Justplainbill's Weblog

December 7, 2014

From 1939, Thanks to Butch and www.vonmises.org [c]

Filed under: Political Commentary — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 7:00 pm

Hard to believe this was written in 1939.

The Criminality of the State

http://mises.org/library/criminality-state

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DECEMBER 29, 2006Albert Jay Nock

TAGS Big GovernmentWar and Foreign PolicyInterventionism

[This essay first appeared in The American Mercury in March 1939.]

As well as I can judge, the general attitude of Americans who are at all interested in foreign affairs is one of astonishment, coupled with distaste, displeasure, or horror, according to the individual observer’s capacity for emotional excitement. Perhaps I ought to shade this statement a little in order to keep on the safe side, and say that this is the most generally expressed attitude.

All our institutional voices — the press, pulpit, forum — are pitched to the note of amazed indignation at one or another phase of the current goings-on in Europe and Asia. This leads me to believe that our people generally are viewing with wonder as well as repugnance certain conspicuous actions of various foreign States; for instance, the barbarous behavior of the German State towards some of its own citizens; the merciless despotism of the Soviet Russian State; the ruthless imperialism of the Italian State; the “betrayal of CzechoSlovakia” by the British and French States; the savagery of the Japanese State; the brutishness of the Chinese State’s mercenaries; and so on, here or there, all over the globe — this sort of thing is showing itself to be against our people’s grain, and they are speaking out about it in wrathful surprise.

I am cordially with them on every point but one. I am with them in repugnance, horror, indignation, disgust, but not in astonishment. The history of the State being what it is, and its testimony being as invariable and eloquent as it is, I am obliged to say that the naive tone of surprise wherewith our people complain of these matters strikes me as a pretty sad reflection on their intelligence. Suppose someone were impolite enough to ask them the gruff question, “Well, what do you expect?” — what rational answer could they give? I know of none.

Polite or impolite, that is just the question which ought to be put every time a story of State villainy appears in the news. It ought to be thrown at our public day after day, from every newspaper, periodical, lecture platform, and radio station in the land; and it ought to be backed up by a simple appeal to history, a simple invitation to look at the record. The British State has sold the Czech State down the river by a despicable trick; very well, be as disgusted and angry as you like, but don’t be astonished; what would you expect? — just take a look at the British State’s record! The German State is persecuting great masses of its people, the Russian State is holding a purge, the Italian State is grabbing territory, the Japanese State is buccaneering along the Asiatic Coast; horrible, yes, but for Heaven’s sake don’t lose your head over it, for what would you expect? — look at the record!

That is how every public presentation of these facts ought to run if Americans are ever going to grow up into an adult attitude towards them. Also, in order to keep down the great American sin of self-righteousness, every public presentation ought to draw the deadly parallel with the record of the American State. The German State is persecuting a minority, just as the American State did after 1776; the Italian State breaks into Ethiopia, just as the American State broke into Mexico; the Japanese State kills off the Manchurian tribes in wholesale lots, just as the American State did the Indian tribes; the British State practices large-scale carpetbaggery, like the American State after 1864; the imperialist French State massacres native civilians on their own soil, as the American State did in pursuit of its imperialistic policies in the Pacific, and so on.

In this way, perhaps, our people might get into their heads some glimmering of the fact that the State’s criminality is nothing new and nothing to be wondered at. It began when the first predatory group of men clustered together and formed the State, and it will continue as long as the State exists in the world, because the State is fundamentally an anti-social institution, fundamentally criminal. The idea that the State originated to serve any kind of social purpose is completely unhistorical. It originated in conquest and confiscation — that is to say, in crime. It originated for the purpose of maintaining the division of society into an owning-and-exploiting class and a propertyless dependent class — that is, for a criminal purpose.

No State known to history originated in any other manner, or for any other purpose. Like all predatory or parasitic institutions, its first instinct is that of self-preservation. All its enterprises are directed first towards preserving its own life, and, second, towards increasing its own power and enlarging the scope of its own activity. For the sake of this it will, and regularly does, commit any crime which circumstances make expedient. In the last analysis, what is the German, Italian, French, or British State now actually doing? It is ruining its own people in order to preserve itself, to enhance its own power and prestige, and extend its own authority; and the American State is doing the same thing to the utmost of its opportunities.

What, then, is a little matter like a treaty to the French or British State? Merely a scrap of paper — Bethmann-Hollweg[i] described it exactly. Why be astonished when the German or Russian State murders its citizens? The American State would do the same thing under the same circumstances. In fact, eighty years ago it did murder a great many of them for no other crime in the world but that they did not wish to live under its rule any longer; and if that is a crime, then the colonists led by G. Washington were hardened criminals and the Fourth of July is nothing but a cutthroat’s holiday.

The weaker the State is, the less power it has to commit crime. Where in Europe today does the State have the best criminal record? Where it is weakest: in Switzerland, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, Sweden, Monaco, Andorra. Yet when the Dutch State, for instance, was strong, its criminality was appalling; in Java it massacred 9,000 persons in one morning which is considerably ahead of Hitler’s record or Stalin’s. It would not do the like today, for it could not; the Dutch people do not give it that much power, and would not stand for such conduct. When the Swedish State was a great empire, its record, say from 1660 to 1670, was fearful. What does all this mean but that if you do not want the State to act like a criminal, you must disarm it as you would a criminal; you must keep it weak. The State will always be criminal in proportion to its strength; a weak State will always be as criminal as it can be, or dare be, but if it is kept down to the proper limit of weakness — which, by the way, is a vast deal lower limit than people are led to believe — its criminality may be safely got on with.

So it strikes me that instead of sweating blood over the iniquity of foreign States, my fellow-citizens would do a great deal better by themselves to make sure that the American State is not strong enough to carry out the like iniquities here. The stronger the American State is allowed to grow, the higher its record of criminality will grow, according to its opportunities and temptations. If, then, instead of devoting energy, time, and money to warding off wholly imaginary and fanciful dangers from criminals thousands of miles away, our people turn their patriotic fervor loose on the only source from which danger can proceed, they will be doing their full duty by their country.

Two able and sensible American publicists — Isabel Paterson, of the New York Herald Tribune, and W.J. Cameron, of the Ford Motor Company — have lately called our public’s attention to the great truth that if you give the State power to do something for you, you give it an exact equivalent of power to do something to you. I wish every editor, publicist, teacher, preacher, and lecturer would keep hammering that truth into American heads until they get it nailed fast there, never to come loose. The State was organized in this country with power to do all kinds of things for the people, and the people in their short-sighted stupidity, have been adding to that power ever since. After 1789, John Adams said that, so far from being a democracy of a democratic republic, the political organization of the country was that of “a monarchical republic, or, if you will, a limited monarchy”; the powers of its President were far greater than those of “an avoyer, a consul, a podesta, a doge, a stadtholder; nay, than a king of Poland; nay, than a king of Sparta.” If all that was true in 1789 — and it was true — what is to be said of the American State at the present time, after a century and a half of steady centralization and continuous increments of power?

Power, for instance, to “help business” by auctioning off concessions, subsidies, tariffs, land grants, franchises; power to help business by ever encroaching regulations, supervisions, various forms of control. All this power was freely given; it carried with it the equivalent power to do things to business; and see what a banditti of sharking political careerists are doing to business now! Power to afford “relief” to proletarians; and see what the State has done to those proletarians now in the way of systematic debauchery of whatever self-respect and self-reliance they may have had! Power this way, power that way; and all ultimately used against the interests of the people who surrendered that power on the pretext that it was to be used for those interests.

Many now believe that with the rise of the “totalitarian” State the world has entered upon a new era of barbarism. It has not. The totalitarian State is only the State; the kind of thing it does is only what the State has always done with unfailing regularity, if it had the power to do it, wherever and whenever its own aggrandizement made that kind of thing expedient. Give any State like power hereafter, and put it in like circumstances, and it will do precisely the same kind of thing. The State will unfailingly aggrandize itself, if only it has the power, first at the expense of its own citizens, and then at the expense of anyone else in sight. It has always done so, and always will.

The idea that the State is a social institution, and that with a fine upright man like Mr. Chamberlain at the head of it, or a charming person like Mr. Roosevelt, there can be no question about its being honorably and nobly managed — all this is just so much sticky flypaper. Men in that position usually make a good deal of their honor, and some of them indeed may have some (though if they had any I cannot understand their letting themselves be put in that position) but the machine they are running will run on rails which are laid only one way, which is from crime to crime. In the old days, the partition of CzechosLovakia or the taking-over of Austria would have been arranged by rigmarole among a few highly polished gentlemen in stiff shirts ornamented with fine ribbons. Hitler simply arranged it the way old Frederick arranged his share in the first partition of Poland; he arranged the annexation of Austria the way Louis XIV arranged that of Alsace. There is more or less of a fashion, perhaps, in the way these things are done, but the point is that they always come out exactly the same in the end.

Furthermore, the idea that the procedure of the “democratic” State is any less criminal than that of the State under any other fancy name, is rubbish. The country is now being surfeited with journalistic garbage about our great sister democracy, England, its fine democratic government, its vast beneficent gift for ruling subject peoples, and so on; but does anyone ever look up the criminal record of the British State? The bombardment of Copenhagen; the Boer War; the Sepoy Rebellion; the starvation of Germans by the post-Armistice blockade; the massacre of natives in India, Afghanistan, Jamaica; the employment of Hessians to kill off American colonists. What is the difference, moral or actual, between Kitchener’s democratic concentration camps[ii] and the totalitarian concentration camps maintained by Herr Hitler? The totalitarian general Badoglio[iii] is a pretty hard-boiled brother, if you like, but how about the democratic general O’Dwyer[iv] and Governor Eyre[v]? Any of the three stands up pretty well beside our own democratic virtuoso, Hell Roaring Jake Smith,[vi] in his treatment of the Filipinos; and you can’t say fairer than that.

As for the British State’s talent for a kindly and generous colonial administration, I shall not rake up old scores by citing the bill of particulars set forth in the Declaration of Independence; I shall consider India only, not even going into matters like the Kaffir war or the Wairau incident in New Zealand. Our democratic British cousins in India in the Eighteenth Century must have learned their trade from Pizarro and Cortez. Edmund Burke called them “birds of prey and passage.” Even the directors of the East India Company admitted that “the vast fortunes acquired in the inland trade have been obtained by a scene of the most tyrannical and oppressive conduct that was ever known in any age or country.” Describing a journey, Warren Hastings wrote that “most of the petty towns and serais were deserted at our approach”; the people ran off into the woods at the mere sight of a white man. There was the iniquitous salt monopoly; there was extortion everywhere, practiced by enterprising rascals in league with a corrupt police; there was taxation which confiscated almost half the products of the soil.

If it be said that Britain was not a sister democracy in those days, and has since reformed, one might well ask how much of the reformation is due to circumstances, and how much to a change of heart. Besides, the Black-and-Tans[vii] were in our day; so was the post-Armistice blockade; General O’Dwyer’s massacre was not more than a dozen years ago;[viii] and there are plenty alive who remember Kitchener’s concentration camps.

No, “democratic” State practice is nothing more or less than State practice. It does not differ from Marxist State practice, Fascist State practice, or any other. Here is the Golden Rule of sound citizenship, the first and greatest lesson in the study of politics: you get the same order of criminality from any State to which you give power to exercise it; and whatever power you give the State to do things for you carries with it the equivalent power to do things to you. A citizenry which has learned that one short lesson has but little more left to learn.

Stripping the American State of the enormous power it has acquired is a full-time job for our citizens and a stirring one; and if they attend to it properly they will have no energy to spare for fighting communism, or for hating Hitler, or for worrying about South America or Spain, or for anything whatever, except what goes on right here in the United States.

Editor’s Notes

[i] Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg (November 29, 1856 – January 1, 1921) was a German politician and statesman who served as Chancellor of the German Empire from 1909 to 1917. He was particularly upset by Britain’s declaration of war following German violation of Belgium’s neutrality in the course of her invasion of France, reportedly asking the departing British Ambassador Goschen how Britain could go to war over a “mere scrap of paper” (the Belgian Neutrality Treaty of 1839).

[ii] Horatio Herbert Kitchener (24 June 1850 – 5 June 1916) was an Irish-born British Field Marshal, diplomat and statesman. During the Second Boer War (1899–1902), Kitchener’s policy was to destory Boer farms and move civilians into concentration camps whose conditions led to wide opprobrium in Britain and Europe.

[iii] General Pietro Badoglio succeeded Benito Mussolini as Prime Minister of Italy (Provisional Military Government), from July 25, 1943 to June 18, 1944.

[iv] Sir Michael Francis O’Dwyer (April 1864 – March 13, 1940), was Lieutenant Governor of the Punjab from 1912 to 1919, where he oversaw the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre on April 13, 1919. According to official figures, 379 unarmed civilians were killed by Gurkha troops. Unofficial estimates place the figure much higher, at perhaps 2,000, with many more wounded. In the wake of the massacre O’Dwyer was relieved of his office.

[v] Edward John Eyre (5 August 1815 – 30 November 1901) was an English land explorer of the Australian continent and a controversial Governor of Jamaica, where he ruthlessly suppressed the Morant Bay Rebellion, and had many black peasants killed. He also authorized the judicial murder of George William Gordon, a mixed-race member of the colonial assembly who was suspected of involvement in the insurrection. These events created great controversy in Britain, leading to calls for Eyre to be arrested and tried for Gordon’s murder. John Stuart Mill organized the Jamaica Committee — comprised of such classical liberals as John Bright and Herbert Spencer — calling for his prosecution. Eyre was twice charged with murder, but the cases never proceeded.

[vi] General Jacob Hurd Smith (1840–1918) was a veteran of the Wounded Knee massacre and well known among Indian campaigners. As brigadier general in charge of the Samar campaign in the Philippine-American War (1899–1913), Smith became infamous for his orders to “kill everyone over the age of ten” and make the island “a howling wilderness.” He was dubbed “Hell Roaring Jake” Smith, “The Monster”, and “Howling Jake” by the newspapers.

[vii] The term “Black and Tans” refers to the Royal Irish Constabulary Reserve Force, which was one of two paramilitary forces employed by the Royal Irish Constabulary from 1920 to 1921, to suppress revolution in Ireland by targeting the IRA and Sinn Féin.

[viii] On March 13, 1940 — one year after Nock published this essay — Punjabi revolutionary Udham Singh shot O’Dwyer dead in Caxton Hall in London as an act of revenge for the massacre.

[Both “The Albany Plan Re-Visited” and TAPR 2nd Edition, solve this problem in the section on Federal Authority and Citizenship. Of the three ways to curtail this form of federal criminality, only Secession may be peaceful. The other two require an armed revolution or insurrection as one, and the other is conquest by an outside force. Both are violent, bloody, and expensive. Secession.]

December 1, 2014

Witness 10, The Washington Post [see prior comment on the law] Michael Brown/Ferguson MO

Filed under: Historical context, Law Enforcement, Police, Political Commentary, Politicians — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 8:05 pm

Witness 10 proves Darren Wilson had a reasonable belief he needed to shoot Michael Brown
By Paul Cassell December 1 at 2:57 AM

Missouri law allows a person to use deadly force defending himself when he has a “reasonable belief” he needs to use deadly force. The law goes on to define a reasonable belief as one based on “grounds that could lead a reasonable person in the same situation to the same belief.” Unsurprisingly, Officer Darren Wilson testified to the grand jury that he reasonably believed he needed to use deadly force to defend himself against Michael Brown. But the clinching argument on this point is that other reasonable people — i.e., some credible eyewitnesses — agreed with Wilson.

In previous posts, I have discussed how the grand jury process was fair, how Officer Wilson’s testimony covered the bases of Missouri self-defense law, and how the physical evidence bolstered his credibility. In this post, I turn to eyewitness testimony — which the Post has helpfully collected in this story. It would be difficult to discuss in detail the testimony of all of several dozen eyewitnesses. But a defendant raising self-defense need not show that his interpretation was the only one; rather he need only show that it was a reasonable one — i.e., a conclusion a reasonable person could reach based on all the facts.

Against that backdrop, I want to review in detail the testimony of one seemingly reasonable and neutral observer — Witness Number 10. If his objective assessment was that Officer Wilson acted appropriately, that would be strong evidence demonstrating Wilson’s belief was reasonable.

Witness 10 told the grand jury that he was outside while working a job on Canfield Drive when two men (later identified as Mike Brown and Dorion Johnson) walked by him. He then was able to see the events in question with a direct line of sight. Witness 10 saw the struggle in Wilson’s police car — with Brown confronting Wilson inside the car:

I just see Mr. Brown inside the police officer’s window. It appeared as [though] some sort of confrontation was taking place. . . . [T]hat took place for seconds, I’m not sure how long. . . . And one shot, the first shot was let loose and after the first shot, Mike Brown came out of the window and took off running. So my initial thought was that wow, did I just witness this young guy kill a police officer (grand jury testimony, Vol. 6, page 165, line 23, hereafter cited by just page and line number).

Witness 10 elaborated about Brown’s position: “Half of his body, his feet was still planted on the ground, his upper body was inside the window in a leaning motion inside the window, his upper body was inside” (169:21). And while the witness could not hear what was being said inside the car, “it just looked out of the norm with somebody being leaned over inside the police officer’s car” (171:15). Witness 10 then explained that, after the firing of a shot, Michael Brown and his friend took off down Canfield Drive. Officer Wilson remained in his car briefly, and then pursued with his gun drawn — but not firing at Brown (177:15). Eventually Brown stopped.
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According to Witness 10, Brown then turned and ran “full charge” toward Wilson:

He [Mike Brown] stopped. He did turn, he did some sort of body gesture, I’m not sure what it was, but I know it was a body gesture. And I could say for sure he never put his hands up after he did his body gesture, he ran towards the officer full charge. The officer fired several shots at him and to give an estimate, I would say roughly around five to six shots was fired at Mike Brown. Mike Brown was still coming towards the office and at this point I’m thinking, wow, is this officer missing Mike Brown at this close of a range. Mike Brown continuously came forward in the charging motion and at some point, at one point he started to slow down and he came to a stop. And when he stopped, that’s when the officer ceased fire and when he ceased fire[], Mike Brown started to charge once more at him. When he charged once more, the officer returned fire with, I would say, give an estimate of three to four shots. And that’s when Mike Brown finally collapsed . . . . (166:21-167:18).

With regard to the body gesture, Witness 10 explained: “All I know is it was not in a surrendering motion of I’m surrendering, putting my hands up or anything, I’m not sure. If it was like a shoulder shrug or him pulling his pants up, I’m not sure. I really don’t want to speculate [about] things . . . .” (180:5). But “[i]mmediately after he [Brown] did his body gesture, he comes for force, full charge at the officer” (180:16). Ultimately, in the view of Witness 10, the officer’s life was in jeopardy when Brown charged him from close range (206:4).

