Conspiracy Theories aren’t as scary as The Truth

For Immediate Release
Contact: Andrew Horning
Libertarian candidate for IN08

30 September, 2022

Freedom, IN – For nearly 30 years through think tank articles, newspaper columns and blogs, and well-before I started organizing protests and running for public office, I’ve been writing about the problems that had already been dividing and threatening this nation’s future. And I’d been proposing solutions, ones that had already been amply proven a hundred years before I was born, to work better than anything else humans have ever tried.

Now, unfortunately, amid massive transgenerational theft, corruption, manipulative promises and domestic militarization that must have our nation’s founders shouting at us from the hereafter, the once brilliant flame of liberty has been replaced by gaslighting and pre-Hammurabi authoritarianism. Our government is both a Big Lie, and our most ominous and existential threat. We don’t have much time to set this right before global conflagration and catastrophe.

There’s no need to detail the lies, the conspiracy facts or the obvious energy, economic, social and moral problems that We The People now suffer. What’s important is to understand that we got here because fewer and fewer among us dare to speak truth to power, far too many are paid to lie, and over 90% of us, both voters, and those who delegate their choice to others, have been voting for this monstrous mess.

The “Two Party System” is a bad game

Any democratic process at all, whether political, business or at home, depends upon good information. Bad or missing information dooms the process to bad outcomes. And our increasingly secret, yet intrusively snooping government has not only paid or otherwise induced people to lie for generations, even well-before and since Operation Mockingbird and Facebook, but has also become a puppet show distracting us from the fact that the people in elected office are not the people running our government.

Most of our citizens have known for some time that our government is corrupt. But how could we know the extent of the corruption, or what to do about it, unless we have more exposure to well-documented yet nearly forbidden information from alternative sources like Epoch Times or foreign media? Political debates are a thing of the past. Most “investigative journalism” has become only a litany of partisan buzzwords and cherry-picked quotes.

So it’s both understandable, and our collective shame, that in electoral politics there is no advantage to being right, and clearly no disadvantage to being wrong. The consequences of that are only now starting to unfold.

But a bigger shame is that our monolithic information, entertainment, education and political systems have so effectively pitted us against each other, that we think we have bigger problems.

We have the power to fix this, of course. But we have to both want to, and vote that way.

Aye, there’s the rub.

https://horning4congress.com/
Liberty or Bust!
Andy Horning
Freedom, Indiana

*See my previous press releases at: https://horning4congress.com/news-media-2/
And please see, “Eight Steps to Success” at https://wedeclare.wordpress.com/2017/12/15/eight-steps-to-success/

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Too stupid to know we’re being stupid?

I’m pretty sure that my wisest, most clear-headed moments have been when I fully, accountably realized that I was being an idiot.

And I think the wisest of those moments resulted from somebody else pointing out to me that I was being an idiot…and I listened.

There is that saying, “A wise man learns more from a fool than a fool learns from a wise man.”

OK, so I hope the preceding was a sufficiently humble preface, since I’m about to call hundreds of millions of people idiots.

You see, having been to innumerable political forums where politicians outnumber regular folk; having participated in scores of public debates; having authored hundreds of articles published in major media and reading the angry retorts; having stood at the center of hundreds of protesters with a megaphone in my hand; having been to hundreds of public meetings where policy is purchased; being fairly well-acquainted with the best political minds in at least Indiana; and having warned everybody I know about our current national predicament when there was still time to fix it; I feel unusually well-qualified to make the following statement:

We The People, that arbitrary, abstract and problematic mob called a “nation,” in the Year of Our Lord 2017, are at least acting like idiots.

I’ll support that statement in four ways:

Number 1. Our society’s deceptive use of language, and level of conversation, has plummeted to embarrassing depths.

Here is a small excerpt from the “Federalist Papers” number 10, written by James Madison and published November 29, 1787:

“A zeal for different opinions concerning religion, concerning government, and many other points, as well of speculation as of practice; an attachment to different leaders ambitiously contending for preeminence and power; or to persons of other descriptions whose fortunes have been interesting to the human passions, have, in turn, divided mankind into parties, inflamed them with mutual animosity, and rendered them much more disposed to vex and oppress each other than to co-operate for their common good. So strong is this propensity of mankind to fall into mutual animosities, that where no substantial occasion presents itself, the most frivolous and fanciful distinctions have been sufficient to kindle their unfriendly passions and excite their most violent conflicts. But the most common and durable source of factions has been the various and unequal distribution of property. Those who hold and those who are without property have ever formed distinct interests in society. Those who are creditors, and those who are debtors, fall under a like discrimination. A landed interest, a manufacturing interest, a mercantile interest, a moneyed interest, with many lesser interests, grow up of necessity in civilized nations, and divide them into different classes, actuated by different sentiments and views. The regulation of these various and interfering interests forms the principal task of modern legislation, and involves the spirit of party and faction in the necessary and ordinary operations of the government.  

