheriffs of the State of Utah; kudos to Sheriff Mueller, Peyman, Cole et al. Come on folks! Find out NOW whether you have a real sheriff in your county or just a political opportunist who wears a badge. Your liberties hang in the balance.

US-led Sanctions Contribute To The Destruction of Syria’s Millenary History

Barring Medicines In Syria…

What a difference a week can make. The heaviest snow in Syria in a quarter-century, some claimed, last week’s storm closed for a time even the main highway from Damascus to Beirut.

But that was then and now its spring in Damascus, or so it feels to those of us used to New England Januarys. It’s nearly downright balmy here. Spring flowers are bursting out all over and the city parks are crowded with mothers pushing baby carriages, kids playing and young lovers cooing softly on the park benches. Park workers are raking the dead leaves and others trimming the palm trees and piling the branches neatly on flatbed trucks.

What “civil war”? What “crisis”? One is tempted to ask himself even though there continues to be intermittent “thuds” and a jet streaking overhead now and then en route apparently to one of the suburbs where clashes erupt intermittently.

It’s been a rough winter and perhaps we are just experiencing here a false spring. Yet one senses a palpable sigh of relief and even some optimism while talking to citizens, NGO staffers and some officials. It could be partly the wonderful weather but perhaps also a realization that a corner may have been turned, peace and security will be restored and the killing ended. Some refugees are to be seen returning to Damascus. Syrians and Palestinians from Lebanon — yet there are still traffic backups with cars piled high with personal belongings crossing over to Lebanon at the Masnaa border checkpoint. Meanwhile the Ministry of Interior in Damascus has pledged various forms of help to those who heed the governments call to “come back home to your people.”

Energized by the exhilarating park ambiance this observer decided to walk to UNESCO headquarters for an appointment. Plus it can be kind of tough at times to find a taxi these days.

Perhaps I should have remained in the park. Lord knows that this observer has experienced his share of irate women shouting at him over the years. Being raised by three older sisters and a no-nonsense German/Italian mother- all of them unmercifully wanting to correct my behavior was a mere harbinger of things to come. But, even with this “training”, I was ill prepared for what the lady at the UNESCO office here in central Damascus unleashed on me.

And I had not done the lady wrong.

Except, perhaps, that I happen to be an American and there is plenty of anger here among the Syrian public, the NGO’s, and increasingly the international legal community among others — not toward the American people but toward the US government — over the effects of its sanctions which are severely and illegally targeting the civilian population. At the same time they are directly contributing to prospects of irreparably damaging many of this millenary country’s historic sites.

According to archeological experts here, Syria, with its six UNESCO world heritage sites testifying to its deserved reputation as being one of the most archeologically well-preserved cradles of civilization, may soon to be the most wantonly destroyed in modern times (Iraq being the other). This frequently-predicted catastrophe is a result, not only of war in the usual sense, but war in its more subtle form of US-led sanctions aimed at political regime change.

Of particular concern to UNESCO, whose UN mandate includes registering and protecting World historical sites, is the preservation of the Ancient Cities of Damascus, Bosra, Palmyra, Aleppo, Crac des Chevaliers and Qal’ at Salah El-Din, as well as the ancient villages of Northern Syria.

This week, the Syrian Directorate of Antiquities and Museums has released its detailed report of acts of vandalism and illegal excavations by armed groups and foreign thieves across Syria. The Directorate has documented violations against archeological sites and Syrian museums, as well the emerging phenomenon of artifact forgery. In Aleppo, the Antiquities division reported that al-Diriya caves in Samaan Mountain suffered from acts of sabotage, adding that “terrorists have looted the equipment of excavations, wooden columns and timbers.”

Also, this week, Human Rights Watch issued a report that Saudi-Qatar-US backed militants destroyed religious locations following a four-day investigation in the provinces of Latakia and Idlib. According to HRW, a Husseiniyah (a congregation hall for Shia commemoration ceremonies) was destroyed by the militants in Idlib, while two Christian churches were looted in Latakia. The Middle East director at the Human Rights Watch, Sarah Leah Whitson claimed that Syria “will lose its rich cultural and religious diversity if armed groups do not respect places of worship.”

Against this backdrop, it is not totally surprising that my UNESCO hostess, less than half a minute after I entered her office, literally threw at me a statement in French from Director Irina Bokova of the UNESCO HQ in Paris. It read:

“I am deeply distressed by the daily news about the escalation of damage to cultural heritage throughout Syria. We saw damage to the Citadel in July and the souks ten days ago, and the Umayyad Mosque, heart of the religious life of the city, one of the most beautiful mosques in the Muslim world, is being severely endangered. In Northern Syria, the region of the Ancient Villages inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2011 is heavily struck and it seems that the invaluable Saint-Simeon Byzantine complex might have been torched.”

Before I could finish reading, the lady exclaimed: “These testimonials from the past!…” raising her voice and glaring at me while pointing to the posters of Syrian historical sites on her wall, “the destruction of this heritage for which your sanctions are partly responsible. Your government is responsible today and will be tomorrow, for the whole of humanity.” When I was eventually able to get a word in sideways, I explained that I had come to her office precisely because I have been studying the immoral, illegal and “un-American” sanctions and that I was spending my time in Syria learning first-hand about the sanctions’ utter disregard for the humanitarian concerns of the Syrian people — in contravention to what one hears repeatedly from US officials.

When I added, I don’t know any Americans who would condone what the Congress and our government have been doing, if they knew the facts on the ground, she did calm down a bit and said she understood what I was saying and more or less agreed. She then mentioned a national poll conducted on 13 January by the Better World Campaign, an organization that works to support U.S.-U.N. relations, that showed that 83 percent of US citizens believe it is important that their country provide funding to UNESCO and want the US to lift its sanctioning of UNESCO and pay its withheld budget contribution, which accounts for 22% of the UN specialized agency’s budget.

“Let me tell you something!” she exclaimed and launched into describing the dire effects of the current US-led sanctions on UNESCO’s work in preserving and protecting historical sites. In her view, the American assault on UNESCO and its work began when UNESCO committed a sin in March of 2011 by admitting Palestine as a full member.

She explained: “For months our offices had been warned by Israeli officials and then Americans, that there would be a big price-tag were we to admit Palestine.” And there was. In October 2011, the U.S. cut off funding to UNESCO as payback for admitting Palestine as a member and in November 2012, the United States was one of nine member states out of 193 in the General Assembly who, on behalf of the Zionist occupiers of Palestine, tried to unsuccessfully bar Palestine from gaining non-member observer state status at the UN.

UNESCO and some other NGO staff here claim that much of the damage here could have been prevented if there was a lifting of the US 2011 cut-off of UNESCO’s budget. As a direct result, UNESCO cannot even replace more than 400 staffers who left from normal attrition or even hire “neighborhood watch,” local volunteer personnel, to coordinate the guarding by of many archeological sites around Syria.

Regarding the other layers of US-led sanctions targeting the civilian population here, a survey by NGO’s on the impact of the fake “medicine and foods” exemptions will soon be released. Its indictment of the US-led sanctions is severe. Contrary to Washington and NATO mythology, the “medicine and foods” exemptions do not exist in reality because suppliers of both fear being accused of violating the great number of sanction details. Washington and Brussels are acutely aware of this fact.

Among the data that will be presented in the soon-to-be released analysis, are cases of cancer patients who need weekly medicines but are now only able to receive them twice a month, with the expected dire consequences. The same obtains for many other long term care patients who need specific medicines, even as generic as penicillin, which are no longer available as they were before the US-led sanctions.

Just as I was preparing to leave her office, she softened a bit and asked this observer. “See here, I generally like Americans who we come in contact with here but how can you explain these sanctions — or those in Iraq or Afghanistan that have killed so many?”

I tried to explain that we have a culture clash in America that means that many Americans overwhelmingly support UNESCO and the work of all sixteen of the UN Specialized Agencies but we also have politicians like Arizona Senator John McCain and South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham who never saw a war they did not like. The former just returned from another visit to the region and apparently learned nothing except that he still wants a military solution.

The latter, who is known for his jokes on Capitol Hill that as a “true southerner” he never got over the American Civil War or what it did to American society, has repeatedly expressed his view of US “economic” sanctions by declaring recently, “Sanctions are good but they need to be tougher! Cut the bastards off at the knees.”

Senator Graham also noted his agreement with former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright who made the repulsive statement that the deaths of 500,000 children in Iraq from a US “economic sanctions” regime that “exempted foods and medicine” but in reality was a starvation program “was worth the price.”

Ironically, it was the arch-nemesis of the Confederacy, Yankee General William Tecumseh Sherman, who might agree with Graham regarding sanctions against a civilian population. What has bothered Senator Graham since he first studied the Civil War in school, according to one Congressional source, is that the Yankee February 17, 1865 captured Graham’s state capital of Columbia, South Carolina. It was not pretty and most of the central city was destroyed. But the Yankee and the Confederate might just agree on targeting civilian populations with economic sanctions. Wrote Sherman, shortly before his March to the Sea which fatally cut the south in two:

“We are not fighting against enemy armies, but against an enemy people, young and old, rich and poor, and they must feel the iron hand of war in the same way as organized armies.”

I left the UNESCO office sort of crestfallen. Not because of the lady’s roughness with me, but rather because of the realization, yet once again, that our species quite simply does not learn much from history and apparently will repeat it until the end of times. May God protect the people, everywhere, from the politicians.

The State-owned Bank of North Dakota

Fiscal conservatives often are blind when it comes to alternatives to the “so called” commercial banking system. Many conventional Republicans are ignorant or simply carrying the water for the crony capitalist banking establishment. The fractional reserve banking monopoly that operates under the auspices of the privately owned Federal Reserve System, despises any trace of competition. The bondage from debt created money has doomed Main Street to the fate of contrite beggars in search of securing loans. Useful purposes for business financing are not sufficient reason for the qualifying for commercial credit.

