Galley Slave Tsar

The Russian people have suffered for centuries under the likes of vicious tyrants such as Tsar Ivan the Terrible, Joseph Stalin, and now Vladimir Putin. The nation has gone from a political form of absolute imperial monarchism to Marxian communism to a mostly corrupt form of democracy today while the average Russian citizen remains virtually a peon barely managing to survive.

With each new form of government a different class of parasite grabs the wealth. That’s the sad situation with most nations and governments today, including the United States of America. The aristocracy and political leaders find nefarious ways to the guild their existence with golden privileges and perks at the expense of the common people.

Nowhere is this more evident than in present day Russia under former communist KGB thug and perennial political boss, Vladimir Putin. This man has the nerve to compare himself to a "galley slave," for his “services” to the nation, but if that is true certainly everyone should aspire to be a galley slave.

Since Putin has been at the pinnacle of Russian political power over the last 12 years or so he has managed to acquire 58 various aircraft, 20 homes and palaces, each with opulent fittings worthy of the Tsars, 4 lavishly appointed yachts, at least 11 luxury wristwatches worth an estimated $700,000, and a wealth of other luxurious perks that would make the former Tsar’s green with envy, including a $75,000 toilet on a presidential jet.

No wonder this guy doesn’t want to quit his job anytime soon according to a detailed and documented report published under the title "The Life of a Galley Slave" by opposition leader Boris Nemtsov which denounces the situation as a "blatant and cynical challenge" to the more than 20 million Russian people who can barely make ends meet.

"We absolutely cannot put up with this," he declares.

The Kremlin portrays Putin as a man of simple tastes and he denies rumors that he has built up a vast personal fortune. But Nemtsov’s report details in 32 pages how the former KGB agent has expanded the trappings of the office of president since he rose to power in 2000.

Putin refers to himself in public as "your humble servant." In a declaration filed this year, the report said, Putin reported an income of 3.6 million rubles ($113,000), and listed three old domestic cars and a trailer hitch handed down by his father as the vehicles he owns.

But nine new residences have been added to the presidential real estate since Putin first became head of state in 2000. Along with 15 helicopters, the 43 other aircraft available to Putin include an Airbus, two Dassault Falcon executive jets and an Ilyushin Il-96 airliner that features an $18-million cabin fitted out by jewelers - and that toilet which, the report says, cost close to $75,000.

There are 700 automobiles at the disposal of the presidential administration, including an armored Mercedes limousine Putin can use to commute to the Kremlin from his country estate.

In addition to that suburban Moscow residence, Novo-Ogaryovo, and Bocharov Ruchei, his summer base in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, Putin also has the run of two palaces by the Baltic, villas on the Volga and a ski lodge in a nature reserve in the Caucasus Mountains.

A 53.7-metre yacht with a designer interior, a spa pool, waterfall and wine cellar is relegated to second best, as the top of the flotilla is a five-decked yacht with a Jacuzzi, barbecue, a maple wood colonnade and a huge bathroom faced in marble.

Putin’s 930-hectare (2,300-acre) residence on Lake Valdai in northwestern Russia has a cinema, a bowling alley and a "presidential church" of all things since he is not known to be a religious man.

His three-storey residence near Saratov, on the Volga River southeast of Moscow, has German chandeliers and Italian furniture, and features a billiard room, a winter garden, a pool and sauna.

All of this is going on while "Russia is continuing to die out ... the country has lost more than five million people, an African level of corruption has fettered the business activity and daily life of the country, and Russia's dependence on natural resources has only deepened during the years of Putin's rule," says Nemtsov’s report.

Oh, well; that’s life under the tyranny of a galley slave Tsar.

$16 Trillion

Sixteen trillion dollars:

That’s about how much money the United States of America is in debt to creditors today – a sum which won’t be paid off anytime soon, if ever.  

And that debt is growing by leaps and bounds. Millions of dollars are added to the total every few minutes. Interest alone just to service this mountain of debt is now accumulating at the rate of about $200 billion every year.

It’s going to get worse.

Sooner or later the bubble is going to pop, and when it does there’s literally going to be hell to pay. The time is fast approaching when the United States government will have no choice but to default on its loans. Uncle Sam will become a deadbeat.

If that happens, the value of the U.S. dollar will plummet. If the government decides to print more cash to pay off the loans, the value of your money and mine will likewise plummet. It’s a no-win situation for every American rich and poor.

