The government is the problem

A buddy of mine and I were talking today about the corrupt nature of our officials. In my opinion, most of them are votes for sale. That is the difference between someone with principles (lives up to their promises and their set of beliefs - regardless of how they are viewed - Like Ron Paul) and someone there to play on the team (compromise). Some of those sales involve monetary gain - direct or indirect, the others just blindly follow what they are told to do and sell out to promises of more political clout in the future (still monetary gain). Then those sellouts turn around and invoke legislation at the beck of their masters devaluing the dollar and in turn their piece of the pie that they sold themselves for dwindles. Who is the idiot now? The government might think the masses are stupid - but they are shooting at us through their own foot because of the ineptitude at believing they know more than than our founding fathers did. Their arrogance continues to be our undoing. In an attempt to play God and tip the scales to protect everyone from nearly all imaginable harm they have harmed everyone and in particular they have dashed the hopes of the middle class and the lowest of the low income. Artificial controls of force cannot overcome the natural order of the world, they can just create harm where none was intended and still not fix the problem.

One day people may finally wake up and realize we don't need an official state, but rather voluntarism. Tiny little areas of unofficial self-government. Micro-agreement nations. We need more and varied nations, not less nations under one oppressive empire, in order to thrive as a people. Only in Liberty do people grow wealthy, for only in freedom can people create wealth out of their own labor. This nation proved it in the 1700 and 1800's. The 1900's only coasted along on that prosperity and in the leaders arrogance and ignorance have we finally come to have squandered it away so far that America's government truly owns nothing but debt.

Just because a person is born, it does not subject them to another's rule of law. In a functional society only by choice and agreement (not force or coercion) can one decide what morality or law they will abide by. What they will give up to gain a specific service from a society. Natural law is supreme to regulatory law. Our great experiment in regulatory law has failed and the false "central" government is demonstrating that failure yet again. The masses have no idea what natural/common law are and they believe the government when it tells them they have admiralty law and jurisdiction over them. The lack of this understanding and the false belief in supreme authority of a lawless government is why we are in the mess we are in. People still cling to the false assumption that government is here to solve our problems. Force is not a solution - you cannot force jobs to be created or force people to be happy, yet millions of people believe the government (force) can do this. Why? Because they have been lied to for eons by people who want unearned reward and credit where no credit is due. We make fun of the absurdity in movies constantly ("Cloudy with Meatballs" as just one of thousands of examples) and yet in real life the media that makes those movies clings to using force and political figureheads to force their ideals and concepts on the unwilling and others go to their representatives and demand their fair share or wave a flag of security through power and have us go to war sacrificing thousands of lives. Why? Because today we know better than our stupid founding fathers who warned of exactly these outcomes. The Congress in 1913 knew more than the founders who warned of a central bank and instituted one. The later Congress' saw that the Federal Reserve was not living up to it's primary mandate to control inflation so they changed the mandate to minimizing inflation. Before the federal reserve the dollar was not on a continual decline - it cycled in value as Gold and Silver still due - but with the federal reserve the dollar continues to decline ad nauseum. This is but one program that has failed our country because a few men decided they knew better than the founders and that it was better to cover up a failure with pretty math and twisted words rather than to undo it. Under the Department of Education our nations science and math abilities have continued to go downhill, not uphill - yet the States and Local governments continue to allow their schools to be dictated to by a federal government that provides 6% of the budget for the school.

It is obvious our government serves one goal - one purpose. That goal is to convince us we need government and they do that by messing with natural law and making things that were already working as well as they can, broken (medical care, retirement, mortgages, elections, free speech zones, airport security, and on and on) then they blame everyone but themselves and create more programs that make it even worse and the cycle continues because we allow it to.

Did you know that at any given moment 90,000 federal government employees are traveling via airplane? (this was a statistic from 2001) That's gotta be cheap, yes? In 2009 the federal government directly employed 2,823,777 civilians! That doesn't include the contractors, or the military, folks!! That's one federal goverment employee for every 110 people in the country. Is there not a problem with this? Using the numbers from March of 2009 the average payroll is 64,192 per person. That means that each of the 110 citizens are paying $583 a year in taxes just to cover the salary of civilian government employees. Of course, not all 110 of those people are working or reporting their income, so the others pick up more of the share. Also, as a side note, I know that the military is being completely left out of this average salary.

It boggles the mind to imagine that the federal employees are really just a drop in the financial bucket, though.

What about the entire budget of the DOD & Homeland Security for 2011? 929 Billion Dollars. Oh, but doesn't include the interest on the debt we've incurred to cover these "recent" wars. The interest stands at a paltry $431.5 Billion dollars a YEAR. That's almost half of the entire defense budget! But, then debt is okay, right? Let's just keep raising the ceiling!

Currently we owe more money to foreign entities than we make in a year (GDP) - that doesn't mean more than we give in taxes, but rather more than we as a nation produce in a year that is then taxed.

Interesting applet to check out on the debt - this application shows other countries as well.

Some numbers show that the Interest payments on the debt for this year will be only $386 billion dollars. That's money going completely down the drain and doing nothing for us. Not that we need a Department of Education, but it is only $31 billion a year - to give you a contrast on "importance".

So, how did we get here? Oh, yeah, we gave an entity the right to use force to protect our Liberty and somehow that mutated into protecting us from nearly everything that could go wrong in our lives and now we are in a cycle that will take eons to get out of, even if we immediately cut all spending in half - including Social Security. If we did that today, it would lower the budget to 1.91 Trillion and give us 430 billion to put on the principle of the debt. However, since the interest on the debt cannot be halved another set of programs would have to lose funding to total an additional $193 billion in order to actually cut the expenses in half. That actually means that if we halved our total spending for the federal government, then over the next year we could actually only pay down the debt $237 billion.

So, if we cut all spending in half, then we could pay down the US debt at $237 billion a year! That means we could payoff the debt in just 59 years!

Not excited? Me neither. However, folks - this is how big a mess we are actually in. Even if we literally took every dollar our richest people in America have it would not make a tiny dent in the debt. Best case scenario it would lower it down to 12 Trillion dollars - it is believe that our richest only have around 1.3 Trillion combined, however. You see, you can't go based on what they hold in paper on the Stock market, because as soon as they started selling to give that to the government the stocks would fall and they would get much less for each share as it sold.

What else can we do? We can raise taxes. Do I believe that would help? No. I believe it would simply destroy more businesses and result in more layoffs and more unemployment.

How do we get out of this and never come back? We have to start paying off the debt and cut government spending immediately. Unfortunately this will result in layoffs and unemployment too. However, once we can get the burden of wreck-less government spending off our backs then we can begin to work on prosperity again and take the responsibility for ourselves and each other back on our personal shoulders where it belongs.

No, I am not proposing utopia, but then there is no such thing. Liberty is as close as we will get on Earth - and it will include suffering and winners and losers. However, the use of force to help each other is no help at all. As our democrat brothers in Congress have been pointing out recently - the poor are worse off than ever and that is following a War on Poverty by our US government that has only made the poverty level go up.

Government is not the solution - how many more examples do we really need to understand that?

Debt Ceiling has nothing to do with defaulting

Spending beyond our income has EVERYTHING to do with defaulting!