Is there an alternative to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and centralized banking dominated by Wall Street investment banksters? Can state chartered commercial banks compete separate from the favoritism shown to the “Not Too Big To Fail” money centered banks? Well, Ellen Hodjson Brown JD, has popularized the subject of the state-owned bank and believes there is a better model for community banking.

“The secret of its success seems to be the state-owned Bank of North Dakota, which was established by the state legislature in 1919 specifically to free farmers and small businessmen from the clutches of out-of-state bankers and railroad men. By law, the state must deposit all its funds in the bank, and the state guarantees its deposits. The bank’s stated mission is to deliver sound financial services that promote agriculture, commerce and industry in North Dakota. The bank operates as a bankers’ bank, partnering with private banks to loan money to farmers, real estate developers, schools and small businesses. It loans money to students (over 184,000 outstanding loans), and it purchases municipal bonds from public institutions.”

 

The informative video, Bank of North Dakota provides a comprehensive overview, well worth viewing.Such a departure from the normal coordinated federal regulation and Federal Reserve prescribes, gives pause to the plutocrats that despise any departure from the top down banking model that is based upon special treatment for the schemes of investment banking.

Bloomberg News points out the banking industry opposition to the state-own charter in the article, North Dakota’s State-Run Bank Adds Millions to Treasury, Spurs Imitators.

“The U.S. banking industry opposes the idea and is lobbying against it, saying a state-run bank would compete with commercial banks for business and politicize a state’s lending decisions.

“A state-owned bank? Why don’t we just re-label the state capitols the Kremlin?” Camden Fine, president of the Independent Community Bankers of America, a Washington-based trade group that represents more than 5,000 community banks, said in a telephone interview.

“It’s a socialistic idea,” Fine said. “If you get a state-owned bank that is allocating credit, it can slide very quickly into a situation where those in favor get credit and those not in favor don’t get credit.”

How ironic the false claim that a sparsely populated state like, North Dakota could be such a citadel of collectivist enterprise when the titans of cartel-controlled crony capitalism were the financiers of the Russian communist revolution. The new generation of algorithmic traders has no more interest in writing business commercial loans then the banker funded Lenin investment of mercy shown to the Czar.

Even more sardonic is the viewpoint that the only banking monopoly acceptable is the one designated by the barons of usury. The slogan – no small business loans, is their operative policy.

Mother Jones examines what Republicans might call an idiosyncratic bastion of socialism in their interview with Bank of North Dakota’s president; Eric Hardmeyer, How the Nation’s Only State-Owned Bank Became the Envy of Wall Street. Mr. Hardmeyer explains the operation of their system thusly.

“Our funding model, our deposit model is really what is unique as the engine that drives that bank. And that is we are the depository for all state tax collections and fees. And so we have a captive deposit base, we pay a competitive rate to the state treasurer. And I would bet that that would be one of the most difficult things to wrestle away from the private sector—those opportunities to bid on public funds. But that’s only one portion of it. We take those funds and then, really what separates us is that we plow those deposits back into the state of North Dakota in the form of loans. We invest back into the state in economic development type of activities. We grow our state through that mechanism.”

The significance of the North Dakota experiment is that the dominance and control of the State/Capital cabal can be broken. Sensible banking is based upon making loans for productive enterprises, not derivative speculation. The customer of any bank is a person. Financing business growth and development is the core purpose and function of a bank.

The populist underpinnings of the independent method of funding the Bank of North Dakota provide an alternative model for depository transactions. Prosperity for local economies is an integral objective for any community interest bank. Those who profess free market enterprise principles need to adopt practical partner relationships with proponents of state charted banks.

ABC News reports the inconceivable, State-Owned Banks: The Future of Banking?

“Bank of North Dakota officials said that at least 10 states have turned to them for guidance, including some states, like Michigan, hardest hit by the financial crisis. They include California, Florida and Illinois, where a bill to create a state bank already is under consideration by the state legislature.”

Success is the best substitute to the stagnation of Wall Street greed and corporatism. Credit unions and associations provide another option for the depositor to conduct business. Loans are a way of life to most wage earners. Applying with an institution committed to their customer is rare in the era of national banking conglomerates. Trust is the basis of banking and the record of the Bank of North Dakota, compared to Bank America, demonstrates a stark difference. Register your discontent with your money stop doing business with national money-centered banks.

Governments And Guns Are Socially Analogous

People Control Both…

Libertarianism has become popular.  But is it really the answer to the despotic regimes that have characterized the history of human society?  Some who claim the name are close but many are far into utopian fantasies.

I like Lou Rockwell.  His internet page is always a source of truth and commendable prose. I saved a quote where he said that the “moral law applies across the board, and that one is not exempted from it by a government suit.”  That is a good starting point as long as the source of the moral law is the Word of the Christian Triune God.  Unfortunately, God’s Law is rarely, if ever, mentioned in Libertarian circles.   

Most Libertarians are pedagogic, articulate, intellectual, and industrious; they have no peers in chronicling the swift deterioration of our nation.  Their primary moral code is that coercion is evil and freedom is righteous.  Most envision a society free from restraints where everyone considers the rights of their fellows. Their objective is attractive and though its realization is murky and imprecise their ranks are growing.

Libertarianism has roots in the Godless intellectualism of the Enlightenment.  Seventeenth Century French intellectual Rene Descartes declared   “I think, therefore I am”. Deification of the human mind began the tragic and irrational march toward human divinity.  Thomas Paine called it “The Age of Reason” and with the irreverence of a rebel and the brilliance of an intellectual he discarded the formal religion of the ages in favor of his own deistic opinions.

Intellectualism spawned the Enlightenment and like its progenitor Libertarianism is steeped in intellectualism.  Free trade ala Ludwig von Mises takes on an almost divine character.  The fractured condition of the movement provides insight into the results of the deification of the human mind.

Libertarian ranks include Liberals, Conservatives, Paleo-Conservatives, Anarchists, Minarchists, limited government rebels, mislead Christians, freedom loving intellectuals, and rebellious youth.  There are Socialist Libertarians and Capitalist Libertarians.  European definitions tend to be anarchic and politically left while American definitions are broader supporting free market capitalism.  All tend to resist coercion and emphasize freedom, liberty, and voluntary association.  There are moral Libertarians and immoral Libertarians.  There are Koch Libertarians and Rockwell Libertarians.  As with many Godless intellectual movements there is a wide acceptance of free sex.

Former Congressman Ron Paul has done as much as anyone to popularize the Libertarian Movement. His run for the Presidency was filled with wisdom and honesty that would serve us well but his defeat was programmed before he began his campaign.  Peter Theil, an openly gay member of the Steering Committee of the Bilderberg Group, provided major support.  I voted for Ron Paul and thought his financing was a result of large quantities of small contributions from internet sources.  I now wonder if it was a setup to insure the election of Barak Obama.

Libertarianism lacks an anchor and is plagued with the anarchy of human opinion.  When organizations become fractured by opposing opinions they become weak through diversity.  Power results from a clear objective.  There are too many voices in the movement. In a Business Insider article Eric Zuesse writes that Libertarians “entirely avoid the real question, which is: What type of government is good? As an “ideology,” libertarianism doesn’t even make it to first base: it’s fake, from the get-go. That’s why libertarianism fails.”

Allegiance to God’s overarching legal system provides an anchor and a big step forward for freedom. Opinions are a form of coercion with each proponent striving to dominate.  Anthony Wile at the Daily Bell recently posted a fascinating interview with George Guilder.  Guilder is a consummate insider who lost his father to WWII and was parented by David Rockefeller.  Some of Guilder’s opinions are compatible with patriots, new world order opponents, and some Libertarians.  The interview is here.   It is an interesting interview of a very smart man.  However, I am not as much interested in the interview itself as I am with the demeanor of Gilder’s responses. He responds with the assurance of the wealthy elite and Wile accepts his responses with the demeanor of the proletariat.  Though they are just opinions Gilder expects them to be heeded; there is tyranny in his manner.  An interview with Walter Block provides another example of dominate opinion.  Block has the lofty credentials of an academic. He expects respect for his positions but with less dominance.  Read his interview here.

Rejection of the Christian doctrine of original sin undergirds scores of disastrous social and political ventures. The government of the United States of America was founded and has been conducted under the assumption that government is a human domain.  We live in a Democratic Republic which depends on the voting public to elect individuals who will abide by a Constitution.

God provided Commandments, not opinions.  Commandments are authoritative and dominating, they demand compliance.  Opinions vary from man to man and are subject to rejections.  Commandments vest authority in God while opinions vest authority in the creature.  One is God centered, the other is humanistic.  God’s Commandments are simple and immutable; human law is voluminous, complex, emendable, and often obtuse.

The United States Constitution is a man made document that is being shredded by men and women who have taken a sacred oath to uphold it.  These are evil, dishonest people.  This kind of behavior is typical of the majority of kings, queens, and dictators that have enslaved and abused the earth’s population from antediluvian times.  It would create severe problems in an anarchic Libertarian society.

Absolute freedom is like infinity, it is beyond the kin of mankind.  We are captives in a body and captives in a universe.  We had nothing to do with our birth and baring suicide we have little to do with our death. Our inclination is to fall into a captivity of action that imprisons our lives.  Some of us become obsessed with business, some with learning, some with drugs, some with sex, some with ego, etc.  A mature person in a properly governed society should be free to choose where he will use his life.

Al Benson began one of his recent columns with this paragraph: “We see in operation today two kingdoms in the world—the Kingdom of God and the kingdom of man (the state). There are few legitimate governments anymore that really comprise the “state.” Most of the legitimate ones are gone, having been replaced with dictatorships, oligarchies, or fake “republics” that fool people with charades they refer to as elections and whose results have already been predetermined long before the “election” takes place. We recently had one of those in the United States.”