Under Missouri law, this testimony by itself (even apart from any other evidence) would have provided a sound basis for the grand jury to decline to return any charges against Wilson. A Missouri appellate decision approves the following jury instruction allowing deadly force when supported by a “reasonable belief” in the need to use such force:

In order for a person lawfully to use force in self-defense, he must reasonably believe he is in imminent danger of harm from the other person. He need not be in actual danger but he must have a reasonable belief that he is in such danger. . . . But a person is not permitted to use deadly force, that is, force that he knows will create a substantial risk of causing death or serious physical injury, unless he reasonably believes he is in imminent danger of death or serious physical injury. And, even then, a person may use deadly force only if he reasonably believes the use of such force is necessary to protect himself.

Of particular importance for this post, Missouri law defines a “reasonable belief” as one that would be held by a reasonable person knowing the same facts:

As used in this instruction, the term “reasonable belief” means a belief based on reasonable grounds, that is, grounds that could lead a reasonable person in the same situation to the same belief. This depends upon how the facts reasonably appeared. It does not depend upon whether the belief turned out to be true or false.

Witness 10 was a neutral observer who saw all the same things that Officer Wilson saw (albeit from a safe distance). He concluded that Wilson’s life was in jeopardy. This would seem to be very strong evidence that a reasonable person could reasonably conclude that deadly force was required to protect against 300-pound Mike Brown’s “full on charge.”

Moreover, Witness 10′s version of the facts is quite credible. Witness 10 saw a “confrontation” and Mike Brown’s DNA was later found inside the car. Indeed, witness 10 was afraid that Brown might have killed the police officer inside the car when he heard the firing of a single shot. (The ballistics evidence shows two shots were fired at the car, so that is a point of difference.) Witness 10 then describes Wilson pursuing Brown but not firing any shots along the way. Here again, the ballistics tracks this testimony.

November 26, 2014

The Legalities of Shooting People, by Correia [nc]

Filed under: Education, Elections, Global Intel, Historical context, Law Enforcement, Police, Political Commentary, Politicians — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 3:56 pm

http://monsterhunternation.com/2014/11/25/the-legalities-of-shooting-people/

The Legalities of Shooting People

Posted on November 25, 2014 by correia45

I’m writing this blog post because I’ve seen a lot of really ignorant comments from a lot of otherwise intelligent folks about some recent shootings. It is really easy to be swayed by knee jerk emotion, but luckily we live in America, where we have a justice system based on evidence and the rule of law. I’m not going to get into the Brown shooting too much because I wasn’t on the grand jury and haven’t read the evidence presented in that particular case, but I’m going to explain how use of force laws work so I don’t have to keep repeating myself.

This will vary state by state, but these are the fundamentals for most places in the US. There are some legal differences between police and regular folks shooting people, but basically the rules are similar. I’m not an attorney in your state, and this is not meant as legal advice for your state. Again, this isn’t meant as legal advice, rather as a primer to get people to not be so damned ignorant about the fundamentals of how the law works.

And the law usually does work.

I’m going to keep this simple. Before I became a novelist, I was a Utah Concealed Weapons instructor for many years. I’m condensing a few hours of lecture and discussion into one article. Again, this will vary state by state.

First off we must understand some terms.

Lethal Force is exercising an action against someone which may potentially take their life. If you shoot somebody and they don’t die, you still exercised Lethal Force. If you shoot somebody in the leg or arm, legally that is still Lethal Force, and contrary to the movies, you can still die if get shot in the arm or the leg (but we train to shoot for center of mass, more on why later).

Serious Bodily Harm (often called Grievous Bodily Harm) is any injury that is potentially life altering or life threatening. Rape is serious bodily harm. A beating is serious bodily harm. Anything that may render you unconscious is serious bodily harm.

Reasonable Man – I will often refer to this. The question isn’t whether the shooter perceives themselves to be justified, but whether a “reasonable man” would perceive you to be justified. Contrary to popular opinion, you can’t just say “he was coming right at me!” and be justified in shooting somebody. The evidence will be examined and the question will be if you made the assumptions a reasonable man would make, and acted in a manner which seems reasonable based on that evidence. This is where the jury comes in, because they are a group of reasonable people who are going to look at your actions and your situation and make a call. Basically, do your actions make sense to them? Would they believe similar things in the same situation?

To be legally justified in using lethal force against somebody you need to meet the following criteria.

1. They have the Ability to cause you serious bodily harm.

2. They have the Opportunity to cause you serious bodily harm.

3. They are acting in a manner which suggests they are an Immediate Threat of serious bodily harm.

If your encounter fits these three criteria, then you are usually legally justified in using lethal force.

Let’s break each one down a bit.

Ability just means that they have the power to hurt you. A gun or a knife can obviously cause serious bodily harm. However, a person does not need a weapon to seriously hurt you. Any blow to the head sufficient to render you unconscious or cause internal bleeding is sufficient to kill you.

Opportunity means that they can reach you with their ability. A hundred yards away with a gun, they can still hit you, so they have the opportunity. A hundred yards away with a knife, pipe, or chain, and they aren’t a danger to you. However, thirty feet away with a contact weapon is easily within range to cause most people serious bodily harm before they are capable of using a firearm to neutralize the threat. I’ll talk more about distances later.

Immediacy (often called Jeopardy) means that they are acting in a manner that suggests they intend to cause serious bodily harm right now. Somebody can have the ability and opportunity, but if a reasonable person wouldn’t believe that they are acting like a threat, then they aren’t one.

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Now let’s break this down in more depth.

Under Ability you will see self-defense experts refer to Disparity of Force, this is where there is such a physical disparity between two individuals that Ability is assumed. I’m 6’5, 300, and I’ve rendered people unconscious with my bare hands. If I’m unarmed, but I am attacking an average sized person, and they shoot me, then a reasonable person could assume that there was a disparity of force, and they were justified in shooting me. Usually when a man attacks a woman, or a fit strong young person attacks a frail old person, then disparity of force is assumed.

However, you don’t have to be bigger or stronger (it only helps convince the reasonable people you are justified). Regardless of size, if you knock someone down and are sitting on them and raining blows on their head, then you are demonstrating the ability to cause them serious bodily harm. A small woman could brain a big strong man over the head with a rock and proceed to beat them, thus demonstrating ability.

A person doesn’t need to even demonstrate that he’s got the ability, he just needs to act in a manner that would suggest to a reasonable person that he did. If you tell somebody, “Give me your purse or I’ll shoot you,” but you don’t show them your gun, a reasonable person would assume that you wouldn’t make that threat if you didn’t have the ability. You don’t need to wait to see the muzzle flash to confirm their gun is real. That’s suicidal.

On the distance someone can reasonably be a threat with just a contact weapon, you’d be surprised. It is easy to underestimate how much distance a human being can cover in a very short period of time. During my classes I used a series of role playing scenarios to demonstrate various issues and test the shoot/no shoot decision making process. While playing an aggressor I routinely covered in excess of twenty feet and caused serious bodily harm before most students could even draw their gun, let alone aim.

Gun people have all heard of the Tueller drill, which demonstrated that the average person could cover about 21 feet before the average police officer could draw and fire a shot (and as we’ll see later, one shot doesn’t often mean much, assuming it hits something vital). That’s average. Basically, without going into a whole lot of detail, the reasonable people are usually stunned to learn how much distance can be covered to provide opportunity.

The last one is the most complicated. Say a man with a gun has Ability and Opportunity, but if he is just minding his own business with the gun in the holster, slung, or being carried in a non-threatening manner then he’s not acting as an immediate threat. But if he is acting like he is going to use it or waving it around, now he is acting like an immediate threat. Again, it all comes down to how a reasonable person would perceive it.

This is why it is silly when anti-gun people start ranting about how they’re justified in harming people who are openly carrying firearms on their person. Nope. #3, unless they’re acting in a manner that suggests they’re an immediate threat, then they’re fine. Otherwise it would be legally justifiable to shoot everybody like me that shops at the Xtra Large Casual Male outlet because of disparity of force. You can’t just have Ability or Opportunity, they must be acting in a manner which a reasonable person would take to be a threat.

You’ve got to have all three.

In most states these rules apply to yourself or a third person being the potential recipient of serious bodily harm, however I believe there are still some states where it is only for you, and not a bystander. Some states suck.

You’ll hear people talking (usually ignorantly) about Castle Doctrine or Duty to Retreat. Some states require you to try and flee before exercising Lethal Force, and it allows the prosecution to question your inability to flee. Some states require you to flee your own home. Most states don’t have that.

Not that escaping or avoiding isn’t a great idea if given the opportunity, but it sucks to have a prosecutor second guessing your running ability.

###

Violent encounters are a triangle. There are three aspects to every violent encounter, the legal side (the decisions that keep you out of jail), the tactical side (the decisions that keep you alive), and the moral side (the decisions that let you sleep at night). These don’t always all match up neatly. There are times when you can be totally legally justified but tactically stupid.

Say somebody breaks into your house. Before you’ve even seen them you can make some assumptions, they came into your house while you are home, they probably wouldn’t do that if they didn’t have the ability, now they’ve certainly got the opportunity, and their presence is an immediate threat. So you’re legally justified, however you still need to identify the target before firing to make sure that it is actually a threat, and not some mistaken identity shooting, your drunk teenager, or the neighbors autistic kid.

I worked primarily with regular folks, and a little with the police. Their triangle is different. There are situations where a permit holder might be legally justified in getting involved, but tactically they are probably going to get killed, so their best bet is to run away. In fact, in most scenarios avoidance is the best answer, and in the vast majority of real life violent encounters involving a permit holder, no shots are fired, because simply producing the gun is enough to deter the attacker.

One thing the permit holders I taught needed to get through their heads was that they weren’t cops. Their permit was simply a license to carry a concealed firearm in order to defend themselves from violence. Luckily the vast majority of permit holders get that.

###

Cops on the other hand are expected to respond to violent people and apprehend them. As a result police have what is known as the Use of Force Pyramid. That means that they are to respond with the lowest amount of force necessary to stop any given situation. That is why they are expected to use tasers or pepper spray before they use physical force or guns. Their goal is to stop the situation, and they’ll try to respond with one level more force than the person they’re trying to stop. However, and this is a BIG damned however, just like the rules for regular people above, if they are in immediate danger of serious bodily harm, then they are justified in using lethal force.

Tasers and pepper spray are not magic. Most people’s understanding of these tools comes from TV and TV isn’t reality. Tasers don’t knock you unconscious. They stream electricity through your body which causes your muscles to lock up for a moment, and if the circuit ends (the tiny wires break or the barbs fall out) then you are back to normal and it is game on. (and I’m talking about air tasers, the little stun guns or “drive tasers” are useless toys. They feel like being pinched with a red hot pair of pliers, which sucks, but if you’re tough enough you can play tag with the damned things). Pepper spray hurts and makes it hard to see and breathe, but you can build up a resistance to it (ask anybody in prison) and it can also bounce back on the user. In reality these tools work sometimes and sometimes they don’t. You’ll note that when you see cops dealing with actual violent types and they use the less lethal tools, there is usually cop #2 standing there with a real gun in case Plan A doesn’t work.

Then there is going hands on, “pain compliance techniques” (arm bars, wrist locks, and wrestling until you say enough of this crap and let them put the cuffs on) but like anything in life that requires physical force one human being to another, these things are dangerous too, and bad things might happen. Bones break, arteries are cut off, people get hurt, sometimes they die.

But the cops are going to try to respond to their subject a level above what the subject is using, until they surrender or comply. Which means that if they think you are going to lethal force, they are going to go to lethal force, and the time it takes to switch gears is measured in fractions of a second.

When a cop shoots somebody, depending on the state, it now goes before whatever they use for Reasonable People.

If you try to wrestle away a cop’s gun, that demonstrates Ability, Opportunity, and Immediacy, because right after you get ahold of that firearm, the reasonable assumption is going to be that you’re intending to use it. If you fight a cop, and he thinks you’re going to lethal force, he’s going to repeatedly place bullets into your center of mass until you quit.

Everybody who carries a gun, whether they be police or not, are trained to shoot for the middle of the largest available target, which is normally the center of mass, and to do so repeatedly until the threat stops. Contrary to the movies, pistols aren’t death rays. A pistol bullet simply pokes a hole. Usually when somebody is stopped by being shot it is A. Psychological (as in holy crap! I’m shot! That hurt! I surrender), but if they keep going it is until B. Physiological (as in a drop in blood pressure sufficient for them to cease hostilities) If that hole poked is in a vital organ, then the attacker will stop faster. If it isn’t in a vital organ, they will stop slower. Pistols do not pick people up, nor do they throw people back. Pistol bullets are usually insufficiently powerful to break significant bones.

Shooting people who are actively trying to harm you while under pressure is actually very hard, which is why people often miss. This is why you aim for the biggest available target and continue shooting until they stop doing whatever it is that caused you to shoot them in the first place.

You’ll hear ignorant people say “why didn’t you just shoot them in the arm/leg?” That is foolishness. Legally and tactically, they’re both still lethal force. Only if they bleed to death in a minute because you severed their femoral artery, they’re not any less dead, only they had one more minute to continue trying to murder you. Basically limb hits are difficult to pull off with the added bonus of being terribly unreliable stoppers.

##

In a fatal shooting you’ll often hear someone say “there was only one side to the story told.” That is false

.

In the aftermath of any shooting, whether it is police or the general public, there is going to be an investigation. There will be evidence gathered. There will be witnesses. There will be an autopsy. There is always multiple sides to any shooting, even if it is just the autopsy results.

Contrary to the media narrative, most police officers don’t want to shoot anyone, regardless of their skin color. Those of us who carry guns don’t want to shoot anybody. One big reason is that because after we had to make that awful shoot/no-shoot decision in a terrifying fraction of a second, then hundreds of people are going to spend thousands of man hours gathering evidence, then they are going to argue about our actions, analyze our every move, guess at our thoughts, and debate whether we were reasonable or not, all from the comfort of an air conditioned room, and if they get hungry, they’ll order pizza. When all is said and done, these people will have a million times longer to decide if what you did in those seconds was justified or not. No pressure.

Each state is different, but if there is any question as to the justification of the shooting, there is usually some form of grand jury, and if there is sufficient question or evidence of wrong doing, then the shooter will be indicted.

Now, an argument can be made as to how shootings—especially those committed by law enforcement officers who are expected to exercise a higher standard of care—should be investigated. However, no matter how the shooting is investigated, it should be done through our constitutional protections and our agreed upon legal system. No one should ever be convicted through the court of public opinion or the media.

In ten years of studying violent encounters and learning everything I could about every shooting I could, I never once found a newspaper article that got all the facts right. Usually they weren’t even close. In that same time period I offered free training in Use of Force to reporters or detractors, and never once had any of them take me up on it.

You may believe that grand juries are too soft on police involved shootings. That may be a valid argument. You may believe that prosecutors are too lenient on police officers because they both work for the government and there is an existing relationship between the prosecutors and the police. That may be a valid argument. Burning down Little Ceasers isn’t the answer.

There are stupid cops, and there are cops who make mistakes. As representatives of an extremely powerful state, they should be held to a higher standard. Just because somebody works for the government doesn’t make them infallible, and if they screw up and kill somebody for a stupid reason, they should have the book thrown at them, but damn if it doesn’t help to know what actually happened before you form up your angry lynch mob!

Violent encounters are complex, and the only thing they have in common is that they all suck. Going into any investigation with preconceived notions is foolish. Making decisions as to right or wrong before you’ve seen any of the evidence is asinine. If you are a nationally elected official, like say for example the President of the United States, who repeatedly feels the need to chime in on local crime issues before you know any facts, you are partly to blame for the resulting unrest, and should probably go have a Beer Summit.

You can’t complain about the bias in our justice system against some groups, and how the state unfairly prosecutes some more than others, and then immediately demand doing away with the burden of proof, so the state can more freely prosecute. Blacks are prosecuted more and sentenced more harshly, so your solution is to remove more of the restraints on the state’s prosecutorial powers, and you think that’ll make things better? You want people to be prosecuted based on feelings rather than evidence, and you think that’ll help? The burden of proof exists as a protection for the people from the state. We have a system for a reason. Angry mob rule based on an emotional fact-free version of events isn’t the answer.

So my request is this, at least learn how stuff works before forming a super strong opinion on it.

November 25, 2014

When a Country goes Bust, The Economist Explains [c]

Filed under: Bail-out, Business, Econonics, Education, Elections, Global Intel, Historical context, Political Commentary, Politicians — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 9:12 pm

The Economist explains
What happens when a country goes bust
Nov 24th 2014, 23:50 by S.N.

Timekeeper

FROM the days when monarchs over-borrowed for their mercantile adventures, to Argentina’s recent failure to pay its creditors, countries have long run into trouble paying back what they have borrowed. Spain’s 16th-century king, Philip II, reigned over four of his country’s defaults. Greece and Argentina have reneged on their commitments to bondholders seven and eight times respectively over the past 200 years. And most countries have defaulted at least once in their history. But what precisely happens when countries stop paying what they owe?

When a country fails to pay its creditors on time, it is said to go into “default”, the national equivalent of going bankrupt. But sovereign defaults are quite different from business bankruptcies as it is far harder for creditors to repossess the assets of a sovereign entity than to repossess the assets of a company (an unarmed Argentinian naval vessel detained in Ghana for ten weeks in 2012 was an exception). In the first instance, to curry favour in international markets, defaulting countries tend to restructure their debt rather than simply refusing to pay anything at all. But these so-called “haircuts”, where the original value of a bond is reduced, can be much more painful for the holders of government bonds than a simple clip of the scissors. After its $81 billion default in 2001, Argentina offered to pay its creditors a third of what it owed—93% of the debt was eventually swapped for performing securities in 2005 and 2010. But the remainder, which is held by vulture funds and other investors, is still in dispute. These “holdouts” are waiting for $1.3 billion plus interest. And when Greece defaulted in 2012, bondholders were forced to take hits as high as 50%. In less severe cases, countries may choose to restructure their debt by requesting more time to pay. This has the effect of reducing the present value of the bond—so it isn’t entirely pain-free for investors. Some suggest that this is the right course of action for Ukraine as it struggles to balance its immediate domestic priorities against its obligations to bondholders.

Defaults can also be very painful for the offending country, particularly if they are unexpected and disorderly. Domestic savers and investors, anticipating a fall in the value of the local currency, will scramble to withdraw their money from bank accounts and move it out of the country. To avoid bank-runs and precipitous currency depreciation, the government may shut down banks and impose capital controls. As punishment for default, capital markets will either impose punitive borrowing rates or refuse to lend at all. And credit-rating agencies will no doubt warn against investing in the country. But as history shows, in most countries yield-hungry lenders will eventually start lending again so long as they are adequately rewarded for the risk they are taking on. Moreover, credit-default swaps—financial instruments which act as a form of insurance against sovereign and corporate defaults—allow bondholders to hedge their risk. But not all defaults are the same: Argentina defaulted again this year by refusing to pay $1.3 billion plus interest to the “holdouts” from 2001.

Critically, there is no international law or court for settling sovereign defaults, which helps explain why they are so varied in length and severity. More international regulation has been proposed—including powers to prevent minority holders from hijacking the process—but such conditions ultimately remain up to the issuing country. The first bond issuances since the new proposals (by Kazakhstan and Vietnam) include these clauses. Other countries might follow suit, but this doesn’t resolve the $900 billion of bonds outstanding that were issued under the old rules. Like any messy divorce, drawn out negotiations around defaults can be costly for all parties involved. Working towards better pre-nuptial terms might not be such a bad idea.