…The inference to which we are brought is, that the CAUSES of faction cannot be removed, and that relief is only to be sought in the means of controlling its EFFECTS.”

Now, who in public life today thinks and talks like that?

Here, by way of comparison, is some of our current President’s writing (unedited and in full):

Written by Donald Trump on May 8 2013: “Sorry losers and haters, but my I.Q. is one of the highest -and you all know it! Please don’t feel so stupid or insecure,it’s not your fault”

And another, perhaps more famous writing by the same person 31 May, 2017 said, in its entirety and verbatim, “Despite the constant negative press covfefe”

Number 2. We know everything about stupid stuff, and nothing about important stuff.

How much do I need to elaborate here? How many men can quote baseball stats back to ‘ought-five, yet can’t name our Vice President? How many women read thousand-page romance novels hours on end, and say they “don’t have time” to read the US Constitution (it takes about an hour)? Our kids lack basic life skills even after spending a quarter of their lifespan in classrooms.

Number 3. We’d never hire anybody else the way we hire politicians.

Let’s say you need to hire a janitor. But instead of reading applications, calling people in for interviews and checking references, you just sit back and see who puts up the best yard signs, billboards and TV ads. You’re not looking for qualifications in the conventional sense. No; you’re looking for the best odd$; you’re looking for who’$ got $upport.  You sure don’t want to hire somebody who “doesn’t have a chance,” right?  Ideology, principles, and certainly truth don’t matter, it’s the Show that counts.

“Give me the keys to your building and relax,” says one candidate, “I’m the Janitor You Can Trust!” Another candidate has run a great ground game, handing out literature and freebies to your other employees, with the slogan “Make Janitorial Services Great Again!”

There are lots of other candidates, of course; but all your interest goes to only the two Major Janitorial Candidates. The media tell you that you’d be a fool to waste your choice on other candidates, no matter their superior abilities and references, because the Major Janitorial Candidates are…well…they’re Major.

(oh, and they also contribute a large percentage of the media’s ad revenue)

When everything else these days can be “nonbinary,” only your choice of candidates must be from only the two given to you by …who exactly?

Interestingly, you never ask where all the money comes from for the expensive campaign materials and professional managers. If you exercised any curiosity at all, you’d realize that the people spending millions of dollars to get a job that pays a salary pittance have other reasons to get access to your building and all that’s inside.

We don’t think about anything else the way we think about politics.  I only wish I had as much faith in my “religion” as people have in their political idols.  I only wish I could be so lackadaisical in my daily life as we are with the power of money, police, prisons, spies and war.

Number 4. We have collectively and intentionally rejected that functional system of moral civil behaviors called “culture.”

No, what we call “multiculturalism” isn’t a culture – it’s divisiveness in the pretense of enlightenment. A functional culture doesn’t require an official, uniform religion, style of speech, dress, food or customs.  But it does require some basic commonality and uniformity in rules of behavior, consequences, methods of conflict resolution, and,  importantly, letting a stack-up of cars pass on the left instead of plugging your big fat black Cadillac Escalade with Hillary bumper stickers in the left lane matching speed with the blue Prius in the right lane going east on Hwy 46 toward Bloomington at 8mph BELOW THE SPEED LIMIT …for example.

Anyway…

I’ve for decades fought our corrupt political scheme; which is based entirely upon Special Deals for Special People.  But that corruption is just a reflection of our corrupt civilian culture.

Instead of looking for common ground, we’ve obsessively divided ourselves into opposing factions of LGBT versus straight, socialist versus fascist (as if either’s any !@#$ good at all), male versus female, poor versus middle class, and…more than at any time since I was just a kid…black versus white.

Why?

Do we not all want peace, prosperity, freedom and maybe a little love? Do we really LIKE the fearful, violent, hateful posture we’ve instead chosen?

Maybe we do prefer hate. I was recently told that because I’m a white Protestant male (a “WASP;” the West’s most reviled, and even self-loathing, minority), I should not even be allowed to speak.

Seriously.

So, you may think I’m about to propose a solution.

