Academy Blog Beats the Big Media Timing

This blog was the first to report yesterday that Fox News' Senior Legal Analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano said that extortion was committed on many American banks by the Bush Administration. The story was being typed as the Judge was speaking, and published to the internet within minutes.

Wednesday, on Fox's Studio B with Shepard Smith, Napolitano said that banks that did not need the bail-out money, did not want the bail out money, and tried to refuse, were specifically told by the FDIC and the Treasury that if those banks did not take the money they would be subjected to expensive and lengthy audits which the banks themselves would have to pay for.

Napolitano said that Monday night he met with an official of one of those banks who explained how the process had gone down. This official is reported to have told the government to go ahead with the audit because his bank was "clean" as far as its book were concerned. That is when the official was told his bank would have to pay for the audit, and his employees would have to give their time, paid for by the bank, to assist with the audit.

The Business and Media Institute said three hours later that "the method the Treasury Department employed to get banks to go along with the TARP bailout breached legal boundaries to the point of 'extortion,' according to Fox News Senior Judicial Analyst Andrew Napolitano, a former Superior Court Judge for the state of New Jersey.

The Judge defined extortion as " a threat to perform a lawful act to affect some ones free will."

"This person runs a bank that’s worth about $250 billion, it has no subprime loans, it has no bad debts, wasn’t involved in credit default swaps," Napolitano said. "It didn’t need any money. It didn’t ask for the money and didn’t want it. The FDIC with Treasury backing - officials from both the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Treasury said if you don’t take this money, we will conduct a multi-year public audit of you."

In addition, those banks which were unduly forced to take the money now owe 5% interest on those government "loans". Some banks cut investor dividends at the end of their business cycles in order to pay for the interest owed.

In related news, "Signature Bank of New York said on Tuesday that it had repaid $120 million to the Treasury Department. Old National Bancorp of Indiana returned $100 million, Iberiabank of Louisiana paid back $90 million, and Bank of Marin Bancorp of Novato, Calif., repaid $28 million. All of the banks paid 5 percent interest on the money they had received.
"New restrictions on executive compensation and dividend payouts made such aid less palatable to bank managers." New York Times

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Bush Administration Committed Extortion--FOX NEWS

Extortion was committed on many American banks by the Bush Administration, said Fox News' Senior Legal Analyst, former judge Andrew Napolitano.

Tuesday, on Fox's Studio B with Shepard Smith, Napolitano said that banks that did not need the bail-out money, did not want the bail out money, and tried to refuse, were specifically told by the FDIC and the Treasury that if those banks did not take the money they would be subjected to expensive and lengthy audits which the banks themselves would have to pay for.

Napolitano said that Monday night he met with an official of one of those banks who explained how the process had gone down. This official is reported to have told the government to go ahead with the audit because his bank was "clean" as far as its book were concerned. That is when the official was told his bank would have to pay for the audit, and his employees would have to give their time, paid for by the bank, to assist with the audit.

In addition, those banks which were unduly forced to take the money now owe 5% interest on those government "loans". Some banks cut investor dividends at the end of their business cycles in order to pay for the interest owed.

In related news, "Signature Bank of New York said on Tuesday that it had repaid $120 million to the Treasury Department. Old National Bancorp of Indiana returned $100 million, Iberiabank of Louisiana paid back $90 million, and Bank of Marin Bancorp of Novato, Calif., repaid $28 million. All of the banks paid 5 percent interest on the money they had received.

"New restrictions on executive compensation and dividend payouts made such aid less palatable to bank managers." New York Times

More information as it becomes available.

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Obama's Policies: America's New Risk from Terrorists

In issuing these executive orders, Mr. Obama is returning America to the failed law enforcement approach to fighting terrorism that prevailed before Sept. 11, 2001.

The column below by John Yoo, which appeared last Thursday in the Wall Street Journal, analyzes some of the decisions President Obama made in his first week as commander-in-chief. Taken together, these decisions, as Yoo notes, “will seriously handicap our intelligence agencies from preventing future terrorist attacks.”

Obama Made a Rash Decision on Gitmo;

By John Yoo [condensed]

During his first week as commander in chief, President Barack Obama ordered the closure of Guantanamo Bay and terminated the CIA's special authority to interrogate terrorists.

While these actions will certainly please his base -- gone are the cries of an "imperial presidency" -- they will also seriously handicap our intelligence agencies from preventing future terrorist attacks. In issuing these executive orders, Mr. Obama is returning America to the failed law enforcement approach to fighting terrorism that prevailed before Sept. 11, 2001.

He's also drying up the most valuable sources of intelligence on al Qaeda, which, according to CIA Director Michael Hayden, has come largely out of the tough interrogation of high-level operatives during the early years of the war. The question Mr. Obama should have asked right after the inaugural parade was: What will happen after we capture the next Khalid Sheikh Mohammed or Abu Zubaydah? Instead, he took action without a meeting of his full national security staff, and without a legal review of all the policy options available to meet the threats facing our country.

It's also likely Mr. Obama will declare terrorists to be prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions. The Bush administration classified terrorists -- well supported by legal and historical precedent -- like pirates, illegal combatants who do not fight on behalf of a nation and refuse to obey the laws of war.