[Not mentioned, is that the domestic GDP has historically shrunk between 7 and 19%, with corresponding increase in box 6 of the employment stats, meaning REAL unemployment, not the misleading box 3 stats released by the gov’t.]

Note specifically Paragraphs one and two, (The Economist is London UK based)

Filed under: Business, Econonics, Education, Elections, Global Intel, Historical context, Islam, Media Check, Military, Political Commentary, Politicians, US Constitution — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 5:18 pm

The Economist Espresso
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The Economist Espresso via e-mail for Tuesday November 25th

Today’s agenda

Race, justice and protest: the Michael Brown verdict
“There is inevitably going to be some negative reaction, and it will make for good TV.” So Barack Obama concluded a press conference late last night, after prosecutors in Ferguson, Missouri, announced that a grand jury had decided not to indict Darren Wilson, the police officer who in August shot an unarmed black man, Michael Brown. The decision, inexplicably, did not come until 8pm, by which time protesters in Ferguson were facing off with police. Even as the president spoke, cable-TV channels screened pictures of men throwing bottles and bricks and the police firing tear gas. There were mainly peaceful demonstrations in several other cities. Mr Obama condemned violence, but he also pointed out that “communities of colour are not just making these problems up.” As the tear gas clears, the investigation goes on: Eric Holder, the attorney-general, said that the federal Justice Department’s investigation into the shooting of Mr Brown continues.

Collateral damage: Obama fires Hagel
When you’re in a hole, fire someone. That being Washington’s way, Barack Obama’s national security team is now wondering who will be next, after the easing out yesterday of Chuck Hagel, the defence secretary. Mr Hagel was picked for his Obama-like caution less than two years ago. His mission: to help wind down the Afghan conflict and shrink America’s war machine to fit a new era in which military force would be a tool of last resort. Then Team Obama learned that, alas, in foreign policy, others get a vote: from Islamic State fanatics to muscle-flexing Chinese generals and revanchist Vladimir Putin. Poor, decent, briefed-against Mr Hagel—a former Republican senator who came by his war-wariness honourably, seeing action in Vietnam—was judged an inept salesman for the old Obama doctrine, and never penetrated the president’s inner circle. More departures surely loom. Some inner-circle sackings would actually help, but don’t count on them.

Indian Kashmir: Modi’s new frontier
Polls open in the perpetually disgruntled Indian state of Jammu & Kashmir today, in the first of five rounds of voting for the state assembly. For the first time the Bharatiya Janata Party of the prime minister, Narendra Modi, known for its Hindu nationalism, stands a chance of leading a coalition government in the Muslim-majority state. It is expected to win by a landslide in the largely Hindu Jammu, but may find allies even in the troubled Kashmir valley. The insurgency there, fired by local resentment at Indian rule and by infiltration from Pakistan, which still claims sovereignty over all of Kashmir, is at a low ebb. So turnout will be high, despite separatists’ call for a boycott. The election will not bring peace, however, without an agreement between India and Pakistan. And, though their leaders may talk at a summit in Nepal this week, that is not on the cards.

Time is money: the IMF and Ukraine
A mission from the IMF leaves Ukraine today, after a two-week visit for talks with the newish coalition. In April, when Ukraine was at real risk of defaulting on its debts, the fund promised it $17 billion: $4.6 billion has arrived. Ukraine wants more; the IMF wants a commitment to reform. Ukraine could yet default: foreign-exchange reserves are probably about $10 billion, and $14 billion-worth of external repayments fall due before the end of 2016. The currency, the hryvnia, has lost half its value this year: some think it may soon fall to 25 to the dollar, from 15 now. The country’s banks are struggling: one, VAB Bank, was declared insolvent on Friday. Meanwhile the conflict with Russian-backed separatists in the east drags on, despite a notional ceasefire. Arguments within the coalition could delay the next slug of IMF money until next year. That may be too late.

Printing banknotes: no more easy money
De La Rue, a British company that prints banknotes for dozens of countries, reported gloomy half-year results today: revenues fell by 8%, year-on-year, and profits by 36%. Its new boss, Martin Sutherland, who joined last month, will have to work hard for his cash. A profit warning in September, the second within a year, caused De La Rue’s shares to plunge by 34%, shortly after the firm won the contract to print plastic banknotes for the Bank of England from 2016. Overcapacity in the industry and growing competition have squeezed margins; De La Rue is thought to have won the Bank of England contract only by offering a huge discount. Fortunately, its other area of expertise—printing passports—offers brighter prospects, as governments everywhere add new security features. For Mr Sutherland, more emphasis on travel documents may be just the ticket, now that producing banknotes is no longer a licence to print money.

The world in brief

The “P5+1” countries (America, Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia) and Iran pushed back their deadline for an agreement on Iran’s nuclear programme from yesterday to the end of June. Iran insists its motives are peaceful and wants sanctions lifted; the other powers want to cut Iran’s enrichment capacity.

Hong Kong’s government began removing tents and barricades from roads in the volatile Mong Kok area, amid signs that public support for the two-month-old pro-democracy protests has started to fizzle, and the movement itself appears increasingly divided between a peaceful majority and a more confrontational splinter group.

Tunisia’s presidential election is heading for a run-off next month between the favourite, Beji Caid Sebsi, and the incumbent, Moncef Marzouki, after Sunday’s first round. Mr Sebsi’s secular Nidaa Tounes (“Tunisian Call”) came top in recent parliamentary elections; Mr Marzouki may attract supporters of Nahda (“Awakening”), an Islamist party with no candidate of its own.

BT, Britain’s biggest fixed-line telecoms provider, said it was in preliminary talks with two mobile operators about a possible merger. One is O2, a mobile network owned by Spain’s Telefónica that BT spun off in 2002. The other is reportedly EE, owned by Orange, of France, and Deutsche Telekom.

The chief executive of United Technologies, which makes Otis lifts, Pratt & Whitney engines and Sikorsky helicopters, resigned unexpectedly. The company did not say why Louis Chenevert had stood aside, to be replaced by Gregory Hayes, the chief financial officer, but insisted it had nothing to do with its unspectacular financial performance.

Executives from Sony told investors today that they expected revenues in the company’s troubled electronics division to rise by 70% in the next three years. They are pinning their hopes mainly on the PlayStation 4, a successful games console, and image sensors; they warned of cuts to Sony’s TV and smartphone units.

A museum in Bern said it would accept a bequest of artworks from the estate of Cornelius Gurlitt, whose hoard of paintings included many collected by Jewish families in Nazi Germany. The museum said it would work to return looted art to its rightful owners.

Markets & Currencies

International markets
At last close

DJIA : 17817.90 (+7.84 / +0.04%)

S&P 500 : 2069.41 (+0.00 / +0.00%)

FTSE 100 : 6729.79 (-20.97 / -0.31%)

DAX : 9785.54 (+52.99 / +0.54%)

Nikkei 225 : 17407.62 (+50.11 / +0.29%)

Hang Seng : 23843.91 (-49.23 / -0.21%)

Crude Oil (WTI) : 76.04 (+0.26 / +0.34%)

Gold : 1201.00 (+5.30 / +0.44%)

Major world currencies
Last updated: Tue 25 November, 11:06 GMT

Currency

EUR – USD 1.2439

GBP – USD 1.568

USD – JPY 118.115

AUD – USD 0.8551

USD – CAD 1.1293

USD – CHF 0.9666

EUR – GBP 0.7933

That’s it!

“Cultivation of the mind is as necessary as food to the body.” — Marcus Tullius Cicero

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November 23, 2014

As Goes the National Cathedral, So Goes the Nation … If We Allow It, by Sylvia Thompson [nc]

Filed under: Education, Elections, Historical context, Media Check, Political Commentary, Religion, US Constitution — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 11:22 pm

Sylvia Thompson column
As goes the National Cathedral, so goes the nation…if we allow it

Sylvia Thompson
Sylvia Thompson
November 22, 2014

Christians need only look at the travesty of Muslims praying to Allah in a house of Almighty God to understand the degree to which Christian leadership has deteriorated in America – the nation founded by Christians for the worship of Christ Jesus.

The worship service was orchestrated by leaders of the National Cathedral, which is an Episcopal denomination. It was touted as outreach.

The Episcopal Church has experienced a decline in membership over recent years, like so many mainline churches, because of its disdain for Holy Scripture. The church has undergone much controversy over its ordination of women as spiritual leaders, its embrace of the homosexual agenda, and its “nuanced” stance toward the killing of the unborn (as characterized by the presiding Bishop, Katherine Jefferts Schori).

True adherents to the Bible in the Episcopal Church broke away from church leadership when Gene Robinson was ordained a bishop. Robinson is a practicing homosexual who was, at the time, in a scripturally condemned relationship with another man. The biblical Christians formed new congregations, unaffiliated with the main congregation, and they are thriving.

Given this history, the decision by leftist Episcopalian leadership (represented by Gina Campbell, pastor of the cathedral) to host a Muslim worship service is not at all surprising. Church leaders may call it outreach, but to allow the worship of a faith that is blatantly antagonistic to Christianity is an agenda, not outreach.

I listened to a couple of Muslim spokesmen in attendance make the case that this event represented a coming together of Muslims to “condemn” the radical hijackers of their faith. Somehow none of their smooth talk rang true in light of the hatred of Christianity that Islam fosters. Muslims could make a statement of condemnation from one of the many mosques proliferating this country. Why is it necessary to make it in a Christian church? Quick answer, it is not.

This action is a blatant, in-your-face to America’s Christian community, aided and abetted by the Left. The goal of Islam is for its adherents to infiltrate and overthrow whatever land Muslims are allowed to reside in, and a weak American Christian community is perfect fodder for overthrow. I have not heard a lot of comments from Christians to counter this latest Muslim affront.

That is, except for Pastor Franklin Graham and one gutsy Christian woman named Christine Weick.

Ms. Weick maneuvered her way into the Cathedral, which in her telling of the event was something of a miraculous feat in itself. Before this Christian woman was booted out, she was able to announce this statement to those worshippers of another god in God’s house:

“Jesus Christ died on that cross. He is the reason we are to worship only Him. Jesus Christ is our Lord and Savior,” she said. “We have built…allowed you your mosques in this country. Why don’t you worship in your mosques and leave our churches alone? We are a country founded on Christian principles.” [1]

With that, she was led from the room by security and handed over to police. She assumed that she would be thrown in jail but she was not. In her description of the response of the men removing her (none of whom said a word), I get the impression that these men detected the irony of it all – a Christian thrown out of a Christian church to accommodate Muslims, in America.

Pastor Graham was the only Christian leader, that I am aware, who took a firm stand. He has exhibited leadership many times in the past when other presumed Christian leaders cowered in fear of speaking out. Or, they have themselves moved away from Scripture and capitulated to our rotting culture. Pastor Graham posted this comment on his Facebook page:

“Tomorrow, the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. – one of the most prominent Episcopal churches in America – will host a Muslim prayer service to Allah. It’s sad to see a church open its doors to the worship of anything other than the One True God of the Bible who sent His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, to earth to save us from our sins. Jesus was clear when He said, ‘I am the way the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me’ (John 14:6).” [2]

All biblical Christians know that a church structure does not in itself make a “church.” Christianity is something that a follower of Christ embraces and incorporates into his very being. Knowledge of Scripture and an acceptance of and adherence to its teachings is what makes a Christian, not the building in which services are held. Many Christians around the world have no buildings because they must worship clandestinely.

I make this point to show that the affront to American Christians by Muslims worshipping with their backs to the cross in the National Cathedral is a minor thing, spiritually. But it is a major thing when we assess what it truly represents. It shows that American Muslims, minus the violence, are no different from their radical counterparts. Their goal is to worm their way into American culture so that eventually there will be no other sanctioned worship besides Islam.

It is no coincidence that the rise of the liberal Left in America is accompanied by the spread of Islam in America. Both entities have as a goal the destruction of America as it was founded. And neither will succeed if we do not allow them to succeed.

NOTES:

[1] See WND.com http://www.wnd.com/2014/11/christian-booted-from-national-cathedral-speaks-out/#KDJsJzTVVXOhTfyA.99

[2] See Newsmax.com http://www.Newsmax.com/US/Franklin-Graham-Billy-Graham-Muslims-Washington-National-Cathedral/2014/11/17/id/607906/#ixzz3JXMZt9an

Sylvia Thompson is a black conservative writer whose aim is to counter the liberal spin on issues pertaining to race and culture.

Ms. Thompson is a copy editor by trade currently residing in Tennessee. She formerly wrote for the Conservative Forum of Silicon Valley California Newsletter and the online conservative blog ChronWatch, also out of California.

She grew up in Southeast Texas during the waning years of Jim Crow-era legalized segregation, and she concludes that race relations in America will never improve, nor will we ever elevate our culture, as long as there are victims to be pandered to and villains to be vilified. America is better served without victims or villains.

© Copyright 2014 by Sylvia Thompson
http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/sthompson/141122

November 21, 2014

Federal Immigration and Nationality Act 1952 [nc]

Filed under: Business, Econonics, Elections, Historical context, Illegal Aliens, Law Enforcement, Police, Political Commentary, Politicians, US Constitution — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 2:28 pm

Federal Immigration and Nationality Act 1952
Section 8 USC 1324(a)(1)(A)(iv)(b)(iii)

“Any person who . . . encourages or induces an alien to . . . reside . . . knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that such . . . residence is . . . in violation of law, shall be punished as provided . . . for each alien in respect to whom such a violation occurs . . . fined under title 18 . . . imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both.”

Section 274 felonies under the federal Immigration and Nationality Act, INA 274A(a)(1)(A):

A person (including a group of persons, business, organization, or local government) commits a federal felony when she or he:

* assists an alien s/he should reasonably know is illegally in the U.S. or who lacks employment authorization, by transporting, sheltering, or assisting him or her to obtain employment, or
* encourages that alien to remain in the U.S. by referring him or her to an employer or by acting as employer or agent for an employer in any way, or
* knowingly assists illegal aliens due to personal convictions.

November 20, 2014

1862 Quote by Dr. Henley of SC, how prophetic is this?

Filed under: Econonics, Education, Elections, Historical context, Illegal Aliens, Media Check, Military, Political Commentary, Politicians, US Constitution — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 10:03 pm

“If they (the North) prevail, the whole character of the Government will be changed, and instead of a federal republic, the common agent of sovereign and independent States, we shall have a central despotism, with the notion of States forever abolished, deriving its power from the will, and shaping its policy according to the wishes, of a numerical majority of the people; we shall have, in other words, a supreme, irresponsible democracy. The Government does not now recognize itself as an ordinance of God, and when all the checks and balances of the constitution are gone, we may easily figure to ourselves the career and the destiny of this godless monster of democratic absolutism. The progress of regulated liberty on this continent will be arrested, anarchy will soon succeed, and the end will be a military despotism, which preserves order by the sacrifice of the last vestige of liberty. They are now fighting the battle of despotism. They have put their Constitution under their feet; they have annulled its most sacred provisions; they future fortunes of our children, and of this continent, would then be determined by a tyranny which has no parallel in history.” ~Dr. James Henly Thornwell of South Carolina, In Our Danger and our Duty, 1862

[Secession.]

November 18, 2014

Illegals in Los Angeles County CA, from Snopes [c]

Filed under: Business, Econonics, Education, Elections, Historical context, Illegal Aliens, Law Enforcement, Police, Political Commentary, Politicians, US Constitution — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 9:13 pm

[Got this email with all sorts of statistics regarding illegals in LA County, claiming LA Times as the source. Actually knowing something re this area, and even though I dislike snopes, I checked with their postings, as if nothing else, they would have references. So, here’s the deal regarding those emailed stats.

Now, I don’t really care that the original email is off, what is disgusting is that the below is the truth. Illegals Aliens are a cancer on American Culture. The below stats prove it. Keep in mind, this is just ONE of dozens of counties in CA, NYS, MA, IL, PA, OR, WA, MO, IA, FL, and several other states.

An estimate of the actual cost to the US Taxpayer in dollars/annum, is over 600B. That is $600,000,000.00 or about the current defense department expenditure on Obama. Another way to look at it, is that 600 B would more than cover the cost of the interest on the national debt.

Think about it.]

Where Your Taxes Go

Claim: Listing provides statistics about the number and costs of illegal aliens in Los Angeles County.

MIXTURE

Examples: [Collected via e-mail, 2006]

WHERE YOUR TAXES GO – ILLEGAL ALIENS

Attributed to the LA Times, June 2002:

1. 40% of all workers in L.A. County (L.A. County has 10 million people) are working for cash and not paying taxes. This was because they are predominantly illegal immigrants, working without a green card.

2. 95% of warrants for murder in Los Angeles are for illegal aliens.

3. 75% of people on the most wanted list in Los Angeles are illegal aliens.

4. Over 2/3’s of all births in Los Angeles County are to illegal alien Mexicans on Medi-Cal whose births were paid for by taxpayers.

5. Nearly 25% of all inmates in California detention centers are Mexican nationals here illegally.

6. Over 300,000 illegal aliens in Los Angeles County are living in garages.

7. The FBI reports half of all gang members in Los Angeles are most likely illegal aliens from south of the border.

8. Nearly 60% of all occupants of HUD properties are illegal.

9. 21 radio stations in L.A. are Spanish speaking.

10. In L.A.County 5.1 million people speak English. 3.9 million speak Spanish (10.2 million people in L.A.County).

(All 10 from the Los Angeles Times)

Less than 2% of illegal aliens are picking our crops but 29% are on welfare. See…

http://www.cis.org/

Over 70% of the United States annual population growth (and over 90% of California, Florida, and New York) results from immigration.

The cost of illegal immigration to the American taxpayer in 1997 was a NET (after subtracting taxes immigrants pay) $70 BILLION a year, [Professor Donald Huddle, Rice University].

The lifetime fiscal impact (taxes paid minus services used) for the average adult Mexican immigrant is a NEGATIVE.

29% of inmates in federal prisons are illegal aliens.

Origins: The various figures quoted above were not taken from a 2002 Los Angeles Times article. They appear to have been gleaned from a variety of sources and vary in accuracy as noted below:

Over 2/3’s of all births in Los Angeles County are to illegal alien Mexicans on Medi-Cal whose births were paid for by taxpayers.
The California Vital Records Department of the Department of Health Services classified as “Hispanic” the race/ethnicity of 62.7% of all births occurring in Los Angeles county in 2001. The statistic quoted above therefore erroneously characterizes all parents of Hispanic heritage in Los Angeles County in 2001 as being “illegal alien Mexicans on Medi-Cal.”