Sadly, no.  There is no solution to idiocy other than humility, and its beloved companion, accountability.  But that is a rare and precious thing.  It hardly ever happens in significant numbers.

America, as a culture, needs to realize that it’s being an idiot, and snap out of it.

But what are the odds of that actually happening?

I of course hope We The People will have a collective epiphany, and back away from the self-obsessed, hateful, prideful, self-destructive madness we’ve chosen, and plot a new course that in some way incorporates at least a little peace, prosperity, and (is it too much to ask?) freedom.

My hopes have alway exceeded my expectations.

Sigh…

Droning Muslims, and the Golden Rule

If all humans lived by the Golden Rule, there’d be nothing like what we call, “civil government.”

We have kings and bureaucrats and jails and armies for two main reasons:
1. Because some percentage of us behave badly.
2. Because we think that politics will somehow fix that.

Of course, there is not now, nor was there ever, a government that operated on the Golden Rule.  Governments are always, to some degree, corrupt. And that is because people (including politicians, of course) misbehave, all power is inherently for sale, and government is nothing but delegated violence.  

It’s force.  It’s the threat and use of violence, imprisonment, fines and death. That’s why a small corrupt government is much, much better than a big corrupt government.

You’d think that since human governments have a 100% failure rate, we’d have learned this by now. But we humans are a surprisingly dumb species. We tend to self-destruct in ways that make great movies, but bad reality.

So, let’s consider our current situation with the Islam that we long ago militarized for our own purposes, monetized for our own purposes, gave good cause to unite where before it kept itself divided against itself, and now consider our enemy.

Wait… Before that… let me interject one more line of thought:
The only people who ever threatened to kill me, personally, were USA Americans (no, not Mexicans, not even Canadians).  One was a black man who claimed I shouldn’t live in a black neighborhood.  But several were red-blooded Tea Party folk who said I should burn in hell for running against their Republican Savior.

The only people who tell me what I can do, can’t do and must do are USA citizens.   It’s my fellows who take away my dwindling freedoms, take my money, tell me what I can do with what little I can keep, and make sure that I know that whatever it is I think I own (including my life), will be taken away if I don’t follow their rules.

It’s my fellow Americans who divide us into three classes for the purposes of rights, privileges, electoral access, and in courts:

1. Rich People,

2. Democrat/Republicans and their cronies,

3. All the rest of us poor suckers who believe their promises and keep reelecting the people of classes 1 and 2. 

And it’s been only my fellow Americans who’ve lied and lied and lied to me about why we’ve been at war forever. 

OK, so, back to Muslims, the North Koreans, Russians, or whoever our rabid Fear-Aggression Syndrome makes us see as the enemy du jour:
They think they’re right, too, you know. They’re convinced that their corrupt, self-destructing political scheme is right, and we’re the bad guys. And they’re not living by the Golden Rule any better than we are.
Are they our enemy?

Sure they are.
Who isn’t?
Just as hammer sees everything as a nail, a government, or by extension to the root…a human, sees everything outside its limits of power as a threat.

Even within our borders we make enemies of white men, Jews, gays, Democrats, Republicans…or people who aren’t gay Jewish white Democrats or Republicans. We’ve been dividing and subdividing against ourselves for so long that we feel we must tighten the cliques in order to defend them against all outsiders.
Right?

But this is why we suffer discord, fear, and violence.
We have politics because of our discord, fear and violence. 

And governments thrive and depend upon discord, fear and violence. Governments tend to stimulate and amplify that discord, fear and violence because that means more power and money for the individual politicians and cronies who comprise governments…

But hasn’t our own government, our own society, become a vastly greater threat to our personal freedom, health, security and prosperity? Shouldn’t we address this before we go picking fights with others?

Here’s what I recommend:
The Golden Rule.
Exemplify the peace, freedom, prosperity and security that’d flow from better behavior – both personally, and then reflected in our governance (our government is, after all, just our reflection, our avatar, our sins amplified).

To whatever degree we do The Golden Rule, our debts, intrusions, deceits and aggressions would diminish, and everything else would get…better.  Other people would see that what we’re doing is working, and maybe try to emulate that to some degree.

Would that be so bad?
I’m not saying that we don’t have to go blow up half the world. Maybe we do. Maybe we’ve been equipping, funding, training and motivating enemies so well and for so long that now we really do have to unleash all the hell we’ve been summoning before it eats us up first.

Maybe.

But how about we try to do at least a little of what we say we’re all about, first?