The CIA must now conduct interrogations according to the rules of the Army Field Manual, which prohibits coercive techniques, threats and promises, and the good-cop bad-cop routines used in police stations throughout America. Mr. Obama has also ordered that al Qaeda leaders are to be protected from "outrages on personal dignity" and "humiliating and degrading treatment" in accord with the Geneva Conventions.

His new order amounts to requiring -- on penalty of prosecution -- that CIA interrogators be polite. Coercive measures are unwisely banned with no exceptions, regardless of the danger confronting the country. Eliminating the Bush system will mean that we will get no more information from captured al Qaeda terrorists.

Every prisoner will have the right to a lawyer (which they will surely demand), the right to remain silent, and the right to a speedy trial. The first thing any lawyer will do is tell his clients to shut up.

The KSMs or Abu Zubaydahs of the future will respond to no verbal questioning or trickery -- which is precisely why the Bush administration felt compelled to use more coercive measures in the first place. Our soldiers and agents in the field will have to run more risks as they must secure physical evidence at the point of capture and maintain a chain of custody that will stand up to the standards of a civilian court.

Relying on the civilian justice system not only robs us of the most effective intelligence tool to avert future attacks, it provides an opportunity for our enemies to obtain intelligence on us.

If terrorists are now to be treated as ordinary criminals, their defense lawyers will insist that the government produce in open court all U.S. intelligence on their client along with the methods used by the CIA and NSA to get it. A defendant's constitutional right to demand the government's files often forces prosecutors to offer plea bargains to spies rather than risk disclosure of intelligence secrets.

Reprinted with permission from

ACT for America

P.O. Box 12765

Pensacola, FL 32591

http://www.actforamerica.org/

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Government Dogma, and Oversight of Industry

The following came from the Pacific Research Institute, using an article from the San Jose Mercury News, from December 15, 2008:

"One week after the election, a think tank founded and led by President-elect Barack Obama's transition chief, John Podesta, referred to synthetic biology as "the most profound challenge to government oversight of technology in human history." In an op-ed in the San Jose Mercury News, Daniel Ballon, Ph.D., PRI technology studies fellow, explains that synthetic biology offers an unprecedented opportunity to transform modern medicine, generate clean, renewable biofuels, and create millions of "green collar" jobs. Will the Obama administration encourage this innovation and respect the scientific community, or cave in to special interests peddling fear and hysteria?"

The better question is this: What authority does the government have to "oversee" any industry? We recognize such things as its authority to oversee standards that have been set for such things as pollution controls; national security interests such as selling items like supercomputers or explosives to enemies who would use those things against us; or in sorting out the vagaries of such things as where the rights of one industry may or may not overlap, such as the right of independent VOIP companies to use the high speed internet providers who offer their own VOIP?

President Bush is the first, and hopefully the only, President who can be said to be of the "religious right". His administration prevented the use of embryonic stem cells in research because his extreme right wing views are such that he--and millions of other people--believe that once the egg has been fertilized by a sperm, it has a soul provided by the Almighty, or that in some way it is one of God's sacred creations and therefore cannot in any sense of moral conscience be destroyed.

Where is the separation of church and state? Since several federal courts have deemed atheism to be a religion for the purposes of protection under the Constitution, an atheist who wishes to experiment with embryonic stem cells ought to be able to do so; after all, I do not have to follow the religious dogmas that Mr. Bush lives with, and he does not have the right to implement such dogma into law.

So where does the right of government oversight begin and end?

It seems it is to have a new beginning under the Obama Administration, which is going to print billions of dollars of money to put into those industries it deems either necessary, worthy, or "green."

Along with all these manufactured dollars will surely come oversight. Free money does not come with out strings. And it is not going to be a simple case of an industry accepting government funding for something it is already doing. The Federal government agencies responsible for handing out these unsecured greenbacks are going to be looking for results--and only the results it wants to see.

Obama is going to replace religious dogma with government dogma.

This is the reason that Ayn Rand stated the principle that there ought to be a wall of separation between industry and state, for the same reason as there is between church and state.

The Bush administration pushed for the government dogma of alternative fuel in the form of corn-based ethenol. This pushed up the price of corn to indefensible levels, farmers put wheat on the back burner in order to cash in on the profits to be made from corn, and as a result both wheat-based and corn-based products went up in price.

Government dogma screwed the American citizen. Fuel mileage is lower with corn-based ethenol, but it costs less, which was a priority when oil prices were going up, and in the attempt to wean us from middle east oil. Instead of paying higher prices at the pump, we now pay a much higher percentage for our food than we would have paid for our oil-based gasoline with the corn syrup left out of it.

Government dogma has no idea of how to "manage" industry or the economy. As a matter of fact, they cannot be "managed" without dire consequences. The housing market bubble disaster is because of government "management" of interest rates, which encouraged Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to perform in a very un-business-like manner, something they never would have done if money had not been so cheap.

Part of Detroit's problems are caused by concessions made to the Union--after the government stepped in many times to help negotiate a settlement because it was deemed "disastrous" to let the industry sit idle while both sides held their ground.

Part of Detroit's problems are that it's own dealers protested when, for example, GM announced several years ago that Chevrolet was going to be making only small cars, and the bigger cars would be in the other brands. Chevy dealers protested that they could not sell only small cars. Now, mini cars are the rage, along with the small, compact, efficient vehicles put out by the Japanese and the Koreans and the Germans and others.