The human freedom being pursued by the Libertarian agenda is at war with the Kingdom of God and in spite of its popularity it cannot realize its objective. Freedom is rooted in Christianity.  It is rooted in individual responsibility and obedience to God’s Commandments.  God’s government is the opposite of the new world order; His government is decentralized. The family is the basic unit.  The state acts as protector and the church is God’s agent.

The universal application of Law is the key to freedom.  All of society; the individual, the church, and the state, must abide by God’s Law.  Government cannot be allowed to pass laws to which they, themselves, are not subject; it always ends in tyranny.

Christians have been living in a dream world and the next few months and years may bring a big change in their religious perception.  God’s Judgment has fallen on our world!   R. J. Rushdoony wrote that “the Moloch state is a product of apostasy.”  We are in the grip of a product of apostasy that is abolishing our freedom and conducting a war against God and His people.  Hobby Lobby is resisting the new health care law which demands support for abortion.  The Moloch state will require a massive daily fine for non-compliance.  The state does not worship the Christian God of Hobby Lobby; its god is the anti-Christ.

Hundreds of thousands of Dispensational Christians are expecting world government to bring the Rapture and the Second Coming of Christ.  It could happen but it is likely it will not.  If they are wrong they will be shocked to find themselves living in a police state run by an evil cabal that hates their Savior.  The dictionary defines apostasy as abandonment of a previous loyalty.  We have abandoned the orthodox Reformed Christian Faith that was bequeathed by our fathers and followed a heresy that has allowed the humanistic hand of evil to invade our religion, our lives, our homes, and our nation.

As the horrors of the new world order afflict the Western World people will realize that government is not the source redemption.  They will concede that we have not followed the gift of salvation with obedience and dominion; and that if we expect to live in freedom again we must turn from our sin and repent of our wicked ways.

Christians often quote 2 Chronicles 7:14 where God promises to remove His judgment “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”.   I get many emails quoting this Bible passage but none of them specify what is meant by turning from our wicked ways.   God’s judgment is not confined to abortion or to homosexuality or to disobeying the often questionable personal guidance that comes from God “speaking to” individuals.  Judgment comes for disobedience to His Commandments (His Law).

We have lost our nation to Moloch because we have allowed a foreign religion to change our laws legalizing the evils of abortion, homosexuality, murder, dishonesty, theft, injustice, war, genocide, hate, pugnacity, greed, torture and independence.   When a society allows its government to disobey God’s Law that society is on the road to ruin.

Freedom is not realized by abandoning government and allowing moral evil to run rampant, it is not a product of a lack of laws, nor can it be produced by intellectual endeavor.  Freedom is a result of obedience to the Commandments of our Creator.  Libertarians put the rational product of their minds above the Law of God.  They are not the only ones who believe their opinions are superior to God’s. Our society is full of legal standards, folkways, and mores that are at odds with God.  We are living in a cesspool created by our own vain laxity and many have not yet smelled the stench.

When Teachers Aren’t Smarter Than A Fifth-Grader

When I’ve written about our listing mis-education system, my focus has mainly been on rampant political correctness, on how students learn few of the right things partially because of emphasis on teaching the wrong things. Yet there’s another problem: in some cases the teachers couldn’t teach the right things even if they wanted to — they don’t know them.

Professor Walter Williams treated this in his latest syndicated column, “Dishonest Educators.” He introduces the topic by talking about the fairly recent cheating scandals in places such as Atlanta, Philadelphia, Houston, New York, Detroit, and other large cities (in areas that, not coincidentally, also have high rates of vote fraud and other criminality). These are shocking instances in which teachers would commit transgressions such as reading answers aloud in class during the National Assessment of Educational Progress test. How did they justify this? Well, Williams quotes one teacher who told a fellow “educator,” “I had to give your kids, or your students, the answers because they’re dumb as hell.”

But it seems the kids aren’t the only ones. Now we learn that some teachers in Tennessee, Arkansas, and Mississippi paid surrogates between $1,500 and $3,000 to take the Praxis exam for them, the passing of which is necessary for teacher certification in 40 states. And how challenging is this test that some would fork over a few grand to a ringer sit-in? Williams describes a couple of representative questions, writing:

Here’s a practice Praxis I math question: Which of the following is equal to a quarter-million — 40,000, 250,000, 2,500,000, 1/4,000,000 or 4/1,000,000? The test taker is asked to click on the correct answer. A practice writing skills question is to identify the error in the following sentence: “The club members agreed that each would contribute ten days of voluntary work annually each year at the local hospital.” The test taker is supposed to point out that “annually each year” is redundant.

Forget about the fact that adults would find such questions challenging; it’s a sad statement about our society that we’d set the bar for teacher certification so low in the first place. I had to think: how young was I when I didn’t know the answers to the above two questions? Ten? Nine? Maybe even eight? Idiocracy has arrived.

Professor Williams also touches on a third rail of American social commentary, mentioning that most of the teachers hiring the surrogates are likely black — and that most of the surrogates may very well be white. Now, before anyone thinks of “Summerizing” Williams (not as I have. Rather, this refers to application of the kind of politically correct social pressure that drove Larry Summers from Harvard), know that he is black himself. And his point in addressing race is that our leftist mis-educators’ tolerance of low-information black teachers puts the lie to their claim that they care about blacks. After all, as he writes in his closing line, “If they [the teachers] manage to get through the mockery of teacher certification, at what schools do you think they will teach?”

But never fear, Dr. Williams. I’m sure these molders of young minds are well versed in afro-centrism, critical-race theory, and the principles of white privilege.

Piers Morgan Takes Aim At The Bible

You’ve got to hand it to bloviating Brit Piers Morgan. While he got most of the facts wrong in his recent targeting of the Second Amendment, it hasn’t stopped him from moving on to even more formidable targets.

Such as the Bible.

He says the book is “inherently flawed” — and needs to be amended.

Piers handed down his decree while interviewing SaddlebackChurch pastor Rick Warren on the December 24^th “Piers Morgan Tonight.” Yes, on Christmas Eve. When other hosts might be discussing love, brotherhood, salvation, and all things ethereal, Captain Morgan was giving us the world according to Piers. And how would he improve the Good Book? Said he, “Both the Bible and the Constitution were well intentioned, but they are basically, inherently flawed. Hence the need to amend it. My point to you [Warren] about gay rights, for example; it’s time for an amendment to the Bible.”

Well, Piers, we’re so blessed to have you to correct both America’s founding document and the most influential book in history. We had to suffer more than 200 years with one and more than 2000 with the other, but the right god-man has finally come along. Oh, and when you’re done with that, old boy, can you contact the Genome Project and rewrite the human genetic code for us? We’re flawed, too.

To Warren’s credit, he politely but firmly disagreed, responding to the amendment call by saying:

What I believe is flawed is human opinion because it constantly changes. […]What was hot is now not. […]My definition of Truth is: if it’s new, it’s not true. If it was true a thousand years ago, it’ll be true a thousand years from today; opinion changes, but Truth doesn’t.

To this Morgan quite predictably responded, “We’re going to agree to disagree on that.”

Warren then noted how pleasant their exchange had been, prompting Morgan to concur and say, “The debate should always be respectful. By the way, it applies to politics, too. The moment it becomes disrespectful, and discourteous, and then rude, and then poisonous, you never achieve anything.” Talk about amendment — without making amends. If that’s what Morgan now believes, he has definitely discovered a new “truth” since his recent interview with Larry Pratt.

This brings us to what lies at the very heart of modern liberalism and confuses the head of Piers Morgan. When Morgan disagreed on the unchanging nature of Truth, he was espousing moral relativism. This is the notion that what we call “morality” is determined by man and thus is relative to the time, place, and people. It is also something virtually every liberal believes.

And while Morgan’s relativistic statement was almost made in passing, and was allowed to pass — perhaps partially because of time constraints — it was actually the most significant comment of the exchange (relativistic sentiments always would be). Why? Because that was precisely when Morgan, completely and abjectly, lost the debate. And if you understand what I’m about to explain, you’ll be able to cut any liberal off at the knees — anytime.

While many will say, as Warren might have implied, that relativism reduces morality to opinion, even this is both too generous and a misunderstanding. “Opinion” often refers to a thesis about what may be the answer to a particular question, about what may be true. But this presupposes that there are answers to be found, that there is such a thing as “true.” In other words, Mars exists not because everyone believes it does, but because its existence is a physical truth. And the question is, does moral Truth exist in the same way, apart from man and his imagination? If not, then saying that something is morally “true” would make as much sense as saying that planet Vulcan exists simply because you felt it did. Delusion does not a truth make.

So relativism does not reduce morality to opinion. It implies something else.

That morality doesn’t exist.

After all, to say that society determines “morality” is to simply put lipstick on the pig of man’s preferences about behavior. To analogize the matter, if we learned that 90 percent of the world preferred vanilla to chocolate, would this somehow make chocolate “wrong” or “evil”? No, it would simply be an issue of taste. But then how does it make any sense to say that murder is “wrong” if the only reason we do so is that the majority of the world prefers that one not kill in a way the majority calls “unjust”? If this is all it is, then murder falls into the same category as flavor: taste. Again, delusion does not a truth make.

More intellectually nimble moral relativists have thought the above through and — although their ultimate conclusion is wrong — they don’t fool themselves the way Morgan, Richard Dawkins, and virtually every other leftist do. For example, I know of a fellow who has echoed the Protagorean mistake “Man is the measure of all things” and said, “Murder isn’t wrong; it’s just that society says it is.” He takes liberals’ cherished relativism to its logical conclusion (or at least close to it).

This brings us back to Morgan’s philosophical juvenility. He repeatedly stated in his Warren interview that the Bible was “flawed,” but such a concept is incomprehensible in a relativistic universe. For what yardstick is he using to judge the Bible?  He certainly cannot refer to any transcendent Truth (a redundancy). And the times, places, and people that extol(led) Scripture certainly don’t align with his judgment, and who is he to impose his values on them? “What you espouse is your ‘truth,’ Piers; theirs is different. Don’t be so judgmental.” That’s how easy it is to hoist liberals on their own petards.