About our nation’s violence…

Reasonable people can disagree both strongly and with facts about our political laws, of course; or about economics; or even the proper role of political government in human societies.

But even among my list of friends, (Facebook and otherwise) there is a disturbingly broad, hostile, and in practice, dangerous range of perceptions and opinions regarding the appropriate use of deadly violence; both abroad, and domestically.

The range is roughly from Peace and Love toward All – No Matter What, to Nuke ‘Em All ‘cause …whatever.  And this is both at a global level, and at a very personal, within-your-home level.

Now I don’t intend to waste time and effort discussing relative merits/ demerits in the arguments, as the divisions are so hard and deep that people hear only what they want anyway.

I just wish more of us would consider a few things when voting, speaking and otherwise enacting or supporting political violence:

1. Are you being consistent?  Are guns really an answer when we’ve eliminated the militia system (killed completely in 1903), stopped free gun training in schools, and have jacked up so many kids on psychotropic drugs, and the rest of us on political lies/divisions, that it’s amazing that there aren’t more mass murders?  Are you sure guns are the problem when you’re proposing taking guns away by force with armed force you may claim is corrupt and globally malignant?  Do you trust the politicians and armed forces who’d take our guns?  Do you trust the politicians and armed forces you say are why we need guns?

2. Are you sure your beliefs aren’t based on fear, or hate?  Does your lip curl and your fingers tighten when hearing opposing views?  Have you tried to understand why others disagree with you as violently as you disagree with them?  Is, in other words, your view on guns and armies and drones and spies based upon fear-aggression-syndrome?  Would you, as some have suggested, shoot people who want to keep their guns?  If you support guns, do you support ownership for…everybody, or are there “certain people” who you don’t want to have guns?  Are there whole countries that need to be smacked down?  Really?

3. Have the political promises you believe, and vote for, ever been kept? Have the predictions and “facts” proven true? …Ever? When?

4. Have you looked skeptically at the forces and money behind the news stories?

5. Are you so sure your opinion isn’t what some very wealthy, powerful – even rogue clandestine agents, put into your head?

If more people actually thought long and hard about the above five things, I’m convinced that there’d be substantial changes in our global and domestic war machines, and military-industrial complex.

In any case, I’m also convinced that what we’re doing right now is madness.
And we had been warned many times by many people.

I think now’s a good time to picture a world that’s more peaceful, prosperous and secure, with liberty and justice for all…and find a way to work together with your neighbor (yeah; the one you think has crazy political notions) to make it so.

We could fix it in a Single Day

But voters, as always, must choose

Freedom, IN – Many feel that our “Major Party” choices on Election Day have been getting worse and worse, while the general condition of our society and individual lives seems to be devolving toward calamity.

That’s true, of course.

But we could fix it if only we’d acknowledge the problem, admit who freely chose this, and realize who’s got the power to turn this around. The fix itself is simple enough, and mostly written-down already.

The most important three steps are:

• Stand down our military-industrial complex and global imperialism.
• Monetary/banking reform.
• End the cronyism/corruption culture.

That’s in reverse order, unfortunately; because as congressmen I could address the first two listed only after voters take a stand against the recent (since the 1970’s), self-appointed and irretrievably corrupt, “Two Party System”…by electing me!

Only voters can topple the two-party-in-name-only, crony network, which has become little more than a front, distraction, protection and marketing group for the finance and militarism elites who run the world behind the Two Party Firewall.

So before we can nullify the unjust, profligate, unconstitutional judgments, agencies, laws and actions which produced the welfare cliff, the horrific cost of healthcare, oppressive lawless bureaucracy, and of course endless war and ever-more militarization, voters must first say something to the ruling elites that they’ve not heard in a hundred years:

…NO!

The other 8^th district candidates have no intention or ability to fix the mess they choose to represent. So, first, voters must vote against that corrupt monstrosity. Yes, it’s good to vote against what’s wrong. To say otherwise is a terrible misunderstanding of the whole point of elections; and that is for peaceful revolution. If they feel that they can vote for me, that’d be great. But first, voters must fire the Two Party System!

After voters fire that shot heard ‘round the world, we can talk about other reforms including:

• Term Limits
• Rule of Law
• End “earmarks” (pork)
• End special classes, special deals for special people – equality for all at long last
• Sunset provision/amendment to refine and reduce the number of laws so that our rules are:
  • Few enough to actually know
  • Simple enough to actually obey
  • Important enough to enforce without exceptions or special classes

None of the preceding is ideological, untested or even new. Most of it is already law.