Government oversight of how to build a car, i.e., what specifications and standards it should meet to be viable in the market place, would have bankrupted the industry already if it had such oversight. It seems it is going to get such oversight, at least in that part of the industry where it will have a "car czar" to tell it where government dogma says it is doing wrong or right.

I read, in a highly respected science magazine, that the Chinese are building a different kind of nuclear reactor than American law allows for. These reactors are smaller, cheaper, easier to build, can be transported in sections and erected in series, as needed, to increase output when it becomes necessary. And the Chinese reactors are so safe that the "China Syndrome" can never happen.

America knew about this type of reactor before "oversight" outlawed it. As a matter of fact, this kind of reactor was invented by the west before it invented the kind of reactor we use now.

But government dogma had other ideas: it seems that cheap, plentiful electricity, easily installable, would throw the electricity industry into some form of "confusion," and the big monopolies would no longer have monopolies, which means that they and their share holders would lose money because competition to build these smaller, cheaper, cleaner reactors would cause the existing companies to shrink.

"Physicists and engineers at Beijing's Tsinghua University have made the first great leap forward in a quarter century, building a new nuclear power facility that promises to be a better way to harness the atom: a pebble-bed reactor. A reactor small enough to be assembled from mass-produced parts and cheap enough for customers without billion-dollar bank accounts. A reactor whose safety is a matter of physics, not operator skill or reinforced concrete. And, for a bona fide fairy-tale ending, the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is labeled hydrogen." Wired

When mayors of Chinese cities and towns need more electricity for their citizens because of population growth and capitalist-style industrial growth, they call the manufacturers of these small reactors and order them! And when they need more power, they order another one to be put in line with the first one. This series can apparently go on for as much electricity is needed.

Instead, America goes for dogma instead of the Chinese idea of how capitalism can cause a nation to become rich.

Certainly China has problems too, such as the murderous chemicals its unscrupulous manufacturers put into their products. But every nation has unscrupulous manufacturers. "Oversight" can never catch such forms of immoral behavior. It would require inspectors everywhere, in every industry, at all times, 24/7/365. And it still would not catch what smart but unscrupulous people will do to their goods just to make profit-making easier or quicker.

Communists used to be fond of saying they did not need to invade other nations to "take over" those other nations. Just let socialism creep in and take over everything, like vines creeping on a brick building, and when there was enough socialism, communist political takeover would not seem threatening at all.

Bush has created the biggest federal statism in our history. It is now Barak Obama's legacy, before it has even begun, to finish the socialist task of creeping into every nook and cranny of American industry.

Perhaps in my lifetime I will even see a communist President who denies he is communist, as Obama (never denied) he is Marxist.

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The Right of Conscience in Public Professions

Bush-Era Abortion Rules Face Possible Reversal:
Obama Team Looks at Regulation Set to Be Finalized This Week Letting Medical Staff Refuse to Take Part in Practices They Oppose

Published on Wednesday, December 17, 2008 by The Wall Street Journal

"The outgoing Bush administration this week will finalize a regulation establishing a "right of conscience" allowing medical staff to refuse to participate in any practice they object to on moral grounds, including abortion but possibly birth control and other health care as well."

It is unconscionable that anyone engaged in enterprise such as pharmacy, nursing, anesthesiology, or anything involving health care should be forced to commit acts that are against his/her conscious.

But if we are to allow such professions to object on moral grounds, then the power of dispensing with health care needs to be given to those who can provide it without a bothered conscious.

The medical profession, from the least important, most replacable jobs in the industry, to board certified doctors, is not open to the layman. If my daughter cannot get birth control in the one-pharmacy town in which she lives, 14 miles from the next pharmacy, then she ought to be able to get them with out prescription.

Fat chance. But you see the issue, and you see that conscious cannot count in an area where only the licensed are allowed to even have such a conscious. Those out side of the licensed arena must not be allowed to be held hostage by monopoly. And the licensed professions are indeed a monopoly, though not of the sort normally thought of. They are a monopoly of educated, regulated, duty-bound individuals who are given the power to provide services and products which we, the general public, are not given open access to.

Since we do not have access to these services and products without the duty-bound licensed professionals, and since it is not against the law for us to procure them from these professionals--indeed, it is illegal to procure them without the professionals--then they cannot be allowed to let their conscience get in the way of their monopoly license.

The very fact that it is illegal for us to procure these services and products without the assistance of licensed professionals is what causes them to be "duty-bound." Ayn Rand was absolutely correct when she said: "The meaning of the term 'duty' is: the moral necessity to perform certain actions for no reason other than obedience to some higher authority, without regard to any personal goal, motive, desire or interest."

But she also said, "'Duty' destroys values: it demands that one betray or sacrifice one’s highest values for the sake of an inexplicable command..." “Causality Versus Duty,” Philosophy: Who Needs It, 95

The privilege of having a licence is no "inexplicable command," so no values are destroyed by the prevention of choosing one's conscience over one's licenced privilege. Soldiers are duty-bound to protect the lives of their fellow soldiers; doctors are duty-bound to save lives whenever possible; airline pilots are duty-bound not to be drunk while flying. These are not inexplicable.

Is the use of the word "duty" to describe the requirements of licenced professionals the wrong word? Not when Rand is using it in the social sense, when the inexplicable duty "may demand the sacrifice of his values at any moment, wiping out any long-range plan or struggle he might have undertaken to achieve them . . . ."