The same applies to homosexual “rights.” If “morals” are values and values just reflect tastes, how can respecting homosexuals be morally superior to persecuting them? How can any behavior preference rightly be judged at all? I think here of how the robot in the film Terminator 2: Judgment Day repeatedly asked the adolescent John Connor why he shouldn’t kill people. “Why? Why?” The machine was just being logical, unlike the liberal organic robots (atheism=no souls=man is merely chemicals and water) that entertain meaning-inducing illusions. In a relativistic universe, moral principles do not compute. This is why any relativism-buttressed point collapses upon itself.

Feelings can become fashions, but never morals. “The Bible isn’t flawed; it’s just that secular society says it is. Respecting homosexuals isn’t right; it’s just that secular society says it is. And what Adam Lanza did isn’t wrong; it’s just that all of society says it is.” Does that sound sociopathic, Piers? It is.

It is also what your relativism implies.

That is Philosophy 101. And if you can’t understand even that, Mr. Morgan, you’re going to start to seem, to use your own words, like an “unbelievably stupid man.”

Feinstein’s Gun Control Bill Will Trigger The Next American Revolution

All political power comes from the barrel of a gun. The communist party must command all the guns, that way, no guns can ever be used to command the party – Mao Tse Tung

After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn’t do it. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to live in a society where the only people allowed guns are the police and the military – William Burroughs

Revolution?  Yes, it all sounds rather “extreme”, but the cold hard reality of our era is not going to comfort us with diplomacies and niceties, so honestly, why should I have to sugar coat anything?  We live in extreme times and there is no longer room for prancing around the ultimate consequences of that which is taking place in America today.  This country is increasingly sliding towards the edge of internal conflict.  The Liberty Movement and true Constitutionalists see it, subsections of Republicans and Democrats see it, and most of all, the federal government sees it.  In fact, they may even be counting on it.

Over the past two years alone, multiple draconian policies have been enacted through executive order by the Obama Administration which build upon the civil liberty crushing actions of George W. Bush and press far beyond.  The Patriot Acts, the FISA domestic spy bill, the bailouts of corrupt international banks, attempts at CISPA and SOPA, actions like the NDAA authorizing the treatment of U.S. citizens as “enemy combatants” without rights to due process; all paint a picture so clear only a one-celled amoeba (or your average suburban yuppie) would not see it.  You and I, and everyone else for that matter, have been designated potential targets of the state.  Our rights have been made forfeit.

There is no ambiguous or muddled separation between the citizenry and the government anymore.  The separation is absolute.  It is undeniable.  It is vast.  It is only a matter of time and momentum, and eventually there will be unbridled oppression, dissent, and conflict.  All that is required is a trigger, and I believe that trigger has arrived…

Though made to appear “complex”, the gun control debate is actually an incredibly simple issue.  It all boils down to a couple of questions which gun grabbers rarely ask:  How does the 2nd Amendment affect the future?  That is to say, what was the original intent, and should we still value that intent as it applies to tomorrow?  And, what will really happen if it is forcibly removed?  Gun opponents act as though they are unaware of these questions, or maybe they don’t care.  However, it is vital to their safety and the safety of our culture in general that they do finally consider the bigger picture.

We’ve all heard the prefabricated gun control talking points before.  Some of them so old they predate us.  They are numerous and most of them incredibly thin.  The gist of the anti-gun position, though, could be boiled down to these three points…

Common Anti-Gun Arguments

1) The 2nd Amendment is “outdated” and no longer relevant in today’s modern society.

2) We do not want to stop you from “defending yourself”, or interfere with the American tradition of hunting, but people do not need “military assault weapons” for either. 

3) Your claimed freedom to own guns should not supersede my freedom to live without fear of guns.  We exist in a society, and our society requires us to give up certain freedoms so that it can function.

Again, in response to these arguments, I have to ask, what does the 2nd Amendment mean for the future?  What was its original intent?  Gun control advocates would like to ignore the fact that the Constitution specifically protects a broad application of gun ownership, but when they cannot deny the legality of it, they instead turn to more abstract and existential methods of attack.  They try to twist the original intent of the 2nd Amendment to further their goals.  To respond briefly to each of the above fallacies:

1) The right to self defense from ANY threat, whether it be an individual, or a criminal government, does not “outdate”.  It is a universal and eternal freedom.  It is a foundational pillar of natural law.  Even if the 2nd Amendment did not exist, I would still have the inborn right to arm and protect myself and those I love, and the best way to do that is to own firearms.  The men who drafted the Constitution were far more intelligent than any pithy gun grabber today, yet, these socialist errand boys seem to believe that they have “surpassed” the wisdom of the Founders.  The amount of ego required to fuel such an attitude boggles the mind…

Gun violence and violence in general will not end simply by banning firearms.  The very idea that any society can remove all weapons from their sight is naïve to begin with.  Criminals always find a way.  Murder, rape, and mayhem will continue until you confront the root problem, which is the human mind, and the human heart.  Only when these two things are balanced in all people will violence end.  Disarming good men and women has never made a society “safer”.  When the power of defense is removed from the people, someone, somewhere, will seek to abuse their weakness.  The most armed entity of the time invariably becomes the subjugator, and usually this is the government.  Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia, Mao’s China, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, etc, all contained disarmed populations.  The guns were gone, and still millions upon millions died.  Modern day Mexico is a perfect example of a disarmed population that is now living in terror because of criminal organizations (which, of course, still have guns).  Disarmament does NOT end gun violence, it only changes the dynamic of who uses that violence, and it makes innocent victims easier to attack.

2) Because the legal argument over the “interpretation” of the 2nd Amendment is essentially over, and the Supreme Court has ruled that gun rights do indeed apply to individuals, and not just collective bodies like the National Guard, gun grabbers are now reverting to the argument that we ARE allowed to defend ourselves with firearms, but the kinds of firearms we are able to use can still be limited.  The goal of this argument is to fool gun owners who only possess conventional firearms (hunting rifles) into believing that they will not be personally affected if they support a ban on military style weapons.  These wishy-washy hunting enthusiasts are often referred to as “Elmer Fudds” because of their gullibility.

All gun confiscation programs start by chipping away at the outer barriers of gun ownership.  Like termites slowly chewing away at the wooden skeleton of a home, anti-gun proponents start small and end by destroying the entire edifice.  Anyone who believes Feinstein’s legislation will begin and end with AR-15’s and AK-47’s is living in fantasy land.  That said, the 2nd Amendment was not established for hunting purposes.  Nowhere in the writings of the Founding Fathers do they mention “hunting” as their primary concern.  Instead, gun rights are protected in order to ensure that the citizenry remains dominant over any centralized government that turns to corruption.  We are supposed to police our own political leaders, and without military style arms, this becomes increasingly difficult.

Gun grabbers will argue that our government is not the enemy because it is derived through democratic elections.  They will say that we can change it anytime we like in the voting box.  I would point out that regardless of which party is placed in power through elections, nothing in terms of our direction as a country has been changed, and, that both parties support almost identical policies.  For instance, Obama has come out in favor of nearly identical policy initiatives to Bush, and I can almost guarantee that many Republicans will sign onto the gun control efforts of Democrats despite their supposed pro-gun rhetoric.  When the two party system becomes a one party system, voting becomes irrelevant.

Finally, they will admonish the idea of an armed citizenry keeping the government in check as a “fairy tale”.  They will claim that in the face of modern military might, constitutionalists would be crushed.  For what can an AK-47 do to an F-15?  Apparently, they have never heard of Afghanistan, which has used AK-47’s and 30 year old armaments to repel two technologically advanced armies; the Soviet Union and the U.S.  Of course, the Afghanis did not allow themselves to be disarmed…

3) Here is where we get into the nonsense of intellectual idiocy.  The only real skill which academics seem to have is jumbling piles of logical fallacies together to make a single argument that sounds “rational”, but, in fact, isn’t.  The third debate point is an extremely collectivist one, and collectivist arguments generally exploit the idea that individuals must sacrifice their personal freedoms in order for the group to function.

The truth is, the group does not matter.  The perceived collective concerns and fears of a mass of people are not relevant.  All that matters are the concerns of the singular man or woman, and whether or not those concerns are legitimate.  If a person “fears” guns and gun violence, then that is their private problem, not the problem of our entire society.  We as gun owners should not have to relinquish our rights because others are afraid of what MIGHT happen to them.  We should demand that they control THEIR fear, instead of being allowed to control OUR guns.  Just because a portion of our country shares this individual fear does not make that fear any more credible, or any more our problem.

Do They Know What They Are In For…?

Feinstein’s campaign for gun control is not hers alone; it has been the overall establishment’s work in progress for decades.  I covered the broad based arguments of gun control advocates above because I wanted to illustrate the tangibility of gun ownership.  I want to show you where we stand as constitutionalists, and I can say confidently that our moral and intellectual footing is strong.  To be clear, when defenders of a particular idea are right in their position, they are much more likely to fight and die for that position, and they are much more likely to win.

In the beginning I asked what the 2nd Amendment means for the future of this country.  Not only if it continues, but if it disappears.  If I was a gun control proponent, I would weigh the aftereffects of my actions carefully, because the penalties will likely be dire…

I have heard it argued that Americans are passive.  We didn’t rise up against the last Assault Weapons Ban. We didn’t rise up against the Patriot Act.  We didn’t rise up against TSA molestation.  We didn’t rise up against warrantless wiretapping, the assassination of U.S. citizens, or even the NDAA.  The people who make this point, though, are not looking at the larger issue.  It is one thing for our government to pass legislation; the wider application of that legislation on our streets and at our doorsteps is another matter.