It’s all in voters’ power to set things right. But first, in order to use their power, they must understand that they’ve always had it, and used it to get to where we are today. And for that to happen, they need to be better informed of their choices, and how elections have been working up to now.

Liberty or Bust!

Andrew Horning

Libertarian for 8^th District US House of Representatives

Facebook www.facebook.com/HorningForCongress/

Money, Politics, and Central Banks

Politicians have robbed us for generations

Freedom, IN – I have proposed a three-step plan to fix most of our worst problems by federal legislation.  In many previous releases I detailed plans for fixing the corruption we call “the Two Party System.” That was Step #1.

Step #2 is to fix our inherently inflationary twisted-hybrid political/private crony financial system.

Money itself, as a fiduciary currency/unit of trade, can be a wonderful thing.  When scrupulously maintained as trustworthy, it facilitates honest trade, and practically guarantees peace.

Unfortunately, we’ve not had such money since 1913, though it’s still required by our state and federal constitutions.

Why?  Because the most effective way to hide the true costs of war, tax the public without their knowledge, enrich elites, and covertly monetize the massive debts incurred by impossible political promises and a military empire and industry, is to replace naturally limited money with monopolized fiat currency*, and then devalue it by making gobs of it…

And making gobs of increasingly valueless “money” is literally what inflation is.  The price of everything goes up when the value of money goes down.  And we’re headed for catastrophic hockey-stick-graph inflation very soon.  I don’t know when.  But we’ve let this corrupt, expand and fester long enough that I’m afraid it is now inevitable.

There’s a long, repetitious history of this.  In every case, from ancient Egypt to today’s Venezuela, devaluing currency represents a slide to catastrophe.

In theory, fiat currency could work fine.  But every case involving humans, the short-term political gain of devaluation outweighs the catastrophic long term costs to the society.

There are no exceptions; “fiat currency” always fails.  And it’s always by the same stupid pattern.

Politicians spend money they expect future generations to pay, so they have to find a way to devalue/inflate the supply of currency, and then point fingers of blame everywhere but at themselves when it all collapses.

The United States of America has occupied the catbird seat of fiat currencies since WWII, when our lend/lease arms trading sucked up 2/3rds of the global reserve currency, and almost 3/4 of the monetary gold.  We immediately started spending down on that when we joined the war, and through subsequent never-ending consequences of the world wars.  We spent all that gold long ago, and between the end of the Breton-Woods Agreement in ’71 and the petrodollar scheme in ’72/’73, we found a new way to further devalue what had become truly fiat currency.

But that is ending shortly, as our dollar is based purely on trust, and violence.  The world is both losing trust in us, and sick of our endless Petrodollar Wars.  We have been deceived right up to the brink of collapse, and we’re past due for some radical action.

So:

1. Audit the Fed.*  We are past-broke, and it’s time to go through an orderly and just restructuring of debts, nullifications, and dismantlings.
2. Replace the current Federal Reserve System with a truly private banking system that is not only subject to audits, reporting and SOP as with other incorporated institutions, but also has NO power to monetize political debts or create currency.
3. All money/currency authority and accountability shall be in the US Congress as per Article I Section 8:5 of the Constitution for the United States of America, so that politicians will be held accountable for greed, shortsightedness, and trans-generational theft.
4. However, people must be free to use whatever form of money or currency suits their needs.  “Cryptocurrency” (which is really a form of market fiat currency that I’m seeing as an eventual problem in itself), foreign coins, even conch shells or knotted strings are not the government’s business.  Our government’s only legitimate role in interpersonal transactions is when there is force or fraud involved.

In other words, I propose we stop lying, stealing, making promises we can’t keep, and clean our accounts for the promotion of peace, prosperity, security …and freedom.

Liberty or Bust!

Andrew Horning

*One could debate the meaning of the words and concepts “money” and “currency” forever.  But for the purposes here, currency is an “official” (mandated or agreed upon) trade instrument that has no intrinsic value.  Money is a pretty abstract concept, since value is still applied by humans, but it’s generally a scarce/limited/difficult-to-reproduce thing that therefore has by itself been granted some relative value (gold, silver, rare shells, libertarians).

*The Fed gets “audited” already, but only with many glaring exclusions and only by internal government and Fed processes.  You can look up the details.  But pretty much everything significant (like actions with foreign governments and international banking groups, internal communications and discount window operations, and monetary policy itself) is excluded from GAO audits, and all “independent” auditors are hired by…(wait for it)…the Fed’s Board of Governors.