Former president George W. Bush started the trouble with wild military spending and on the unnecessary wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Barack Obama is compounding the problem by doing absolutely nothing to stop the profligate spending.

Romney and Ryan really don’t have a clue about how to stop the pending avalanche but at least they recognize there is a problem.

Perhaps the first people to be screwed will be the post-World War II generation of baby boomers, myself included, who are just now beginning to retire on the government’s promise to pay social security and Medicare benefits. Their savings have already been decimated by the housing implosion brought on by George W. Bush so they will need their retirement benefits more than ever.

One thing is for certain. The last people to suffer will be those on the government payroll. They’ll continue to get theirs with honey on top.

We know that the GSA scandal was just the tip of the iceberg. Now we learn that a small group of federal judges in the western U.S. circuit are planning to spend more than $1 million taxpayer dollars on a Maui Hawaii conference (vacation).

They’ll stay at the upscale Hyatt Regency Maui Resort & Spa in rooms costing 230 to $250 per night for four nights. Accommodations alone are expected to total more than $500,000, plus each participant will enjoy per diem expenses starting at a base level of $289. Add to that the travel costs and the total is outrageous for four days of conference activities which could just as well be accomplished over the Internet at a fraction of the costs.

These judges have been spending this kind of taxpayer cash every year now for several years and they’re not about to give up their lavish perks without a fight.

Meanwhile, nearly $100,000 worth of "coffee break refreshments" was among the itemized expenses revealed Friday from two controversial Veterans Affairs conventions, whose combined price tag topped $5 million, including $52,000 wasted on "Patton-style" video that surfaced earlier this week.

“As we learn more about these conferences, I am more and more concerned about the clear lack of leadership, accountability, and transparency at VA," U.S. Rep. Jeff Miller, said in a written statement.

"To see that VA employees were treated to tens of thousands of dollars in refreshments, a $300,000 Audio Visual Center and a night of Karaoke ($863) does not invoke confidence in employees who are entrusted with the nation’s monies for veterans."

The price tag on the VA conferences far exceeds the roughly $830,000 spent by the General Services Administration at a 2010 Las Vegas conference, a lavish affair that drew outrage on Capitol Hill.

With out of control spending like this, it’s no wonder America is underwater in debt to the tune of $16 trillion and there is no end sight.

American Christians Are Victims?

American Christians Are Victims?

Have you heard the news?

Christians in America are now becoming the victims of hostility because a growing number of Americans are exercising their First Amendment rights by demanding separation between church and state.

That’s how the Family Research Council and the Liberty Institute see it. And they’re whining loudly about it in a new report that concludes there’s been a rising pattern of hostility toward Christians in America over the past decade.

Their 140-page "Survey of Religious Hostility in America," cites more than 600 examples illustrating what it characterizes as religious animosity shown by judges, government bureaucrats, schools and secular groups.

"It's way beyond anything we had imagined. It's so much more prolific than it's ever been before," groused Kelly Shackelford, president of the Liberty Institute.

“It’s a conflict of world views," said Tony Perkins, president of Family Research Council. "These groups want people to check their faith at the door of the public square.”

Is that so?

Hardly.

This is the kind of stuff they’re crying about:

A Junior-Senior High School valedictorian in Victor, Iowa was told by school authorities that his graduation speech had to be “secular” in nature against his wishes to attribute his academic success to his faith in Jesus Christ.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ordered the removal of a Christian Cross from a government sponsored veterans' memorial on public property in San Diego, holding that it was unconstitutional because it violated the Establishment Clause.

An 8-year-old girl was not permitted to sing "Kum Ba Yah" at a government sponsored Boys and Girls Club in Port Charlotte, Fla., because the song includes the words "Oh, Lord."

A nurse at a government funded hospital was threatened with job termination and loss of license unless she participated in a late-term abortion procedure against her religious convictions.

Public school teachers have been barred from leading prayers with students in the classroom, and students have been told that they may not proselytize their religion in the classrooms during school hours.

And, of course, there’s Obama Care, which would have religious institutions that are not churches provide insurance coverage for contraception to their employees.

These findings and others of similar nature in the report have those who commissioned it shocked – shocked – at what they describe as a pattern of unprecedented hostility toward religion in America.