Feinstein’s bill is unprecedented in the history of this country, and requires widespread enforcement in every town and hamlet in order to be effective.  The way in which it is designed makes a violent response from the public inevitable.  It reaches far beyond the Assault Weapons Ban of the 1990’s, calling for the creation of a massive database of almost all gun owners in the United States.  This database will require citizens to submit their EXISTING firearms to cataloging, and the owners to be filed and fingerprinted like criminals.

The bill will ban the outright sale, manufacture, and transfer of at least 120 models of firearms (which have not yet been named).  It will ban the manufacture and sale of most if not all semi-automatic rifles and the bill specifically targets handguns as well.  Large capacity mags and mag fed weapons will essentially disappear from gun stores.  Though, those guns designated as “hunting rifles” will be exempt (for now).

Feinstein has also openly agreed with NY Governor Andrew Cuomo that government buy back programs (forced selling of firearms at a reduced price) and even physical confiscations are on the table:

http://www.opposingviews.com/i/society/guns/new-york-governor-andrew-cuomo-says-gun-confiscation-could-be-option

http://washingtonexaminer.com/sen.-feinstein-suggests-national-buyback-of-guns/article/2516648

To put this bluntly, there are approximately 50 million gun owners (according to official estimates) in the United States.  If only 2% of those gun owners refuse to submit to the Feinstein Database, and the feds attempt confiscation, they will have a massive revolution on their hands.

Many Americans, including myself, will not be strolling into the local Fusion Center to register our weapons.  Why?  Because gun registration reeks of fascism!  Some might call this “cliche”, but let’s just examine the guidelines of the Nazi Gun Registration Program of 1938:

- Classified guns for “sporting purposes”

- All citizens who wished to purchase firearms had to register with the Nazi officials and have a background check.

- Presumed German citizens were hostile and thereby exempted Nazis from the gun control law (meaning officials could have guns, citizens could not).

- Gave Nazis unrestricted power to decide what kinds of firearms could, or could not be owned by private persons.

- The types of ammunition that were legal were subject to control by bureaucrats.

- Juveniles under 18 years could not buy firearms and ammunition. 

You see, we’ve witnessed the Feinstein gun bill before, many times through history.  We know how it ends, so, there is very little incentive for us to go along quietly.

The database itself is truly the crux of it all.  It basically begs to be defied.  When a government has become openly hostile to common people, destructive of their economy, and oppressive of their individual rights, it only follows that gun registration will lead to outright confiscation later down the road or imprisonment for the owner.  Many Americans are simply not going to fall into the same trap that past societies have fallen into.  The eventual refusal of millions of citizens to voluntarily register will lead to a definite federal response.

The Department Of Homeland Security has obviously taken this into account, at least partly, by stockpiling over 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition in the span of a year, most of which are used in weapons distributed by the government for domestic enforcement.  Their projected scenario, I believe, involves limited resistance from people like myself; “gun nuts” and “liberty freaks” who are on the “fringe” of the populous.  At least, that’s what the headlines will say.  In the end, who will care if a few “conspiracy theorists” take a bullet in the quest to end gun violence, right?  But then again…

What I see in America is a much harder stance against gun confiscation than at any time in recent memory, and far less compromising than in the 1990’s.  Gun grabbers are, in my view, walking into a hornet’s nest.  Most average firearms enthusiast may be less aware of the deeper problems at hand, but they know when they are about to be raped, and will react in kind.  We in the Liberty Movement are often accused of “radicalizing” people against government authority, but I have to say, if that is the case, then the Feds are doing a much better job than we ever could.

Simultaneously, the UN (which most gun owners despise) is helping matters along by using the recent Sandy Hook shooting as a springboard for a reintroduction of their failed international Small Arms Treaty:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/28/un-arms-treaty-nra_n_2373417.html

“European and other U.N. delegates who support the arms trade treaty told Reuters on condition of anonymity they hoped Newtown would boost support for the convention in the United States, where gun control is an explosive political issue.”

“Newtown has opened the debate within the United States on weapons controls in ways that it has not been opened in the past,” Abramson said, adding that “the conversation within the U.S. will give the (Obama) administration more leeway.”

The UN has always claimed that their small arms treaty would NOT restrict private gun ownership in the U.S., and that it only deals with the international trade of illicit arms.  Yet, they try to use gun control actions in the face of Sandy Hook as a rationale for reopening negotiations?  They can’t have it both ways.  Either they are trying to tie the treaty to domestic gun ownership in the U.S, or they aren’t.  Will our government sign on to an international agreement to restrict private gun ownership on top of Feinstein’s gun grab bill?

To put this in the most basic terms: registration and restriction equals revolution.  Count on it.  It is not a matter of what we “want”, it is a matter of what is necessary.  Without a citizenry armed with weapons of military application, we lose our last deterrent to tyranny, and thus, we lose everything.  When backed into a corner, a victim has two options: he can lie down and die, or, he can fight regardless of the odds.  Sadly, this is where we are in America; fear, servitude, subservience, or civil war.

Let us hope our weapons are never needed –but do not forget what the common people knew when they demanded the Bill of Rights: An armed citizenry is the first defense, the best defense, and the final defense against tyranny. If guns are outlawed, only the government will have guns. Only the police, the secret police, the military, the hired servants of our rulers. Only the government — and a few outlaws. I intend to be among the outlaws – Edward Abbey

Source: Brandon Smith | Alt-Market

The Highly Intelligent Psychopath – Achieving Deviant Goals

Understanding how psychopaths manipulate their victims, and even work together to prey on others, is a subject, about which, the public needs to be informed. Additionally, Americans need to understand the gravest threat to our personal autonomy and freedom, are highly intelligent psychopaths. While less intelligent psychopaths also exact monetary costs, more intelligent ones destroy our institutions, using these for their own ends. These are the ones who work their way up the corporate ladder and into Congress, after all.

Psychopaths were estimated by neuroscientist Kent Kiehl to cost Americans 460 billion every year.

The series of stories you are about to read move from the personal to the corporate and political, following the acts of individual psychopaths.

This is a story using my own, real life, experiences, and those related to me by other victims. This series of articles will examine the strategies and so illustrate how psychopaths think.

These stories illustrate how psychopaths operate together and how and why others tolerate what is happening, in business and personally.

The first two psychopathic individuals discussed in this series are Craig Franklin and Morgan Barteaux Gell (AKA Pillsbury). In this article we focus on Franklin. I was once married to Franklin.

I gave birth to Morgan, whose biological father was, I recently learned, a psychopath, when I was 18. When Morgan, then Carolyn Anne Barteaux, was born I had already left him. There is strong evidence psychopathy, or tendencies to the condition, are inheritable.

This specific story chronicles sexual deviancy tolerated by a major defense contractor, now providing drone technology to our government. Most Americans are horrified by the off shore use of drones, and even more so, at the idea these will be used by law enforcement in America.

We ask ourselves, how could those who provide the technologies have failed to see the use of drones as a gross violation of human decency? The short answer is they knew, quite well. The longer answer is that profits trump all other considerations all too often. The corporate toleration for shocking behavior, herein illustrated, makes their production of drone technology entirely understandable.

Individuals whose standards for acceptable behavior change due to their association with psychopaths, are known as ‘situational’ psychopaths. The shift toward behavior which harms others in politics and business is now believed, by many, to be related to the number of highly psychopathic individuals  in these arenas.

This story begins with a document, already published to the Internet, written by my youngest daughter, Ayn Pillsbury which shows the strategy laid out by a psychopath intent on gaining sexual access to little girls who viewed him as a father.

Ayn’s Declaration, written for the court in Santa Barbara in 1999, outlines events which took place eleven years previously when she was around twelve, in the presence of her sister Dawn, her brothers, Arthur and Justin, and her step-brother, Scott. Morgan Barteaux (AKA Pillsbury),was not present, as was usual. She was, at the time, attempting to extract Eddy van Halen from his marriage.

The most relevant part of the Declaration is at the beginning, but reading it in its entirety adds further insights.

“The first episode of violence I recall was the year I was in eighth grade. That would have been in the autumn of 1988. Craig had taken us into the family room, just the kids. Mom wasn’t there. Craig wanted to talk to us about how incompetent Mom was. It was bad stuff about Mom. He was trying to win our loyalty. So then Mom came home and came into the room wanting to participate in the discussion. Craig was very angry and told her he was having a private discussion with the kids and that she wasn’t welcome.

Of course, being our mother, she believed the contrary. None of us objected to her being there. Then he became very loud and vituperative and became vocally and physically intimidating. He wrestled Mom to the ground and was on top of her holding her down and hitting her and so all of us kids were torn. We didn’t know what to do. We wanted to get him off of her, so I picked up a bar bell which was probably from 12 – 15 pounds and sort of tapped Craig with it on the back, not really wanting to hurt him but wanting him to realize that we didn’t approve of what he was doing. I don’t know how well it worked. Eventually he got off her.

There was some discussion for a while, Mom saying why she should be able to stay and Craig saying why she should leave. Then Craig again became very angry and punched Mom in the jaw, knocking her out cold. Of course she was standing so she fell over and I thought she might have struck her head on the hearth stones. So she hit the floor and we were all worried she was dead. She wasn’t responding. Craig left her there. We ran and got some water and someone felt her pulse. Then Scott and Edi (AKA Arthur) and Justin went to call the police. We stayed with Mom until she came around and the police came but Craig wasn’t arrested because Mom told them not to arrest him.

Mom did not hit Craig. Mom never hit Craig. Mom is the least violent person I know. Craig never scrupled to use physical intimidation to get what he wanted.”

I had asked Ayn to recall those times she remembered Craig battering me. In 1999 I did not understand really what Ayn’s declaration documented, if considered along with events taking place after 1999. Now, with more information from his multiple relationships, the answers are glaring.

