Government is a Socialist, Spending Addict in need of DECONSTRUCTION!
By making THEFT legal, government has transferred wealth from business and individuals—private citizens who don't produce products or perform services for
government—to government by taxes, excises, fees, and asset forfeiture. Asset forfeiture has become "criminal asset forfeiture" or armed robbery. It is now
LEGAL for government to steal your private property by calling you a criminal. WE all know who is the REAL CRIMINAL!
For restoration of power to States and We the People, see the block below subtitled CONVENTION of STATES.
Anyone who believes this country is free is an idiot!
"The politicians only want power so they can 'serve' you."
"Extortion and thuggery are good things when they're called law!"
Larken Rose
Uncle Sam, the thief, taking citizens for a ride!!!
Government can't afford its expenditures, so, steal from honest people to pay for more thieves. "The object is to get rid of big government, not find a new way of financing it." Harry Browne
CONVENTION of STATES
BECOME a MEMBER-PARTICIPANT of CONVENTION of STATES here.
Get into the Action; Get information. Join here.
March 22, 2017, by Pat Nolan /
@PatNolan4Justic / David Safavian [any emphasis added by this Editor]
The owner of the resort didn’t ask his guests why they were there. He offered plush accommodations to those seeking to get away.
Sometimes, guests would come to play golf at the private and very exclusive country club. Other times, they used the fabulous spa services down the road. Still others wanted to simply enjoy the nearby beach.
But people came and stayed at the resort, and it was profitable. Some would call it a huge success.
But not all of the guests were good people. A few brought their drug habits with them. And in 30 instances (over a period of 17 years in which the owner and his wife rented out rooms to guests 125,000 times), law enforcement got involved.
The local police knew that the owner wasn’t involved in drugs. He and his wife were model citizens who took pride in their establishment. They even cooperated with law enforcement when something suspicious was going on with their guests.
But the police also knew that the resort was valuable, and that its millions in worth could add to the police department’s budget under forfeiture law. But under state law, the local cops didn’t have enough evidence of crimes to institute state forfeiture proceedings.
Undeterred by limits imposed by the Massachusetts Legislature, the police utilized a workaround. Federal law provided a lower threshold for seizing assets. The local police could circumvent state rules on forfeiture by turning the case over to the feds.
Using a program called Equitable Sharing, if local law enforcement could convince the Justice Department to institute forfeiture proceedings, the locals would get a cut.
So the police went to the Drug Enforcement Administration and convinced it that the resort should be forfeited. The Drug Enforcement Administration then convinced the Justice Department, which authorized the seizure.
Served with a federal notice of civil forfeiture, the resort owner was told that he had to prove he was innocent in all this. If he failed to do so, Uncle Sam could take the property, auction it off, and keep the proceeds—most of which would end up in the coffers of the local police department.
The owner and his wife, who built the business, would end up with nothing, despite not having been charged with any crime, let alone convicted of anything.
This property is not Mar-a-Lago, and the owner is not Donald Trump. But this is a real case involving the Caswell Inn in Tewksbury, Massachusetts, in 2009.
The owner was baffled by the seizure of his hotel because he had always had a good relationship with the local police department. He asked a police official why they targeted him rather than a nearby motel that was notorious for prostitution and drug dealing. The officer explained that they had looked up the other motel’s assessed value and found that it was heavily mortgaged.
The police would have gotten very little money if they seized that one. But seizing the unmortgaged Caswell Inn would net them millions of dollars.
This process is a clear conflict of interest. The local police department profits from these seizures, even if there is no conviction of a crime. The more that is seized, the more money goes back to the police for things like new equipment and retirement programs.
Civil asset forfeiture has turned many law enforcement agencies into modern “Sheriffs of Nottingham,” robbing from the so-called rich to give to the poor local police departments. Outraged citizens have taken to calling this nefarious process “policing for profit.”
Unfortunately, it’s not out of the ordinary. According to The Washington Post, more assets were seized under civil forfeiture proceedings than were stolen in all of the burglaries that took place in the United States in 2014.
The owner of the Tewksbury hotel was very fortunate. The Institute for Justice learned of his case, and undertook the legal fight to get his hotel back. They won.
But it is worth noting that there is no way that the owner could have paid for such top-notch lawyers out his own pocket. Few others can afford to fight the government.
Prosecutors argue that forfeiture is an important weapon in the war on drugs. That may be true, but only if it is tied to a crime for which there is an actual conviction.
Without a conviction, the current system turns our legal rights upside down. When assets are seized, the owners are presumed guilty until proven innocent. They have the burden of showing that their ownership of the asset was not the result of criminal activity. Otherwise, the government gets to keep the money.
Proving the negative is very hard to do, particularly when the government has seized all your assets and you have no funds to hire a lawyer. That isn’t just unfair. It’s un-American.