I want to clarify for people what the debt ceiling is. It is the agreed upon maximum debt our government decided it would allow itself to go into. It is the same as a credit card limit. If you hit your limit, but you still need credit to make your day to day costs, you cannot simply vote yourself a new limit, can you? Surely no one is going to believe that increasing that limit will ensure they can continue to make the minimum payment and all their other bills forever? If your credit cards were all maxed and you needed credit to continue paying your bills, will increasing the amount you owe help you bring that under control? It may provide a temporary shelter but in the end you will owe more and your monthly payments will go up and you will have less money to meet your primary obligations.

But many bloggers and the President of the United States would have you believe that only by raising the debt ceiling (the credit limit of the US Government) can we avoid a default. Not only will this NOT avoid a default (it may delay it) but it will ensure that if we default later we will have many more angry debt collectors at our door.

There is only one way to reduce our debt and that is to cut unnecessary spending. Washington needs to start right with their own salaries and Congress needs to start by halving their salaries and eliminating their retirement program. They have failed our country and no longer deserve the lavish lifestyles they lead on our tax dollars. Most of them are very successful people and can easily afford to pay for expenses above and beyond what a typical private sector employee would be reimbursed for periods of travel. Alcohol with dinner? Pick that up with your own dime. $50-$500 dollar entree? You can pay for any amount over $20 yourself "honorable" person. Hell, they ought to be at home enjoying the same thing most of us are - $13 Lasagna, $8 tacos, or a $10 Pork Lion with trimmings for the whole family.

The President gets a $400,000 salary that is on top of a nearly 100% expense budget. He gets to bank all of that income to save for when he is out of office. A private sector employee earning $50,000 a year would be fortunate to save that up in a 401K in 52 years of employment and somehow this is justified as a payment for one year of services rendered? The office of the President is about service. Yes, he could probably make more in the private sector - it is supposed to be about public service, not about the ability to buy two or three houses a year. But wait, there is more! He's in on the same retirement that the Congress is and boy is it a good one! Not only that, but he gets a life long security detail. The latter I can understand to some degree. These things are not free, however and they are paid for by the taxpayer.

The only way to avoid default is to sit down and remove from the budget all the programs, foreign aid (in all forms - including military), until the government is spending less than it is earning - including the payments on the debt and it's interest. Right now that would require removing $4 billion dollars a day from the budget. Seriously? They can't find a way to quit spending $4 billion a day? Moreover how in the name of all that is holy are we spending even that much a day?! Then they need to sit down with the Constitution and remove all programs that are not directly provisioned for in the Powers Clause and phase them out.

They do have another choice - they could sell some assets. They do hold a ton of land (80% of Nevada for example), sadly most of that land is out in areas people could careless about right now, but there are several locations in premium metropolitan areas that would fetch top dollar. Think IRS and Federal buildings in downtown or mid-town areas. They could sell these and pay down the debt. We don't need the IRS in its current gigantic size - the fairtax could help ween us off of them and as the legislators worked to remove more programs. The government should never have ran many of the current programs that should have only been tried in the private sector. We could eventually eliminate the need for taxes whether they be income or consumption. The federal government was intended to run off import fees and tarrifs and that is where it needs to be returned to. Power of Law, not $$ should be what makes the States respect the powers they gave the Federal Government - but only those powers directly provisioned and nothing more.

Another major thing they could do is eliminate the Federal Reserve. Only with the Reserve out of the way will we have a chance to strengthen the dollar. The Reserve has done nothing but devalue the dollar since 1916 and it's owners have no reason to do anything other than keep the US in perpetual debt. We the slaves to the Federal Reserve, working and paying our debt as income and a myriad of other taxes forever. Is that what we want for our Children and our grand Children?

The next step would be for Congress to ask themselves, "Does this program need the power of force behind it to work?" That is all government is: force. George Washington knew this. Government has been licensed by the people to use force. It is an archaic and deadly institution. People should only use force to protect themselves, not to get their way. What program needs the power of force behind it?

The military? Yes.
NASA? No - privatize it.

(I love our space program, but why does it need to be government ran?) As 4,000+ people found out last week the government can't keep people employed once a program is defunded.

The Postal Service needs force? No!

Privatize it and wish it luck in the world of competition. It did back when the country was rugged. UPS has gone for bailouts a time or two, but Fedex has proven it can be done as long as people are willing to pay the price it costs to get it there.

Retirement funds need force? No!

We are all investing in a lie and we know it. The Congress takes the money and spends it, then they have to borrow to get money to the people who are supposed to be collecting from money that was invested for them. It wasn't, it's gone and it is only costing our children and their children and their children to fund us now.

Medical Insurance needs force? Really? No!

Medi-care/cade are failing seniors and poor people constantly. Doctor's can't afford to provide care to people on the program unless they are willing to gouge other patients or work as if they are in a non-profit. Health Insurance should not be used for 80% of care, because by using it people don't care that an office visit can cost $200 as they only pay $15-$20. By hiding the "true" expense away people are numb to the actual charge and it doesn't irritate them enough to realize that government mandates and regulations are why medical care is so expensive. Those who don't have insurance understand that the teams of administrators, lawyers, and insurance that doctors have to carry is why healthcare is so expensive - not because doctors are greedy. By adding the veil of "insurance" it removed the consumer choice in spending from the equation and made healthcare have no reason to be competitive, but instead maximum price fixed regardless of the efficient processes of the hospital or doctor's office you are visiting. Insurance has ensured price-fixing rather than negate it.

Of course, we can't just flip a switch and turn these programs off - many would need to be spun off into the private sector where they may flourish or die and be bought up by other companies and improved or eventually dismissed as a failed idea. Others, like Social Security would need to be phased out in the long term and replaced with a different idea completely from the private sector and mildly regulated by the States. Sure, we love the idea of a Federal guarantee, but the reality is that it is the taxpayer that guarantee's it. We are guaranteeing our own possible loss, by law. So, just like what happened in the bailouts we point a gun at ourselves and make ourselves bail out the big business that "failed" at our own expense. Some guarantee....

Here is what I wrote my Senator - Senator Bill Nelson.

Senator Nelson,

I am all for any legislation to prevent default, unless it includes raising the debt ceiling. We cannot borrow our way out of debt and raising the ceiling only increases the debt.

Americans who have not been fooled into believing that the only way not to default is to increase the credit limit would likely agree that the only proper method is to immediately terminate spending that creates more debt. Focus on basic needs and paying off the debt. That means we need to cut more than 4 billion dollars of every day's expenditures. That comes out to 1.5 Trillion a YEAR. Don't settle for any cool looking plans that save a couple trillion over 10 years or 20 years. That won't solve anything.

The government is spending like a drunken sailor and it doesn't just do it occasionally, it does it every second of every day. Time for the government to realize it depends on the working American and right now working America can no longer afford drunken government.

If Congress would like to fix its image the first thing it needs to do is include pay cuts to all Congress and immediate termination of their retirement program. There is absolutely no reason to be paying millionaires and successful business people a retirement check for serving as little as one term in Congress. Yes, it's not a huge drop in the bucket, but it is a drop and the little drops add up. But that drop would send a message to the American citizen that Congress is finally waking up and cutting where it "hurts them" first. Remember "public servant" is the key. Sure Congress deserves just compensation for travel and expenses, but no more than the average employee would get for travel and expenses. Most employers would scoff at an employee trying to expense wine and beer with dinner or dinners costing over $25 a plate. Time for Congress members to pay out of pocket if they think they deserve better. Most of them can certainly afford it without the taxpayer's help.

Clean that up as a part of the bill and who knows - Congress might actually click up in ratings.

A letter to Senator Bill Nelson of Florida

Thanks for your fourth of July message.