STOP stealing our wealth, opportunity and security!

The Orwellian “Bank Secrecy Act” of 1970 forces banks to report large financial transactions to federal agents. As with all “federal” laws, since its passage, requirements have gotten tougher, more expansive, and secretive.  For example, the “Suspicious Activity Report” invokes a gag order, and nullifies the already-lowered dollar limit such that any financial activity at all may be secretly monitored by federal agents.
Some might think increasing secrecy, power and spying is good; that it keeps us safe.  

But voters make decisions on information that is increasingly missing or proven false.  It’s foolish to believe that politicians we claim we don’t trust are honest with us when it comes to programs that actually fund their cronyism; like “civil asset forfeiture” programs.

While few know it, police forces now take more money and property from USA citizens by “civil asset forfeiture” (as opposed to “criminal asset forfeiture,” which requires a conviction) than do all other criminals, combined.

This “forfeiture” at gunpoint doesn’t require charges of any crime, or any warrant.  Increasingly, this is done with foreknowledge of money movement, and taken with devices like the “Electronic Recovery and Access to Data” or ERAD (as in eradicate?) machine.

While all this was initially intended to fight drug trade and terrorism, it is in practice irrelevant to either, and is encouraged to fund police departments.

It is literally armed highway robbery. This “policing for profit” must be stopped, not expanded.

But just last week, US House Rep. Larry Bucshon touted his support of, among other anti-constitutional bills, H.R. 5607, the Enhancing Treasury’s Anti-Terror Tools Act.

ETATTA did not go through regular order, and was rushed to the floor under suspension of the rules. No amendments were considered, debate was limited, and, as usual, few representatives actually read the bill before voting on it.

This carelessness is apparent in the practical force of the law proposed – that in violation of the USA Constitution’s Article I Section I, Article II Section I, Article III Section I, and Amendment IV, bureaucrats in executive agencies are granted even more power to write rules, judge their efficacy and infractions, and at least recommend, and ultimately execute, new actions as already imposed upon Americans as by “civil asset forfeiture,” without warrant, probable cause, or conviction of any crime.  Furthermore, ETATTA expands the role of the Treasury’s power of spying and enforcement to non-monetary assets – essentially encompassing all property.

Politicians have blurred the lines between good-guy and bad-guy, dividing us by class and race, imprisoning a higher percentage of citizens than any other nation, and making us less secure and prosperous to boot.

In other words, our government has become what it’s supposed to protect us from.

I have a written plan to restore respect for the badge and restore faith in all our important institutions.  It’s an already well-respected plan to not only police the police and govern government, but also to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.

Liberty or Bust!

Andrew Horning

How We Fix This Mess

I like talking ideology. But right now, talking about socialism versus fascism versus libertarianism versus the Two Party System is like discussing paint colors while your house is on fire.

Forget ideology; that’s not the problem.

CORRUPTION!

Corruption is the problem. Almost everything else is just a symptom of that.

Let’s be clear about what our nation’s “corruption” really is. We have an unconstitutional (illegal) ruling class that’s intentionally violating our most fundamental laws (legal, moral, economic) to fill their pockets though it harms the rest of us.

That’s called crime when any of the rest of us do it.  When it’s done abusing power in violation of oaths of office and causing economic distress and pointless death it really ought to be called treason.

And that treasonous ruling class is mostly not the people you see on the ballot, or numbly pontificating on C-SPAN.  Heck no.  Follow the money that we’ve been voting for.  You’ll see the people who pull strings from behind a curtain.

There isn’t anybody alive who can’t be threatened, blackmailed or otherwise manipulated by the dark and twisted forces that control our “intelligence” agencies, for example.

We can’t determine to what degree and in what ways we’re being harmed because so many  of our rulers systematically and habitually lie to us about everything. So it may not be off the table to include mass murder in the list of crimes.

The unregulated militarized monster we only call “government” is really a crime ring that’s “too big to fail.”

So let’s fix it.

Here’s how:

1. Stop voting for it! And by “it,” I of course mean the global crony network whose puppets we call The Two Party System.  No, I don’t mean just Democrats and Republicans.  I mean the system of cronies and unfair legal advantages that’s more corporate than it is political.  Don’t give this monstrous mob your approval on Election Day. And do NOT, by default, grant its wishes by staying home on Election Day. Anybody left alone and unchallenged with unchecked power for too long becomes corrupt, and almost all of us have been blowing electoral kisses to the same Powers That Be for over a hundred years nonstop. STOP THAT!!