The report was presented in Tampa just ahead of this week's Republican National Convention. The goal is to raise awareness of these incidents to promote the appointment of judges "who are sensitive to the Constitution," said Shackelford.

Obviously, Shackelford really wants a Republican president to appoint judges who will ignore the United States Constitution First Amendment Establishment Clause and tear down the wall separating church and state which was plainly intended by our nation’s founders.

He wants the United States government and the governments of all the 50 states to sponsor and promote the Christian religion. He demands that our nation become a Christian nation, and anyone who has the nerve to oppose his demands is deemed “hostile” to religion.

Perkins declared that the secular nation that church/state separatists seek was never envisioned by the Founding Fathers, and will not come to be. "That's not the future of our country," he insisted.

These guys don’t know the meaning of hostility toward religion. They actually think that the First Amendment is hostile toward their religion. They cannot or will not grasp the reality that the First Amendment is the greatest government friend their religion ever had because it protects it against government hostility.

Hostility is what happened to the Jews in Hitler’s Nazi Germany. Hostility is being rounded up by the government and forced into concentration and slave labor camps. Hostility is being shot, gassed, or starved to death and then cremated in ovens for the “crime” of being Jewish.

Hostility does not involve being prohibited from proselytizing Christianity in a public school. It’s not about removing government sponsored Christian crosses from public property, or insisting that a nurse do her job at a hospital or work somewhere else.   

The United States government is hardly being hostile toward religion by exempting churches from paying property and income taxes. What kind of hostility is that? All they have to do to enjoy those exemptions is keep their clerical noses out of politics while preaching to their flocks.

But they can’t even do that.

Former Arkansas governor and TV personality, Mike Huckabee, initiated a conference call last Friday with hundreds of Baptist pastors and Christian talk radio hosts in Missouri to coordinate a defense of Rep. Todd Akin as he faces pressure from Republicans to drop his Senate candidacy.

Huckabee at one point compared the National Republican Senatorial Committee to "union goons" who "kneecap" their enemies. Party bosses are "opening up rounds and rounds" of ammunition on Akin and "then running over with tanks and trucks and leaving him to be ravaged by the other side." “This is unprecedented, to see to this orchestrated attempt to humiliate and devastate a fellow Republican,” Huckabee told the pastors.

Now, of course, there is nothing at all wrong with Huckabee exercising his right to free speech, but he encouraged the pastors to aggressively defend Akin to their congregations. Pastors have free speech rights too, just like everyone else, but as soon as they start preaching politics from their pulpits their churches should lose their tax exempt status just like everyone else.

I suppose Huckabee would decry that as hostility toward religion too, but one fact is abundantly clear:

American Christians are not victims.

Romney Ryan Republicans Deserve to Lose

There are many reasons why I would prefer the Romney-Ryan ticket to win the presidency in November, mostly because the Obama Administration has been a fiscal disaster for the nation; a disaster which will only get worse if he is reelected. At least Romney and Ryan, I believe, might restore some sense of fiscal responsibility to the government.

But, alas, Romney, Ryan, and the Republican Party richly deserve to lose.

That’s because the ultra-right-wing religious element of the party will make it extremely difficult for them to win. Once again, in their Biblical zeal they are overreaching, especially on hot button social issues, and that will probably cost them the election.

Frankly, I hope it does. It’s about time the Republican Party threw off the toxic yolk of religious extremists who call all the shots. It’s about time the Republican Party for once becomes attractive to freedom loving fiscally conservative Democrats, Independents, and Libertarians. It’s about time the Republicans became the party of reason.

Too bad it probably won’t happen this time around. The Romney-Ryan ticket can rightly be characterized by the Democrats as Bush-Cheney warmed over. That’s exactly how the Democrats should characterize it. If they do, they will most likely win the election since the United States has still not recovered in spirit from the devastatingly boneheaded blunders committed by George W. Bush.

The Republicans just don’t learn from their mistakes. Once again they are poised to officially place in their platform the call for a so-called "human life or personhood amendment" to the United States Constitution that would outlaw all abortions, even in cases of rape or incest.

"Faithful to the 'self-evident' truths enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, we assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed," the draft platform declares. "We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment's protections apply to unborn children."

In short, if they have their way, the Bible thumping knuckle-draggers of the Republican Party will actually force women by constitutional law to bear the unwanted offspring of rapists and relatives alike.