If the struggle and long-range plan of a licensed professional is to prevent the products and services offered by capitalism and approved for use, then he must do so from outside the strict, lawfully defined terms of his position.

It is one thing to protest, to plan, to persuade, and otherwise to struggle to achieve the goals of one's life. It is another to use one's power to prevent others from achieving their goals. They ought not need to struggle against the very people licensed to provide them with their goals.

Stop Jihad In America Now

"We are Americans opposed to the “stealth jihad” being waged in this country by those who promote Shariah - authoritative Islam’s theo-political-religious program for establishing a global theocracy. As such, Shariah and its espousal of violent and stealthy jihad constitute sedition. We are determined to resist efforts now underway to create “parallel” Muslim societies and otherwise to insinuate Shariah into this country via its mosques, prisons, campuses, media, government and financial institutions. continued

related
AIG and Sharia-Compliant Insurance

is financing jihadists' efforts to overthrow the governments of the western world. Read the article above to find out about the Federal suit brought against the Treasury Department to stop its traitorous efforts to be sharia-compliant so long as the long term goal of sharia is to overthrow the rest of the world--which has been 1400 years now, and counting.

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Sharia-; Hoover-Bush; Church and State

Chairman of Sharia Lawyers Brands Christmas "Evil"

As you read the short article, ask yourself what the “establishment media” would be saying today if the “Chairman of the Society of Christian Lawyers” had publicly proclaimed that Ramadan is “evil,” and a “pathway to hellfire.” Remember, the Muslim lawyer [Choudary] who branded Christmas “evil” is not just any Muslim, but the Chairman of the Society of Muslim lawyers. Note also that he is the Principal Lecturer at the London School of Shariah and “a follower of the Islamist militant leader Omar Bakri Mohammed.”

These are the kinds of people American financial institutions are affiliating with when they offer shariah-compliant financial products. [emphasis added]

George ‘Herbert Hoover’ Bush
by Daniel J. Mitchell

According to Politico.com, Vice President Dick Cheney lobbied Republican senators to support the bailout of auto companies, arguing that it would be “Herbert Hoover time” in the absence of government intervention.

Cheney is right, but for the wrong reasons. To the extent that it is “Herbert Hoover time,” it is because the current administration has repeated many of the mistakes that were made by President Hoover. There was a huge expansion in the burden of government spending under Hoover, up 47 percent in just four years. There’s been an equally huge increase in government spending under Bush. Hoover dramatically increased government intervention with everything from schemes to prop up wages to protectionism. Bush’s intervention takes a different form, with mistakes such as steel tariffs, Sarbanes-Oxley, and bailouts.

Hoover’s legacy is statism. Bush’s legacy is statism. The only unanswered question is whether Obama will be the new Roosevelt — i.e., someone who compounds the damage caused by his predecessor with further expansions in the burden of government. from Cato At Liberty

The LAST Thing We Need

According to the American Policy Center, the United States is only

two states short

of obliterating what is left of our government's policy of protecting individual rights:

A public policy organization has issued an urgent alert stating affirmative votes are needed from only two more states before a Constitutional Convention could be assembled in which "today's corrupt politicians and judges" could formally change the U.S. Constitution's "'problematic' provisions to reflect the philosophical and social mores of our contemporary society." [bold added, link dropped by Gus Van Horn]

The message is, unfortunately, made to look ridiculous by its messenger, which warns not only of the legitimate threats to freedom of speech this could unleash, but also pretends that we do not (and should not) have separation of church and state. I would not want conservative theocrats holding such a convention any more than I would the socialists now in power.

Alan Sullivan, who notes that the left is suddenly talking about pushing for this in Ohio,

comments that -- surprise! -- certain elements of the conservative movement helped push us to this brink some time ago: "[T]he Reagan-era drive to launch a new constitutional convention ... began with a revolt by disgruntled deficit hawks, who were horrified by Cold War deficits, and failed to get a balanced-budget amendment through Congress."

Let us hope that this does not occur, so that we can profit by this object lesson in substituting the point of a government gun for rational persuasion. The ultimate problem lies not with Congress, but with a public that is all too happy to accept trinkets in the form of welfare state programs from the government in exchange for little pieces of its freedom.What were those fools thinking? That Congress would fail to find a way around their amendment if it was passed? Or that a nation that elected such a Congress in the first place would outdo the Founding Fathers as authors of a constitution?-- CAV from Gus Van Horn

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Yaron Brook on Newsweek.com

Various Subjects Worthy of Noting

An interview with Dr. Yaron Brook titled "Who Is To Blame?" has been published on Newsweek's Web site. Newsweek accepts comments from readers. It ends with this classic Rand-fan fantasy exchange:

Newsweek: With free markets now in disrepute, what's going to happen to the popularity of Ayn Rand's most famous book, "Atlas Shrugged"?

Brook: I think it's going to go up dramatically. I think it already has. [People] are saying, "We're heading toward socialism, we're heading toward more regulation." "Atlas Shrugged" is coming true. How do we get out? How do we escape? Unfortunately, there is no escape. Businessmen are panicking, and I think they should be panicking. Many of them understand that this was not a crisis of free markets. There was no free market to fail. What we have is a regulated market, and the regulated market has failed.

Brook also takes down Greenspan! I love it!