The FBI reports half of all gang members in Los Angeles are most likely illegal aliens from south of the border.
In April 2005, Heather Mac Donald, a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, testified before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Claims. On the issue of gang membership among illegal immigrants, she said:
No one knows for certain the percentage of illegals in gangs, thanks in large part to sanctuary laws themselves. But various estimates exist:

A confidential California Department of Justice study reported in 1995 that 60 percent of the 20,000-strong 18th Street Gang in southern California is illegal; police officers say the proportion is actually much greater. The bloody gang collaborates with the Mexican Mafia, the dominant force in California prisons, on complex drug-distribution schemes, extortion, and drive-by assassinations. It commits an assault or robbery every day in L.A. County. The gang has grown dramatically over the last two decades by recruiting recently arrived youngsters, most of them illegal, from Central America and Mexico.
Note, however, that this statement references a California Department of Justice study (not an FBI report), and that it describes only a single gang in Los Angeles County (the 18th Street Gang), the gang that likely has the highest membership rate of illegal aliens.

95% of warrants for murder in Los Angeles are for illegal aliens.
This figure also appears (unsourced) in Heather Mac Donald’s testimony before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Claims:
In Los Angeles, 95 percent of all outstanding warrants for homicide in the first half of 2004 (which totaled 1,200 to 1,500) targeted illegal aliens. Up to two-thirds of all fugitive felony warrants (17,000) were for illegal aliens.
Even if the statistic is accurate, however, it is subject to a variety of interpretations. For example, illegal aliens might be disproportionately represented by outstanding homicide warrants in Los Angeles because they are more likely to flee the jurisdiction before their cases are adjudicated than legal residents are (not necessarily because they commit a far greater share of the homicides in Los Angeles). This interpretation is supported by a University of California Davis summary of immigration issues that notes:
The Los Angeles Police Department has a 12-year old Foreign Prosecution Unit that pursues suspects who fled the US after committing crimes in Los Angeles and gives testimony when they are prosecuted aboard. The United States does not have extradition treaties with most Latin American countries but many countries, for example, Mexico, Nicaragua or El Salvador try suspects for murder and other violent crimes committed in the US.

The Foreign Prosecution Unit was founded in 1985, after a study found that nearly half of the LAPD’s outstanding arrest warrants involved Mexican nationals who were presumed to have fled the country. The FPU works with Interpol to find suspects who flee abroad and then prepares the evidence so that the person can be arrested and prosecuted. The FPU clears about one-third of its cases, compared to two-thirds of all homicide cases in Los Angeles.

The Mexican consulate in Los Angeles has a representative of the Mexican attorney general’s office to work with the FPU in prosecuting suspects in Mexico for crimes committed in Los Angeles.
75% of people on the most wanted list in Los Angeles are illegal aliens.
The Los Angeles Police Department’s “Most Wanted” list is viewable on-line, but since each entry generally includes only the ethnicity of a suspect (not his or her immigration status or nationality), and many of the entries refer to persons of unknown identity, it’s difficult to verify the claim that 75% of the people listed therein are illegal aliens.

Nearly 25% of all inmates in California detention centers are Mexican nationals here illegally.
Again, this figure appears to correspond with Heather Mac Donald’s testimony before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security, and Claims:
The L.A. County Sheriff reported in 2000 that 23% of inmates in county jails were deportable, according to the New York Times.
Note, however, that the 23% figure cited includes all deportable aliens, not just Mexican nationals.

21 radio stations in L.A. are Spanish speaking.
The number of Spanish-language radio stations in Los Angeles varies a bit from source to source (and according to how one defines “Los Angeles”), but according to Los Angeles Almanac, if both AM and FM stations are counted, and all programming formats (e.g., music, news, talk, religion, sports) are included, then it’s fair to say that there are about 20 “Spanish speaking” radio stations in Los Angeles.

Less than 2% of illegal aliens are picking our crops but 29% are on welfare
Although illegal aliens are not generally eligible to collect public welfare benefits, an illegal alien may receive benefits under the Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) and Food Stamps programs on behalf of his or her U.S. citizen child. (Any child born in the United States is considered a U.S. citizen, regardless of the parents’ immigration status.) A 1997 General Accounting Office (GAO) report determined that in 1995 households headed by illegal aliens received a total of $700 million in AFDC benefits and $430 million in Food Stamps.

Over 70% of the United States annual population growth (and over 90% of California, Florida, and New York) results from immigration.
As the Sacramento Bee recently reported, the “over 90%” figure for population growth in California is essentially accurate if the term “immigration” is defined to encompass both foreign immigrants and births to immigrant mothers:
When Department of Finance numbers are merged with Census Bureau numbers and birth and death data collected by the state Department of Health Services are added to the mix, showing that half of all births are to immigrant mothers, the inescapable conclusion is that foreign immigration and births to immigrant mothers together comprise all of the state’s net population growth. Or, to put it another way, without foreign immigration, California would have virtually zero population growth.
The cost of illegal immigration to the American taxpayer in 1997 was a NET (after subtracting taxes immigrants pay) $70 BILLION a year, [Professor Donald Huddle, Rice University].
It is true that Rice University economist Donald Huddle has conducted studies and concluded that immigrants (both legal and illegal) in the U.S. receive billions of dollars more in social services from local, state and federal governments than they contribute in revenue. It’s also true that others have criticized his studies as flawed and arrived at exactly the opposite conclusion (i.e., that immigrants actually produce a net revenue surplus). For example, a University of California Davis Migration News article on “Illegal Immigration: Numbers, Benefits, and Costs in California” notes:
There is a great deal of disagreement over the costs and benefits of immigrants to the US and California. Studies in the early 1980s in Texas and New York concluded that the taxes paid by immigrants exceeded the cost of providing public services to them, but that the federal government got the surplus of taxes over expenditures, and local governments had deficits. Los Angeles did a study in 1992 that reinforced this conclusion.

Donald Huddle of Rice University set the benchmark for today’s debate with a study that concluded that the legal and illegal immigrants who arrived since 1970 cost the US $42.5 billion in 1992, and $18.1 billion in California. According to Huddle, 7.2 million immigrants arrived legally and illegally in California since 1970, and the state incurred costs of $23 billion to provide them with services — half of the costs were for education and health care, and one-sixth were due to the costs of providing services to US residents displaced by these immigrants.

As with all such studies, Huddle made assumptions about how many illegal aliens there are, their usage of welfare and other public services, the taxes they paid, and their indirect economic impacts. Jeff Passel of the Urban Institute reviewed and revised Huddle’s US estimates, and his calculations turned the $42 billion net cost into a $29 billion net benefit.

Most of the $70 billion difference between these studies arises from their estimates of the taxes paid by immigrants — Huddle assumes that post-1970 immigrants paid $20 billion in taxes to all levels of government, and Passel assumes they paid $70 billion. And the major reason for the difference in tax estimates is that Huddle did not include the 15 percent of each worker’s earnings that are paid in Social Security taxes, while Passel did — this accounts for over one-third of the $70 billion difference.

Huddle excluded Social Security taxes because, in his view, contributions today need to be offset by the promise of benefit payments to immigrants when they retire. Passel included them because the federal government treats Social Security on a pay-as-you-go basis.
An article published by the Urban Institute drew similar conclusions:
According to the most controversial study of those discussed here, the benefits and costs of immigration to the United States in 1992 add up to a total net cost to all levels of government of $42.5 billion. This study, by Donald Huddle, was sponsored by the Carrying Capacity Network, a nonprofit group that advocates major reductions in immigration to the United States. “The Costs of Immigration” (Huddle 1993) uses estimation procedures that include a variety of errors. When these errors are corrected, the post-1970 immigrants in Huddle’s study actually show a surplus of revenues over social service costs of at least $25 billion.
Last updated: 19 September 2014

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November 17, 2014

Marine Activity 9/11, Flt 77 hit Pentagon. from John, former USArmy

Filed under: Elections, Global Intel, Historical context, Military, Political Commentary, Politicians, US Marine Corps. Patriots — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 5:18 pm

AFTER FLIGHT 77 HIT THE PENTAGON ON 9/11, THE FOLLOWING HAPPENED

AFTER FLIGHT 77 HIT THE PENTAGON ON 9/11, THE FOLLOWING HAPPENED

A chaplain, who happened to be assigned to the Pentagon, told of an incident that happened right after Flight 77 hit the Pentagon on 9/11.

A daycare facility inside the Pentagon had many children, including infants who were in heavy cribs. The daycare supervisor, looking at all the children they needed to evacuate, was in a panic over what they could do.

There were many children, mostly toddlers, as well as the infants that would need to be taken out with the cribs. There was no time to try to bundle them into carriers and strollers.

Just then a young Marine came running into the center and asked what they needed. After hearing what the center director was trying to do, he ran back out into the hallway and disappeared. The director thought, “Well, here we are, on our own.”

About 2 minutes later, that Marine returned with 40 other Marines in tow. Each of them grabbed a crib with a child, and the rest started gathering up toddlers.

The director and her staff then helped them take all the children out of the center and down toward the park nears the Potomac ..

Once they got about 3/4 of a mile outside the building, the Marines stopped in the park, and then did a fabulous thing – they formed a circle with the cribs, which were quite sturdy and heavy, like the covered wagons in the Old West.

Inside this circle of cribs, they put the toddlers, to keep them from wandering off. Outside this circle were the 40 Marines, forming a perimeter around the children and waiting for instructions. There they remained until the parents could be notified and come get their children.

The chaplain then said, “I don’t think any of us saw nor heard of this on any of the news stories of the day. It was an incredible story of our men there.” There wasn’t a dry eye in the room.

The thought of those Marines and what they did and how fast they reacted; could we expect any less from them? It was one of the most touching stories from the Pentagon.

It’s the Military, not the politicians that ensure our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It’s the Military who salutes the flag, who serves beneath the flag, and whose coffin is draped by the flag.

If you care to offer the smallest token of recognition and appreciation for the military, please pass this on and pray for our men and women, who have served and are currently serving our country, and pray for those who have given the ultimate sacrifice for freedom.

“GOD BLESS AMERICA”

Mitchell Paige, Col. USMC

Filed under: Education, Historical context, Media Check, Military, Political Commentary, Politicians, US Marine Corps. Patriots — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 5:09 pm

Joseph R. John
To
jrj@combatveteransforcongress.org
Nov 15 at 11:45 AM

A truly remarkable combat action you no doubt know about, but the details are worth reviewing again—Semper Fi

Joseph R. John, USNA ‘62

Capt USN(Ret)

Chairman, Combat Veterans For Congress PAC

2307 Fenton Parkway, Suite 107-184

San Diego, CA 92108

Fax: (619) 220-0109

http://www.CombatVeteransForCongress.org

Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?” Then I said, “Here am I. Send me!”
-Isaiah 6:8

From: Ron Martin
Sent: Friday, November 14, 2014 10:54 AM
To: Joseph R. John
Subject: Mitchell Paige – Marine

Thought this needed sharing !

Semper Fi !

GBA,

Ron

In case some have forgotten or never knew the story of Mitchell Paige…

History at Guadalcanal ……and one of our nation’s finest!

DOWN TO ONE MARINE

On November 15, 2003, an 85-year-old retired Marine Corps colonel died of congestive heart failure at his home in La Quinta, California, southeast of Palm Springs .

He was a combat veteran of World War II. Reason enough to honor him. But this Marine was a little different. This Marine was Mitchell Paige.

It’s hard today to envision — or, for the dwindling few, to remember — what the world looked like on 26 October 1942.

The U.S. Navy was not the most powerful fighting force in the Pacific. Not by a long shot. So the Navy basically dumped a few thousand Marines on the beach at Guadalcanal.

As Platoon Sgt. Mitchell Paige and his 33 riflemen set about carefully emplacing their four water-cooled .30-caliber Browning machine guns, manning their section of the thin khaki line which was expected to defend Henderson Field against the assault of the night of 25 October 1942, it’s unlikely anyone thought they were about to provide the definitive answer to that most desperate of questions: How many able-bodied U.S. Marines does it take to hold a hill against 2,000 desperate and motivated Japanese attackers?

Nor did the commanders of the Japanese Army, who had swept everything before them for decades, expect their advance to be halted on some jungle ridge manned by one thin line of Marines in October of 1942.

But by the time the night was over, The Japanese 29th Infantry Regiment has lost 553 killed or missing and 479 wounded among its 2,554 men, historian David Lippman reports. The Japanese 16th Regiment’s losses are uncounted, but the [US] 164th’s burial parties handled 975 Japanese bodies. … The American estimate of 2,200 Japanese dead is probably too low.

Among the 90 American dead and seriously wounded that night were all the men in Mitchell Paige’s platoon; every one. As the night of endless attacks wore on, Paige moved up and down his line, pulling his dead and wounded comrades back into their foxholes and firing a few bursts from each of the four Brownings in turn, convincing the Japanese forces down the hill that the positions were still manned.

The citation for Paige’s Medal of Honor Citation defines the event: “When the enemy broke through the line directly in front of his position, P/Sgt. Paige, commanding a machinegun section with fearless determination, continued to direct the fire of his gunners until all his men were either killed or wounded. Alone, against the deadly hail of Japanese shells, he fought with his gun and when it was destroyed, took over another, moving from gun to gun, never ceasing his withering fire.”

In the end, Sgt. Paige picked up the last of the 40-pound, belt-fed Brownings (the same design which John M. Browning fired for a continuous 25 minutes until it ran out of ammunition, glowing cherry red, at its first U.S. Army demonstration) and did something for which the weapon was never designed. Sgt. Paige walked down the hill toward the place where he could hear the last Japanese survivors rallying to move around his flank, the belt-fed gun cradled under his arm, firing as he went.

The weapon did not fail.

At dawn, battalion executive officer Major Odell M. Conoley was first to discover the answer to our question: How many able-bodied Marines does it take to hold a hill against two regiments of motivated, combat-hardened Japanese infantrymen who have never known defeat?

On a hill where the bodies were piled like cordwood, Mitchell Paige alone sat upright behind his .30-caliber Browning, waiting to see what the dawn would bring.

One hill: one Marine.

But “In the early morning light, the enemy could be seen a few yards off, and vapor from the barrels of their machine guns was clearly visible,” reports historian Lippman. “It was decided to try to rush the position.”

For the task, Major Conoley gathered together “three enlisted communication personnel, several riflemen, a few company runners who were at the point, together with a cook and a few messmen who had brought food to the position the evening before.”

Joined by Paige, this ad hoc force of 17 Marines counterattacked at 5:40 a.m., discovering that this extremely short range allowed the optimum use of grenades. They cleared the ridge.

And that’s where the previously unstoppable wave of Japanese conquests finally broke and began to recede. On an unnamed jungle ridge on an insignificant island no one had ever heard of, called Guadalcanal .

But who remembers, today, how close-run a thing it was, the ridge held by a single Marine, in the autumn of 1942?

Some time after, when the Hasbro Toy Company telephoned asking permission to put the retired Colonel’s face on some kid’s doll, Mitchell Paige thought they must be joking.

But they weren’t. Today, that’s his face on the little Marine they call “G.I. Joe.”

November 13, 2014

Jane’s 360 [nc ]Note the Saudi defense budget

Filed under: Business, Global Intel, Historical context, Islam, Military, Political Commentary — Tags: , , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 4:36 pm

Raytheon begins DARPA CAS programme tests, plans live fire
IHS Jane’s 360
To
me
Today at 4:56 AM
If you are having trouble reading this email, read the online version.

Latest updates from IHS Jane’s 360 Thursday 13th November, 2014

Jane’s 360
HOME DEFENCE SECURITY INDUSTRY

Raytheon begins DARPA CAS programme tests, plans live fire

Raytheon has begun flight tests of the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA’s) Persistent Close Air Support (PCAS) programme, the company announced on 5 November. Raytheon plans to…

READ FULL ARTICLE…

MORE IHS Jane’s 360 NEWS

A Airshow China 2014: land systems front and centre at Zhuhai – Read more

A China develops laser to take out small UAVs – Read more

A Iraqi F-16s to remain in the US until security situation improves – Read more

A Israel adopts Flight Guard missile protection system for national airliners- Read more

A IJT problems force Indian Air Force to modify fast jet training programme – Read more

A Indian MoD opts for Seahawk in navy’s MRH tender – Read more

A Syrian military reportedly reverses Islamic State gains – Read more

A Russia exercises its strategic nuclear ‘triad’- Read more

A Iran claims to have flown reverse-engineered US stealth UAV – Read more

A Details emerge on new Chinese survey ships – Read more

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November 11, 2014

Standardized Testing IS the norm!

Filed under: Education, Elections, Historical context, Political Commentary, Politicians, US Constitution — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 6:02 pm

Standardized Testing
Posted: 11 November 2014

On 4 November 2014, in Missouri, we had several constitutional amendments to pass or refute. Amendment 3 dealt with a state-wide educational mandate that would allow the state government to apply standards, via standardized testing, across the state in order to provide educational uniformity among students pre-K – 12. It also provided for requiring accountability for learning to the teachers, and restricted tenure as well as requiring uniform standards to teacher accreditation. Further, it allowed for the termination of incompetent teachers.

It failed to pass by close to ~80% against and ~20% for.

You should review two earlier posts at this time. One starts with an article posted by Yahoo News, which demonstrates the low level of journalism as well as how poor and substandard the educational system is, my comments at the end are important to both of these posts, and the other is the earlier posted White Paper to the Missouri Senate on Education and Entrepreneurship.

Standardized testing as toxic to education is one of the greatest politico-union hoaxes ever perpetrated on a long-suffering taxpayer. Pay close attention to the FACTS.

The first thing that y’all need to know is that standardized testing was and is an irrefutable fact of the lecture-response form of teaching. Lecture-response is universal throughout the pre-K – 12 American Educational System. Read the White Paper for more. The second thing that you need to know is that there are two forms of textbooks for pre-K – 12. The next time that you see your child, look closely at her textbook.

Open it, look at the publisher’s page, and it probably has a Chicago publisher listed as the publishing company. That is correct, wherever you are in the U.S.A., the odds are that the publisher of your kids’ textbook is the same as everywhere else in the U.S.A., and the publisher is in Chicago. Yupper, everyone HAS THE SAME TEXT BOOK! Now, look at the content.

The book is broken down into modules, sections, and chapters that coincide with the school year. So much for “lesson plans”, when the textbook is designed with internal lesson plans. Oh? Look carefully at the questions at the end of each piece.

Keep in mind, now, that the entire country uses THE SAME TEXTBOOK.

Now, the next time that you attend a P.T.A. meeting, ask to look at THE TEACHER’S textbook. Same publisher and ALMOST the same contents. Look closely at the parts of the book immediately AFTER the questions in your kids’ book.

Do not be shocked. In the teacher’s copy, not only are all of those questions answered, but there are whole paragraphs with what the teacher should be concentrating on, with what questions to ask to guide the students to the correct answer, AND there are suggested TEST QUESTIONS! Where do you think teachers get their test questions?

Yupper, ALL TEACHERS GET THEIR TESTS FROM THE QUESTIONS IN THE SAME TEACHERS’ EDITION OF THE SAME TEXTBOOK! THERE IS ONLY STANDARDIZED TESTING!

So why the argument against standardized testing when no matter where you are, the teachers MUST “teach to the (same) test”?