Please note, as a veteran, I take issue at anyone calling this nation a democracy. I didn't serve so a few people in Washington could vote out our rights and I am tired of the progressive erosion of our freedoms done in the name of "democracy".

Please take some time to research what the founding fathers thought of democracy. In a nutshell democracy is anarchy of the majority. A republic - what this nation is supposed to be - is protection of the minority and majority through rule of law.

Put aside the nonsense of the special interests and help to issue in a return to limited federal government that follows the law of the land. The federal government is not the central government of America - it is a body created to perform a very few limited functions assigned it by the States and the People who hold the true sovereignty and power in this land.

Right now our federal government operates in anarchy and until it removes all functions that are outside it's Constitutional authority it will remain a lawless entity that serves only itself no matter how much propaganda it issues forth to convince people it is for the greater good.

Internet Explorer 9 - another business tax

Microsoft has a new browser, but it is not for anyone running Windows XP64 or below! That's right, Microsoft has taken a stance that they would rather lose IE market share than support their own Operating Systems. Granted XP is 10 years old and about to be phased out of support, but XP64 is only 7 years old and has been overlooked by Microsoft since Vista 64 was released. I am so glad I spent $300 for a copy of it to be constantly left out of the 64 bit loop simply because I was an early supporter!

I just read an interesting article where Mr. Methvin of InformationWeek describes older versions of IE as the hidden tax of web development. I don't disagree with his position as it is true that older versions of IE do add to development costs and time, thanks to their lack of standards compliance.

I added that there is another very real tax that Microsoft places on the serious web community each time it releases a new browser. It's true you don't normally hear about it from the marketing engines or the mainstream press in regards to the costs it places on the companies, but behind the scenes the IT departments buckle down for another very expensive episode of preventing the "critical update" and determining whether or not to re-write a major portion of their internal sites to work with the latest IE. This it the other tax that Microsoft places on all companies each time it releases a new browser - the cost of redesigning parts of their sites to keep it functional in the new IE.

Yet again, the list of sites that have issues with a new version of IE is growing and the IE9 users are running to the forums of these companies and demanding that the companies "fix" their sites to work with IE9.

Let's not forget the MS has yet again set their browser "upgrade" as a critical update thus forcing IT staffs world-wide to spend cycles ensuring their Vista and Windows 7 boxes will not be upgraded until they have tested all internal and business dependent external sites will work with IE9. The testing is not free, it's a very exhaustive and expensive process and even when the IT department is confident that the latest version of IE9 can be safely released to a sub-population of the company's staff they often times find themselves up all night trying to fix an issue that a few employees discover breaks their ability to do their jobs or that a VP discovers breaks a special system they had not shared with the department. I speak from experience and although I love that Microsoft is why I had income I don't enjoy being forced to stay up all night to ensure my company can do their jobs.

My advice to all those companies is to let IE die and begin using real browsers that design themselves to work with the standards and include features to ensure sites that already exist are displayed and function correctly. Not all of those browsers will be able to perform the functions that IE6 or Netscape did or in-house development, but they may be able to take over for some areas and free your IT department from the chore that is IE "upgrade" testing.

It is time for the bully on the block to learn that every time they build another car the countries of the world should not have to redesign their roads.

I find that every time I author a site I have to design for real browsers, then drop in hacks for IE. IE is the hidden cost, not just IE6 or 7, but IE period. IE9 may be the best yet at standards compliance, yet there are discussions about CSS issues that didn't exit in IE8 and even companies like Facebook have users complaining about basic functions being broken for them in IE9.

Microsoft can know that I, for one, will not develop for IE9. If my site looks okay on IE9, then great, but as an end-user that doesn't have one of their "new" Operating systems I have no way to test for it, and I could careless to develop for something that I cannot get easy access to.

The only new cool feature I see in IE9 is the 3D graphic rendering engine. Call me a pessimist but I see the so-called "integration with Windows 7" as just a great thing to be exploited via another set of lovely security loop-holes. Honestly, the age of playing games in the browser is just around the corner and I can assure you Microsoft will not be the only contender with full 3D rendering.

Before I go, I will share what I like about IE9. I like that they finally woke-up and presented a GUI that is about surfing the web and not about toolbars. It is almost where IE6 was but with tabs, in that you can move everything to one bar at the top, sadly, though they aren't quite as good at providing room as the Chrome browser, but they are very close (as a matter of fact at quick glance it looks almost identical). I'll never forget the bullet point of IE7 that it provided more real-estate for viewing the web, but literally had three locked rows, all rows that could be moved into one row on IE6. Yeah, that's progress "Microsoft style!"

Virtual Property Discussion

-=-=-=-This is a clip of an entry I wrote in regards to a "debate" about who has rights to what in a game. Several compelling legal arguments were brought to the table stating that the gamers have a right to their virtual items that they purchased in a game. As compelling as the arguments were, they were legally based on a flawed idea.-=-=-=-=-

I argue that if the players ever win such suits and laws are made placing the game owners into perpetual virtual access providers regardless of sustainability (financial and technical) then we will witness a marked decrease in the availability and variety of virtual entertainment. The concept of collecting in a game will evaporate and many items will either encounter a fixed decay rate or come with a note stating they are only guaranteed to be provided for x number of days. I'd prefer it stay the way it is with me knowing it will probably stay there until the server is shutdown.

The concept of feeling ownership in a game, for the player, is inevitable, but not realistic. By that I mean that we truly feel we have invested the time or the money for the item that we previously agreed will always be the property of the game's owner, but we feel that we own it. The reality is we don't own it anymore than we do our own house and plot of land that it is on. There is a larger power that owns the land and if you don't pay that power they will take your land. That isn't how it was supposed to be in the land of the free - we were supposed to have full property rights when we bought our land, but only a very few people do. If you don't believe me, simply don't pay your property taxes.

I understand the unfair business practices argument, but it's only unfair if they promised us in their contract that they'd never change anything once released. They didn't. As a matter of fact this is from the Terms of Service under the "Content Rights" paragraph:

Quote:

You acknowledge and agree that all Content, including, without limitation, all accounts, characters created, and virtual items or in-game currency acquired and developed as a result of game play, are the sole and exclusive property of Playdom and may be used by Playdom (and/or its affiliates, publishing partners, distributors, licensors and licensees) for any purpose, including for commercial or promotional use. You agree that you may only upload or otherwise transmit on or through the Services Content that does not infringe the intellectual property rights of any third party, and you represent and warrant that any Content you do transmit will not infringe the intellectual property rights of any third party.

As it is their property, they may do with it as they wish, including delete it.

I have 7 years of ownership in Star Wars Galaxies, yet I can't access one item that I have earned over those 7 years unless I renew my account by resubscribing. During those 7 years SOE not only modified properties of items I owned, they even rendered several items completely useless. I had spent over 200 million credits, which took me hundreds of real life hours to earn to buy anti-decay kits to keep my clothes from decaying off my Jedi. With one game update they removed decay from the game and rendered the most expensive items I had ever bought to a useless display item and they reinvented the game from a turn-based MMORPG to a first person click shooter MMORPG. The outcry from the players was tremendous and their forums rocked with the upset players comments. The end result was that SWG lost hundreds of thousands of players and it has been downsizing to fewer servers ever since.

To actually claim legal ownership rights to the virtual items would mean one of two things - either we would have to being paying for our share of the database for as long as we wanted it to run - with that price going up as the player ownership base went down, or we'd have to buy the complete rights to the designs or a permanent license to use the designs from the company at a cost of thousands of dollars per item. Then, and only then could we claim we have the right to their property.