Nine year-old girls impregnated by their perverted grandfathers would be forced to endure physically and psychologically devastating pregnancies to term. Innocent victims of rape would be forced to carry the fruit of the crime and the psychological impact of it for the rest of their lives.

Every woman in America, once pregnant, would be denied her precious right to liberty in order to accommodate the constitutional rights of a fertilized egg. The state would take control of her body under the guise of the best interests of the unborn “person.”

It would result in an Orwellian nightmare. No reasonable voter will stand for this outrage once they come to realize fully all the implications of it. Even the super conservative voters in the states of Mississippi and Colorado rejected similar “personhood amendments” to their state constitutions after they soberly contemplated all the unintended consequences of such laws.

The Democrats should pound on this point again and again until every prospective voter is aware. They should bring up without fail over and over the utterly stupid, bigoted and ill-informed statements of Missouri Rep. Todd Akin, a U.S. Senate anti-abortion rights candidate, who actually believes that the bodies of women who are “legitimately raped” can shut down the pregnancy process on their own without the help of a doctor.

Both Romney and Ryan condemned Akin's remarks and called for him to quit his candidacy, but they are obviously hypocrites who know that they are just as anti-abortion in their political philosophy as Aiken. They both have opposed anti-abortion law exceptions for rape and incest, and have called for “fetal personhood” amendments. And, of course they are aware of their own party’s official platform.

Ryan has earned a perfect rating from the National Right to Life Committee for his votes during his 14 years in Congress. The National Abortion Rights Action League tallied 59 votes that Ryan took on abortion-related bills. On each measure, he voted against abortion rights. "I'm as pro-life as a person gets," Ryan told The Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine, in 2010.

Paul Ryan is a religious extremist.

Candidate John McCain tried to reasonably modify the abortion plank four years ago to make exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother, only to be angrily rebuffed by the ultra-right-wing social conservatives in his party. Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council said it would be "political suicide" for him to add such language.

And we all know what happened to John McCain and the Republican Party in 2008.

Little has changed between then and now.

Romney, Ryan and the Republicans deserve to lose.

Religious Savagery in Pakistan

Pakistani police have arrested an illiterate mentally disabled Down syndrome afflicted 11-year-old girl from a Christian family after a mob of 150 Muslim savages angrily accused her of blasphemy and threatened to burn down Christian homes outside the capital of Islamabad.

Her parents have been taken into protective custody following threats and other Christian families have fled.

"From the reports I have seen, she was found carrying a waste bag which also had pages of the Koran," said Paul Bhatti, Pakistan's minister for National Harmony; that she was known to have a mental disorder; and that it seemed "unlikely she purposefully desecrated the Koran."

"This infuriated some local people and a large crowd gathered to demand action against her. The police were initially reluctant to arrest her, but they came under a lot of pressure from a very large crowd, who were threatening to burn down Christian homes."

More than 600 people have fled from the Christian neighborhood. Christians make up a tiny 1% religious minority in Pakistan.

A local resident accused the little girl of burning pages of the Muslim holy text after she gathered paper as fuel for cooking. Qasim Niazi, the officer in charge of the police station near where the incident took place, said that the girl told him she had no idea there were pages of the Quran inside the documents she burnt.

"The mob wanted to burn the girl to give her a lesson," he said.

Pakistani law provides that it is a crime punishable by life imprisonment or even death to insult Islam, the Quran or the Prophet Mohammed. Many of those accused of blasphemy have been killed by violent mobs before they can even go to trial.

Critics of the blasphemy laws say they are being used to persecute religious minorities. Civil rights activists have urged reform. But the critics and those who advocate a change in the laws too often become targets themselves.

Last year, for example, Shahbaz Bhatti, the minister for minority affairs, was killed after calling for the repeal of the blasphemy law. His death came just two months after the murder of Punjab Governor Salman Taseer, who also spoke out about the issue.

This horrific story represents a perfect example of just one of the many problems I have with religion. Religion has always given people a fallacious excuse to become violent.

It also provides credible evidence that the “substance” of all religions are entirely imaginary. After all, if religion involved realities in existence there would be no need for adherents to become violent in instances of blasphemy – the God would simply take care of the problem himself.