    The state will only use the same questions to make up the test in the first place; so no matter what, they MUST ‘teach to the test’! Could it be that it takes the granting of the actual grade AWAY from the teacher? Does it mean no more tokens, no more pets, and no more free passes to “minorities”? Does it mean that there will be a true LEVEL playing field, that FAVORITISM will now be ELIMINATED?

    AND, does it mean that incompetent teachers will be exposed for what they are and now vulnerable to replacement with competent teachers?

    Now, a little history lesson: until The Johnson Administration and its “Great Society”, New York City had one of the best public school systems in the U.S.A. The New York Public School System REQUIRED standardized testing at several grades until it was, magically by judicial decree, made racist, and therefore discriminatory. Until The Johnson Administration, the teachers were NOT unionized, tenure was limited, and a teacher did NOT need a Master’s Degree, to teach or to get tenure. Teachers and students did not fear for their lives in any of the schools in New York City in 1960. Parents were involved, teachers were involved, and except for a very few, students were involved.

    During The Clinton Administration, Hilly-Billy wanted Congress to forgive student debt and allow grants for university students taking teaching degrees. What they found out, once the people got involved, was that for every teaching position, there were 2 ½ accredited and licensed teachers!

    Why so many people with teaching licenses, compared to so few jobs?

    Class size in the 1950’s, when kids learned to read, write, and do arithmetic, was between 25 and 35. Now the teachers complain about a class size of 15 and our dropout rate is higher now than it was in 1960.

    Teachers were not required to have an M.Ed. within 10 years of getting their license, or be fired. Why, when if you look at the teachers’ textbook in grades pre-K – 8, is not an Associates’ Degree adequate? Why shouldn’t there be standardized testing and teacher accountability? Keeping in mind, of course, that STANDARDIZED TESTING is already in place and will remain in place for as long as the lecture & response teaching methodology exists.

    Who actually benefits from the current situation? Student? Parent? Teacher?

From Vol. 68 “Law Enforcement Magazine”, [nc]

Filed under: Elections, Historical context, Illegal Aliens, Law Enforcement, Media Check, Police, Political Commentary, Politicians, US Constitution — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 4:38 pm

Here is reality, clearly stated!
Sheriff Diehl would like to share an article with everyone: Picture the following hypothetical scenario: A chief at a press conference states, “Ladies and gentlemen I have gathered you here today, because police use of force cases are routinely mishandled by journalists and community leaders. It is my belief that journalists and community leaders may do a better job in this area if they have at least a basic understanding of what a justified use of force looks like.” There are three things the public needs to know about contacts with police; 1. Be courteous 2. Be cooperative 3. Be compliant Criminality, Not Color = It is important for you to convey to the public that police officers pursue criminality, not color. Officers must have a reason to make contact with an individual. They must be able to explain later in court that they had either a reasonable suspicion or probable cause to believe the individual had committed or was about to commit an offense. The fact is that more than 95 percent of police contacts are handled without rising above the level of dialog. This is because most people are cooperative and compliant. This is the way it should be, because it is unlawful to resist and or obstruct an officer, while in the performance of his/her duty. If a person disagrees with a stop or an arrest, the place to argue the case vigorously is in a court of law, not on the street. Force Options = When an officer meets resistance, officers are trained to use a level of force justified by the specific threat, or resistance they are presented with. For example, if a person pulls away from an officer making an arrest and snaps, “Don’t you touch me,” the officer can choose to apply a compliance hold to that person. These holds are designed to convince the person to comply. When a suspect is actively resisting, the officer can also choose to disengage and deploy a TASER or utilize pepper spray to overcome that resistance. It might surprise some people to discover that when a suspect strikes an officer, or even acts as if he or she is about to strike an officer, that officer can legally deliver impacts with what we call personal body weapons. Officers can punch, kick, or strike with elbows and/or knees to defend themselves and/or make an arrest. Officers can also choose to deliver baton impacts to targeted areas on the body. Officers can even strike a suspect more than once if once does not stop the suspect’s threat. If a suspect tries to hit an officer, don’t be surprised when that officer hits back. Use of Deadly Force = I’ve never heard an officer say at the beginning of a shift, “I hope I get to shoot someone today.” While the vast majority of officers never fire their weapons in the line of duty, some have to. When an officer is faced with the threat of death or great bodily injury — or someone they are sworn to protect is faced with that same imminent threat — an officer is justified in using deadly force. There are three generally held misconceptions about deadly force that continually arise and need to be addressed: 1. An officer can shoot an unarmed man under certain conditions. An officer may have to use deadly force on an unarmed man who is larger, stronger, and/or attempting to disarm the officer, for example. In the case of a suspect, who is battering an officer to the point that he or she may suffer death or great bodily harm, the use of deadly force is defensible. Police officers do not have to sustain a severe beating in the line of duty. Other factors that could justify an officer’s choice to utilize deadly force are the extent of that officer’s injury, exhaustion, or the number of assaultive adversaries the officer is confronted with. 2. An officer can, in certain conditions, shoot someone in the back. You see if a suspect is fleeing and their escape presents an imminent threat of death or great bodily harm to the community at large, the use of deadly force can be justified. On some occasions a round might enter through the back, because of the dynamics of the circumstance. 3. Officers are not — and never will be — trained to shoot to wound or shoot weapons out of subjects’ hands. These are not realistic options. Handguns are not accurate enough to deliberately attempt such things when lives are on the line. The Bottom Line = From 2003 to 2012, 535 officers were killed in the line of duty in this country. Another 580,000 were injured in the line of duty. I’m afraid that policing — which is already a dangerous profession — is becoming even more so, because of anti-police rhetoric and inaccurate reporting in use of force cases. If every person contacted by officers were to remain courteous, cooperative, and compliant, there would never be a need to employ force. The reality is, however, that although most people will cooperate, some people will resist arrest. It is not easy for a lone police officer to get a resistive suspect into handcuffs. If it looks rough, that’s because it is rough. Police work is a contact sport, but for cops there is no second place. If someone in the public sees a cop struggling with a suspect and decides not to give him/her a hand, they should at least give them the benefit of the doubt. Cops are not asking for citizens to get into the arena with them — they would just like the audience to stop cheering for the other team. The only way to get these three extremely simple ideas out to our communities is for you to take this information and share it, with both your fellow officers and with your community members. The above article was originally released in Volume 68 of the Law Enforcement Magazine.
Cass County Sheriffs Office

Sheriff Diehl would like to share an article with everyone:

Picture the following hypothetical scenario: A chief at a press conference states, “Ladies and gentlemen I have gathered you here today, because police use of force cases are routinely mishandled by journalists and community leaders. It is my belief that journalists and community leaders may do a better job in this area if they have at least a basic understanding of what a justified use of force looks like.”

There are three things the public needs to know about contacts with police;

1. Be courteous
2. Be cooperative
3. Be compliant

Criminality, Not Color = It is important for you to convey to the public that police officers pursue criminality, not color. Officers must have a reason to make contact with an individual. They must be able to explain later in court that they had either a reasonable suspicion or probable cause to believe the individual had committed or was about to commit an offense.

The fact is that more than 95 percent of police contacts are handled without rising above the level of dialog. This is because most people are cooperative and compliant. This is the way it should be, because it is unlawful to resist and or obstruct an officer, while in the performance of his/her duty.

If a person disagrees with a stop or an arrest, the place to argue the case vigorously is in a court of law, not on the street.

Force Options = When an officer meets resistance, officers are trained to use a level of force justified by the specific threat, or resistance they are presented with. For example, if a person pulls away from an officer making an arrest and snaps, “Don’t you touch me,” the officer can choose to apply a compliance hold to that person.

These holds are designed to convince the person to comply.

When a suspect is actively resisting, the officer can also choose to disengage and deploy a TASER or utilize pepper spray to overcome that resistance.

It might surprise some people to discover that when a suspect strikes an officer, or even acts as if he or she is about to strike an officer, that officer can legally deliver impacts with what we call personal body weapons.

Officers can punch, kick, or strike with elbows and/or knees to defend themselves and/or make an arrest.

Officers can also choose to deliver baton impacts to targeted areas on the body. Officers can even strike a suspect more than once if once does not stop the suspect’s threat. If a suspect tries to hit an officer, don’t be surprised when that officer hits back.

Use of Deadly Force = I’ve never heard an officer say at the beginning of a shift, “I hope I get to shoot someone today.”

While the vast majority of officers never fire their weapons in the line of duty, some have to. When an officer is faced with the threat of death or great bodily injury — or someone they are sworn to protect is faced with that same imminent threat — an officer is justified in using deadly force.

There are three generally held misconceptions about deadly force that continually arise and need to be addressed:

1. An officer can shoot an unarmed man under certain conditions.
An officer may have to use deadly force on an unarmed man who is larger, stronger, and/or attempting to disarm the officer, for example. In the case of a suspect, who is battering an officer to the point that he or she may suffer death or great bodily harm, the use of deadly force is defensible. Police officers do not have to sustain a severe beating in the line of duty.

Other factors that could justify an officer’s choice to utilize deadly force are the extent of that officer’s injury, exhaustion, or the number of assaultive adversaries the officer is confronted with.

2. An officer can, in certain conditions, shoot someone in the back.
You see if a suspect is fleeing and their escape presents an imminent threat of death or great bodily harm to the community at large, the use of deadly force can be justified. On some occasions a round might enter through the back, because of the dynamics of the circumstance.

3. Officers are not — and never will be — trained to shoot to wound or shoot weapons out of subjects’ hands.

These are not realistic options. Handguns are not accurate enough to deliberately attempt such things when lives are on the line.

The Bottom Line = From 2003 to 2012, 535 officers were killed in the line of duty in this country. Another 580,000 were injured in the line of duty.

I’m afraid that policing — which is already a dangerous profession — is becoming even more so, because of anti-police rhetoric and inaccurate reporting in use of force cases.

If every person contacted by officers were to remain courteous, cooperative, and compliant, there would never be a need to employ force. The reality is, however, that although most people will cooperate, some people will resist arrest.

It is not easy for a lone police officer to get a resistive suspect into handcuffs. If it looks rough, that’s because it is rough.

Police work is a contact sport, but for cops there is no second place. If someone in the public sees a cop struggling with a suspect and decides not to give him/her a hand, they should at least give them the benefit of the doubt.

Cops are not asking for citizens to get into the arena with them — they would just like the audience to stop cheering for the other team.

The only way to get these three extremely simple ideas out to our communities is for you to take this information and share it, with both your fellow officers and with your community members.

The above article was originally released in Volume 68 of the Law Enforcement Magazine.

November 6, 2014

The Catholic Church and other Charitable Organizations [c]

Filed under: Elections, Global Intel, Historical context, Islam, Media Check, Political Commentary, Politicians, Religion, US Constitution — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 7:29 pm

[It’s not only The Catholic Church, it is also B’Nai B’Rith, and the Protestant Christian churches and charities. Before Obamacare, more than 40% of all hospital beds in the USA, were ‘charitable’ hospital beds, meaning, as I posted in the post on the healthcare hoax, provided by non-government charities, mostly religious. Go review the other post. Until Obamacare, every human being within the geographical confines of the United States of America, had free access to healthcare simply by showing up at one of these hospitals. Charitable institutions provide the bulk of services for those truly in need. Government through extortion covers the rest. Keep in mind that many of the newly elected US Senators and Representatives got into office pledging to repeal Obamacare. Watch what goes on, and consider the following, and keep in mind that the founders were opposed to these socialist tendencies. All that it takes to understand what limitations were placed on the federal government, is to read two books: The Federalist Papers, and The Anti-Federalist Papers, publishing/ purchasing info is on the book list posted herein.]

The Catholic Church

Good Morning Folks, Here is an interesting piece that I received from a friend. Please read and figure out the consequences.

I AM NOT A CATHOLIC, BUT THIS NEEDS TO BE READ BY ALL AMERICANS ASAP!

This for all denominations, not just Catholics, Protestants & Jewish people

Catholic Church

Charity Hospital run by the Sisters of Charity in New Orleans, along with the Upjohn Company, developed the plasma system in the 1930’s that savd so many lives in WWII, Korea, and Vietnam and in the Middle East now.

During the Civil War most of the nurses were nuns.

Even if you are not Catholic, this is eye opening:

When the Catholic Church was founded, there were no hospitals.

Today, one out of five people in this country receive their medical care at a Catholic hospital

When the Catholic Church was founded, there were no schools.

Today, the Catholic Church teaches 3 million students a day, in its more than 250 Catholic colleges and universities, in its more than 1200 Catholic high schools and its more than 5000 Catholic grade schools.

Every day, the Catholic Church feeds, clothes, shelters and educates more people than any other organization in the world.

The new Obama Health Mandate could end all this, and the tax payers would have to make up the loss.

Also, all Catholic adoption services will come to an end…a human disaster.

There are more than 77 million Catholics in this country.

It takes an estimated 50 million Catholic votes to elect a president.

I am asking all of you to go to the polls in 2014, and be united in replacing all Senators and Reps with someone who will respect the Catholic Church, all Christians, and all religions with perhaps, the exception of Islam

Mr. President, you said, “The USA is not a Christian Nation”.

You are wrong!!!

We are a Christian nation founded on Judeo-Christian values, allowing all religions in America to worship and practice freely….

Something that Islam will never do.

Oh, by the way, on MUSLIM HERITAGE in America….

Have you ever been to a Muslim hospital, heard a Muslim orchestra, seen a Muslim band march in a parade, know of a Muslim charity, ever seen Muslims shaking hands with a Muslim Girl Scout, or ever seen a Muslim Candy Striper volunteering in a hospital?

Have you ever seen a Muslim do much of anything that contributes positively to the American way of life?

PLEASE DON’T KEEP THIS—PLEASE SEND IT OUT TO YOUR LIST.

Let’s circulate this to as many as possible. And remember this at the elections coming up in 2014 and 2016.

November 3, 2014

Massive Voter Fraud, Capt John USN [nc]

Filed under: Econonics, Elections, Global Intel, Historical context, Illegal Aliens, Islam, Law Enforcement, Military, Political Commentary, Politicians, Religion, US Constitution — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 8:41 pm

Joseph R. John
To
jrj@combatveteransforcongress.org
Today at 4:03 AM

In the 2008 Presidential election, Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) had 1200 neighborhood chapters with 500,000 members in 100 major cities across the nation; ACORN was funded by Congress to register voters. ACORN employed massive Voter Fraud to get Obama elected. In 2009, in the wake of the production of video tapes portraying members of ACORN engaged in the registration of illegal aliens, a nationwide controversy erupted. ACORN was found to be falsifying then filing voter registration forms in Missouri, Ohio, Colorado, Indiana, New Mexico, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Texas, Arizona, Florida, California, Wisconsin, Washington, New York, and Illinois, resulting in felony convictions in Federal Court in those states for Voter Fraud. As a result, millions of illegal votes were cast by illegal voters, and the previous funding for ACORN to register voters was terminated by Congress. ACORN was disbanded following multiple convictions for felony Voter Fraud in Federal courts in multiple states. The Obama administration morphed the 1200 ACORN chapters into many newly named organizations in 50 states, and those newly named organization employed the same ACORN operatives who are being well funded by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, as they continued perpetrating massive Voter Fraud in the 2012 Presidential election.

It was reported in the below listed article, that in the 2012 Presidential election, that 6.4% of the 124,026,000 votes cast by voters, or 7,937,664 vote cast, were cast by illegal aliens. For 6 years Holder, following Obama’s instructions, has been aggressively filing law suits against any state that passes a voter photo ID law to prevent them from opposing the massive Voter Fraud again in 2012, like they did in 2008 and the number of illegal aliens voters grew in to over 7 million voters in 2012. States have been passing voter ID laws requiring that voters present a photo voter ID, in order to vote at the polls for comparison to the list of registered voters.

Even when states offered to pay for the issuance of those voter photo IDs, Holder still filed suits against the states to oppose the requirement for a photo voter ID, by saying those ;laws were designed to suppress minorities from voting. The long term goal of Obama and his leftists and Marxist supporters appointees in the bloated bureaucracy is to CHANGE the Republic into a one party Socialist State. Obama’s leftist supporters are continuing the employment of Voter Fraud to register more illegal aliens than the 7.937,644 illegal aliens that voted in 2012.

Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL-Senate) addressed the US Senate in a 30-minute floor speech and alerted the nation to the fact that after the November 4th election, Obama is preparing, once again, to unilaterally circumvent Federal Immigration Laws by issuing an Executive Order in order to violate Federal Immigration Law and the US Constitution, without the consent of Congress. Obama had previously violated Federal Immigration Laws, without the consent of Congress, by issuing an Executive Oder to prevent ICE from deporting nearly 1 million illegal aliens, termed Dreamers, who are now protected from deportation by the Obama administration’s ill-conceived Deferred Action-Childhood Arrival Program (DACA).

Obama gave temporary lawful status to those illegal aliens in the DACA program, up to age 31, and provided them with identity documents, expediting their rapid pathway to citizenship, without so much as a face-to-face interview with ICE or Immigration officials. The Obama administration has made it very easy for another 1 million Illegal aliens to obtain drivers licenses and register to vote, when those 1 million Dreamers are added to the 7,937,6644 illegal aliens who violated Federal Law by voting in 2012, there will be nearly 9 million Illegal aliens violating Federal Law and voting on November 4th. The Obama administration knows the that Immigration Service does not have the resources to conduct field investigations of the 1 million DACA Illegal aliens, in order to check their applications, so the Immigration Service could uncover fraud, determine if they have criminal records, or determine if they might be listed in the CIA terrorist data base. Although Congressional leaders have the power of the purse, they have done absolutely nothing to cancel the funding required to expedite the pathway to citizenship for the DACA program.

After the November election, according to Senator Sessions, Obama is planning to issue another Executive Order, that will provide legal status and work authorization cards to an additional 5 to 6 million illegal aliens in the United States. Obama plans to issue those work permits to 6 million illegal aliens at a time when 44 million American citizens are unemployed & on food stamps, all American citizens would be required to compete for jobs with the 6 million Illegal aliens Obama plans to issue work permits to. When those 6 million illegal aliens, are added to the 1 million DACA illegal aliens previously provided with legal status, and the 7,937,664 illegal aliens who illegally voted in 2012. Obama will have been behind and responsible for helping nearly 15 million illegal aliens to register to vote for President in 2016.

Current examples of the massive Voter Fraud:

Maryland–Massive voter fraud in Maryland has been uncovered where illegal aliens who say they are not citizens on jury duty survey forms are found to have registered to vote by the thousands http://conservativebyte.com/2014/10/massive-non-citizen-voting-uncovered-maryland/ Early voting just started in Maryland, but there are already accusations that some voting machines are changing Republican votes to Democrat Now Republicans are calling for an investigation by the State Board of Elections.

Illinois—Early voting in Illinois got off to a rocky start last Monday, as votes being cast for Republican candidates were transformed into votes for Democrats. Republican state Representative candidate Jim Moynihan went to vote at the Schaumburg Public Library. “I tried to vote for myself and instead it cast a vote for my opponent.” Moynihan said Cook County Board of Elections Deputy Communications Director, Jim Scalzitti, told Illinois Watchdog, the machine was taken out of service to be tested

North Carolina—The North Carolina Board of Elections has found 1,425 registered voters who likely are illegal aliens. The audit sample 10,000 registered voters in with data provided by the North Carolina Division of Motor Vehicles and the US Department of Homeland Security.