Then, Brook and Don Watkins talk about The High Cost of Washington's Price Manipulation Policy. "Want to eliminate the glut of homes? Don't give the government more power--open the borders to immigration."

On To Other Subjects

On Wednesday, December 10, Rev. Robert Sirico posted, in part, this entry on the Acton Institute Power Blog:

"It is with a sense of great pride and joy that I join with thousands around the nation in congratulating Chuck Colson on his reception of the Presidential Citizen’s Medal presented to Chuck at the Oval Office today by President Bush.

"It is important to remember that the ministry that Chuck founded some 35 years ago is noteworthy not only because it has assisted in countless men and women to transform their lives through the power of a right relationship with Christ, or that this ministry is staff by a veritable army of volunteers who visit prisons and in other ways help to mend broken families with God’s love.What is most noteworthy is that all of this came from one man’s surrender to the call of Christ to turn from his sins and accept the Gospel of redemption.

"Here’s some of what Chuck had to say on the Prison Fellowship site:
'Whatever good I may have done is because God saw fit to reach into the depths of Watergate and convert a broken sinner,” said Colson. “Everything that has been accomplished these past 35 years has been by God’s grace and sovereign design.'"

This is the same Chuck Colson who, it was reported just yesterday, said of Mormons: "Mormonism either affirms historic Christianity, or it doesn't. Since it doesn't, it can't call itself Christianity -- a fact that all the good will and public relations in Utah can't change."

Remember, President George H. Bush is the first Moral Majority President* to be elected, and I thank his God that he will probably be the last. It is deplorable that such an honor should be bestowed--by a President, no less--upon a man with such a distorted view of another religion. The Coptic sect of Christianity does not affirm the historic Christianity, either, since from its inception it was not part of the Holy Roman Church. Would Colson say the same about the Coptics?

Wikipedia has this to say about the Coptic Church: "The Church belongs to the Oriental Orthodox family of churches, which has been a distinct church body since the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451, when it took a different position over Christological theology from that of the Eastern Orthodox and Western churches, then still in union. The precise differences in theology that caused the split are still disputed, highly technical and mainly concerned with the Nature of Christ. The foundational roots of the Church are based in Egypt but it has a worldwide following."

*The Moral Majority rose to power on the coat tails of Ronald Reagan; Reagan was not connected to the MM in any way other than that of having its support. But for a different--and opposing--view of the strength and power of evangelical American, see this article in "Mother Jones".

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The Last Nail in the American Fascist Takeover

You Are Losing the Right to Challenge Fed Policy In the Courts of America

Naturalism is a way of thinking, an epistemic "modus operandi." Alone, it is not a strict philosophical system, as is evident by the many variation of naturalism. But the one thing all variations have is the justification for seeing natural laws in all things, and humans are no exception. We too operate by natural law, but natural law for humans is more than following our biological and environmental influences to their ends.

Natural law for humans is following reason and free will to its natural ends, overcoming where necessary the influences of biology and environment, and whatever else may not be of the will and/or of reason.

Economics is necessary to human nature. The first person in history to exchange in barter one thing for another created the field of economics, and it had to happen. It was only a matter of time before money had to be created, because bartering means you must have possession of the item that someone else wants in order to get what he wants. Money, when its standard is accepted, is much easier to carry in your pocket or purse than a chicken.

Capitalism is the economic form proper to naturalism because it requires no coercion, works automatically when left alone, and creates wealth which is distributed within a civilization by the simple means of: "He who has capital exchanges it for material or services owned or provided by someone else, of which material or services he needs or desires, but does not purchase for altruistic ends."

Rational egoism, not altruism, is naturalistic human nature in the field of psychology. Capitalism is the naturalistic psychological desire on the part of egoism to want to be fair in economics. Any form of economics that is not laissez faire is less than the fairness demanded by rational egoism. That automatically defines capitalism as the rational psychology of dealing fairly with other humans in the field of economics.

The following is not fair:
Not only has the U.S Treasury Department "included foreign banks into this crazy scheme [to save Wall Street] but they've also included this gem in section 8:
'Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are
non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.'"

http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/business_law/2008/09/paulson-asking.html

By what Article of the Constitution is the Congress permitted to extend to any function of the Federal Government the unsupervised authority, unreviewable by any Court in the land, to act in the manner of a fascist regime and dictate all the the elements of economics by which an economy must operate?

Bush and Paulson are acting in the manner of fascist economic tyrants. Do you think "fascist" is over-reaching or reactionary? Here is the definition:
"In economics, fascism [is] seen as a third way between laissez-faire capitalism and communism. Fascist thought acknowledge[s] the roles of private property and the profit motive as legitimate incentives for productivity—provided that they did not conflict with the interests of the state." [italics added] http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/Fascism.html

To that I should add a huge exclamation point, but by adding it I am admitting my dismay that anyone could think such economic "middle ground" "acknowledges the role of private property." It certainly does not. If private property was properly acknowledged, such legislation would not put a gun in the hands of Paulson and his department.

Why do I say the Treasury Department and the Fed would have guns in their hands? Because "the word fascism comes from the Latin fasces, meaning a bundle of rods with an axe in it."

This "bundle of rods with an axe in it" was used to initiate force against other persons, specifically for the purpose of preventing dissention and for bringing the form of "order" that was desired and acceptable to those wielding the fasces.