2. Vote against it. Yes, we’re supposed to vote against people. Remember, this is revolt with your vote! When your house is on fire, you need to kill the fire, not swap it for another.  So first, fire the crooks! Vote for anything or anybody but the puppet show you know to be corrupt!

Remember, even the very best Ds and Rs (and there are some great people in those parties – like Thomas Massie, or Justin Amash, for example) are powerless against this mess without more allies, and your help.  They cannot fix their party, or the people who control it.  YOU must vote against all of that!

Our nation’s founders understood that elections are messy, corrupt and problematic in themselves; so elections’ purpose is very focused – they’re for peaceful revolution. That’s why we vote; so we don’t have to shoot politicians the way our founders did.

3. Use your vote as a weapon, or somebody else might.  Seriously.  It actually happens that people who don’t vote often show up voting…even after they’re dead.  If you think staying home is a protest, you don’t understand how bad things have gotten.

4. Then, and only then, is a discussion of ideology and ‘isms something better than a time and energy wasting distraction.

In summary: Vote as though it’s war! Because, of course, it is.

 

Radically Reasonable

Besides the complaints about jobs, money and immigration that now seem ubiquitous on this planet, the Brexit supporters complained about the “unelected bureaucrats” in Brussels who write laws for all of Europe. This ruling cabal of commissioners was called things like, “…overpaid and arrogant, but opaque and unaccountable…”

USA wonks nodded their smug comprehension, apparently thinking that at least we elect our lawmakers on this side of the pond. At least our lawmakers can be fired.

But we don’t fire them. Nor can we; because most of our laws aren’t written by people authorized to write laws. And we didn’t elect them.

And, no, I’m not even talking about the lobbyists who write most of what Congress makes law.

You see, while the “lawmakers” in the US Congress are of course overpaid, arrogant, and almost completely corrupt, they’re practically irrelevant now.

Unelected bureaucrats in innumerable federal agencies (DOE, FDA, FCC, USDA, IRS…) and even private organizations with governing powers like “The Federal Reserve System,” make thirty times as many regulations as does the US Congress, though Article I Section I of the Constitution for the USA restricts all legislative powers to only congress. Even if counting only those regulations that affect USA citizens directly, bureaucrats wrote sixteen times as many laws as did the US Congress.

Some say the rapidly growing regulatory burden amounts to around $15K per year for every USA household. Whatever the actual cost, unregulated regulation is literally criminal, and very destructive to our prosperity, independence, opportunity and of course, freedom.

What’s worse is that these agencies are also, quite unlike our US Congress, heavily armed against us.

They have been granted legislative, judicial, and executive powers (armed with SWAT teams and military gear…the USDA has machine guns! Even the federal DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION is armed now!!!) without checks and balances, without an electoral accountability, and without any constitutional authority.

And this doesn’t even count the UN…

So,

I propose we limit lawmaking to only lawmakers, as the constitution demands.

I propose a sunset rule or constitutional amendment – a 10-year expiration date for all non-constitutionally specified agencies, laws, powers and programs to gracefully remove, or at least review for reinstatement, everything that’s not specifically written into the constitution.

I propose a Rule of Law reboot, to affirm that politicians must obey laws too…at last.

I propose we stand down our global military “whack-a-mole” machine, and concentrate on defending our homeland instead of browbeating and manipulating the world.

I propose that our government issue only sound money as constitutionally required, and allow free market trade and monetary alternatives as our constitution also demands (Amendments 9 and 10 in particular).

All this is what we’re supposed to be doing anyway. It’s what many of us think is what’s happening now.

It’s unfortunate that this sane, legal, proven sensibility would be nothing less than a revolution.

What’s fortunate is that it already belongs to us. We need only to choose it on Election Day.

About Our Guns…

Let’s get something straight about the 2^nd Amendment that has little to do with personal protection or fighting off an ungoverned government:

The second amendment is about citizens taking PERSONAL responsibility for violence!  Citizen militias are much, much less likely to reelect warmongers and meddle with other people’s countries.  And we willingly, anti-constitutionally, surrendered our militia system in 1903 to build a professional, global, war machine.   …Just what our founders warned us to never, ever do.

The USA Constitution‘s Article I, Section 8:15 does grant Congress the rather scary authority, “To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions.”

Politicians (including judges) apparently stop reading here, thinking this grants the federal government essentially total military power and authority over everything, including you; you uppity citizen.