Religious adherents become violent because blasphemy and the non-believer threaten their fantasy, a fact which they know instinctively and unconsciously.  They get upset because they know the blasphemer has it right but they do not under any circumstances want to consciously accept it.

It’s the same reason why religious adherents demand that governments sponsor their gods. Without government support of the fantasy the believer feels a sense of apprehension and doubt about his own beliefs. They feel secure only when everyone believes, and if anyone doesn’t believe – even if she’s a mentally disabled 11 year old child – the savages think they have an excuse to commit murder and mayhem.  

The predictable result: religious savagery in Pakistan.

Robin Hood by Government

Robin Hood of Sherwood Forest that celebrated legendary “good guy” of old who robbed the rich to give to the poor was certainly no friend of government if I remember the story correctly. He was constantly dodging the nasty sheriff of Nottingham who wanted him hanged.

But now it seems that the government has adopted the essence of Robin Hood with open arms; in fact, the government has become the modern times Robin Hood. Taking from the rich to give to the poor is the standard government philosophy in America and all over the world these days.

While Democrats and Republicans bicker about ways to increase revenue for the government coffers they all agree that a great way to do it is to take from the people they think are responsible for the present day financial crisis; those who finance American growth by trading in stocks and other securities in the financial markets.

You know – those “greedy Wall Street speculators.” No politician will ever admit that it was the government which caused the financial crisis, not the free market participants. It’s the government that controls the economy; the government that spends the money; and the government that makes up the rules.

So what better way to punish the innocent free marketers and raise revenue at the same time than creating a “Robin Hood tax?” It’s the government’s latest idea about how to rob the rich. Naturally, it has the complete backing and approval of the labor unions as well.

It would supposedly impose a tiny three-hundredths-of-a-penny tax on financial trades, an amount that seems like a pittance now, but once instituted could easily go much higher. Supporters say the tax would cost the average investor just $1 per year, but could generate up to $35 billion annually from the high-stakes, high-volume high-speed computer trades critics claim increase market volatility.

Big deal; Government spends that kind of money every few minutes.

"It would benefit long-term investors with stability," Rep. Peter Defazio, D-Ore., said. "It would benefit the economy with a longer-term perspective on investing, and it would reward patient capital as opposed to this useless daily second-by-second, millisecond-by-millisecond churning that goes on."

Defazio is an example of a critic who doesn’t understand the financial markets. Those high volume traders he derides are the market makers; the ones who make the markets work; the ones who provide the market liquidity which allows the average investor to find buyers and sellers for his security within seconds.

Opponents of the tax insist it would not eliminate high-frequency traders but send them offshore to avoid the tax altogether. They also say it would hit mutual and pension fund trades, thereby affecting everyone.

"It's something that sounds good in theory, but it won't work in practice and instead will actually cause great damage to the economy and in doing that it actually reduces the amount of taxes collected rather than increasing them," David John of the Heritage Foundation said. "This is something that will reduce jobs, move them overseas and reduce rates of returns for union retirement funds… This is something that has a real potential to do damage."

England already has a half percent tax on stock trades. The presidents of Germany and France support a global financial tax.

Of course they do. The statist governments of Europe never met a tax they didn’t love. And look where they are now.

It’s just more Robin Hood by government.

GSA Gravy Train Still Rolling

That General Services Administration (GSA) scandal involving the parasite Jeff Neely, lounging with a glass of expensive wine in a Las Vegas premium hotel hot tub during a four-day Western regional office conference where $823,000 was spent on extravagant entertainment for just 300 employees, is the least of the damage according to new revelations.

“He was the tip of the iceberg," says Rep. John Mica, R-Fla. Mica’s committee is now looking into wasteful spending at as many as 77 other lavish GSA conferences in which the agency dumped taxpayer money with little or no record of the spending, no receipts, and no way to account for the cost associated with travel, while also doling out generous bonuses to their party guest employees.

A conference held in Crystal City, Va., for just one example, engaged in what was called a "team-building" exercise in which millions of dollars in taxpayer money was doled out to GSA employees. More than 3,700 employees received bonuses averaging about $1,000 each adding up to a whopping $3.6 million.

Another example involves about 100 high-ranking GSA employees assigned to work from home billing $750,000 on travel over only nine months, a fact which made even the infamous Jeff Neely blanch.