Mirriam-Webster Online defines fascism as "a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control" and indicates "instances of army fascism and brutality."
Still another source says of fascism that it "rejects the liberal doctrines of individual autonomy and rights, political pluralism, and representative government..." [italics added.] http://www.publiceye.org/eyes/whatfasc.html

This rejection of individual sovereignty with its inherent rights to act in its own best regard by the just qualities of non-coercive capitalism, this rejection of political pluralism and representative government, is the complete description of the epistemic roots of fascism.
While that description does not cover all the methods used to implement such rejection, the wielding of a fasces in the ancient world is replaced by the gun in our world. Who ever thinks he will operate outside the sphere of total government control is he who will not be prosecuted but summarily fined or jailed without any recourse to the courts.

The only honest appraisal I found of what is going on epistemically was from a left-wing blogger who wrote:
"Even if nothing good comes out of the Bush administration's proposed $700 billion intervention in the mortgage crisis, maybe we can get U.S. economic leaders to stop pretending they're capitalists. Capitalists who expect the government to bail them out when the economic roller-coaster they've been pillaging runs off the track, as it inevitably must, are not capitalists -- they're beggars looking for a handout from the same hand they've been biting for years. That the supposedly laissez-faire Bush administration has to ask Congress to rescue the financial system is a humiliation and a repudiation of decades of Republican Party economics. Where were the market 'corrections' to prevent the meltdown?" [italics added] http://viewsfromtheleftcoast.blogspot.com/

The dog-eat-dog lobbyists have finally gotten what they deserved. But the American public deserved better. The American public deserved the protection of the government against such dog-eat-dog lobbying and policies and legislation and court reviews.

Now it seems, if this legislation before Congress is passed with Section 8 intact, [see above] then no court in the land will have the jurisdiction to arbitrate and judge this new economic fascism. The American people will have lost, capitalism will have lost, justice will have lost, and we might as well all go out and get our own fasces and use them against the government officials who use them against us.

As I recall, self-protection is still a right in this country.

For another perspective on this subject, titled:
Welcome to the final stages of the coup...
Please click on the linked title above.

Yesterday's Academy Post Turns Into Today's American Headline: "The Jihad Prevention Act"

Sharia Law in Britannia

"Dear Curtis, Last week we learned that Islamic sharia law is now being followed in numerous cities in Great Britain, enforced by sharia courts. News reports indicate as many as 100 cases have been heard in such courts. Thus continues the tragic saga of Great Britain’s capitulation to militant Islam. The good news is that here in America the threat of sharia law is gradually getting the attention of more and more elected representatives. The latest illustration of this is the report below, carried on the “Muslims Against Sharia” website, that Congressman Tom Tancredo has proposed legislation called the “Jihad Prevention Act.” However, because Congress is trying to wrap up its business for this year, coupled with the fact that it is trying to grapple with the financial sector meltdown, it is a virtual certainty that Congress will not take up Tancredo’s legislation this year. But every time someone like Congressman Tancredo introduces legislation, or Congresswoman Sue Myrick puts forth a plan to “wake up America” to the threat of radical Islam, progress is being made. Progress is being made!" http://www.actforamerica.org/index.php/learn/recent-news

Tancredo Proposes Anti-Sharia Measure in Wake of U.K. Certification of Islamic Courts “Jihad Prevention Act” would deny U.S. visas to advocates of ‘Sharia’ law, expel Islamists already here WASHINGTON, DC – Amid disturbing revelations that the verdicts of Islamic Sharia courts are now legally binding in civil cases in the United Kingdom, U.S. Representative Tom Tancredo (R-Littleton) moved quickly today to introduce legislation designed to protect the United States from a similar fate. According to recent news reports, a new network of Sharia courts in a half-dozen major cities in the U.K. have been empowered under British law to adjudicate a wide variety of legal cases ranging from divorces and financial disputes to those involving domestic violence.

“This is a case where truth is truly stranger than fiction,” said Tancredo. “Today the British people are learning a hard lesson about the consequences of massive, unrestricted immigration.” Sharia law, favored by Muslim extremists around the world, often calls for brutal punishment – such as the stoning of women who are accused of adultery or have children out of wedlock, cutting off the hands of petty thieves and lashings for the casual consumption of alcohol. Under Sharia law, a woman is often required to provide numerous witnesses to prove rape allegations against an assailant – a near impossible task.

“When you have an immigration policy that allows for the importation of millions of radical Muslims, you are also importing their radical ideology – an ideology that is fundamentally hostile to the foundations of western democracy – such as gender equality, pluralism, and individual liberty,” said Tancredo. “The best way to safeguard America against the importation of the destructive effects of this poisonous ideology is to prevent its purveyors from coming here in the first place.”

Tancredo’s bill, dubbed the “Jihad Prevention Act,” would bar the entry of foreign nationals who advocate Sharia law. In addition, the legislation would make the advocacy of Sharia law by radical Muslims already in the United States a deportable offense. Tancredo pointed to the results of a recent poll conducted by the Centre for Social Cohesion as evidence that the U.S. should act to prevent the situation in Great Britain from replicating itself here in the United States. The poll found that some 40 percent of Muslim students in the United Kingdom support the introduction of Sharia law there, and 33 percent support the imposition of an Islamic Sharia-based government worldwide.

“We need to send a clear message that the only law we recognize here in America is the U.S. Constitution and the laws passed by our democratically elected representatives,” concluded Tancredo. “If you aren’t comfortable with that concept, you aren’t welcome in the United States.”