Regardless of the "logic" behind the arguments raised in the articles you shared, ____, they are completely lacking in common sense. One of the biggest failures for America, and many countries around the world, has been a mass movement away from common or natural law and an adoption of admiralty and color of law. Our involvement does not garner us ownership in the game any more than our being a member of the crowd at a ballgame assures that our team will win or that we can take the seat home with us at the end of the game. To gain entry into the stadium again, we must pay again, even if the building was built completely with our tax dollars. Just because we feel we should have entitlement it doesn't mean we do. We are not the ones who risked anything to provide the game.

But there are those who will pursue the legal recourse, sapping billions of dollars from the gaming industry over the years. Billions of dollars that we, the end-user, provide and that could have been used to research and develop better and more entertaining games but instead will be used to line lawyers and government officials pockets so they can debate the moral and ethical dilemmas of ownership of virtual property that was designed and provided by one set of people for the entertainment of another set of people.

Again, I don't agree with their decision or how it was handled, but I will uphold their right to do so.

My first sticky!

Okay, for those not in the know a sticky is a thread that gets positioned to the top of a section in a forum as it is a helpful thread that the community moderators believe should be kept visible for future readers.

I submitted this post to the City of Wonder forums today and it got stickied. It feels like being published for the second time. (Many thanks to my friend Craig for getting me published the first time.)

I found myself helping people and having to explain over and over again how to kill flashplayer to help them overcome memory leaks when playing flash games, so I took a moment and wrote up a post explaining the steps.

Here is that post for anyone who needs help getting rid of flashplayer memory leaks.

How to Force Exit Flash Player without Restarting your PC

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Having Facebook post issues from a game? Can't send gifts, request help with building marvels, or travel to allies, opponents, or between your capital and colony?

Is your game slowing down and shortly after reloading the issues are back?

Sometimes it is simply time to reboot your computer. Let's face it no operating system is perfect and eventually memory leaks and fragmentation will require a restart of the user environment (logoff, log back on) or a complete shutdown to poweroff state, count to 10, then turn it back on. It just depends on what service or program is being affected.

Most of the time, however it's just Flash player that needs to be restarted. One would think that closing their browser window that has the flash game in it would close flash. Unfortunately, most browsers use one flash instance for all their tabs including Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, and Opera. Why it is done this way is beyond me and I wish they'd start providing each tab their own separate instance of flash. The other problem is that even if you completely close every last tab of your browser sometimes the flash plug-in remains loaded and when you restart your browser you are right back to using the "broken" instance of flash that was giving you problems to being with.

Thus, you have two options left at this point. You can either force flash to completely exit or you can restart your computer. Force exit is much faster than rebooting, so here are the steps to save you time. There are different steps for each browser.

Chrome

Method A

1. Click in the address box.
2. Press SHIFT+ESC
3. A "Task Manager - Google Chrome" window will open.
4. Scroll down and find "Plug-in Shockwave Flash" or similar and click to select it.
5. Click "End Process"
6. You will notice that all tabs using flash will report that flash has crashed. Now reload the page you need and flash will start up again.

Method B

1. Click on the wrench icon in the upper right corner of your browser.
2. Select Tools -> Task Manager
3. A "Task Manager - Google Chrome" window will open.
4. Scroll down and find "Plug-in Shockwave Flash" or similar and click to select it.
5. Click "End Process"
6. You will notice that all tabs using flash will report that flash has crashed. Now reload the page you need and flash will start up again.

Internet Explorer [all versions]
Unfortunately there is no browser tool built-in to even the latest IE (IE8) to show processes, so we have to go out to the good old windows task manager to start killing processes.

1. Close all Internet Explorer windows.
2. Launch Windows Task Manager using one of the following.

a. Press CTRL+SHIFT+ESC
b. Right-click on your Start bar (next to the Start button is a good spot) and select "Task Manager from the list.
c. Press Windows Key+R or Click Start->Run.

i. Type "taskmgr" in the run "Open" box and click "OK".

3. Click the Processes tab and select and "End Process" on any iexplore.exe processes you see running.
4. Relaunch IE.

FireFox

Method A

1. Click Tools -> Add Ons.
2. Select the Plugins icon.
3. Scroll down to Shockwave Flash.
4. Click "Disable".
5. Count to 10.
6. Click Enable.
7. Reload your page.

Method B

1. Install Process Explorer from Microsoft.

a. This is a task manager that shows much more information and detail about the processes running on your computer, including what directory a process is located, who it's parent process is, and MUCH more. I am never without it.

2. Launch Process Explorer, look for firefox.exe.
3. Click the + symbol in front of firefox, if it is not expanded and right-click "plugin-container.exe" and select "kill process".
4. Reload your web page.

Method C

1. Launch Windows Task Manager using one of the following.

a. Press CTRL+SHIFT+ESC
b. Right-click on your Start bar (next to the Start button is a good spot) and select "Task Manager from the list.
c. Press Windows Key+R or Click Start->Run.

i. Type "taskmgr" in the run "Open" box and click "OK".

3. Click the Processes tab then select and "End Process" on plugin-container.exe.

Opera

Method A
I am not 100% positive this method will restart the flash plug-in's environment, so I would appreciate feedback on your experience using this method.

1. Click Menu -> Page -> Developer Tools -> Plug-ins.
2. Find Shockwave Flash and Disable any and all version you find in the list.
3. Reload the game tab and note that it says to install flash.
4. Enable Shockwave Flash from the Plug-ins tab.
5. Reload the game tab again.

Method B

1. Exit Opera
2. Launch Windows Task Manager using one of the following.

a. Press CTRL+SHIFT+ESC
b. Right-click on your Start bar (next to the Start button is a good spot) and select "Task Manager from the list.
c. Press Windows Key+R or Click Start->Run.

i. Type "taskmgr" in the run "Open" box and click "OK".

3. Click the Processes tab and select and "End Process" on any "Opera.exe" processes you see running.
4. Relaunch Opera and reload the game.

Safari on the Mac
For Mac users using Safari, use the following link to help you simply restart Flash.
http://hints.macworld.com/article.ph...00920113426884
Gotta love Linux! My native environment. :0)

Tyranny in the classroom

This was written by me as a comment on a blog from the Sun-Sentinel in regards to a bill that has been penned for teachers in Florida to grade parents. See the blog entry for more information by clicking here.

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This would be absolutely awesome in a socialist dictatorship, however it has no place in a proverbial free country.

Quit empowering the fictional "state" over the very real people. Quit making moral laws that have great intentions but then only end up destroying the very thing they were made to protect along with the lives of millions.

QUIT PLAYING GOD and let the people decide what is best for themselves and their children.

In case you all have not noticed there has been one constant increase during the decline of our country. The increase has been in the power, taxes, and debt taken by our government at all levels. Reduce government back to its actual place - mediator of disputes - and this country might be able to recover economically, spiritually, and physically. Continue on the terrible purpose of the last 150 years and this country will fall to the bottom of the international community.

My America is being destroyed by all the do-gooders who think they can come up with just one more law to fix everything. Give it up, there is no magic pill or law to fix things. Life isn't perfect and no matter how many laws you pass and no matter how many fines you collect it won't change one thing for the better, it simply adds one more penalty and one more state authorized tyrannical act to something that will happen any way.