Craig began to denigrate me to my children and others who knew us as soon as we were married. He constructed and spun stories to make me look incompetent, stupid, venal, and unworthy of the respect due to a mother. This was essential to his goal of gaining access to my daughters so he could live out his fantasies of violation and incest. Destroying the credibility of the victim is essential. This was present in each instance, my own and others.

For psychopaths the truth is irrelevant. The story which advances their goal is the story which is told.

Strategies such as these take forward planning, demonstrating one of the less understood aspects of intelligent psychopaths, the ability for strategic planning and patience, coupled with complete ruthlessness in the advancement of the goal.

Craig’s I. Q. is 180. Forward planning is as natural to him as breathing.

At the time, in 1988, I suffered a concussion and had no memories, for quite some time, of what had transpired. I did not, then remember Craig battering me or talking to the police. The children told me what had happened, but with no details. Now, officers responding to this kind of situation would have known not to listen to me. People with concussions are not capable of making informed decisions.

Additionally, I suffered Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

Craig should have been out of the home – not just because of what he did to me but because of what he was then just beginning to do to my children. I say, “my children,” because although he later went through a form of adopting them, naming them as his children in his will, this was, clearly, only a step in a process which was not about being a father, but rather living out his sexual fantasies. Eliminating my former husband, their father, from the equation, was part of his plan. Ron Foster, relinquishment of parental rights.

Ron relinquished his rights, June 21, 1989. Craig adopted the children June 26, 1989. The two events were clearly related. Craig would go into court and lie on this point ten years later, having conspired with his divorce attorney, Jacqueline Misho, to steal the records.

Denigrating one parent by another is known as Parental Alienation Syndrome. This technique is used to manipulate children and gain their trust. The same technique is used by sexual predators to alienate children from those who will protect them. Craig was not a parent in any terms we would accept because his goal was, in the first instance, sexually predatory.

Morgan also engaged in alienating my children from me, first for her own purposes, then to support Craig in his agenda. For the psychologically disordered, harm to others, is not a consideration.

While Legal Abuse Syndrome is now recognized as a form of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, abuse suffered at the hands of a psychopath is not seen as causing similar, and worse, symptoms. I have survived only because I began to study the symptoms and understand psychopathy, despite the emotional anguish suffered, which included the realization I had never had a relationship with either Craig or Morgan. No one has a relationship with a psychopath in any normal, human, sense.

I began to understand this when I retrospectively put together a time line, remembering what he had told me, and what he had done. Then, I understand his real motives. This year I did the same for Morgan.

The marriage I had entered into was a fraud used to gain access to my children, milk me for money, and use me in a variety of other ways. Craig’s intention was to accomplish his goal and leave me penniless. Keep this in mind, as the theme will reoccur.

The psychologically disordered use familiar human institutions as avenues for carrying out their predatory behavior routinely. Marriage, parenthood, all familial relations, make us vulnerable when psychopaths are involved. We need to understand this, our courts need to be take this into account.

Those who benefit by enabling these behaviors for their own profit must be taught this is a form of fraud which will not be tolerated.

In public officials, for instance judges, either engaging in this behavior, or allowing it to take place by others, for profit, should be grounds for removal and incur liabilities. It can also be handled as a violation under color of law.

Craig’s Corporate Partner

In this instance Dan O’Dowd, who with his wife, Amy owns 97% of Green Hills Software, Inc. had little real experience with business when he partnered with Glenn Hightower, his boss, and founded GHS in 1982. Craig, who he hired as Senior Vice President for Advanced Products Development in 1986, prevented him from having to return to Hightower for more funding and diluting his holding by actually selling Green Hills products before he even knew Dan. Craig read the code and judged them simply on their merits, recommending their purchase to companies with which he was doing business.

Craig also provided the edge expertise which made Dan’s success possible from the late 1980s until he, Dan, was able to orchestrate a forced buy-out of Hightower in 1998 – 1999. This link, and the links which follow, tell the story through the court documents generated from the resulting law suit.

[b.] “Glenn Hightowervs. Daniel O’Dowd, Case No. BS 053127

[d.] “Glenn Hightowervs. Daniel O’Dowd, Case No. BS 053127,

[e.]AMERICAN ARBITRATION ASSOCIATION No. 72Y 180 0960 98,

The opinion expressed by the court in [d.] was that Hightower was likely to prevail if there is proof of unlawful action by O’Dowd. While there had, in fact, been a conspiracy to make it impossible for Hightower to exercise his option to buy O’Dowd out Hightower was unable to prove this at the time.

The deal struck between Craig and Dan was for Dan to recharacterize the stock and for Craig to run the ‘Green Hills Personnel Strike.’ Promises of lavish benefits were made by Craig to other key personnel. Morgan’s 2001 Deposition touches on the conspiracy in which Craig was paid to organize the strike by an exchange of favors. One of these was O’Dowd’s having a fraudulent stock option agreement written.

But it is very possible the manipulation went on in several directions. Dan and Craig saw a lot of each other and while Craig and I were still married Craig would come home shaking with rage because Dan passed on to him remarks, Dan said, were from Glenn, which were far less than complementary toward Craig.

Dan’ s own personal goal was to be richer than Bill Gates. To accomplish this he had to be rid of his partners. Stories of Dan’s belief he was smarter and better at computers than Gates traveled to me both from Craig and others at the company. I have considered the possibility Dan, too is psychopathic, but lacking more substantial evidence than his willingness to destroy me, my children, and suborn the court system, I have no opinion in the matter.

However, this interesting note should be considered. In 2003, according to Anne Fisher, who was eating dinner with Craig when he showed her an envelope and told her what was inside. The envelope enclosed a deposition from a law suit settled in 2001 given by Morgan Pillsbury. It was addressed to John Fund of the Wall Street Journal. It was Green Hills Software, stationary and postage was paid.

The deposition inside was uncertified, meaning Morgan had no chance to review and edit the document. Craig would have had to obtain it from the Green Hills attorney. Why would Dan Risk providing this to John Fund if there was no accrued benefit to himself?

Look at the graph below, from the GHS site, for how much Dan benefited, and when.

Craig joins GHS 1986  -  Government Contracts 2003

 

Although it should not have been mailed, or placed on Fund’s website, the deposition is, in fact, revealing. In the deposition Morgan states she has had a borderline personality disorder all of her life. But she had never been diagnosed as having one by a competent professional. She admits Craig came on to her sexually and recalls having conversations with him where he insisted on discussing his sexual attraction to her and to my other daughters.

Morgan relates Craig’s goal of finding a blond haired, blue-eyed twenty-something woman who will cater to his every whim, as well and Craig’s insistence Morgan, who he is also approaching sexually, find him other women as well.

John immediately put it up on his website, started for him by intimate friend, Gail Heriot. The two had been intimate for over a year at this time. Email documenting their meetings in various hotel rooms, dated 1/13/02 10:05 PM. John’s only comment on the deposition was Morgan’s admission she had a borderline personality disorder. But Craig’s other reported activities coincide exactly with the same pattern exhibited later with Anne Fisher. When the deposition was given, in 2001, Anne and Craig were still in the honeymoon phase of their relationship.

Craig would prove himself to be a serial abuser, with the same patterns recurring with multiple women.

At about the same time, 2003, Fund put up his website Dan was struck with a moment of patriotic fervor and started the Fallen Heroes Last Wish Foundation.   2010 2011 2012

From this time on government contracts became very much part of Dan’s business. This suggests to me John Fund, through his friends Karl Rove and Dick Cheney, arranged government contracts as another exchange of favors.

Craig was very serious about leaving me destitute. In a phone recording made in 1999, Craig discussed stock options with Morgan. It is clear as you read, no matter what, Craig and Green Hills do not intend me to get even the tiny amount of stock the court awarded to me in the decision rendered in “Divorce Judgment, August 16,1999.” It was planned in advance.

Craig had agreed to assist with Dan’s take over of Green Hills to benefit himself. One of these ‘benefits’ was to destroy me financially, part by having a new stock option agreement written by Ruth Fisher, an attorney in Los Angeles, in late 1997 or very early 1998. Craig told this to Morgan at the time and, when we were again talking, she relayed this to me.

By 2003 John had his reasons for helping Craig. By then Morgan had stabbed Craig in the back and the war between Morgan and Fund had involved Fund’s friends, Karl Rove and Dick Cheney. Psychopaths routinely stab each other in the back.

Morgan had started talking to me again in 1999 because she needed me to provide support Craig had withdrawn and help her get Fund to the altar.

Until recently I did not realize what had actually transpired. I also had no idea I was being double-teamed by two psychopaths, Craig and Morgan.

I began to understand this when I retrospectively put together a time line, remembering what they had told me, done, and then understanding their real motives.

Craig’s Fixation on Incest

Each of us is impacted by what happens in our own lives and from the reflected memories of those who raise us. Craig’s first sexual arousal came when he was sixteen, while wrestling with his younger sister, Priscilla, then twelve. He did not molest her. But thereafter his focus would be young girls with whom he had a familial relationship, who were virgins, and who he was betraying. A life-time pattern was set.

Craig’s parents were rigid, highly domineering, and cold. Craig’s father, a double vice-president of the University of Southern California, was also an attorney. His reputation at USC was built on fundraising, and I was told, over and over again, he had raised over 100 million for the university.

Dr. Franklin’s communications with his children came in the form of a news bulletin, announcing in gloating language, how much he had raised by persuading elderly people, whom he and his wife paid assiduous attention to, to leave money to the university instead of their families. These potential donors were never invited to their home, instead, Dr. Franklin and his wife entertained them at the Los Angeles Country Club, membership paid for by the USC. Listening to them discuss these people, gloating over their success and the anticipated consternation of the donors children, was disgusting.

Craig and his siblings grew up seeing this as normal.

Anne Fisher, another woman abused by Franklin

Anne Fisher, whose relationship with Craig continued for many years, first contacted me in the beginning of 2003 by email. Our communications continued sporadically over the years.