"OMG," Neely wrote in a 2011 e-mail to a regional commissioner who circulated a spreadsheet that included travel-reimbursement costs for virtual employees. "100 virtuals and most of them with some pretty serious grades… [W]ell this is a fine mess we've gotten ourselves into.”

”This will take your breath away. Don't share further," he warned his colleagues in another e-mail. The average reimbursement was $8,000 per virtual employee, according to the Oversight committee's initial findings.

"They tried to do everything they could to cover up the October 2010 Las Vegas fiasco. Now, we're hearing there are dozens more. We're going to drag in all the parties involved and get to the bottom of this scandal," Mica declared.

Right.

Stopping the avalanche of U.S. government spending is like sticking fingers into the holes of a crumbling dyke. Every agency, department, bureau, and office in the entire government is guilty of wasting huge sums of cash that doesn’t belong to them. It’s easy to spend other people’s money.

Just when something responsible is proposed to curb the spending, something equally irresponsible is done to keep the gravy train rolling. In Washington, for instance, a Senate panel has recently approved a $604 billion defense spending bill that reverses proposed Pentagon cuts in Air Force personnel and equipment.

The Appropriations defense subcommittee approved the bill by voice vote. It would provide $511 billion for the base military budget and $93.3 billion for the war in Afghanistan in the fiscal year beginning October 1, 2012. It also provides $800 million to halt the Air Force’s planned cuts.

Don’t count on Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan to stop the spending madness should they get elected in November. Ryan’s highly touted responsible budget plan is not exactly a ticket out of this mess. Under it, government spending increases almost every year over the next decade while tax and other revenue rises year after year. The 10-year deficit will still be $3 trillion.

Ryan’s proposed budget merely slows the rate of government growth will still allowing the budget to grow. His plan would grow government from $3.6 trillion this year to $4.9 trillion in 2022. Obama’s budget would be even worse, ballooning to $5.8 trillion in 2022. Instead of the $3.1 trillion long-term deficit under Ryan's plan, Obama's plan comes with a $6.7 trillion deficit.

So there will be plenty of taxpayer cash for GSA and all the other government agencies to waste in the future regardless of who is elected president.

We can count on that.

The GSA style gravy train will just keep rolling along.

.

Liberty in America: Permission Required

Liberty is well on the way to extinction in the United States of America.

The precious elements of liberty all Americans took for granted and enjoyed during yesteryear require permission and fees today – permission from legions of American gangsters who have carved out every territory in the nation large and small from which to wring out and exploit their hapless victims – their fellow citizens.

Not so long ago in America gangsters and mafia types were looked upon and treated as the criminals they were. They provided liquor when the government prohibited liquor. They furnished prostitution because prostitution was illegal. They dealt in illicit drugs to fill the demand for recreational drugs. They stole; they hijacked; they bribed; they racketeered.

Those gangsters were criminals and when they were caught they paid the price criminals must pay for their crimes. But at least, for the most part, they provided goods and services that many Americans wanted. The average American had little to fear and often something valuable to gain from them.

Today the most vicious and ruthless of the gangsters are not even considered criminals by most Americans, especially those who have lost all perspective as to what it is like to be free.

I’m talking about the parasitical class of lowlifes among us who claim legitimacy for their takings – the politicians and bureaucrats lurking everywhere in plain sight without the slightest apprehension against the wrath of their fellow citizens.  

The old time gangsters provided goods and services that people wanted. But these new style mobsters are like a horde of vampires sucking the juices from the American producers. If America is losing its economic edge in the world – and I think it is – it’s because of these infernal bloodsuckers.

These people are doing things today in the name of the law, justice and legitimacy that would make an old time mafia don blush with shame.

No self respecting gangster in days of old, for instance, would ever dream of extorting their fellow citizens to purchase permission slips for hosting children’s birthday parties in their private homes.

What sort of a maggot species human being would do such a thing?

Why, your neighborhood county supervisor, that’s who.  

The Fauquier County Virginia Board of Supervisors has actually threatened a woman with criminal penalties and fines for the temerity of hosting a child’s birthday party on her private property without permission.

I’m not making this up.

Martha Boneta, owner of a 70 acre farm near the village of Paris, VA, was threatened with nearly $5,000 in fines for selling fresh vegetables, eggs, herbs, produce, and crafts, and throwing unlicensed events, including a birthday party for her best friend's child.