Oh, that's right, wave the banner of "for the children" - a favorite of the right-wing. It isn't about the child if you need a law - it's about proving that government is necessary and that society can't function without dependence on rich people telling us which way to look.

My 5 children all get access to the same resources, yet they all perform differently in their education. Three are A- to B+, one is sitting at a C- for the year, and the other is too young for formalized education. Take a wild guess what each teacher would likely grade me as....it would depend on the student, wouldn't it?

Understand that I could _careless_ what a teacher rated me at. They have no business grading anything other than a child's paper.

How much big brother do you people really want? Did you enjoy worrying about your permanent record so much as a child that you just can't stand the idea of being a sovereign adult who should not bequeath their every last decision to a few elected representatives?

It is obvious to me that most people do not understand what Liberty means. Perhaps you should look it up sometime and see what the soldiers of the American Revolution, Texas Revolution, and the so-called US Civil War were really fighting for - the freedom to decide for themselves. The freedom to be the masters of their own destiny. "Remember the Alamo" was a cry for freedom from tyranny - from other people deciding for you.

With that in mind, some parents simply do not place as much importance on education as others do. At least, that is, not in the sense of formalized education that our country's elite has decided is best for our children. Does that mean they are being bad parents? Perhaps to one person it does - but does their opinion really matter more than another persons opinion? Is their child being given access to education? If the answer is yes, then the law is being met. This nonsense of grade averages determining success for our schools is cheating our children of the true purpose of education - to learn and to be given a chance to excel in what interests them, not in all things. Our nation continues to push for testing as the key to success while we continue to fall behind other countries in motivating people to become doctors, scientists, and industry leaders.

Just perhaps we need to remove the government from our classrooms and let the teachers teach. Remove the high-paid administrators who bring no true benefit to the educational system and get the school budgets to operate on less than what it costs to go to a decent private school per year. Give the teachers raises and cut out the nonsense that has school budgets running over $14,000 per year per student. Remove tenure so that teachers who have lost the desire to teach can be removed without pay.

Until then I will continue to home-school and let my child's grades be their grade. You all can participate in the socialist nonsense with the parent being held responsible for their child's performance.....just like your parent wasn't when you (the current parent) went to school. Finally the child can point to the government and prove that the parent's nurturing (or lack there of) was precisely what made them the person they are today. All hail Dr. Spock!

Florida Ballot Amendments Section

No time like the present to talk about the amendments from a libertarian point of view. Keep in mind that one cannot get what one wants by denying it to everyone else.

Ballot Initiative 1. Yes. There should be no such thing as public funding for campaigns, so Yes would appear to make the most sense here.

Ballot Initiative 2. No, this only helps a very few select people and the savings is a joke that will likely cost the counties more than it saves a few tax payers. This is obviously a pie-in-the-sky worthless amendment that appears to be taking care of our boys in arms, but in reality does nothing. A whole extra additional homestead exemption subject to a percentage based on the number of days the person was deployed. That very deployment can actually remove the base homestead exemption if our military person was to rent out their residence while gone. What? How many hard pressed soldiers do you know of that own houses (real property)? At best the military person would be able to qualify for an additional $25,000 exemption but would likely be looking at less. This would result in at most $600 of savings for the county with the worst mill rate. Sounds pretty decent, but shouldn't it be the entire property tax for the year? Of note, however, the person that could really use the $600 is either living in base housing or on ship. This is tax reform? No, it is not. Florida needs to look at removing property tax completely off the table and move to reduced spending and reliance only on sales tax and other optional fees (licensing). Taxing someone simply for owning property goes against the basic right to own property and is not a reasonable means to support government activities.

Ballot Initiative 4. No, no, and more no! People still believe the lie that property value is solely linked to control of what the neighbor does with his property. In a nutshell, it is already bad enough that the local governments think their zoning is the end-all, be-all, final word on what a person may do with property they own. Now we want to amend the Florida constitution to let the neighbors vote on every rezoning event thus giving the property owner 1 say in thousands of what they would like to do with their property. Proponents of this horribly worded amendment don't seem to realize that they won't be voting on what goes in their city, just when local government decides to change the land use plan (rezone). Property ownership aside, this would make rezoning prohibitively expensive thus causing stagnation for many areas as the person or people who want the change would have to find funds to bring land use changes to a vote or just wait until the next larger scale election to consider it. Granted, legally the government would have to fund it, but we all know that means either the taxpayer funds it or another method is found to accomplish it. New business is very unlikely to want to spend money on the possibility of getting a land use changed.... The last thing we need is less freedom for property owners to decide what to do with their property. We need to work on repealing laws that prohibit people from free use of their property, not slap on more restrictions and legal costs to change. The Texas Revolution was fought over less than the kinds of restrictions we live under today. Stand up for your right to do with your property as you wish and stop worrying about what your neighbor wants to do with theirs.

Ballot Initiative 5 & 6. No. These amendments makes no sense. I understand the spirit of them, yet what they would require of us to make it work is nothing less than an invasion of privacy. I am tired of being labeled a race other than American. I was born an American and I am still an American. Anyone who has immigrated to here is an American. Draw the districts as circles and squares, keeping them contiguous and get rid of the long little tails that wrap up, through, and around other districts, yes. Worry about race, culture, political party, religion, sexual affiliation[okay, I added that one, but I honestly see it coming] (etc) no! This is getting ridiculous. If the congressional and legislative districts were meant to be nations, then we'd have the people in the districts determine what the districts boundaries are like the states originally did. The nations are supposed to be the States, not the districts or the counties. This amendment does exactly one thing - opens up a huge hole for legal battles making a bunch of lawyers very rich and accomplishing nothing else.

Ballot Initiative 8. Yes, only because it is less restrictive than the original amendment. Here we see the result of the failing of democracy. Just a few years ago we voted overwhelmingly to put the schools under a strain that we didn't want to actually pay for. This amendment barely relaxes the original one and is just as ridiculous. This is a criteria that should be set by each district and not by a State constitution. The people of the districts should be permitted the flexibility to handle education the way they can afford without having to face legal battles over democratically created laws that look great on paper, but fail miserably in reality.

Nonbinding statewide advisory referendum. Why have an opinion poll on a ballot? Take the place of power that Florida truly has and bindingly tell the federal government to start following the US Constitution as well as immediately suspending all federal deficit spending. If the federal government actually obeyed the Constitution they would have a surplus of funds just from legal taxation (without the income tax).

Special Referendum for Orange County School District. No, no, and hell no. The school district currently throws away between $12,000 and $15,000 per actual full time student. They do not need nor deserve ONE penny more in revenue. They need to restructure and reduce salaries of all their administrators, including eliminating unnecessary levels of management. Get rid of the waste and get the money to the teachers and the classroom. Get rid of the overhead and figure out how to get education down to private school levels of $3,000-6,000 a student. Refuse federal dollars and start educating instead of indoctrinating. Teach theories as theories and don't favor one culture over another.

Why I won't be voting for Marco Rubio

I took a look at Marco Rubio's ideas on how to "take back America"

There are a few very good ideas. Some include automatic sunsetting of government programs, requiring a 2/3 vote of house and senate to approve new taxes, a balanced budget amendment (I could take or leave this as the feds don't follow the rest of the Constitution anyway).

Click the title link to see the lists for yourself.

Every one of his lists includes at least one idea that grants MORE power to the federal government, not less.