Craig had told her a story about his childhood he had not shared with me. When Craig was around two he wandered into the hallway at night and his mother, dressed in a scanty negligee, saw him, became angry, and spanked him with a Bible. According to Craig, as reported by Anne, she then went into her bedroom and engaged in sexual intercourse with her husband. It is, naturally, impossible to know if this happened, but from Anne’s report it clearly had heavy significance for him.

Craig told me about his arousal with Priscilla, but I did not realize this was anything more than a single incident. Over the years we were together, however, I was occasionally uncomfortable at his insistence I have plastic surgery so I looked like his sister. I refused. Priscilla is blond, blue-eyed and her face is highly neotenous.

I took his peculiarities to be simple eccentricities of no real significance. I was obviously wrong on this point.

After Craig left me Ayn told me Craig had long been exposing himself to her when she walked past our room and I was not in the house. Further pieces of information seeped in through several sources, although I have never really been in contact with Craig again.

The same year I began talking to Anne a private detective I hired to get Craig’s address for service of papers found Incest Pornography and a receipt from the sex shop in his trash neatly contained in a gift bag. He had watched Craig deposit it there.

Anne Fisher did not initially tell me very much about her relations with Craig. It was a serious relationship in that Anne became financially dependent on Craig, who agreed to fund a business she was starting and buy ‘them’ a home. He even took her and her two children to look at houses and found one he agreed to buy. Declaration Time Line No. 1 Time Line No. 2

The relationship was highly traumatic for her, and the stories she told me directly, and through letters and other documents she sent, were chilling.

Her relations with Craig put her, and her two children, at real risk, disrupted her real relationships and left her, and her children, homeless.

This is reproduced from Time Line 2 , which Anne sent me in 2008. The events chronicled date from around 2005, taking place after Craig had enticed her into dependence on him and then raped and destroyed her ability to make a living. Craig reentered her life when she was mending matters.

Anne Fisher – “HE ASSURED ME THAT HE WOULD NEVER EVER DO THAT AGAIN… and that we would work together at this business, he with his business experience and my technical trade knowledge. I began to build the business.

At first it was great, until I was at the point of contracts and office space and equipment purchases. He became evil… during this time… That is the best way to describe it. He had me in his control again and he used me as anything but a business partner.

He held over my head that he would take the business, destroy the business… He used me as his own private escort service, making me meet with prostitutes, writing letters to his prostitutes and promoting him as a decent man so that possibly? He could get whatever he wanted. I found notes from other girls that he was investing in their company at the same time and sleeping with them and lies… to me… He gave one girl 30k, and he told me he could only give me 5500/month and had no money for the operating start up cash he had promised…. So, I had to pay my bills, around 3k and then take about 2k a month to push the company forward each and every month and in this time I was used like a butt wipe and was privy to the other arrangements that made me realize that I was being taken advantage of, however, I couldn’t step back or lose it all and I couldn’t really step up because? I felt I owed craig his share and would lose it all. In 2007 he paid my daughter 3k/month to help out and the halfway through the year, cut me off, and kept her on (to punish me or cause grief)… and my entire family saw me, my children, saw me homeless… after craig had promised me all this. I tried to commit suicide twice or more. Entered therapy I cannot afford and have terrible shame, guilt and embarrassment due to this being a small town and having craig not “not” have the money, but choosing not to continue me or help me until I can get a job. It’s like he enjoys seeing me lose it all and then he’ll be back… to offer me money since I am completely at a loss to keep things and not lose anymore, my self esteem is in the bucket and I have no friends because how can you tell anyone what you are going through like this?

Craig has basically destroyed my reputation and my ability to be seen my those in my town as anyone other than a “hustler or a gold digger or a stupid ho”. This is far from who I am and from who I came here to be…”

Over the years Anne and I talked on the phone and got to know each other, to some extent, though we never met in person. On the phone she also provided information. All of this information was provided for my use and at my discretion because she was frustrated with her inability to either extract herself from Craig’s circle or successfully find justice.

In a declaration Anne sent to me she states Craig raped her four times. Verbally, she had told me about two occasions involving herself and another audio tape she has of Craig admitting his rape of Ivory May Kabler.

Anne told me she attempted,twice, to report Craig to the police, who refused to listen. Craig was, after all, protected as the Senior Vice President of a seemingly respectable company, Green Hills Software, Inc. Those with wealth are protected by both law enforcement and our courts.

It was Anne who also told me Craig had been meeting women online and using frequent flyer miles, available through his travel for Green Hills Software, to bring them to Santa Barbara for the weekend where he would rape them and put them, traumatized, back on the return flight. This was pure aggression and a violation of the Mann Act. These women were not in his ‘target zone,’ for young girls, just lonely women who believed they had found someone who really cared about them.

Emotionally destroying, raping, and humiliating women was, clearly, a goal for Craig, an element of his continuously repeating pattern of abuse.

At one point Anne gave me a tour of one of the ‘Sugar Daddy’ sites she handled for Craig. It was horrifying to realize how she had been used as she took me through the site and showed me letters she had read for Craig from other women.

The betrayal theme, which is present in Craig’s core fantasy, was very much being fed, if what Anne told me was true. I have no reason to believe it was not, as I later heard from Morgan he had brought one of these women down to meet her while she was moving from her original apartment to a cheaper one down the street. These themes are also present in Morgan’s 2001 Deposition.

Craig continually returned to Anne through the time they knew each other, according to her time lines and declaration and from what she told me. This is a typical form of extended control used by psychopaths to destroy the self-confidence and integrity of the victim. Anne has survived, and started her own business, which was no easy thing. But she is very much the exception in these cases. Talking to her persuaded me of Craig’s ruthlessness and lack of conscience. Anne was treated like a utility to be picked up, enjoyed, and then again destroyed while Craig enjoyed every step of the process.

Craig lived out the same scenario with multiple women, whose names I have. Details will be provided in the book, now being prepared.

But Craig, while enjoying these interludes, also keeps his eye on the future with long on planning. A clear learning curve appears as he grows more and more ruthless in his pursuit of his goal.

During the years past he was also pursuing other lines of action. The long term planning for the goal of incest included seeking a woman young enough to have children, preferably girls. In parallel, Craig also attempted to get unsupervised visitation with his eight-year old granddaughter, the daughter of his oldest son, Jonathan Scott Franklin, when Scott was charged with paying a hit man to murder his estranged wife and her new boy friend. Craig entirely ignored the existence of his grandson, two years older.

Scott’s wife, Kathy, alarmed at this, resisted Craig having any such visitation and this was denied by the court, who put her and the two children in a victim protection program.

Craig and Scott had conspired to leave Kathy destitute, which doubtless suited Craig’s own ultimate goal, even if Scott had not tried to have Kathy murdered. Craig’s comment to Anne on being told was, “How could he (Scott) be so stupid? They always suspect the husband!” No shred of concern for Kathy was expressed.

When my youngest daughter, Ayn, had a little girl Craig refocused his attentions there and made plans to ‘become a part of his grand-daughter’s life.’

Craig is a danger to little girls, who he immediately begins to manipulate. This is true for his own relations and for others. His points of entry into relationships include music and the film industry.

Songs, especially ballads and country western music plays a part in Craig’s plans. Craig planned a children’s album and wrote a song for his grand-daughter, the lyrics for which appear here, and were produced for the album, “Celeste Sings for Kids,” The album was publicized professionally, and Craig thanked those who helped publicize it. Here is one of his thank yous which appears on a list of endorsers. The site is To Market Kid.

“Craig Franklin, President – Romantic Realist Records, LLC

“Words can’t begin to describe the difference Regina has made with my children’s music project and its visibility in the marketplace. Regina took my project from 0-100 in two months! She has made all the difference! Anyone who has the good fortune to work with Regina Kelland should jump at the chance!” “

It is not possible to know when you are dealing with the disordered, necessarily, especially when you never have the opportunity to know them more than professionally.

Note that the song, “Justin’s Lullaby” was not written by Janet Smith and Craig Franklin. It was written by Craig, tuned up by me in 1983. Justin is my son with Franklin. Psychopaths continually reinvent history to suit their purposes. On this site Craig features a song, “To Have and to Hold,” he wrote on the occasion of our formal wedding. I am, naturally, not mentioned.

Craig also positioned himself as being adversarial to sex offenders by funding a movie titled, “Barracuda,” a B sort of movie produced by Mercury Rising Films. Both of these ventures were well thought out to put him in place to form relationships allowing for access to young girls by simply spending money and continuing to play around with his guitar.

After Green Hills removed Craig from their management team last summer Craig moved on to another project, “Craig Franklin’s Tea Party,” a movie. The webmaster is an associate from Mercury Rising Films, which would produce the film.

Over the last several years I have been outing both Craig Franklin and Green Hills Software. My most recent website, Craig Franklin and Green Hills Software, went up within 45 minutes of reading this email, which I published on the site.

Craig is a sexually deviant psychopath whose focus is seduction, sexual violence, betrayal, and leaving the victim homeless. One of these scenarios plays out as raping little girls, preferably daughters, or grand-daughters now, when they are around twelve years old. Here, he also begins with seduction, moves to building trust and thereafter devolves into a series of betrayals, sexual and financial, intended to leave both the mother and daughter completely traumatized and financially destitute.

It is impossible to know how many women and girls he has traumatized or what he has cost these individuals in peace of mind, financially, and so many other ways. But, in retrospect, it is very easy to see what he will continue to do.

Green Hills Software, Inc., enabled this behavior, conspiring with Craig to destroy both myself and my children. They, Dan and others in the company, did this to secure Craig’s cooperation when it was needed. They removed him from their ‘team’ when the risk of exposure finally became to high. They profited enormously over the years and now are repositioning themselves with absolutely no show of conscience.

Craig’s website, Romantic Realist, is now down, as is the Romantic Realist My Space. But his Ivory May My Space site is still up.