Article I, Section 8:16 further grants Congress authority “To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress.”

This is considerable power over militias, but look at the delimiter, “…governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States…” (bold is my added emphasis)

That should make us think about what the state constitutions say about the “Part of them” not governed by the feds, but we’ll get to that shortly.

Article I, Section 10:3 provides enough confusion in today’s context that, without the state constitutions, you might get the wrong idea about militias: “No State shall, without the Consent of Congress… keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace …or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.”
If you can’t “keep Troops” in peace time, how could a state respond to invasion or other imminent danger?

Article II Section 2 should provoke some thought, though: “The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States.”

So, the POTUS is NOT the CIC of the militias until an actual declaration of war by the US Congress.  The militias aren’t “federalized” until an actual declaration of war by the US Congress.   And  an actual declaration of war by the US Congress hasn’t happened since WWII.

Again, this won’t make proper sense without state constitution context.

So, for Indiana, for example, the Indiana Constitution’s Article 5, Section 12 is where things ought to start coming together: “The Governor shall be commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and may call out such forces, to execute the laws, or to suppress insurrection, or to repel invasion.” (again, boldface is my emphasis, but you really ought to be raising your eyebrows now. This is even as amended in 1984. This is still law!)

Here’s Article 12, Section 1 of the Indiana Constitution, which was amended as recently as 1974:

“A militia shall be provided and shall consist of all persons over the age of seventeen (17) years, except those persons who may be exempted by the laws of the United States or of this state. The militia may be divided into active and inactive classes and consist of such military organizations as may be provided by law.”

OK, there it is, Hoosiers. I’m supposed to be in the militia, arthritis and all. So are you. Anybody over 17, unless a conscientious objector or otherwise excluded by law, is the militia. We are constitutionally to be more like Switzerland, where kids learn gun safety early on, and everybody plays a part in the defense of the Canton/County, state and nation.  And we used to be until around 1903.  Even more recently, kids still learned gun safety…in public schools!

So, now, still, by law, you are supposed to be trained in the use of weapons, as a militia member, including the sort of weapons that’d make Nancy Pelosi scream, as in Indiana’s Article I Section 32, “…for the defense of themselves and the State.”

(This is why, dammit, you have to read both your state and federal constitutions to get the whole picture when it comes to anything having to do with politics.)

There’s more, of course, but I need to get to the point:
We’re not doing any of this at all, and we need to. Pronto.  

…Why, you may ask?

I’ll repeat this because it’s important:

The second amendment is about citizens taking PERSONAL responsibility for violence!  Citizen militias are much, much less likely to reelect warmongers and meddle with other people’s countries.

Without going into how, why or when we became a global empire of fear and aggression, I want to as quickly as possible, and by big steps, nullify this self-destructive mess, and enforce/invoke/do the constitutions, as written; to restore our freedom, prosperity, opportunity, justice and security, for all.

I want to stand down our professional, global, permanent war industry.  That would not only reduce the obvious blowback of constantly blowing up other people’s countries and people and wedding parties, it would make us more secure here at home.

And a lot richer!

We could afford to actually keep the promises we make to our soldiers in both regular and “National Guard” ranks. We’ve currently no way to keep up with the escalating costs of medical care and pensions. Not until we massively cut our global monstrosity of destruction, and return our military to its proper role and structure in national defense. Real national defense.

I want kids to learn about both the danger and proper use of weapons. That would not only raise up a nation better able to defend itself, it would also greatly reduce the irresponsible, stupid accidents, and unchecked violence in places like Chicago (where guns are essentially illegal and therefore ubiquitous in all the wrong hands) we now suffer.

And I want our armies out of the control of all the wrong people. You know that our government sold out. If you’re reading this, you probably know a good part of our global weaponry is unleashed in service to our financial sector’s fiat currency scams, the “petrodollar” scheme, the CIA (which I’d like to kill, gut and mount on the wall as a warning to future generations that we must never allow such a thing again) and the military industrialists we were warned about by a dozen USA Presidents.

There’s nothing civilized about delegating away all our violence and acting like it’s right. The damage we do to our own children’s lives, minds, bodies, careers and family lives, just to soothe our trembling nerves, is both embarrassing, and sin.

Putting this right would be a major part of making our government go legit, at long last, with world peace a possible side effect.
Would that be so bad?

It’s our decision. We can make this next Election Day a peaceful revolution to finally make good on the dreams of 1776. Please think on it.