Publishing Note Re: Reader Comments

I have made the attempt several times to allow the posting of reader comments to this blog. I have followed all the directions set by Google (yes, I've read the directions, several times,) but as of yet it isn't working. If you wish to comment, please email them to the address below. If you know how I can fix this, please email. Thank you.

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© 2008 by Curtis Edward Clark and Naturalist Academy Publishing ®

Musings and Quotes for Saturday

Condensed from About.Com
"John McCain did the right thing and tapped Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential running-mate.
".Palin showed a commitment to her pro-life conservative principles by not bowing to the pressure to abort her mentally-challenged child.
".Palin will be keenly aware of how her military decisions and the decisions she influences as vice-president will affect the men and women serving in the armed forces. Her oldest son, Trig, (sic) is headed to Iraq next month.
".At 44, Palin nullifies any advantage Barack Obama might have with his youth...brings a refreshing female voice to the debates and the campaign... has a likeable style and toughness .
"...earned a staggering 90-percent approval rating from her Alaskan constituents, not the easiest people to please. Her commitment to her principles and her willingness to follow through on promises makes her the toast of Alaska, the darling of the GOP and, now, the apple of the nation's eye."
Justin Quinn http://usconservatives.about.com/b/2008/08/29/alaska-gov-sarah-palin-the-right-partner-the-right-running-mate.htm

Condensed from CATO Institute for Media
"She has been a crusader against pork-barrel spending and has taken on the corrupt Alaska Republican establishment. Certainly this pick carries a great deal of risk, but it has a high upside as well." Michael D. Tanner
"Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's selection as John McCain's running mate is a political masterstroke. Always an electorally attractive choice, Palin is an even stronger selection following Barack Obama's political punt on Joe Biden. Palin checks a lot of boxes for the McCain campaign: a maverick, anti-establishment profile; a youthful, telegenic, professional woman and devoted mother; and a non-Beltway politician popular among grassroots conservatives." Patrick Basham
http://www.cato.org/pressroom.php?display=ncomments&id=137
"Palin supported and signed into law a $1.5 billion tax increase on oil companies in the form of higher severance taxes. One rule of thumb is that higher taxes cause less investment. Sure enough, State Tax Notes reported (January 7): “After ACES was passed, ConocoPhillips, Alaska’s most active oil exploration company and one of the top three producers, announced it was canceling plans to build a diesel fuel refinery at the Kuparuk oil field. ConocoPhillips blamed the cancellation on passage of ACES [the new tax]. The refinery would have allowed the company to produce low-sulfur diesel fuel onsite for its vehicles and other uses on the North Slope, rather than haul the fuel there from existing refineries.” "Chris Edwards http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2008/08/29/palin-uninspiring-tax-policy-record/

Condensed from Fox News.Com
" Women are not fungible.
"I don’t know if anyone sitting around with John McCain in the last few days has explained that to him; frankly, I don’t know if there even were any women sitting around with John McCain in the last few days. But, I think I understand a few things about Hillary’s base in the Democratic party, and why so many women have been so loyal to her, and if John McCain thinks that simply picking another person with similar anatomy is going to win their votes, he’s about to learn a very important lesson in gender politics." Susan Estrich http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,413525,00.html

"I appointed both Democrats and independents to serve in my administration. And I championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress. In fact, I told Congress — I told Congress, “Thanks, but no thanks,” on that bridge to nowhere.
If our state wanted a bridge, I said we’d build it ourselves. Well, it’s always, though, safer in politics to avoid risk, to just kind of go along with the status quo. But I didn’t get into government to do the safe and easy things. A ship in harbor is safe, but that’s not why the ship is built.
Politics isn’t just a game of competing interests and clashing parties. The people of America expect us to seek public office and to serve for the right reasons.
And the right reason is to challenge the status quo and to serve the common good. Now, no one expects us to agree on everything, whether in Juneau or in Washington. But we are expected to govern with integrity, and goodwill, and clear convictions, and a servant’s heart."
Sarah Palin http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/08/29/raw-data-sarah-palins-remarks-after-being-named-gop-vice-presidential-candidate/

Now, my own opinions are these:
I hate Obama's far left politics, and if elected he will cost this nation a lot, in terms of money, in terms of irreversible social policies such as came from the FDR's New Deal (like Social Security,) to LBJ's Great Society, whose "War on Poverty" still has young people asking by what means can we eliminate poverty, as if that is ever going to happen. You can't legislate equal pay to all persons; you can't take from the rich to give to the poor; and if you give a college education to everyone, there are still those who will make so much more than others, percentage-wise, that they will cause those who among the college educated will fail at life, to fall under the "poverty line."

But Obama is the person America needs to heal us from decades of wounds done to the self-esteem of black Americans, and to the esteem of white American's who were ashamed of what their neighbors had perpetrated on blacks. His election would give MLK's "Dream" a reality that others before Obama could never have brought. He acts like a politician, not like a black politician, such as Jesse Jackson. Oh, I admire Jackson for many things, including the teaching of
blacks in the 60's to stand up and shout, "Say it loud--I'm black and I'm proud!"