New York—A single Bronx voter listed in official records as being 164 years old led to the Board of Elections officials to review their files—–where they turned up another 849 New Yorkers who were supposedly alive when Abraham Lincoln was President.

Examples of Voter Fraud in Connecticut, Kentucky, Georgia, Virginia, Minnesota, Alabama, Texas, Massachusetts, Tennessee, California, Idaho, Ohio, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, New Hampshire, Mississippi, Wisconsin, Indiana, Florida, South Dakota, Nevada, Oregon, Iowa, Colorado, Kansas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Michigan, Hawaii, Maryland, Rhode Island, etc. can be reviewed by clicking on the link https://www.rnla.org/votefraud.asp

To prevent the massive scale Voter Fraud underway being perpetrated by the Obama administration, every state should pass laws to require voters to show a photo ID in order to cast a vote at the polls. The Republicans in Congress must use the power of the purse to shut down the issuance of legal documents to provide legal status for DACA illegal aliens and the 6 million Illegal aliens that Obama plans to provide legal state to. The Governors of every state should close down the issuance of drivers licenses for illegal aliens, so they cannot use their drivers licenses as proof of residence, so they can register to vote. We encourage voters to volunteer to be poll observers or poll workers to assure Federal voting laws are observed on November 4th.

“If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth. And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man’s relation to man. This is the issue of this election. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves.”

President Ronald Reagan’s “A Time for Choosing” Speech on October 27, 1964

Joseph R. John, USNA ‘62

Capt USN(Ret)

Chairman, Combat Veterans For Congress PAC

2307 Fenton Parkway, Suite 107-184

San Diego, CA 92108

Fax: (619) 220-0109

http://www.CombatVeteransForCongress.org

Then I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for Us?” Then I said, “Here am I. Send me!”
-Isaiah 6:8

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

WaPo Publishes Scientific Evidence of Voter Fraud on a Massive Scale — As Previously Predicted By This Here Very Blog

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 7:29 pm

What you are about to read should be front-page news in every newspaper in the country tomorrow. You know it won’t be — but I want you to treat it as that important . . . because it is. Jesse Richman and David Earnest write in the Washington Post:

Could control of the Senate in 2014 be decided by illegal votes cast by non-citizens? Some argue that incidents of voting by non-citizens are so rare as to be inconsequential, with efforts to block fraud a screen for an agenda to prevent poor and minority voters from exercising the franchise, while others define such incidents as a threat to democracy itself. Both sides depend more heavily on anecdotes than data.

In a forthcoming article in the journal Electoral Studies, we bring real data from big social science survey datasets to bear on the question of whether, to what extent, and for whom non-citizens vote in U.S. elections. Most non-citizens do not register, let alone vote. But enough do that their participation can change the outcome of close races.

Our data comes from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES). Its large number of observations (32,800 in 2008 and 55,400 in 2010) provide sufficient samples of the non-immigrant sub-population, with 339 non-citizen respondents in 2008 and 489 in 2010. For the 2008 CCES, we also attempted to match respondents to voter files so that we could verify whether they actually voted.

How many non-citizens participate in U.S. elections? More than 14 percent of non-citizens in both the 2008 and 2010 samples indicated that they were registered to vote. Furthermore, some of these non-citizens voted. Our best guess, based upon extrapolations from the portion of the sample with a verified vote, is that 6.4 percent of non-citizens voted in 2008 and 2.2 percent of non-citizens voted in 2010.

This is astonishing — but Richman and Earnest fail to convey just how astonishing it is . . . because they don’t explain how many people they are talking about.

Allow me to remedy that.

The progressive think tank Center for American Progress puts the number of noncitizens in the U.S. at 22.1 million in 2012. Of these, “13.3 million were legal permanent residents, 11.3 million were unauthorized migrants, and 1.9 million were on temporary visas.” These numbers are roughly consistent with numbers offered by the Department of Homeland Security (.pdf) and Kaiser Health News. So let’s take 22 million as our number of noncitizens.

Richman and Earnest estimate that 6.4% of noncitizens voted in 2008. 6.4% of 22 million is 1,408,000.

That’s 1.4 million illegal votes likely cast in the presidential election of 2008.

Richman and Earnest also estimate that 2.2% of noncitizens voted in 2010. (In off-year elections, such as 2010 and the approaching election in 2014, turnout is obviously lower.) 2.2% of 22 million is 484,000. That’s nearly half a million illegal votes likely cast in the election of 2010 (and the same number could be cast in the upcoming election).

How important is this? Richman and Earnest say:

Because non-citizens tended to favor Democrats (Obama won more than 80 percent of the votes of non-citizens in the 2008 CCES sample), we find that this participation was large enough to plausibly account for Democratic victories in a few close elections. Non-citizen votes could have given Senate Democrats the pivotal 60th vote needed to overcome filibusters in order to pass health-care reform and other Obama administration priorities in the 111th Congress.

I don’t like to say I told you so, but . . . ah, hell. Y’all know I actually love to say I told you so. And I have, repeatedly. In November 2008, I cited reports that huge increases in Latino voter registration had accompanied huge increases in illegal immigrant populations, and argued that this was probably not a coincidence. As I said then:

It certainly seems logically possible that there were hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of illegal votes cast in this past election. If this is true, it is possible that illegal immigrants decided this election.

If Richman and Earnest are correct, there may well have been hundreds of thousands, indeed almost a million and a half, votes cast by noncitizens (including legal residents who may not vote in federal elections, as well as illegals). And I argued in 2010:

Over time, as our population increases, your vote becomes worth less and less. This problem is exacerbated by factors such as voter fraud. Oh, I know: the liberals all assure us that there is no such thing. But let’s just take one likely rich vein of illegal votes: votes cast by illegal immigrants. What’s that, you say? Votes cast by illegal immigrants? Yes. Estimates say that there are anywhere from 10 million to 18 million illegal immigrants in the country. This means millions are of voting age. What’s more, many of them are experts at obtaining false documents, allowing them to work, drive, and participate in all other aspects of civic life. Do we really think that none of them vote? None? Let’s go with a conservative estimate of 10,000,000 illegal immigrants. If only one percent of them vote — just one percent! — that’s 100,000 illegal votes. That is voter fraud on a massive scale — certainly enough to tip a close election. This sort of thing dilutes your vote.

One percent? In 2010, Richman and Earnest say it was more than two percent, and in 2008 it was more than six percent. And again, I overlooked the population of legal noncitizen permanent residents, which more than doubles the number of people we are talking about. But, although my numbers were conservative, I will modestly concede that I totally nailed the main point — which is: hundreds of thousands of illegal votes are potentially being cast in every federal election, and nobody talks about it.

Always trust content from Patterico.

P.S. I can’t leave this post without noting this by Richman and Earnest:

We also find that one of the favorite policies advocated by conservatives to prevent voter fraud appears strikingly ineffective. Nearly three quarters of the non-citizens who indicated they were asked to provide photo identification at the polls claimed to have subsequently voted.

Really? That’s “strikingly ineffective”? (Well, yeah, it could be a lot better. But read on.)

The converse of that is that more than a quarter of the people who were asked for voter ID did not vote. We’re not told how many of the 1.4 million who voted illegally in the 2008 election were asked for IDs, but if voter ID laws were in effect in all 50 states, rather than only about 15 states, we might see over 25% of 1.4 million illegal votes prevented in a presidential election. That’s over 350,000 illegal votes that could potentially be prevented by voter ID laws.

Now: I’m perfectly happy to consider other means for preventing illegal voting. But voter ID laws work, and this study helps prove it.

This is hugely important, folks. Bookmark this post, right now. The next time people try to tell you there is no such thing as voter fraud, I want you to take this link and shove it right down their throats.

P.P.S. The authors do say: “Finally, extrapolation to specific state-level or district-level election outcomes is fraught with substantial uncertainty.” We can’t know for sure whether the extrapolation I present here is overstated, understated, or completely accurate. But one thing we can say: despite the false claims by the left, there is definitely massive voter fraud occurring in every federal election.

October 31, 2014

ABA article: Municipalities vs Homeless in Venice CA [nc]

Filed under: Econonics, Historical context, Illegal Aliens, Law Enforcement, Police, Political Commentary, Politicians, US Constitution — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 2:46 pm

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Cities get mired in civil rights disputes…

Cover Story
Cities get mired in civil rights disputes in trying to deal with growing homeless populations

Posted Nov 01, 2014 05:00 am CDT

By Lorelei Laird
house on venice beach

Photo of Mark Ryavec by Kyle Monk.
Mark Ryavec lives in a beautifully restored duplex in Venice Beach, the artsy beachfront neighborhood of Los Angeles.

He’s about half a mile from the shore and even closer to Abbot Kinney Boulevard, a trendy artery filled with pricey restaurants and boutiques. Depending on which real estate website you consult, his improvements and recent gentrification in the area have pushed the property’s value to roughly three or four times what he paid for it in 1989.

Across the street, one of his sometime neighbors lives in a van. Drinking coffee in his front yard, Ryavec watches a young man slip out. Shortly afterward, the man comes back with a car that jump-starts the van. This is necessary because it’s a street sweeping day and the space ceases to be legal at noon. This, Ryavec says, means the van-dweller will take up a parking spot that a resident could be using—in a parking-poor neighborhood that gets 16 million visitors a year.

But this is just the beginning of Ryavec’s problems with homelessness in Venice Beach. A much smellier problem is that people living in vehicles have limited access to bathrooms. As a result, he says, vehicle-dwellers routinely relieve themselves behind million-dollar homes.

“There’s a street down there, and they’ll have two or three [vehicle-dwellers], and it’s like their alley is the one that’s consistently used as a toilet,” he says. Homeowners “used to call the police all the time … and now they can’t do that. Unless they snap a photo of them in the process —[and] who wants to stake that kind of thing out?”

Homeless Camper in parking lot, Venice Beach

A homeless camper in a Venice Beach, California, parking lot. Photo by Jennifer Kelton.

Ryavec’s neighbors can no longer call the police without proof of public elimination because of Desertrain v. City of Los Angeles. On June 19, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at San Francisco struck down a Los Angeles city ordinance forbidding using a vehicle “as living quarters either overnight, day by day or otherwise.” The unanimous three-judge panel ruled that the ordinance was unconstitutionally vague, overturning a district court’s summary judgment ruling.

“Section 85.02 is broad enough to cover any driver in Los Angeles who eats food or transports personal belongings in his or her vehicle,” wrote Judge Harry Pregerson. “Yet it appears to be applied only to the homeless. The vagueness doctrine is designed specifically to prevent this type of selective enforcement.”

This displeases Ryavec, president of a group called the Venice Stakeholders Association that is pushing for more city intervention in Venice’s homeless problem. It’s had some success; citations for vehicle-dwellers grew substantially after increased neighborhood complaints.

But the courts have complicated things. Desertrain is the third in a line of 9th Circuit cases striking down LA’s homelessness laws. In 2012, the court ruled in Lavan v. City of Los Angeles that seizing and destroying the personal possessions of homeless people, left on sidewalks so their owners could go inside to do things like shower, violates the Fourth and 14th amendments. The city now must hold seized possessions for 90 days before destroying them.

And in 2006, the 9th Circuit ruled in Jones v. City of Los Angeles that it’s cruel and unusual to punish people for sitting, sleeping or lying on public roads at night. The resulting settlement required the city to permit sleeping on sidewalks from 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. until an additional 1,250 units of supportive housing were built.

Carol Sobel on Venice Beach

Carol Sobel questions whether community leaders have the political will to advance long-term solutions to homelessness. Photo by Kyle Monk.

In all three cases, the plaintiffs’ attorneys included civil rights lawyer Carol Sobel, whose Santa Monica office is just over the Venice border and a few blocks from Venice’s “Skid Rose,” a stretch of Rose Avenue with a notorious homeless encampment.

“It is unlawful, it is immoral to put people in jail when there’s not enough shelter, in a city where everybody’s writing about the lack of housing,” says Sobel, a former ACLU Foundation attorney.

But for residents like Ryavec, the cases represent another lost tool for solving the problems homeless people bring to the neighborhood. In addition to parking and sanitation concerns, he notes that residents sometimes have a well-founded fear of violence, thanks to some high-profile crimes. These include a 2009 rape and murder by a transient with a past stint in a mental hospital and an incident last year when a transient drove a car onto the pedestrian-only beach boardwalk, killing an Italian honeymooner and injuring 16 others.

“What’s happened is the court keeps whittling away at the police’s powers to do anything when there is a problematic situation, to the point that the residents can’t do anything when you really have somebody scary,” Ryavec says.

man enjoying his coffee

Mark Ryavec is not enthused about recent court decisions that he believes have whittled “away at the police’s powers to do anything when there is a problematic situation.” Photo by Kyle Monk.

Though LA’s three trips to the 9th Circuit stand out, similar laws have been at issue across the United States.

And they’re on the rise. In a July study examining 187 U.S. cities, the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, based in Washington, D.C., found a 119 percent increase since 2011 in city bans on sleeping in vehicles. The NLCHP also found a 25 percent increase in citywide laws against begging, a 60 percent increase in citywide camping bans and a 35 percent increase in citywide loitering or vagrancy laws. This doesn’t count laws that apply only to a specific district.

Similarly, Michael Stoops of the National Coalition for the Homeless says 53 cities had enacted or considered restrictions on feeding the homeless between January of 2013 and this past June. Over the last decade, Albuquerque, Dallas, Las Vegas, Orlando and Philadelphia have all been sued over feeding restrictions. (Los Angeles proposed such a law this year, but ultimately took no action.)

Jeremy Rosen, director of advocacy for the law center, believes more laws are being passed because more poverty is becoming visible.

“Why you’re seeing a whole lot more of them is because it’s actually occurring in a whole lot more places,” says Rosen of D.C., who is also a member of the ABA’s Commission on Homelessness and Poverty. “So the cities are seeing more of this than they ever saw before. They don’t like it and so they’re passing these laws rather than coming up with a productive way to deal with it.”

When sued, cities generally defend these laws by citing concerns that food, trash and human waste litter the streets; that a homeless presence will scare customers away from commercial areas; and that helping homeless people in place prevents them from seeking out social services that could be more beneficial. Before the 9th Circuit, Los Angeles argued that the Desertrain plaintiffs were unsafe in vehicles crowded with belongings, pets and garbage.

But Rosen is not so sure. He says taking a “criminal justice approach” suggests that the city’s concerns about public health are pretextual.

“Cities that use the criminal justice system are saying ‘If you stick around here, you’re going to go to jail,’ ” he says. “And that’s not a productive approach for people living outdoors.”

It’s not productive because criminalization tends to perpetuate homelessness rather than solve it, the NLCHP report says. People without homes have limited options for where they can perform basic life activities like eating and sleeping. Businesses don’t always let them in—a Venice homeless man wrote an essay for the Free Venice Beachhead blog this year about being asked to leave a Starbucks. And according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development, there are more homeless people than available shelter beds in the U.S. As a result, homeless people may not be able to avoid breaking laws that make it a crime to sleep, eat or urinate outdoors.

Desertrain has roots in a push from Venetians like Ryavec for greater police intervention. Venice has long been known as a beach community for free spirits—and it’s always had a homeless population.

Rosendahl

Bill Rosendahl foresees continued tension in Venice unless permanent housing options are developed. Photo by Kyle Monk.

“Venice is a magnet,” says former LA city councilman Bill Rosendahl, who represented the area before he retired in 2013. “Those who have issues—psychiatric issues, homeless issues—they’re just like any other person, attracted to the beach.”

Venice became even more of a magnet after the LAPD got the neighborhood’s 1990s gang problem under control. This brought in wealthier residents, as did the “Silicon Beach” group of tech companies clustered in LA’s beach communities. (Among others, Google’s LA offices are in Venice, not far from Skid Rose.)

Some perceive these newer residents as less tolerant of the homeless than longtime Venetians. Rosendahl strongly disputes this but says that “Venice has been more accommodating in the past.”

At the same time, the Los Angeles Times reported in February that younger and more aggressive people have moved into the homeless population, changing its character. Ten-year resident Jack Hoffman, a neighborhood activist like Ryavec, also believes methamphetamine has changed the homeless population. Some of these new people have not proved to be good neighbors. For example, an RV dumped its septic tank along Rose Avenue in 2010, requiring the city to send a hazardous materials cleanup crew.

homeless on the pier in Venice Beach

Photo by Jennifer Kelton.

The resulting community complaints brought more city pressure to bear on the area’s homeless. The city stepped up police presence and enforcement with an LAPD Venice Homelessness Task Force, instituted a beach curfew between midnight and 5 a.m., approved a ban on oversize vehicles in neighborhoods that asked for them, and originally supported the Venice Stakeholders Association’s fight with the California Coastal Commission for overnight parking restrictions. (The city dropped its support not long before former city attorney Carmen Trutanich left office in July 2013 after an unsuccessful re-election bid.) And LA started enforcing its 1983 ordinance forbidding living in vehicles, resulting in the citations challenged in Desertrain.

Venice residents are sharply divided on homeless issues, with some feeling threatened by the situation and others arguing that driving the homeless out changes something unique and important about Venice culture. Online debate can quickly get heated, with personal attacks on people like Ryavec and Sobel and the homeless themselves.

It spills over into the real world. In 2012, the city put a shipping container on the beach to store homeless people’s property while they slept at winter shelters. The container became a subject of fierce community debate. Eventually, someone sneaked extra padlocks onto it in the middle of the night. This required the city to cut them off, creating delays for homeless people trying to collect their things.

In January, Councilmember Mike Bonin told a Venice Neighborhood Council meeting that the container was required by the Lavan decision. He called for “a more civil discourse,” noting that his office had gotten numerous complaints about the container based on misinformation.

Though nothing is proven, some of the area’s homeless believe the debate also leads to violence. In May, someone broke all the windows in an inhabited camper shell near Penmar Park, according to the Venice Update and Free Venice Beachhead blogs. The next night, the blogs said, someone firebombed the camper shell as its owner, Ernest Roman, lay in bed. Roman escaped, but the fire destroyed his home and almost everything he owned. In July, the Los Angeles Fire Department confirmed that a vehicle fire at that time and location was being investigated as arson.

homeless in an alley in Venice Beach

Photo by Jennifer Kelton.

UNPAID TICKETS LEAD TO CRIMINAL RECORDS

At a weekly dinner for the poor given by the First Baptist Church of Venice, vehicle-dweller Charles Moore said there are homeless people with 10, 15 or even 20 parking tickets. He said he watched a police officer pass up a chance to arrest such a person—but then issue yet another ticket, which Moore thought was an odd way to handle alleged lawbreaking.

Moore said he’d gotten four tickets himself since arriving in Venice about a month before. One was a parking ticket—which he said he’d paid because it was legitimate—and three other tickets for $197 each, which he planned to contest. One was for blocking the sidewalk; Moore said he was helping another man fix a bicycle at the time. Another was for jaywalking.