She didn’t have the proper event permits for the party and other events, including wine tastings, craft workshops, and pumpkin carving.

This lady already had a special license issued to her in 2011 that allowed her to run a “retail farm shop,” but the Board of Supervisors changed the “farm sales” classification to require a special permit for activities that were previous including under the license.

So now she’s “out of line” declared Fauquier County Zoning Administrator, Kimberley Johnson. “There were a multitude of violations," said Johnson. She added that Boneta would be able to continue so long as she obtains the proper permits; “She can get an administrative permit for 90 percent of the events being held.”

Birthday parties and pumpkin carvings require permission from the Authority in Fauquier County VA, and that permission requires the payment of tribute to the local legitimate mob.

Add this to the necessity for permits to paint your house, erect a fence, plant a tree, or repave your driveway, and one starts to wonder how long it will be before you have to seek permission and pay a fee to go to the toilet in the United States of America.

I doubt that the Chinese communists require government permission for birthday parties in Beijing. This is a statist nightmare from Hell.

“This affects every farmer. It affects our ability to earn a living to produce and sell on our own land,” said Boneta, in what must qualify as the understatement of the century.

If petty county bureaucrats tried to do this kind of thing to American citizens 100 years ago, they’d have been tarred, feathered, and run out of town on a rail.

Now the people of America just meekly accept the treatment like flocks of frightened sheep. We’re becoming used to exploitation by government parasites.

A few farmers showed up at a board of supervisors meeting with pitchforks to express their support for Boneta, but in the end the thug’s actions were upheld and all went home with tails between their legs.

From now on it seems, permission is required and fees to be paid for what was once considered basic liberty in America.

Our Government God

Imagine today driving your car through the American country side coming to the outskirts of a town displaying prominently a road sign welcoming travelers. “The City of Bigatri, Ohio, Welcomes You…,” says the sign in large black letters, “…White Power Forever!”  

Surely, no one in their right mind in twentieth century America would ever think for a moment that a government municipality in the United States of America has the constitutional right to promote publicly a blatantly racial policy favoring one group of people over all others even if that group constitutes a 99% majority of the population.

Yet when it comes to promoting religion, particularly the Christian religion, over all other religions and non-religious belief, it seems that American governments everywhere are falling all over themselves getting out the word. The folks who run these governments actually think it’s their constitutional right to sponsor Jesus.

A 26-foot tall cross emblazoned with the message "Jesus Saves" stands on a public plot of land smack dab in the town center of the small community of Dugger, Indiana. It was erected two years ago near a high school baseball field with government approval on behalf of the town's Faith Community Church.

"We wanted people to be able to see what the message of the cross represents and get it out to the world in need," the head pastor at the Church declared. The problem with that is it’s not the job of government to promote the message of the cross.

He doesn’t believe that his town is making a religious endorsement. "We knew it was okay because when you look at the separation between church and state, it's just a fact that the government couldn't tell people how to worship ... it would be the same if they allowed a crescent moon to be put up," he added.

Huh? A 26 foot tall cross erected on government property in a town of 955 people is not an endorsement of Christianity? Who does he think he’s kidding?

Now the city is considering selling the plot of land to a group of churches as if that might rectify the constitutional violation. It wouldn’t. They are both deluded. Crescent moons aren’t allowed either.

“The Firefighter’s Prayer” is a 91-year-old memorial featuring a huge Christian Cross, religious symbols and prayers, standing in the parking lot of the Woonsocket Rhode Island municipal fire station to honor hometown soldiers who fought in World War I and II.

Freedom from Religion Foundation wants the Woonsocket Fire Department to remove the display along with a picture of an angel from its website because it amounts to a blatant violation of the U.S. Constitution First Amendment Establishment Clause.

But Mayor Leo Fontaine reaffirmed that the group’s request will not be met without a fight. “We will defend this monument no matter what,” he said, because the monument is a symbol of the community, and the city is prepared to fight to keep the monument where it stands. Fontaine has said that the city will not remove the cross, “under any circumstances,” even though the city is currently facing the possibility of bankruptcy.

A Christian Cross is a symbol of the community? I thought crosses were symbols of Christianity.

Meanwhile, religiously paranoid Missouri voters have approved by a huge majority a State Constitutional Amendment, which, they are convinced, gives them at last the right to express their religious beliefs. They called it the “Right to Pray Amendment.”