Anne expressed a wish to ensure Craig’s sexually predatory behavior would be brought to an end. These articles, and the book, are being written, in part, to accomplish this goal.

Next: Morgan and Craig, a relationship.

Dan O’Dowd, Green Hills Software, Inc., Green Hills Software, LLC, and Integrity, missing from the equation.

Something Rotten In Ashtabula

My friend Dave sent me some articles today and two of them included links to articles previously published in the Star Beacon about nasty smells emanating from someplace not far from State Road. The article reported the stench smelled like, “cat urine/ammonia,” and additionally reported there had been over 100 complaints since June.

In a later story Mike Settles, Ohio EPA spokesman, named Detrex/ Elco Corp., 1100 State Road had been issued a notice of violation, “after a number  of citizens complained.” Settles further, helpfully, noted the company had, “14 days to respond with a written plan of action.”

But the article went on to quote the claim by Detrex/Elco’s operations manager, Mike Steib, “the company is in compliance.”

You could see the folks from the EPA looking at each other, waiting to see someone ‘fess up to making the smell. The ‘investigation’ was still ongoing.

Comments in the paper were far more pointed, including, “ashtabula area has been a dumping ground that has been ignored for at least 70 years,we have never had any really politicians or inspectors in any dept. clamp down on these irresponsible polluters. personally i believe thats why our area seems a liitle slow if you know what i mean.”

Reports of visits to the Emergency Room, passing out due to the smell, moving out of the area, cancer clusters, and being ignored by the EPA were also included in the long thread of commentary.

But there were a few points which were overlooked, which should be kept in mind. The EPA has precisely one monitor in Ashtabula County. It is located in Conneaut, miles from the source of the problem. The specific substances for which monitoring takes place are very limited.

Also, the complaints have focused on the scent, which implies a substance which is unpleasant and is picked up by the olfactory senses. This brings up other issues. First, substances such as Manganese are not monitored by the station in Conneaut. Second, one of the substances which we know is emitted is Carbonyl Sulfide. When this hits water, for instance in your nose or mouth, it becomes Hydrogen Sulfide, which deadens the olfactory receptors. So, you may well be inhaling something toxic which has no smell – or be unable to smell something which is toxic.

So now you can stop worrying about the smell, it is the least of our problems.

Navigating Egypt’s Revolutionary Crisis

As chaos again envelopes Egypt, the revolution is evolving in new directions, along contradictory and confusing channels. It’s tempting to immediately support the “opposition” to the Muslim Brotherhood’s apparent “power grab,” but the situation in Egypt is more complex. The recent events in Egypt are not simply signs of a healthy revolution, they also include immediate dangers.

Making sense out of a constantly changing, frantic revolution involving millions of people involves unpeeling layers of outer turmoil until the inner motives of different interest groups are exposed. At bottom, the groups vying for power have economic interests at stake; asking “who benefits” is still the best way to navigate a revolution.

For example, in Egypt the freshly-formed “opposition” — to the democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood government — is a motley crew. After the President announced “emergency powers,” an opposition coalition formed, calling itself the “National Salvation Front,” consisting of different groups united with the ultimate aim to remove President Morsi from power (some members of the coalition revealed their actual motives when the President rescinded the emergency powers decree, but they retained their demand for him to immediately step down). Included in this coalition are sincere revolutionary youth, wealthy 1%’ers and western-backed bureaucrats, as well as “socialists”, unions, and even those with deep connections to the former Mubarak dictatorship like Amr Moussa, a former foreign minister under Mubarak.

The only thing that unites this group is their antagonism to the Muslim Brotherhood. But different groups within the opposition have different reasons for hating the Muslim Brotherhood. The revolutionary youth and socialists want a real democracy, both social and political, and correctly view a religious group in power as being inherently anti-democratic, since it automatically minimizes the rights of religious minorities, like the religious states of Saudi Arabia and Israel do.

However, others in the coalition are anti-Muslim Brotherhood for less virtuous reasons. Those who benefited from the former dictatorship simply want to be back in power where they controlled the government, using it as a giant money trough of parasitic corruption.

The other liberal and affluent groups in the opposition — those not connected to the former regime — aspire towards the same government money trough: they were excluded from state power by the Mubarak regime and now the Muslim Brotherhood dominates the state apparatus and all its perks.  This exclusion from power is the real basis for many of these groups crying about democracy; they want a democracy with themselves in power.

In Egypt, the economic interests of different groups are consciously hidden behind religion and abstract notions of democracy. The very wealthy and corporations have no problem acting extra religious or especially democratic if it pushes their interests forward.

But to truly wield power during a revolution implies that you express the interests of the millions who crushed the Mubarak dictatorship. And although it’s true that the new opposition has led massive demonstrations in the streets, it’s also true that the Muslim Brotherhood has led much bigger demonstrations, a fact under-reported in the media.

Another ignored fact is that most people believe — including Egyptian opposition groups — that the Muslim Brotherhood will win the upcoming referendum vote, which is why the opposition is trying to prevent the referendum from happening by causing havoc in the streets, instead of waiting for a more democratic vote.

President Morsi has accused the organizers of these protests to be scheming towards a coup, and there’s likely more than a little truth in this (this was in part the reason he gave for granting himself emergency powers).

It’s certain that the former Mubarak officials in the opposition are thinking along these lines. Some have accused the military and police of provoking violence and intentionally not intervening in protests that killed several people and injured hundreds outside the presidential palace. Similar non-interventions during mob violence happened at a massacre at a soccer game where 75 died, and with attacks against Christian churches. The military are regulars at using such social crises to reclaim their powers via martial law and dictatorship. This threat is real and urgent in Egypt.

And although the Muslim Brotherhood has bent backwards trying to please the military, this can change quickly; the military has a weak allegiance to the Brotherhood and a long history of conflict. It would rather have military-associated politicians in power.

This isn’t to suggest that the Muslim Brotherhood is politically supportable. They’re not. They have been far too friendly to the military and other criminals associated with the former regime. Nor have they done anything to address the economic and social issues that were the real fuel of the revolution. Millions of people participated in the revolution because they wanted to improve their lives. This hasn’t happened. And things are about to get worse under the Muslim Brotherhood government.

For example, the Brotherhood government recently signed off on a loan from the U.S.-dominated International Monetary Fund (IMF), which, as history has repeatedly shown, proves disastrous for the working and poor people of the debtor country by forcing economic policies that favor rich investors at everyone else’s expense.

Moreover, the IMF usually demands privatization of public services that are directed toward helping the poor. One example of a common IMF attack on the public sector is the elimination of government fuel subsides, which lower the price of gasoline and oil used for cooking. This IMF policy has created mini-Arab springs in Jordan and Nigeria; and now Egypt’s IMF loan includes the same attached string. A report on Reuters explains:

“If the [Egyptian] government does begin cutting the [fuel] subsidy and publishes a timetable for its eventual removal — probably a minimum IMF demand — then we would expect
funds from the IMF and other donor organizations to provide Egypt with breathing space [to fund its government].”

At the same time, the IMF loan also helped insure that Egypt’s Mubarak-era miniscule taxes for the wealthy and corporations stay where they are, at 25 percent.

Thus, in one stroke of the pen — signing the IMF debt deal — the Muslim Brotherhood proved in practice that it will continue the economic policies of the wealthy-dominated Mubarak dictatorship.

This economic policy of free-market capitalism of the IMF is agreed to by all of the large anti-Brotherhood “opposition” groups, with the exception of the revolutionary youth and socialist organizations. This is more proof that for many of these groups, the battle for “democracy” is a shallow one, a thin shell of political democracy that doesn’t penetrate into the larger economic sphere. The best expression of this razor-thin democracy is the leader of the opposition coalition, Mohamed ElBaradei, who said that:

“The demands of the revolution were for social justice, freedom and dignity.”

Of course “social justice” is vague enough to be misinterpreted to not include jobs, good wages, adequate social services — the core economic demands of the revolution.

And although the economic voice of the majority of Egyptians is not currently being expressed by any of the main groups vying for power, the demands of working people will inevitably find their way into the larger struggle for power. Voices expressing these demands are already emerging in various parts of the country, where labor and community issues are coming to the forefront. For example, the Egyptian Federation of Trade Unions recently included in their demands:

• Re-form the Constituent Assembly with at least 50 percent of the members to be workers and peasants
• Guarantee trade union freedoms in the Constitution or the law
• Issue a new labor law guaranteeing workers’ rights
• Speed up the implementation of a law on minimum and maximum wages, and link these to rising prices
• Return of all workers to work who have lost their jobs

It has also been reported the important industrial city of Mahalla — known for its tradition of labor struggles — has declared itself “independent” from the government, and will be run by a “revolutionary council,” although details are still scarce.

Ultimately, the voice of the working Egyptians must be expressed if the revolution is to be pushed forward. However, an urgent question must still be answered immediately: Should the main demand of the opposition — for President Morsi to step down — be supported?

It seems that, at this time, the demand is premature, considering that there has been a recent election that overwhelmingly put the Muslim Brotherhood into power, and that even the opposition admits that the Brotherhood is likely to win its nationwide referendum vote (the large pro-government demonstrations seem to confirm this). The demand thus seems strangely at odds with the current political reality, and thus raises suspicions about some of those demanding it, especially the ex-Mubarak lackeys, who are likely using legitimate popular anger for the purpose of coup-making.

The opposition’s shallow version of democracy cannot be won by ignoring President Morsi’s recently won democratic election. The revolutionary youth in the anti-Brotherhood coalition should strive for an independent path for working people, far away from those associated with the last dictatorship and with those trying to tie Egypt’s economy to the short leash of the U.S. corporate-run IMF.

http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2012/al-monitor/egyptmorsireferendum.html

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/10/09/idUSWNA707020121009

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/162901#.UMVjIK7VDMw

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