Other vehicle-dwellers at the dinner said they were given warnings during the crackdown on living in vehicles, but no tickets for living in a car. One said he was told he had to move if neighbors complained, but it wasn’t illegal to sleep in the car. (This was contradicted to some extent by testimony from the Desertrain plaintiffs, one of whom started sleeping on the sidewalk after police warned him not to sleep in his car.)

Another man parked on the Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu for three months before returning to Venice. He said everyone in vehicles is “breathing a lot easier” after the Desertrain decision.

Moore claimed he was living in his car by choice and could pay the tickets. But for homeless people with very low incomes, the NLCHP report says, criminalization creates more barriers to ending homelessness. Arrests and citations generate fines they can’t pay, creating bench warrants later. A criminal record can mean being turned down for jobs and for public housing subsidies, which are crucial for housing very-low-income people. Going to jail can mean losing public benefits, a job or an opportunity. And losing belongings to arrest or confiscation can mean losing basic tools like identification, cellphones and medication.

Laws like these often violate the civil rights of the homeless, or sometimes (as in cases involving church groups giving out food) their advocates. Just as the ban on living in a vehicle was found unconstitutionally vague in Desertrain, vagrancy and loitering laws have also been struck down as vague, especially when defendants can point to uneven or arbitrary enforcement. Laws prohibiting public performance of basic life activities like sleeping can be struck down under the Eighth Amendment, if homeless people have nowhere else to perform those activities. That was the ruling in LA’s Jones case.

Laws permitting seizures of homeless people’s property can be struck down under the 14th Amendment’s due process clause and the Fourth Amendment’s ban on unreasonable seizures. These formed the basis of the 9th Circuit’s Lavan decision. The First Amendment right to freedom of speech prohibits blanket bans on panhandling. That was the holding of both the Richmond, Virginia-based 4th and the Cincinnati-based 6th circuits last year in Clatterbuck v. City of Charlottesville and Speet v. Schuette.

And organizations that feed the homeless have invoked their own First Amendment rights to freedom of religion or political speech. Over the past decade, federal district courts have often struck these laws down on religious freedom grounds, although the Atlanta-based 11th Circuit upheld Orlando’s restrictions in 2011 as a reasonable time, place or manner restriction on political speech.

These humanitarian and civil rights concerns are why the ABA House of Delegates passed Resolution 117 at the 2013 annual meeting, urging governments to “promote the human right to adequate housing for all through increased funding, development and implementation of affordable housing strategies and to prevent infringement of that right.” It was sponsored by nine ABA groups, including the ABA Commission on Homelessness and Poverty. The commission itself advocates for laws and policies to lift people out of homelessness, and it provides resources for advocates for the poorest Americans.

“The criminalization of homelessness is perhaps the least effective way to end homelessness and is a tremendous distraction from the real solutions to homelessness, which are housing and income for people in poverty,” says Antonia Fasanelli, immediate-past chair of the commission and executive director of the Homeless Persons Representation Project in Baltimore.

homeless asleep on the sidewalk, Venice Beach

Photo by Jennifer Kelton.

Perhaps most important for municipalities with limited budgets, letting homeless people cycle through jails and hospitals is actually more expensive to taxpayers than providing housing, research shows.

That’s because homelessness tends to lead to increased reliance on emergency medical services, as well as more dealings with the criminal justice system (as both victims and perpetrators).

A few localities have tried “housing first” models and documented considerable savings. One of the first such programs was the Albuquerque Heading Home initiative, which was launched in January 2011. The goal was to house some of the city’s toughest cases: chronically homeless people who had documented behavioral health and substance abuse problems. Those people are usually the most vulnerable within the homeless population—and use the most police and medical services. Combining a mixture of public and private funding, the program moved those individuals into housing and provided social workers to address their underlying problems.

After a year in the program, a University of New Mexico study found, clients were costing the public 31 percent less than they had the previous year—an average of $12,831.68 less per person. Those savings largely came from less use of emergency rooms, hospitals, jails and jail-based treatment programs. Albuquerque Mayor Richard Berry said in June that the city saved $3.2 million over the three years of the program.

So why don’t more cities try it? Rosen suggests that the greater immediate cost of supportive housing might blind people to the long-term costs of overusing the criminal justice system.

“It requires a willingness and ability to make that upfront investment,” he says. “There’s a desire to find an immediate solution that doesn’t cost money, and so people turn to ‘Well, just arrest everyone.’ Of course, that does actually cost money.”

There have already been some efforts toward housing-first programs in Los Angeles County, although none directly sponsored by the city. One was Los Angeles County’s Project 50, which from 2007 to 2012 sought to permanently house 50 chronically homeless, vulnerable people on downtown LA’s notorious Skid Row. In the end, a county report says, the project housed 67 people and saved more money than its cost to taxpayers.

Also underway is the Home for Good initiative, a collaboration between the United Way of Greater Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, which seeks to end chronic and veteran homelessness by 2016. Program Associate Emily Bradley says it works closely with several area governments, including that of Los Angeles, and had housed 14,249 people through April.

The city itself has taken a softer approach. In 2010, when homelessness became a serious issue in Venice, then-councilman Rosendahl started Vehicles to Homes, a program that he later said moved about 100 people into stationary homes.

Rosendahl also wanted to establish a parking lot where vehicle-dwellers could park for the night legally and have access to social services, modeled after programs in Santa Barbara, California, and Eugene, Oregon. But Sobel says Rosendahl was stymied by community opposition to all three of the potential sites. (Rosendahl says a site near LAX is still under consideration.)

“This is the problem with homelessness in LA generally,” says Sobel. “There is not the political will to address the solutions; there is only the political will to put people in jail. And that doesn’t address anything.”

A similar problem arose when advocates for the homeless made plans to establish permanent supportive housing for homeless veterans at the VA campus in West Los Angeles. The land is expressly designated for veterans’ care, but it’s also near the expensive neighborhoods of Brentwood and Westwood, and some of those residents didn’t want the project nearby.

Advocates say those complaints caused government agencies to slow the project. Though the permanent supportive housing was announced in 2007, renovations on the three abandoned buildings chosen didn’t start until 2010. And the original federal funding allocated was enough for renovating only one of the buildings, Rosendahl says, with nothing left over for staffing. Rosendahl believes the city can’t solve its homelessness problems without greater funding and support from other levels of government. “Venice will continue to have tensions until we get permanent housing,” he says. “And we’re talking about tens of millions of dollars, and actually talking about hundreds of millions of dollars.”

homeless veteran in a wheelchair with an American Flag on Venice Beach, California

A homeless veteran displays his patriotism along the shores of Venice Beach. Photo by Jennifer Kelton.

At least some funding might be coming.

In July, Mayor Eric Garcetti pledged to join the Obama administration’s Mayors Challenge to End Veteran Homelessness, which advocates a housing-first approach. Garcetti was reportedly in talks to secure related federal funding.

There are also signs that the city is changing its day-to-day approach to homelessness. City officials said in July that the LAPD would reduce arrests on downtown’s Skid Row for petty offenses. And the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, an entity that coordinates homeless services for most of the county, has begun offering social services on Skid Row in combination with major street-cleaning efforts.

As for vehicle-dwellers, City Attorney Mike Feuer said in June that he wouldn’t appeal Desertrain. Instead, he said he would work with other city officials to write a new law that balances homeless civil rights with neighborhood quality-of-life issues.

But Sobel isn’t optimistic about those changes. As of August, she says, the 1,250 units of supportive housing ordered by the settlement in Jones were nearly built. In fact, she says the city even allocated general-fund money for that purpose in 2013. That means the city will soon no longer be enjoined from enforcing its law against sitting, sleeping or lying on sidewalks at night.

The city “went out of its way to speed it up … so that, as one of the council people said when they came out of closed session, they can return to enforcement,” Sobel says. It’s “not over, and they know they’re going to get sued again.”

This article originally appeared in the November 2014 issue of the ABA Journal with this headline: “Unwanted Guests: Trying to manage a growing homeless population, Los Angeles and other cities get mired in civil rights disputes.”
Clarification

“Unwanted Guests,” November, should have described Mark Ryavec’s duplex as being built about 1905. The Los Angeles County assessor’s office lists that date and 1947. Ryavec says the house was built in 1907 and a two-bedroom structure in back was built in 1949.

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October 30, 2014

Honor, Lt. Col. Goodson USMC, thanks to Brother Tom

Filed under: Education, Global Intel, Historical context, Islam, Military, Political Commentary, Politicians, Religion, US Constitution — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 2:28 pm

Burial at Sea
by Lt Col George Goodson, USMC (Ret)

In my 76th year, the events of my life appear to me, from time to time, as a series of vignettes. Some were significant; most were trivial…

War is the seminal event in the life of everyone that has endured it. Though I fought in Korea and the Dominican Republic and was wounded there, Vietnam was my war.

Now 42 years have passed and, thankfully, I rarely think of those days in Cambodia , Laos , and the panhandle of North Vietnam where small teams of Americans and Montangards fought much larger elements of the North Vietnamese Army. Instead I see vignettes: some exotic, some mundane:

*The smell of Nuc Mam.
*The heat, dust, and humidity.
*The blue exhaust of cycles clogging the streets.
*Elephants moving silently through the tall grass.
*Hard eyes behind the servile smiles of the villagers.
*Standing on a mountain in Laos and hearing a tiger roar.
*A young girl squeezing my hand as my medic delivered her baby.
*The flowing Ao Dais of the young women biking down Tran Hung Dao.
*My two years as Casualty Notification Officer in North Carolina , Virginia , and Maryland .

It was late 1967. I had just returned after 18 months in Vietnam . Casualties were increasing. I moved my family from Indianapolis to Norfolk , rented a house, enrolled my children in their fifth or sixth new school, and bought a second car.

A week later, I put on my uniform and drove 10 miles to Little Creek, Virginia. I hesitated before entering my new office. Appearance is important to career Marines. I was no longer, if ever, a poster Marine. I had returned from my third tour in Vietnam only 30 days before. At 5’9″, I now weighed 128 pounds – 37 pounds below my normal weight. My uniforms fit ludicrously, my skin was yellow from malaria medication, and I think I had a twitch or two.

I straightened my shoulders, walked into the office, looked at the nameplate on a Staff Sergeant’s desk and said, “Sergeant Jolly, I’m Lieutenant Colonel Goodson. Here are my orders and my Qualification Jacket.”

Sergeant Jolly stood, looked carefully at me, took my orders, stuck out his hand; we shook and he asked, “How long were you there, Colonel?” I replied “18 months this time.” Jolly breathed, you must be a slow learner Colonel.” I smiled.

Jolly said, “Colonel, I’ll show you to your office and bring in the Sergeant Major.

I said, “No, let’s just go straight to his office.”

Jolly nodded, hesitated, and lowered his voice, “Colonel, the Sergeant Major. He’s been in this job two years. He’s packed pretty tight. I’m worried about him.” I nodded.

Jolly escorted me into the Sergeant Major’s office. “Sergeant Major, this is Colonel Goodson, the new Commanding Office. The Sergeant Major stood, extended his hand and said, “Good to see you again, Colonel.”

I responded, “Hello Walt, how are you?” Jolly looked at me, raised an eyebrow, walked out, and closed the door.

I sat down with the Sergeant Major. We had the obligatory cup of coffee and talked about mutual acquaintances. Walt’s stress was palpable. Finally, I said, “Walt, what’s the h-ll’s wrong?”

He turned his chair, looked out the window and said, “George, you’re going to wish you were back in Nam before you leave here. I’ve been in the Marine Corps since 1939. I was in the Pacific 36 months, Korea for 14 months, and Vietnam for 12 months… Now I come here to bury these kids. I’m putting my letter in. I can’t take it anymore.”

I said, “OK Walt. If that’s what you want, I’ll endorse your request for retirement and do what I can to push it through Headquarters Marine Corps.”

Sergeant Major Walt Xxxxx retired 12 weeks later. He had been a good Marine for 28 years, but he had seen too much death and too much suffering. He was used up.

Over the next 16 months, I made 28 death notifications, conducted 28 military funerals, and made 30 notifications to the families of Marines that were severely wounded or missing in action. Most of the details of those casualty notifications have now, thankfully, faded from memory. Four, however, remain.

MY FIRST NOTIFICATION
My third or fourth day in Norfolk , I was notified of the death of a 19 year old Marine. This notification came by telephone from Headquarters Marine Corps. The information detailed:

*Name, rank, and serial number.
*Name, address, and phone number of next of kin.
*Date of and limited details about the Marine’s death.
*Approximate date the body would arrive at the Norfolk Naval Air Station.
*A strong recommendation on whether the casket should be opened or closed.

The boy’s family lived over the border in North Carolina , about 60 miles away. I drove there in a Marine Corps staff car. Crossing the state line intoNorth Carolina , I stopped at a small country store / service station / Post Office. I went in to ask directions.

Three people were in the store. A man and woman approached the small Post Office window. The man held a package. The Store owner walked up and addressed them by name, “Hello John. Good morning Mrs. Cooper.”

I was stunned. My casualty’s next-of-kin’s name was John Cooper!

I hesitated, then stepped forward and said, “I beg your pardon. Are you Mr. and Mrs. John Cooper of (address.)

The father looked at me – I was in uniform – and then, shaking, bent at the waist, he vomited. His wife looked horrified at him and then at me. Understanding came into her eyes and she collapsed in slow motion. I think I caught her before she hit the floor.

The owner took a bottle of whiskey out of a drawer and handed it to Mr. Cooper who drank. I answered their questions for a few minutes. Then I drove them home in my staff car. The storeowner locked the store and followed in their truck. We stayed an hour or so until the family began arriving.

I returned the storeowner to his business. He thanked me and said, “Mister, I wouldn’t have your job for a million dollars.” I shook his hand and said; “Neither would I.”

I vaguely remember the drive back to Norfolk . Violating about five Marine Corps regulations, I drove the staff car straight to my house. I sat with my family while they ate dinner, went into the den, closed the door, and sat there all night, alone.

My Marines steered clear of me for days. I had made my first death notification.

THE FUNERALS
Weeks passed with more notifications and more funerals. I borrowed Marines from the local Marine Corps Reserve and taught them to conduct a military funeral: how to carry a casket, how to fire the volleys and how to fold the flag.

When I presented the flag to the mother, wife, or father, I always said, “All Marines share in your grief.” I had been instructed to say, “On behalf of a grateful nation….” I didn’t think the nation was grateful, so I didn’t say that.

Sometimes, my emotions got the best of me and I couldn’t speak. When that happened, I just handed them the flag and touched a shoulder. They would look at me and nod. Once a mother said to me, “I’m so sorry you have this terrible job.” My eyes filled with tears and I leaned over and kissed her.

ANOTHER NOTIFICATION
Six weeks after my first notification, I had another. This was a young PFC. I drove to his mother’s house. As always, I was in uniform and driving a Marine Corps staff car. I parked in front of the house, took a deep breath, and walked towards the house. Suddenly the door flew open, a middle-aged woman rushed out. She looked at me and ran across the yard, screaming “NO! NO! NO! NO!”

I hesitated. Neighbors came out. I ran to her, grabbed her, and whispered stupid things to reassure her. She collapsed. I picked her up and carried her into the house. Eight or nine neighbors followed. Ten or fifteen later, the father came in followed by ambulance personnel. I have no recollection of leaving.

The funeral took place about two weeks later. We went through the drill. The mother never looked at me. The father looked at me once and shook his head sadly.

ANOTHER NOTIFICATION
One morning, as I walked in the office, the phone was ringing. Sergeant Jolly held the phone up and said, “You’ve got another one, Colonel.” I nodded, walked into my office, picked up the phone, took notes, thanked the officer making the call, I have no idea why, and hung up. Jolly, who had listened, came in with a special Telephone Directory that translates telephone numbers into the person’s address and place of employment.

The father of this casualty was a Longshoreman. He lived a mile from my office. I called the Longshoreman’s Union Office and asked for the Business Manager. He answered the phone, I told him who I was, and asked for the father’s schedule.

The Business Manager asked, “Is it his son?” I said nothing. After a moment, he said, in a low voice, “Tom is at home today.” I said, “Don’t call him. I’ll take care of that.” The Business Manager said, “Aye, Aye Sir,” and then explained, “Tom and I were Marines in WWII.”

I got in my staff car and drove to the house. I was in uniform. I knocked and a woman in her early forties answered the door. I saw instantly that she was clueless. I asked, “Is Mr. Smith home?” She smiled pleasantly and responded, “Yes, but he’s eating breakfast now. Can you come back later?” I said, “I’m sorry. It’s important. I need to see him now.”

She nodded, stepped back into the beach house and said, “Tom, it’s for you.”

A moment later, a ruddy man in his late forties, appeared at the door. He looked at me, turned absolutely pale, steadied himself, and said, “Jesus Christ man, he’s only been there three weeks!”

Months passed. More notifications and more funerals. Then one day while I was running, Sergeant Jolly stepped outside the building and gave a loud whistle, two fingers in his mouth. I never could do that… and held an imaginary phone to his ear.

Another call from Headquarters Marine Corps. I took notes, said, “Got it.” and hung up. I had stopped saying “Thank You” long ago.

Jolly, “Where?”

Me, “Eastern Shore of Maryland . The father is a retired Chief Petty Officer. His brother will accompany the body back from Vietnam …”

Jolly shook his head slowly, straightened, and then said, “This time of day, it’ll take three hours to get there and back. I’ll call the Naval Air Station and borrow a helicopter. And I’ll have Captain Tolliver get one of his men to meet you and drive you to the Chief’s home.”

He did, and 40 minutes later, I was knocking on the father’s door. He opened the door, looked at me, then looked at the Marine standing at parade rest beside the car, and asked, “Which one of my boys was it, Colonel?”

I stayed a couple of hours, gave him all the information, my office and home phone number and told him to call me, anytime.

He called me that evening about 2300 (11:00 PM). “I’ve gone through my boy’s papers and found his will. He asked to be buried at sea. Can you make that happen?” I said, “Yes I can, Chief. I can and I will.”

My wife who had been listening said, “Can you do that?” I told her, “I have no idea. But I’m going to break my ass trying.”

I called Lieutenant General Alpha Bowser, Commanding General, Fleet Marine Force Atlantic, at home about 2330, explained the situation, and asked, “General, can you get me a quick appointment with the Admiral at Atlantic Fleet Headquarters?” General Bowser said,” George, you be there tomorrow at 0900. He will see you.

I was and the Admiral did. He said coldly, “How can the Navy help the Marine Corps, Colonel.” I told him the story. He turned to his Chief of Staff and said, “Which is the sharpest destroyer in port?” The Chief of Staff responded with a name.

The Admiral called the ship, “Captain, you’re going to do a burial at sea. You’ll report to a Marine Lieutenant Colonel Goodson until this mission is completed…”

He hung up, looked at me, and said, “The next time you need a ship, Colonel, call me. You don’t have to sic Al Bowser on my ass.” I responded, “Aye Aye, Sir” and got the h-ll out of his office.