The abuse of asset forfeiture has prompted a growing number of states to restrict its use to when someone has been convicted of a crime.
To get around these restrictions, the federal government uses an equitable sharing law, which allows federal agencies to seize and launder proceeds, and then cut the local police in on the back end. It’s a pretty nifty way for the Justice Department and local police to conspire and get around limits imposed by state legislatures.
This issue arose just last month when Trump met with local law enforcement officials. During the meeting, a Texas sheriff complained that proposed reforms to civil asset forfeiture in the Lone Star State would hurt his ability to fight drug traffickers.
Without anyone to explain to him the unfairness of civil asset forfeiture, the president seemed to side with the sheriff and against state efforts to reform it.
Trump won his election by fighting for the “little guy” against an overbearing and dishonest government. Civil asset forfeiture is a prime example of just how overbearing and dishonest the government can be.
The next time asset forfeiture comes up, the president should remember the case of the hotel in Tewksbury. Under current law, his prized resorts are just one Hollywood star with a coke habit away from being seized.
A new Congress has been seated, and it brings the prospect of perhaps, maybe, potentially, in a possible way doing something about the runaway federal deficits. And in other news, several New York area bridges are for sale, which you can acquire at a bargain price.
Excessive Spending Destroys!
Feds Have a Spending Problem — DO NOT RAISE THE CEILING!
Feds Have a Sewage Problem!
[Editor's Note: The transparent, superficial, theatrically staged,
choreographed appearance of debate, disagreement, and stalled legislation always resolves into more government and less FREEDOM for us.
Most laws enacted by the envious comrades
of CONgress since the tyrannical dictatorship of Teddy Roosevelt have only increased the power of the federal government to the extreme detriment of individual freedom.
Citizens and businesses can't be free and grow without stifling taxes/regulations or some agency's theft of their property without Due Process because of Big Brother's perversion of
Civil Asset Forfeiture Laws passed to enable
government theft.
We the People are told that America's current corruption of freedom is a "nation of laws". Since 1895 it is a corrupt fraudulent scam designed and
developed to expand the powers of government under the guise of freedom and faux-legality. Two very good examples are the fraudulently ratified 16th Amendment (income tax) and the
Federal Reserve Act (money from thin-air) signed into law 2 days before xmas, 1913 by Woody Wilson, another of the tyrannical dictators elected by progressives who 6 years later passed
Prohibition (Volstead Act) over the veto of Woody Wilson. These domestic events are major contributors to America's imperceptible "slide" into totalitarianism.]
See the following links for more related articles:
The CONgress (by
Article V of the Constitution) has proposed and
States have ratified many new amendments to the Constitution, some that increase their power over us citizens. CONgress can propose amendments, and the
alternative method to CONgressional proposals can come from States via
Article V. When "We the People" — meaning
a very large majority — are opposed to Acts of CONgress like the INCOME TAX or ENDLESS WARS or the FEDERAL RESERVE, Acts that restrict and regulate our
LIBERTY, Acts that are a waste of money, Acts that have caused unrecoverable indebtedness, then through local representaatives of our States WE can propose
Amendments to be ratified by States just like CONgress.
STATES and the PEOPLE of America are very angry at the federal goverment's violation of its
constitutionally-defined boundaries. States created the federal government in 1787 with LIMITED powers defined in the Constitution. All powers not
given by States to the feds remain with the States by Article X. The feds have through deceit, distortion, and falsification rearranged the entire contractual agreement
between States and the federal government. The feds have become a very powerful, all consuming force in American government. The time has come for States to rein in the federal government,
to take power back, to limit the federal government's power, and to add some detailed restriction to the definition of CONgress, the Executive, and the Judiciary.
In 1787 a central government was (is) necessary only to provide for the common defense and ensure equality
under the law for all Citizens, to provide a final arbiter for the resolution of unsolvable problems among States and People. Most laws and regulations that the federal
government has wreaked on the States and the People are unconstitutional. States are independent, sovereign countries who realized the need for a limited and defined
central government to prevent wasteful duplication of effort. The federal government, in 2017, is OUT OF CONTROL, infringing and interfering with State sovereignty and their
separate economies. A problem arose in 2012 with Arizona's attempt to secure their border with Mexico. An article is
here. States can prevent infringements
by the federal government with an Aricle V Convention of States to not only reverse past federal government "power grabs" but prevent future federal government
violations of their Constitutionally-defined boundaries.
A new, well-organized group of volunteers in all 50 states have gathered to restore America to
its roots by limiting all 3 branches of the federal government with a
Convention of States (CoS) organization (alternate site,
CoS Action). This is a Convention of States to AMEND the Constitution — NOT rewrite it!