Jackson even has international foreign policy credentials which I admire: "In addition to Slobodan Milosevic, Jackson has also persuaded Hafez al-Assad, Fidel Castro, and Saddam Hussein to set American captives free." http://www.slate.com/id/1002723/

But Jackson's personality often appears to polarize America. It is an historic fact that most black American politicians are polarizing. After all, they came of age in the violent era of the Civil Rights Movement. Obama is not polarizing and doesn't come from that generation. He does not even have any American ancestors who were slaves. That has caused some of those polarizing black leaders to question Obama's "blackness."

I like Obama. I really think he thinks that left-wing policies are moral, and good for people. But how he can square up those socialistic policies with the Constitution he has taught at the college level, can only be explained by the socialistic policies that our left wing courts have allowed to pass unchecked. He comes from a generation that believes because legislation and policies within the New Deal, the New Frontier, and the Great Society were not struck down as unConstitutional, that more of the same will be more than "ok," it will be cathartic for the younger generations who have demanded "social justice" and not gotten it.

With Obama they will get it, but they will push this nation further than it has ever gone, in the direction of Marx's proclamation that "From each [we shal steal] according to his ability [to be stolen from;] to each [we will give the stolen money] according to his needs [and according to how much we can afford to steal from those with ability.]"

That is not the kind of social justice that comes from the Constitutional dream of individual sovereignty. "Individual sovereignty was not a peculiar conceit of Thomas Jefferson: It was the common assumption of the day..." Joseph J. Ellis http://www.friesian.com/ellis.htm

On the other hand, the Republicans have gone along with much of it, and when they protested against leftist socialistic legislation, they protested too quietly and rarely about the socialism that such legislation represented. It was usually about the costs, or a side issue, or it was just partisan bickering.

For the cathartic effects, and because it would, in a John-Galt fashion, hasten the failures of socialistic leaders and thinkers in this country, I seriously considered voting for Obama. As I said, he's likable, and the fact that we would have elected a likable black man, rather than having this nation ripped apart more by seeing a contentious black man in the Oval Office, would heal many wounds.

But John McCain's pick of a young female who is as likable as Obama and who has the credentials of political integrity, if not of political background, changed the race. (She is a Republican who fought against corrupt Republicans in Alaskan government--and won.)

McCain will not be "four more years of Bush" because McCain pushed Bush to change much of the policy Bush was hell-bent on following. Those two have been political enemies far longer than they have appeared to be friendly. So he voted 90% with Bush? Well, sometimes voting against a bill is worse than voting for it. I suspect that if voting against Bush would not have given ammunition to the leftists in America, McCain would have voted far less than 90% with Bush.

And now, in one brilliant stroke, he has given us the same power of catharsis, for women if not for blacks; and since Obama is not a woman, we are forced to take "catharsis" one step at a time--either in the step toward black, or toward female.

See what I mean about voting against something? In this case voting against a likable woman V.P. along with a maverick Republican Presidential candidate would be worse than voting for a likable socialistic black male candidate with a contentious white male V.P.

Have a happy and safe Labor Day Weekend.

Quotes to Get You Through the Weekend

"Money won't buy happiness, but it will pay the salaries of a large research staff to study the problem." Bill Vaughan.

"If you want to be happy, be." Leo Tolstoy

"I am at two with nature." Woody Allen.

"Failure is not falling down but refusing to get up." Chinese Proverb

"The greatest reward in becoming a millionaire is not the amount of money that you earn. It is the kind of person that you have to become to become a millionaire in the first place." Jim Rohn

"Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great." Mark Twain

"Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will not die, but long after we are gone be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistence." Daniel Hudson Burnham

"Operator! Give me the number for 911!" Homer J Simpson.

"First there are those who are winners, and know they are winners. Then there are the losers who know they are losers. Then there are those who are not winners, but don't know it. They're the ones for me. They never quit trying. They're the soul of our game." Paul William "Bear" Bryant

"When we got into office, the one thing that surprised me most was to find that things were just as bad as we’d been saying they were." John F. Kennedy

"Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory nor defeat." Theodore Roosevelt

"One of the things that distinguishes man from the other animals is that he wants to know things, wants to find out what reality is like, simply for the sake of knowing. When that desire is completely quenched in anyone, I think he has become something less than human.” – God in the Dock; C.S. Lewis

"Congratulations. I knew the record would stand until it was broken." Yogi Berra

"Only one man in a thousand is a leader of men — the other 999 follow women." Groucho Marx

"Life is the art of drawing sufficient conclusions from insufficient premises."
Samuel Butler (1612-1680)

"I didn’t fail the test, I just found 100 ways to do it wrong."Benjamin Franklin

"The price of greatness is responsibility." Winston Churchill

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines, Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream." Mark Twain

"For two people in a marriage to live together day after day is unquestionably the one miracle the Vatican has overlooked." Bill Cosby

"If a million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing." Anatole France

"In any free society, the conflict between social conformity and individual liberty is permanent, unresolvable, and necessary."Kathleen Norris

"We can laugh at those who think spirituality the way of weakness. Paradoxically, it is the way of strength." Bill W. from the Big Book, Alcoholics Anonymous

"I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed." Michael Jordan

Please send all comments to mailto:freeassemblage@gmail.com

http://freeassemblage.blogspot.com/

The Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists is the sm of the
Academy of Metaphysical Naturalism tm, the educational arm of the Assemblage.
This publication © 2008 by Curtis Edward Clark and Naturalist Academy Publishing ®