I went to the ship and met with the Captain, Executive Officer, and the Senior Chief. Sergeant Jolly and I trained the ship’s crew for four days. Then Jolly raised a question none of us had thought of. He said, “These government caskets are air tight. How do we keep it from floating?”

All the high priced help including me sat there looking dumb. Then the Senior Chief stood and said, “Come on Jolly. I know a bar where the retired guys from World War II hang out.”

They returned a couple of hours later, slightly the worst for wear, and said, “It’s simple; we cut four 12″ holes in the outer shell of the casket on each side and insert 300 lbs of lead in the foot end of the casket. We can handle that, no sweat.”

The day arrived. The ship and the sailors looked razor sharp. General Bowser, the Admiral, a US Senator, and a Navy Band were on board. The sealed casket was brought aboard and taken below for modification. The ship got underway to the 12-fathom depth.

The sun was hot. The ocean flat. The casket was brought aft and placed on a catafalque. The Chaplin spoke. The volleys were fired. The flag was removed, folded, and I gave it to the father. The band played “Eternal Father Strong to Save.” The casket was raised slightly at the head and it slid into the sea.

The heavy casket plunged straight down about six feet. The incoming water collided with the air pockets in the outer shell. The casket stopped abruptly, rose straight out of the water about three feet, stopped, and slowly slipped back into the sea. The air bubbles rising from the sinking casket sparkled in the in the sunlight as the casket disappeared from sight forever….

The next morning I called a personal friend, Lieutenant General Oscar Peatross, at Headquarters Marine Corps and said, “General, get me out of here. I can’t take this anymore.” I was transferred two weeks later.

I was a good Marine but, after 17 years, I had seen too much death and too much suffering. I was used up.

Vacating the house, my family and I drove to the office in a two-car convoy. I said my goodbyes. Sergeant Jolly walked out with me. He waved at my family, looked at me with tears in his eyes, came to attention, saluted, and said, “Well Done, Colonel. Well Done.”

I felt as if I had received the Medal of Honor!

A veteran is someone who, at one point, wrote a blank
check made payable to ‘The United States of America ‘
for an amount of up to and including their life.

That is Honor and there are way too many people in this country who no longer understand it.

October 29, 2014

Another hidden Obama-Democrat attack on US citizens. What else do we not know? [nc]

Filed under: Business, Econonics, Global Intel, Historical context, Illegal Aliens, Political Commentary, US Constitution — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 2:10 pm

Record Number of Americans Renouncing Citizenship Because of Overseas Tax Burdens
ABC News
By ALI WEINBERG 20 hours ago




Bloomberg
Why Are U.S. Tax Policies Sending Americans Packing

Frustration over taxes is as American as apple pie, but some U.S. citizens are becoming so overwhelmed by the Internal Revenue Service that they’ve decided to stop being Americans altogether.

According to new Treasury Department data, 776 Americans renounced their citizenship over three months ending in September for a total of 2,353 renunciations this year, on pace to surpass the previous year’s record number of 2,999 renouncers.

Experts say this growing number of ex-Americans is a side effect of new tax regulations within the last few years intended to crack down on tax evasion but that also make it harder for all citizens abroad to conduct even routine financial transactions. Chief among them is the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act, or FATCA, passed by Congress in 2010 and in effect since July 2014. FATCA aimed to cut down on the use of secret offshore accounts by requiring foreign banks to report all Americans with accounts over $50,000 or face a 30 percent surcharge on the accounts.

Marylouise Serrato, the executive director of American Citizens Abroad, an advocacy group, said the measure ended up hurting otherwise law-abiding citizens living in foreign countries, of which the most recent estimates say there are 6.32 million. Serrato cited a 2014 poll conducted by the group Democrats Abroad that found an average of 12.7 percent of applicants for various foreign financial services were denied by their banks.

“The problem is not paying taxes or not wanting to pay taxes, the problem is that they’re having an inability to find financial providers and people who are still willing to deal with them as American citizens,” Serrato said.

There’s also the problem of so-called “accidental Americans,” who were born in the United States but have lived most of their lives in Canada. American tax law mandates that citizens pay U.S. taxes regardless of the country in which they reside, meaning that in the last five years, when the U.S. government started cracking down on foreign tax evaders, many Canadians born in the U.S. realized for the first time that they might owe the IRS back taxes.
View gallery
Record Number of Americans Renouncing Citizenship Because …
Record Number of Americans Renouncing Citizenship Because of Overseas Tax Burdens (ABC News)

Among them was one man who was born in the U.S. but was brought to Canada right after birth, who insisted on anonymity because he is still in the process of renouncing his American citizenship – which he didn’t even realize he had until, on a 2011 trip south of the US-Canada border, he was told he needed an American passport in order to re-enter the United States.

He was eventually allowed to pass, but upon returning home realized the agent who let him through was correct. “Sure enough, if you are considered a US citizen you can’t travel into the US using anything other than a US passport,” he said.

He learned he could either declare five years of back taxes to the IRS under a new voluntary disclosure program, which he said would have cost him thousands of dollars in legal and accounting fees, or renounce his American citizenship, which so far has taken him more than a year and several trips to his nearest consulate to do.

“I don’t break any laws,” he said. “It’s an accident of birth.”

And when he does renounce his American citizenship, the Canada resident will also have to pay a onetime fee of $2,350 for what the State Department says is the cost of processing a citizenship renunciation.

That fee is more than a five-fold increase from what the cost was before September 2014, when renouncing one’s American citizenship cost $450.

A State Department spokesperson said the fee was increased to reflect the real, unsubsidized cost of providing the service. “In addition to the work done at the embassy or consulate, the case comes back to the department for a final review and decision, which involves additional resources. A renunciation is a serious decision, and we need to be certain that the person renouncing fully understands the consequences,” the spokesperson said via email.

Serrato’s group American Citizens Abroad recommends that Congress add a “same-country exception” to FATCA, which would exempt citizens living in a foreign country from paying a U.S. tax for financial services from a bank in the same country where they live. The intended goal would be for FATCA to affect only the groups it intended to target: potential tax evaders who live in one country but have foreign accounts in others.

“This is a community that’s not tax evaders and living the high life. There’s a real need, if the US is going to be a global player and we want Americans overseas selling products, that people need to have certain tools in order to do that,” she said.

October 26, 2014

Stephen Flatow, from Rabbi Brenner Glickman [c]

Filed under: Business, Econonics, Global Intel, Historical context, Islam, Media Check, Political Commentary, Religion, US Constitution — Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , — justplainbill @ 7:02 pm

[ Additional commentary at the end: Keep in mind while reading this, that the timeline for Counselor Flatow’s actions actually start in the 1970’s when this “Foundation” was taken over by the Iranian Theocracy. Thus, the criminal activity detailed herein, took place during the following administrations: Carter, Reagan, HW Bush, Clinton, H Bush, and Obama.]

Stephen Flatow: The Amazing Story of What One Person Can Accomplish
By Rabbi Brenner Glickman, Rosh Hashanah 5775/2014

Tonight, I will tell you a story. It is the true story of a seemingly inconsequential man who, driven by passion and determination, has accomplished the extraordinary. It is a David and Goliath story of our times, and it continues to unfold. When you hear this story, I think you will agree that someone needs to write a book about this man. I can’t believe that no one has yet.

Our hero’s name is Stephen Flatow. He is a real-estate attorney in northern New Jersey. He does title work, mostly, out of a small, cluttered office. He is well-regarded in his field, but not especially well known. He makes a living. He is famous, however, in other circles, as an activist. His courage and determination are unmatched. This lone man has stood up to the greatest powers and has not blinked. He has challenged the State Department, the Justice Department, the courts, and the largest banks in the world. He has failed and prevailed, stumbled and triumphed, over and over again. He does not quit. He is driven by the love of his daughter, a daughter who was killed by a suicide bomber twenty years ago. This is his story.

Alisa Flatow was a student at Brandeis University. She chose to spend a semester studying abroad in Jerusalem. After a few months in Israel, she and her roommates decided to spend a weekend at a beach resort in Gaza. This was 1995, soon after the Oslo accords, and Gaza was still under Israeli control. It seems unfathomable now, but people used to vacation in Gaza at the beach resorts. On the way to the beach, their bus was struck by a van filled with explosives. The terrorist group Palestinian Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the killing. Seven Israeli soldiers riding on the bus were killed. Alisa was severely wounded, but she did not die right away. The terrorist van was filled with shrapnel that exploded through the windows of the bus and struck her head. She was unconscious, but her body was unharmed.

The doctors called her father in America, and told him to come right away. When he landed in Ben Gurion airport, government agents met him on the runway, and escorted him straight from the plane to the hospital. By the time he arrived, Alisa was brain-dead. The doctors offered their condolences, and asked the father if he would be willing to donate her organs.

This was not a simple question. The Flatow family was Orthodox and observant. It was not customary for Orthodox Jews to donate organs, and they were not sure it was allowed by Jewish law. So the parents called their rabbi and asked what to do. He told them to donate the organs, and so they did.

That single act became a sensation in Israel. To understand its significance, I need to give a little background information. There is much in Jewish law and custom that would discourage organ donation. It has been our longstanding tradition to treat a dead body as sacred. Our custom is to watch over it, cleanse it, and prepare it carefully for burial. The body is buried whole and unaltered. That is why rabbinic authorities have generally discouraged autopsies.

But organ donation is special. It presents the opportunity to save a life. In Jewish law, the saving of a human life takes special precedence. You can violate just about all the other commandments if you can save a life. Therefore, Jewish law does not just allow organ donation, it requires it. Reform and Conservative rabbis immediately encouraged organ donation, and by the 1970s, Orthodox rabbis did as well.

The problem was that most Jews in Israel were not aware of this. The rates of organ donation were extraordinarily low. Israel was part of a European consortium of organ sharing nations, but was suspended because too few Israelis were registered donors. It was a stunning irony for a nation famous as an innovator of advanced medical technologies. The problem was that Israelis knew about the tradition of burying a body whole; they were not so aware that their rabbis allowed organ donation.

Throughout the 1970s and 80s, various medical groups and the government in Israel tried to educate the public, but nothing worked. Organ donation rates were terribly low. People were desperate for organs, but few were donating. It just wasn’t what people did.

And then the Flatows offered their daughter’s organs to the people of Israel. The news made headlines in every newspaper throughout the nation. Her heart, lungs, liver, kidneys, pancreas, and corneas were able to save six lives in Israel. Notably, at least one of the recipients was Arab Palestinian. The people of Israel were amazed, and grateful. They had felt so alone in suffering against terrorism, and here this family from America made such a gesture. They felt that the world Jewish community was with them. We were one.

Days later, Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin came to Washington DC and spoke before a gathering of 12,000 American Jews. What he told them would be printed in newspapers throughout America. He spoke about what Alisa’s gift meant to the Israeli people. “Today,” he said, “her heart beats in Jerusalem.” There is more. After Alisa’s death, the Flatows lives were shattered. Alisa’s mother withdrew into herself and her home. But the father, Stephen, decided to take action. He wanted justice. It was widely reported that the State of Iran was the sponsor and financial backer of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. It angered him that there were no consequences for Iran. They had funded his daughter’s murderers, and no one was doing anything about it. The bomber himself was killed. The terrorist ring was being pursued by Israel. Stephen Flatow decided to take it upon himself to go after Iran.

A lawyer by training, he sought justice through the courts. He had a brilliant idea. If he and other victims of terror could file suit against Iran, they could exact punishment on the regime. They would make it costly for states to sponsor terror, and then maybe Iran would think twice about doing it again.

But there was a problem. United States law did not allow private citizens to sue foreign governments. It was expressly forbidden. So Stephen Flatow went to Washington to change the law. His senator, the Jewish Frank Lautenberg, happened to be in Israel at the time of Alyssa’s death. He took a special interest in her family and drafted legislation. Flatow testified before congress, and even gained the backing of President Clinton. Congress passed the Anti-Terrorism Act of 1996 to make an exception to the longstanding rule. In cases of state-sponsored terror, individual US citizens could sue foreign nations for damages in US courts. It was the first victory.

It did not last. The courts threw it out. So back to Washington he went for a new law, one written specifically to override the objections of the court. Once again he sued the state of Iran in a US court. But his time, one of his allies became an adversary. The Clinton administration began to see Flatow as interfering in national diplomacy. The White House was against Iran, but they did not want Flatow dictating the terms. So the U.S. Department of Justice intervened in the case, and actually filed a brief in support of Iran and against the victims of terror. Once more, Flatow returned to Congress and this time he got a third law that gave citizens even more strength to sue foreign governments, this time with teeth.

Finally, in 1997, he received his judgment. A court ruled in favor of the Flatows and against Iran. The family was awarded $26 million in compensatory damages, and over $200 million in punitive damages.

But the issue was hardly over. How do you collect money from a rogue state? They weren’t paying. Stephen Flatow devised a plan. Since the United States had ended diplomatic ties with Iran following the rise of the Ayatollah, the Iranian embassy in Washington and the residence of the Iranian ambassador have been in control of the United States Government. The State Department holds them in trust with the goal of returning them to Iran someday when relations resume. Stephen Flatow now had a ruling that said the Iranian government owed him $247 million. He sought possession of the embassy and the residence, property owned by Iran. The State Department refused. They feared that if the United States confiscated sovereign property here, our embassies and properties abroad would become threatened. So instead, they paid Flatow $20 million from US funds with the understanding that the United States would collect that money from Iran someday.

Stephen Flatow was furious. His goal was not to get money. His goal was to make Iran pay so they would stop sponsoring terror. He had won in court and he had received money, but Iran had still not paid one cent.

And this leads to the third chapter of this amazing saga. Stephen Flatow did not give up. He began to look for other assets in the United States that were owned by the government of Iran. Officially, there were none. United States sanctions prohibited Iran from doing any business in the United States, or for anyone to do business with Iran in the United States. But Flatow had suspicions that a charitable foundation in New York was actually a front, laundering money for the Iranian regime.

Why would the Iranians funnel their money through New York? Because the financial exchanges are there, and you can’t get anything done internationally without going through New York’s markets. Iran’s economy, its nuclear weapons development, its sponsorship of Hezbollah and other jihadists groups – all required moving money across currencies. They needed a secret foothold in New York. The Alavi Foundation was established decades ago by the Shah to promote Iranian culture abroad. It owned a gleaming skyscraper on 5th Avenue in Manhattan, between Rockefeller Center and the Museum of Modern Art. Ivan Boesky used to office there. Stephen Flatow did a lot of digging, and then filed papers in court demonstrating that the foundation and the building were secretly operated by the Iranian government. And if they belonged to the state of Iran, they were subject to his financial ruling.

Stephen Flatow’s case was a civil matter, but it came to the attention of a young analyst sitting in a cubicle at the Manhattan District Attorney’s office. If what Flatow was saying was true, there was some serious criminal wrongdoing going on. That young analyst’s name was Eitan Arusy. Before he starting working for the District Attorney, he served in the Israel Defense Force as a spokesman. He was one of the first responders to the scene of the carnage on the day that Alisa Flatow’s bus was bombed. He had a special interest in the case. The district attorney’s office did their own digging, and came to the same conclusion as Flatow – the Alavi Foundation was actually a front for Bank Melli, the State of Iran’s government-owned national bank. But how did the Iranians do it? How did they get their money in and out of the United States? The district attorney’s office soon discovered that two European Banks, Credit Suisse and Lloyds of London, were moving money and falsifying documents for the Iranians. When the FBI raided the records of the charity, they found vast deposits from Credit Suisse and Lloyds. The banks cooperated with investigators. They provided emails and memos detailing how they took Iranian money and sent it to the United States in their own names. Without admitting guilt, Lloyds agreed to pay a fine of $350 million, and Credit Suisse $536 million.

They were not alone. It was soon discovered that most of the major European banks were laundering money for the Iranians into the United States, in direct violation of US law. Barclays Bank settled in 2010, paying the United States $298 million. In 2012, ING, Standard Chartered, and HSBC also settled. HSBC agreed to pay $1.9 billion.

Then came the big one. While all these banks were making deals with the US government, two employees of BNP Paribas became whistleblowers. They shared with investigators that their bank had laundered tens of billions of dollars of Iranian money. They had also laundered money for Sudan while its regime was committing genocide.

BNP is the largest bank in France. This summer you may have seen the news. BNP became the first bank to admit guilt in laundering money for the Iranian government. They agreed to pay $8.9 billion in fines to the United States. It was far and away the largest penalty ever paid by a bank in history. The New York Times headline said it best: “A Grieving Father Pulls a Thread that Unravels BNP’s Illegal Deals.” A dad lost his girl. The hole in his life will never be filled. He thinks about her every day. He never gives up. He is a small-time attorney doing title work in New Jersey. But his tenacity and his grit and his smarts were beyond anyone’s estimation. This one man in New Jersey uncovered an international conspiracy of bank fraud.

The story is not over. Stephen Flatow is not done. The man who instantly changed the culture of organ donation is Israel is trying to do the same here in America. He takes every opportunity to speak to Orthodox congregations to encourage organ donation. Though the rate of donation consent in America is strong at 60%, the rate among Flatow’s fellow Orthodox Jews is only 5%. He is on a mission to change that.

He and his wife have also established a foundation in Alisa’s name. They sponsor young Jewish women from around the world to take a semester of study in Jerusalem. The money they have received in their fight against Iran is now sponsoring women’s Torah study and the vitality of the State of Israel.

And, in the months ahead, he may finally achieve his goal of making Iran actually pay. A federal judge has the ruled that the assets of the Alavi Foundation be liquidated. The gleaming office tower in New York and other properties around America will be sold and the proceeds will go to the victims of Iranian-sponsored terrorism. That will be Iranian money. Finally, Iran will pay a price.

All of this because of one man in Northern New Jersey. One man who never quit.

Earlier this summer, I did my own digging and I found Stephen Flatow’s contact information. I sent him an email.

Dear Mr. Flatow,

My name is Brenner Glickman and I am a rabbi with a congregation in Sarasota, Florida. I admire you and am writing a sermon about you and your family for this High Holidays. Thank you for all that you have done and continue to do for Israel and America.
You are an inspiration.

He replied the same day:
Dear Rabbi Glickman,

Thanks very much for your note. But it’s really Alisa who has been the source of strength and encouragement these past 19 years. As I like to remind people , I’m still her father and we do anything for our children.
Stephen Flatow

[Aside from the obvious corruption evident in the entire narrative, here are some things that are passed over; both FINRA and the OCC were established decades ago to prevent all of this. High members of the administrations listed in my opening comment MUST have known, including those at the Cabinet Level, Secretary of State, Secretary of the Treasury, Department of Labor, Securities and Exchange Commission, to list just a few. Whether or not these cabinet level officiasl informed their respective president or respective chief of staff, is a matter for the pertinent Congressional Oversight Committee.

Y’all keep wondering and sending me emails about secession, but it is the only way to get rid of this institutional corruption which never reaches the media, much less your notice. I redirect your attention to, once again, the posts below on wealth, economics, education, and the argument for secession.

Secession is the only way to remove all of the bureaucrats who have allowed this form of corruption to exist for as long as it has, and to prevent its continuance.]

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