List 1: Grow the Economy:

"IDEA #8: Repeal and replace ObamaCare. We must repeal ObamaCare and replace it with common-sense reforms that will actually lower health care costs for American families and businesses." Get rid of one bad federal law and replace it with more bad federal laws to add to the federal laws that created the healthcare problem in the country that had the best healthcare in the world until the federal government started getting involved....

List 2: cut spending (I like many of the ideas he presents here, yet.....)

"IDEA #12: Reform Entitlement Programs. Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are going broke and will bankrupt our country. Benefits for those currently receiving them or those approaching retirement should not and will not change. But the truth is that for those who are younger, the programs will need to change or they will no longer exist when they themselves approach retirement age. Unlike his opponents, Marco has been willing to confront this reality, to talk about it with voters, and to come up with common-sense solutions that will safeguard our future." The ponzi scheme is failing! /sigh. Keeping this program alive as a federal program just continues to perpetuate the first major scam on the American public since the creation of the federal reserve itself.

List 3 Health Care: Riddled throughout is the demand to move state regulation of insurance to the federal level.Some believe it would open the market to more insurance policies from other states, thus giving MORE options, MORE choice, and lower prices. The reality, as has been proven time and again, is that it would destroy smaller companies, thus reducing choice, reducing options, and increasing prices as fewer business remain to compete. For an existing business to enter a different State's market they just have to comply with the State's regulations - that hardly prevents an insurer from entering a State's market. Each State must have a free market - we should not be considering a federal market, ever!

List 4 Gulf Coast Economy: Several of these ideas have me confused as they aren't federal level ideas (especially the sales tax and property tax relief) However, this one struck me as completely odd,,,,IDEA #10: Relax onerous fishing bag limits and seasons. When it is safe to do so for the next two years, we need to focus on opening our waters with relaxed quotas for all fishing so grounded fisherman can get back to work.

(When/if this oil spill is halted it's hardly the time to look at relaxing fishing limts as these fish populations will be struggling to recover...)

Again, most of these ideas are/should be state level policies and I don't see how they have anything to do with the federal government.

List 5: Education. This list is out of control with massive increase in federal power.

"Idea#6 - protect teachers by insulating them from frivolous lawsuits. " First, our justice system couldn't tell if a lawsuit was frivolous if it was biting their rear-end. Second, we don't need even more people moving to a legally protected status. We need to remove EVERYONE from legal protection - especially our government leaders!

"Idea #3: Make Block Grants Conditional On Performance And Accountability Measures." Oh, yeah, give the federal government even more power over that tiny amount of funding they currently provide our indoctrination centers.

"Idea #12: Promote A National Virtual Learning Platform." Sweet! Let's create the baby that will become our National School indoctrination program that all students will be required to watch from home and is funded by the taxpayer or could be funded by the taxpayer and some businesses! Uhm, no!

I could touch on nearly all the ideas here as they all have a flaw or two that is major.

List 6: Agriculture

"• IDEA #1: Stand Up To The EPA On Numeric Nutrients." This idea makes no sense. Paraphrased: 'We are facing federal imposition of economically damaging numeric nutrient standards, so congress should step-in and ensure that Florida leads the effort to implement numeric nutrients.' Huh? We should lead the way on using them to ensure we don't get economically damaged by having to use them?

"IDEA#2: Promote Economic Growth And Job Creation Through Trade." More NAFTA - after all it REALLY helped us get where we are right now! We traded our jobs and our products right out of the US! Let's do the same with oranges!

"IDEA #5: Reform America’s Foreign Pest And Disease Interdiction Process." Federal efficiency by increasing sharing of information between three agencies that should not be sharing information and at least one of these agencies shouldn't even exist.

"• IDEA #6: Matching Grants For Agriculture Research." Take our tax money and force us to pay for research that is already being paid for by us when we buy the products.

List 7: Commitment to Veterans.

"IDEA #1: Keep The Department Of Veterans Affairs (VA) As A Cabinet Level Department." Instead of dismantling this BS concept, we should continue to tout that the Cabinet is the most powerful table in America and keep American's paying for yet another seat at this table that shouldn't exist.

"IDEA #3: Overcome The Benefits Claim Backlog" How else can this be done without growing the government branch that services these requests?

"IDEA #4: Seamless Transition Back Home." How else can this be read other than to create jobs to tell us veterans what all we are eligible to receive when we leave military service? I thought I got that talk during my last week of service.

"IDEA #8: Demand Accountability At Arlington National Cemetery. We must monitor the Department of the Army’s attempts to straighten out this fiasco and ensure this level of mismanagement is never reached again." We must pay more people to watch the people that we were already paying to check into this fiasco that happened while under the watch of people we were paying to ensure something like this never happened.

"IDEA #9: Increase Veterans Mobile Healthcare Clinics. In 2008, the VA announced four mobile health clinics to bring care to veterans in predominately rural counties. We need to consider adding to the fleet and continue to provide support to those veterans far away from a medical center." More money spent to build facilities that will be in areas where they will barely be used?

"IDEA #2: Protect Defense And Veterans Spending. We must get our country’s budget, deficit and debt under control. However, we cannot do it at the expense of our veteran services, national defense and safety." Neocon much? We can drastically reduce our defense budget by bringing our troops home. But if we did that we wouldn't need agreements with Canada and Mexico to bring their troops to quell civil disturbances on US soil.

Want to help veterans in one fell swoop? Make any person that has served our country federal tax exempt. Not State, just federal.

List 8: Seniors

"IDEA #1: Increase Prosecutions On Those Who Prey On Seniors Through Fraud And Financial Crimes." Forget due process and all that, let's just increase prosecution! This doesn't make any sense. We need to ensure that people who prey on seniors are tried and if found guilty - convicted. Yet if there isn't a case we can't just prosecute them. The federal government doesn't have any say in prosecution of these kinds of crimes, States do.

"IDEA #2: Protect Seniors From Identity Theft." Another BS idea that gives no solution. We need to ensure everyone is protected from identity theft, yet it is not a realistic goal. Yes, we must share ways to help prevent identity theft, but we can't stop it once and for all - the thieves get better at it.

"IDEA #3: Protect Current Benefits For Seniors." Keep SS and Medicare as is for the generation that we cannot afford to provide these benefits for. Whereas I agree with the sentiment, there just isn't the prosperity required to support the baby boomers in and entering retirement. The ponzi scheme is failing - our funds were spent on other things and they don't exist.

"IDEA #5: Crack Down On Unapproved Prescription Drugs." Uhm, no the FDA needs to be constrained as an advisory panel for people to consider before using a drug. The federal government has no authority to remove any drug from the market - the responsibility lies with the consumer to decide what they will use and due process should be brought against any product manufacturer that has placed false claims on their product or endangered people unnecessarily. The FDA is why we pay 20,000-40,000% more than the cost of drugs. I do not need my hand held when it is time to get something that will make it easier for me to endure pain I am in, or to try something new that could save my life, but die while waiting for the FDA to "approve" it.

A pastor wants to do what with what?! Who cares! Seriously? This was the news of the night. It's what I saw on CNN every time I looked up this evening.

I just read Ron Paul's release regarding this nonsense. I was looking for a voice of reason in the storm, but honestly I was a bit taken back by the fact that Dr. Paul sided against the pastor... or at least that is how it looks on the surface. The truth may be in what he didn't say.

Regardless, here are my thoughts and contemplations on what should have been a non-story. In a time when Tea Party and Liberty candidates cannot get decent exposure by the media, they seriously believe that our time should be wasted on a nut exercising his rights to make a fool out of himself?