Recently, CoS held an Article V, Convention
simulation with appointed volunteers from all 50 States. The simulated Convention demonstrated how a well-organized CoS can vote for proposed amendments
to the Consitution that are popular enough to be ratified by the necessary 3/4ths of States (38). Obviously, only proposed Amendments that are likely to pass
both Houses of the legislatures of thirty-eight (38) States, that is, the required 3/4ths of States to ratify an Amendment to the Constitution should be proposed.
See the Final Report here.
The purpose in a Convention of States, simulated or real, is to PROPOSE AMENDMENTS that give power back to the People. The proposed amendments must reflect the
thinking, objectives — the goals of people of States — who want to restore our Constitutional Republic to one that represents the people.
ARTICLE V Convention of States—Restore the Appropriate Balance!
ARTICLE V Convention of States—Restore the Appropriate Balance!
ARTICLE V Convention of States—Restore the Appropriate Balance!
A real CoS, requires that 2/3rds of States (34) send an "application" to CONgress requesting that
CONgress schedule a CoS. State Legislatures are composed of an Assembly and Senate. Each "house" must pass a bill separately and send the resolution to their
Governor. Then the State sends an "application" to the CONgress. When the federal CONgress receives applications from 34 States, the CONgress is required to set a date for
the Convention of States. CONgress is NOT involved otherwise. The States have the Convention, propose amendments, and dispatch the precisely worded amendments to
their respectives assemblies and senates for ratification. CONgress only schedules the Convention.
[Editor's Note: what I have dubbed the "Legislative-Executive-Judicial Cabal" which the American People have caused by ignoring the generational transition from our Constitutional Republic to what now is, in effect, an "elected" dictatorship. Never mind who is elected. Never mind which bogus party is in power. The superficial, theatrically staged, choreographed appearance of debate, disagreement, and stalled legislation always resolves into more government and less FREEDOM. We the People still lose more freedom after every "emergency" or unnoticeably when CON-gress passes another general, open-ended law that enables the Executive (dictator) and its unaccountable agencies to formulate more freedom-restricting regulations (200 pages a day get posted to the Federal Register). The "Dictator's" agencies (police force) continue to pile-up more weapons to squelch uprising(s) when the People finally realize and understand their tyrannical government.
Currently, CONgress is just a group of socialists, progressives, and faux-conservatives (career politicians) that, on a daily basis, ignores the Constitution, many of their own past statutes, and cedes their responsibilities to the president ("elected" dictator). A comparison to the history of Rome becomes more and more credible with the Executive and its "featherbedded" lackeys gaining more power while CONgress sits back all fat-dumb-and-happy.
CONgress has made recent efforts to expose State Dept. failures in Benghazi (inept political leader), Fast-and-Furious gun-running (criminal AG), IRS 1st amendment violations, gov't union Veterans Administration fraud, and whining about Obama(Reid)-killer-Care, but these efforts are mostly politics as usual. Most "citizens" will forget about these infringements from our unaccountable, uncontrollable Executive branch with its tyrannical agencies staffed by socialist unions that extort "juicy" contracts from the "elected" dictatorship.
Most positions in the federal government whether elected, appointed, or hired are nominal, make-work jobs (confidentially) designed merely to grow government, bilk money from private businesses and citizens, and eventually fully transform America into a totalitarian state. When this happens, CONgress will have destroyed the economy and the country by their negligence and counter-liberty policies, and it will be almost impossible to Restore America. The 'Restore America' list is only a beginning too.]
"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."
James Madison, Federalist Paper 47, Friday, February 1, 1788
Anyone who believes this country is free is an idiot!
"Extortion and thuggery are good things when they're called law!"
Larken Rose
[Editor's Note: a Constitutional Convention is required to reverse the damage to freedom and liberty since 1900. This Article V was ratified by the participants at America's founding Constitutional Convention as an alternate path for repairing damage to freedom and liberty, a path for the People to restore damage caused by our failed representatives in the Legislative, Executive, and Judicial branches of a government designed to represent the wishes of We the People.
The States must "demand" a Convention and explicitly specify an agenda of:
laws to be repealed or modified,
Amendments to existing constitutional clauses that define the co-equal branches to further specify and define, and
new Amendments or statutes to be eventually ratified by States.
These Amendments should further specify and clarify the powers of the Legislature and Executive Branches. A good example is the definition of a "Bill".
A Bill should contain ONLY verbiage in regards to the topic of the future law. NO earmarks and NO unrelated sections or attacments.
Many past Bills sent to a president for signature contained unrelated but essential funding sections that rendered the Bill veto-proof when it warranted a veto.
CON-gress can override a veto if the Bill is deemed absolutely necessary by CON-gress.
If the Bill requires SPECIFICALLY related amendments, the CON-gress can "debate" (with its usual theater) and vote any new amendments.