The ballot read:

Shall the Missouri Constitution be amended to ensure: That the right of Missouri citizens to express their religious beliefs shall not be infringed; That school children have the right to pray and acknowledge God voluntarily in their schools; and That all public schools shall display the Bill of Rights of the United States Constitution

Voters thought it was necessary to “protect Christianity in the state,” which they believe is under attack. Never mind that they have already enjoyed all these rights under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution for the last 235 years – they just wanted to say it again in order to feel good.  

Kids have always had the right to pray voluntarily in public schools. The First Amendment simply prohibits praying lead by government teachers and administrators.  

But hold on a minute; Kerry Messer, president of the Missouri Family Network admitted the real reason for the Amendment: “The public feels like the Supreme Court took this away from them over 50 years ago by" ruling against mandatory school prayer.“

The reason the measure almost certainly will be approved today is because Missouri’s Christian majority has decided it will no longer do nothing as the godless, the secularist, the non-sectarian wage unholy war against those who share the faith of this nation’s founders.”

So we see once again that this is nothing more than a Trojan Horse employed to circumvent the First Amendment Establishment Clause. Teachers will start leading prayers in public schools again; Intelligent Design will be taught; and the Missouri government authorities will start promoting the Christian religion again.

Our Government God:

It never ends.

Bottom of Form 1

Are You Pregnant?

I knew a woman once, (Ok, a wife, I’m ashamed to admit), who possessed an exceedingly meddlesome know-it-all disposition combined with a big bellicose mouth – a toxic combination for sure.

While vacationing for two weeks on the Island of Cozumel Mexico one winter, lounging by the pool along with several other guests at a seaside hotel, I heard her call out to someone standing several feet away on the opposite side:

“When are you due?” she inquired rather loudly.

Half asleep on my lounge chair, I opened my eyes a crack to see what was going on.

“What?” replied a 30’s something lady in a two-piece black swimsuit.

By this time all eyes of the other guests were staring in our direction directly at my wife.

“WHEN ARE YOU DUE?” she bellowed out even louder than before.

A short pause ensued during which I knew right away that something wasn’t right.

“I’m not pregnant,” the mortified woman retorted tersely, “… just fat.”

A heavy silence followed.

“Oh,” my wife muttered, “sorry.”

It was a moment I shall never forget for the rest of my life as perhaps the most excruciating embarrassment ever experienced. I just covered my face with my hands and sighed, desperately wanting to disappear.  

Of course, my wife had absolutely no business demanding of a perfect stranger, in front of several other perfect strangers, private information about her current reproductive condition.  

It was unforgivable.

This bad memory was prompted by the latest news from the ACLU about a Louisiana public school demanding of female students suspected of being pregnant that they take a pregnancy test. Under school policy, those who are pregnant or refuse to take the test are kicked out and forced to undergo home schooling.

“Welcome to Delhi Charter School, in Delhi, Louisiana, a school of 600 students that does not believe its female students have a right to education free from discrimination. According to its Student Pregnancy Policy, the school has a right to not only force testing upon girls, but to send them to a physician of the school administration’s choice. A positive test result, or failure to take the test at all, means administrators can forbid a girl from taking classes and force her to pursue a course of home study if she wishes to continue her education with the school,” according to the ACLU which has asked them to suspend the policy deemed a blatant violation of federal law and the U.S. Constitution.

Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the federal law that prohibits sex discrimination in federally funded education programs provides that schools may not exclude any student from an education program or activity, “including any class or extracurricular activity, on the basis of such student’s pregnancy, childbirth, false pregnancy, termination of pregnancy or recovery there from.”

The policy also violates the U.S. Constitution Fifth Amendment Due Process Clause and the Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection Clause.

What is the reason for this policy? Why?

It’s against the law. It’s unconscionable. It’s embarrassing. It’s unforgivable.

Public school administrators simply have no legitimate business meddling into the reproductive status of female students. It defies my understanding as to how the statist bastards could come to think that they could ever do such a thing in a free society.

Women in the United States of America, at least in theory, enjoy a constitutional right to procreate and may not be treated differently than male students on the basis of sex.

Thank goodness for the ACLU and more power to them.

They have good reason to settle the question. The government should not ever have the power to ask of free women:

Are you pregnant?