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The only part I don't get is people giving two bits of a care about what some pastor wants to do with a few copies of the Quran that he bought.

To prove my point, I wouldn't be the least bit offended that someone burned 1,000 copies of the Bible. Want to burn it? Go ahead. It's your own stupidity. I'll still have my copy and millions more will continue to exist.

The only time when book burning is bad is when it is done by the government to prevent the spread of opinions and theories that go against their agenda. Book burning en mass to remove thoughts from the world, including virtual book burning otherwise known as banning. That's the problem to care about.

Where is anyone standing up for this guy's right to express himself as he sees fit? I still, foolishly, I know.... want to believe that in the united States of America we have first amendment rights. If we want to speak out against a war while on tour in France or burn some books or flags to make a political statement, that is our right. Those around us have their right to state their opinion regarding the matter.

However, to blame the future deaths of our troops on a person for upsetting a few people who can't see the true irrelevance of the act is ridiculous. The outrageous comments of our "leaders" in response to something that should not have gotten so much as a head shake truly demonstrates how backwards our society has become.

As a US Navy sailor, I repeatedly stated my resolve that I was in the military to defend Liberty. The phrase, "I may not like what you have to say but I will fight to the death to ensure you have the right to say it" must have been washed out in the last 15 years.

I also find it completely hysterical that our media gives one iota of a damn about moral righteousness. They who are repeatedly guilty of airing prime time shows that belittle religious views of millions of Americans. You can't have it both ways. You cannot be the champions of moral propriety and the entertainers who spend millions producing movies that would last 20 minutes with the curse words removed.

No one has the right, least of all our opinionated, pompous, arrogant media charlatans to decide another man's morals and dictate what he does on his property with his property so long as it does not infringe on the rights of another. Last I checked, burning a few copies of a book you don't agree with doesn't fit into that criteria.

-=-=-=

One parting thought for our feeding frenzy "friends" in the media, "You cannot enjoy freedoms you want denied to everyone else." Chew on that one for a while.

Dear Senator

Thanks to the NRDC's misleading ad on facebook, I ended up on their site where they were asking me to take action and write to my senator to condemn their inaction on "comprehensive climate and energy legislation."

So, since they pulled me in under false pretenses, I cleared out their text demanding creation of 2 million clean energy jobs and etc and replaced it with this:

Whereas we need clean energy and the ability to get away from Oil dependence, I do not agree with the Federal Government taking it upon themselves to decide anything in this area as they do not have the Constitutional authority to do so. However, they should make a case to the States to take under consideration what should be done to reduce pollution.

Of course, the repeal of laws making it nigh impossible to create a dam, build a nuclear power plant, or otherwise invest in alternatives to oil would be a step in the right direction.

Increasing taxes on current forms of energy is not an option. In a time when people can barely find enough money to keep their basic needs satisfied where Electric and Gas Energy for the home looks like another rent or mortgage payment, a tax would mean that many low income folks would simply have to do without. Could you imagine living without electricity or the ability to drive? No throwing more taxes on that basic building block of our economic infrastructure would only serve to cripple our country.

Please investigate ways to make it easier for people to bring us electric generation that does not depend on coal or oil and empower the people to develop a car that runs off hydrogen, electricity, and natural gas to help reduce carbon emissions without taxing the entire country into poverty.

Thanks!

Marc

Schools believe they have power over parents - sadly so do parents

I have no problem accessing my child's classroom at any moment.....but then I homeschool.

The public schools are the worst plague this country has, spreading lies about our country's system of government and teaching theories that require as much faith as any religion does as fact.

"Trespassing on public property..." when are these idiots going to understand how ridiculous they sound? Sure, we don't want people aimlessly wandering around on a school yard, especially with the worry of possible predators, kidnappers, etc. At the same time, however, how can one trespass on their own property? I you are the parent of a child, you have a right to be there and all you should have to do is check-in and get a visitor badge at most. When school is out it is community property and the community will use it. Vandals, if caught, should be prosecuted. However you can't throw down the gauntlet and shut the school grounds off to access because someone might do something. The school grounds best protection are parents and their kids using the play areas and tracks during off hours as a family.

A school board doesn't have the power to authorize a principal to detain a visitor as they don't have the power to detain a visitor. However, in this new era of Government OVER the people that has been being preached as gospel since the 1950's most people would just laugh if you told them that government cannot create powers out of thin air.

The authoritarian state is growing out of control and as long as they keep the majority believing that they need Democrats or Republicans to "fix it" we will continue to go down the path of servitude to our benevolent government while worshiping at the alter of humanism.

We don't need government at all. Government knows this and fights to hold power and "prove" our need for it with lies, problem creation, and by playing on our social nature to claim its power. It is an abomination of natural order when people claim power over other people and the end result is always the same, killing the people the body in power is charged with protecting.

We need voluntarism where people knowingly give up a bit of their sovereignty to gain benefits. No one should be born into a system where they have no choice to take on the benefits before they know what they are going to give up to get them. One example of that is a toll-road. Sure it isn't perfect, but you only pay the toll if you want to drive on the road. The bottom line is things that people won't willingly volunteer for will die out. Ninety-nine percent of todays government programs would be gone if people were permitted to volunteer for it as most people cannot see the benefit of them. The programs that did survive would be efficient because people would not stay with a program where they were getting less from it than what they were putting into it. But then, that is the argument for why businesses work only in a free market. People vote with their dollars and when a company messes up it fails and gets bought up in pieces by other companies. Government and social markets can keep a failing company or program alive as long as they can steal enough money from the citizens to keep it afloat. BAILOUTS mean anything to you? People voted with their dollars to let GM go out of business, GM wasted tons of money trying to correct that image and when it was still failing government bought it out. We bought a failing car company? Why? Do not get me wrong, I love my Dodge Durango, but I don't see why people believe any company is too big to fail.

Keeping dead companies afloat may keep some jobs for a while, but it doesn't help us address the larger problem as quickly as we could by just returning to a free market . We didn't even actually bail them out. We took a loan, printing more dollars, to give them money to stay in operation. More money in circulation makes it worth less. We all took a pay cut to keep these companies running. We will see that pay cut in the near future as prices rise due to too much currency in circulation. No matter how you dress a problem up it really comes down to the same question, in business. "Team, we are not making enough money to keep operating as we have been. We either have to lay some people off or ask you all to take a percentage pay cut." Either some of us or all of us get affected, no matter how you look at it. However, solving it by throwing money at it and keeping a company that failed running does more damage in the long run. It undermines our confidence in ourselves, it rewards reckless behavior, and it punishes companies that did what they needed to do to stay competitive. In the end that affects everyone - from the competition to the customer. We are all being punished for the misdeeds of a few big companies and banks. That, frankly, makes no sense to me.

When a free market reacts to a depression, like the one we are currently in, it kills what caused the issue, in this case several big businesses would have failed or they would have sold off assets to cover losses. If this happens on a grand scale then we enter a depression. The most significant thing about a depression is that the you lose a lot of jobs. As people lose their jobs other companies begin to feel the loss of customers so they do what they must to survive by lowering prices, finding ways to be more efficient, they might layoff employees or go under as well. Prices do not rise or stay firm during a free market depression. They follow the buyers. In the false markets of today and since FDR prices stay flat or even rise during a recession or depression. This is just one of the reasons why we continue to become worse off as time goes on. The government is not permitting a true market correction. They print more money, create nonsense jobs and make us all suffer far longer than would happen if they got out of the business of regulating market fluctuations. The great depression of the 20's was an almost immediate result of government regulation on the free market. Most people haven't even heard of the great depression of the 1880's because it was permitted to go through correction and society pulled through it, just like all the previous recessions and depressions that had occurred for the centuries prior. Only in the last century have we seen depressions that can affect the economy for decades and that is 100% due to our falsely tampering with the mechanism that only works when we take government out of the equation. The founding fathers knew it, why do we continue to believe that we know better than them? Because our schools have been teaching us we do for the past 60+ years, that is why.