The original text of the Constitution contains some very GENERAL clauses enabling both CON-gress and Executive branches to write laws and
regulations with their particular nuances expanding powers beyond intent. "Intent" may be gleaned from a complete understanding of
Federalist Papers.
An example of further specification and clarity for CON-gress should be a clear, very specific definition of the boundaries for the interstate Commerce Clause.
To restore freedom, liberty, and individuality - minimally these must be repealed:
Currently, even with computer-searching systems, the list of antiquated and/or obsolete statutes (and related regulations) is unwieldy.
These statutes must be invalidated unless there remains an applicable reason for retaining the law(s).
Aside from invalidating statutes, there are many regulations that are biased in favor of large enterprises (who buy support from bureaucrats)
at the expense of the competition, effectively repressing the Free Market. Any regulations not related to public safety that gives a financial advantage
to some companies over their smaller rivals must be rescinded to enable all companies with good consumer products to excel without burdensome regulations.
Additionally, the Convention should adopt for ratification at least these new Amendments or statute modifications:
clearly define and limit the role of government in regards to the term "general welfare",
Term Limits for CON-gress (12 years) including a 6 month limit on time residing in DC,
strict Prohibition of Lobbying (with a comprehensive definition of "lobbying"), and
a Balanced Budget Amendment to stop wreckless spending. During a CON-gressionally declared "war" (only after USA is attacked or attack is proven "imminent"),
deficit spending is permissible.
Restore America to its roots, i.e. Defense, State, Treasury, and Justice. Some Agencies are required like CIA and NSA, both respectively focused on defense against real foreign aggressors and not fictitious paranoid delusions of war mongers. Other agencies help where certain interstate communications are necessary. Most agencies like Agriculture, Education, DEA, IRS (eliminated with 16th Amendment) and many other listed here should be eliminated.
Restore the world Gold Standard with five contentious steps, and
Replace the IMF, World Bank, and Export-Import Bank with facilities that reflect the new Gold Standard, and
After decentralizing and economizing, if tax revenue is needed to fund all or part of the federal government, then implement the Fair Tax.
Regarding a Constitutional Convention itself, some of the available literature warns the reader about a possible "unstructured" and "mismanaged"
Convention that might propose and adopt amendments that could damage the Republic.
Possible, however, it is difficult to envisage how much more damage could done over what the L-E-J Cabal has already done.
If the Convention's agenda and rules of order strictly prohibit violation of the rules and enable a vote on unlisted Amendments AFTER all others are adopted,
then the Convention will be properly structured and managed. ]
The FairTax is a consumption tax unilaterally applied to all Americans at the same rate. For businesses, payroll taxes would no longer exist. Our exports would include a heavy tax for overseas buyers purchasing our products, while our imports would be cheaper for us to purchase. I'm not sure how this would affect GDP, as more information is necessary.
According to the FairTax website, "Under the FairTax, every person living in the United States pays a sales tax on purchases of new goods and services, excluding necessities due to the prebate." The prebate gives every legal resident household an "advance refund" at the beginning of each month so that purchases made up to the poverty level are tax-free.
So a family of four making something like $50,000/year should not have to pay taxes, thus preventing an unfair burden on low-income families. Since the FairTax eliminates both federal and payroll taxes, you get to keep your gross pay amount of each paycheck earned.
John Adams said, “Without [term limits] every man in power becomes a ravenous beast of prey”. That being said, here are some of the reasons we believe our country needs Term Limits.
Term Limits can help break the cycle of corruption in Congress. Case studies show that the longer an individual stays in office, the more likely they are to stop serving the public and begin serving their own interests.
Term Limits will encourage regular citizens to run for office. Presently, there is a 94% re-election rate in the House and 83% in the Senate. Because of name recognition, and usually the advantage of money, it can be easy to stay in office. Without legitimate competition, what is the incentive for a member of Congress to serve the public? Furthermore, it is almost a lost cause for the average citizen to try to campaign against current members of Congress.
Term Limits will break the power special interest groups have in Congress.
Term Limits will force politicians to think about the impact of their legislation because they will be returning to their communities shortly to live under the laws they enacted.
Term Limits will bring diversity of people and fresh ideas to Congress.
[Editor's Note: If you want to get rich, i.e. advance from a low paying government bureaucrat job on the local or state level, THEN GET ELECTED TO THE US CONGRESS (House or Senate). Once you're elected, it's easy to steal from your campaign contributions or the Congressional budget allocated to your seat and staff. You can go on a government-funded junket with 'lavishly' paid expenses. The list of ways to steal from the government while in office is inexhaustible. There are only a few Congressmen who left Congress just wealthy instead of a multi-millionaire. Of course, there are several who arrived in Congress as multi-millionaires and don't need to steal from the government.]