Freedom only works when we teach people what it truly is. Freedom, Liberty, is NOT freedom from desire or need, it is freedom from tyranny. Freedom to make a choice, not freedom to enforce a choice. People cite how cruel the world is and argue that we can't live in freedom because of the dangers to us. We must give up Liberties to be safe. That is complete nonsense. History documents with black and white clarity that giving up Liberty is exactly how you lose safety. When you give the State the power to make you safe, they will keep you safe by killing you, your neighbors, and anyone else they think might be a threat to anyone for any reason. Lynch mobs are exactly what an authoritarian state is. In a free society with an educated population people demand evidence and reason before action.

People complain that government isn't efficient and that things are not progressing in DC. These days things progress too much and pass to fast right through the three bodies of government that were designed to do exactly one thing - fight each other to ensure they did very little to nothing. The federal government was never intended to be our solution factory. It was designed to be a guardian of our Liberty. Some people think adding amendments to the constitution will somehow help. I can think of several amendments that we need. The problem is that the government does not abide by the document now, so why would it start suddenly just because a few amendments got added to it? What is the one thing that our government can't seem to do, but is supposed to do? It is supposed to use our military to defend us. The only way it is go to war is by a vote in the house to make a declaration of war. When was the last time our Congress did that? We have been at war since the end of World War II, without so much as a tiny teeny declaration. Why? Is it really that impossible to get a majority vote to go to war for cause? We can pass unconstitutional laws all day long through the Congress, stripping our basic rights and telling us we owe each other things that no man can claim as a right, yet we can not declare war? Our government is pitiful.

We are living in a democratic anarchy that is cloaked as a democratic republic, but it is supposed to be a republic. The difference between democracy and a republic is that a democracy is about popular vote making law while a republic is about rule by law with a process to amend existing laws by due process. A law cannot be voted out in a Republic. A Republican form of government protects the rights of the minority from the majority. In a democracy the majority can simply vote out the rights of the minority.

I dare you to argue to me that we do not live in anarchy. Prove it. The media uses the battle cry of "That would be anarchy!" to people who speak values of Liberty. They must not know what anarchy means. I will help them. Anarchy: "A state of lawlessness". When the government does not obey the law it was created under then you are in anarchy. This country had law and order long before the Constitution was written. The several states had bodies of government that ensured due process for their citizens. Yet, they were much more free than they are now. Freedom does not equal lawlessness. Do not let the uneducated, indoctrinated minds of our media tell you otherwise. Lawlessness is democracy. Democracy is arbitrary use of money and power without checks and balances. We are in anarchy right now friends and the powers that be will continue to depend on you doubting your rights and believing that they are in charge to push their agenda forward.

When the day comes that a true American Patriot stands up and puts them self in the way of that agenda you will see the true nature of government as they pull out their force and use it. They can't afford for you to see it too overtly, they don't want you to. They hide behind color-of-law and pretend to do things legally.

We cannot win another war for freedom. Our founding father's failed when they chose that path. Freedom can only win by opening people's minds through discussion and debate. The last war for Liberty was lost by the people who did not start the war and who were fighting for freedom as defense. Yes, they lived in a a pitiful state of duplicity - craving freedom while denying it to their brothers. I will not defend that. However, anyone who still believes that the civil war was a civil war or that it was about freeing the slaves obviously hasn't read more than the school book version of history. True history, even that edited by the North, shows what the war was about and accounts the misdeeds of both sides and the way they failed their citizenry while a war between two nations took place. It was a failed revolution, not a civil war.

Just because a founding father said the tree of Liberty must be fed by blood doesn't mean he meant through war. It must be fed by blood, sweat, and tears of those laboring to help others understand how imperfect liberty is and how it is exactly the system the our imperfect human selves need. Communism and Socialism are great theories and beautiful principles based on sharing equally. They are also a complete impossibility as you cannot find a benevolent enough person to run government that only takes exactly their share and ensures everyone else gets the same. Only God can be benevolent and ensure we all get a fair share. All others will pad their share and deduct just a little from the whole. True capitalism permits the end user the power to destroy a corrupt organization. A socialist controlled market allows the government to force people to participate thus ensuring the corrupt organization survives as long as they want to.

Only the people can hold the government accountable. Only we can get them back on the Constitution. I believe that the only way this is ever going to get corrected is for us to work at the local level to take back local governments, then to take back our State governments. Then our State governments will have the power they need to cut off the anarchist federal government and force it to get back to constitutional restrictions. The reconstruction amendment framers knew this and that is why they removed the State power to appoint Senators. This amendment along with the popular vote amendment for the President of the US made this country a democracy. The President of the United States was never intended to be the Leader of the Free World, nor the leader of our country. He is not a King and was never supposed to be. He was put in place to stop the Congress from pushing through unconstitutional laws and to ensure the Supreme Court kept competent judges on it that would keep our Constitutional Republic exactly that.

Instead, we have anarchy. Brought to you by the bi-partisan movement of compromise. Compromise, as most married couples will share, is where you both lose a little in order to both win a little. Whereas in a household the compromise may simply be the husband wanting pizza and the wife gets to pick the toppings, in government that means that Group A wants to pass a bill about opening government documents for review every 10 years, but group B won't vote for it unless they put a Search and Seizure rider on the bill granting the federal government the power to seize an entire crop of corn if a marijuana plant was found growing with it. Group A knows they need at least half of the people from Group B to pass the bill so they say, "Sure." The bill passes and next year the open document law is removed by another bill passing however the search and seizure law remains on the books. Yes, it is only regulatory law, but most courts are convinced that regulatory law is just as powerful as the Constitution so many farmers lose their crops because a punk kid planted a couple marijuana plants on their fields, but no one can prove the kid did it. That is where we are today. Compromise - multiple laws on a bill that have nothing to do with the bill. That is why you had people voting for the Health Care bill - a couple more bucks for a project in their state. Compromise is the tool that was discovered to ram any piece of crap through our federal government. Now we need our States to wakeup and realize they have the right to say, "No!". You may be prompted to say, "We need an ammendment stating 'One bill, one law'!" The problem is the government doesn't obey the law right now, so why would they obey one more silly ammendment?

(republished to fix my spelling error in the title. I r a public education victim!) ;0)

Strip Search for Ibuprofen found reasonable by US Supreme Court

Amendment 4, Constitution of the United States of America

Search and Seizure. Ratified 12/15/1791.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

What part of this doesn't apply when a child is in school? According to the US Supreme Court which derives it's power from the same Constitution it ignores, its okay to search a child. According to the Justices of our Supreme Law of the Land:

"...there was no clearly established law finding unconstitutional the strip searching of students under materially similar circumstances from the Supreme Court..."

Really? What is the 4th amendment? A cute paragraph on a rotting piece of paper?

Wrong, supreme court, wrong!

The school does not have the power to search. It only has the power to send a child away from the school. The biggest thing that should have happened was the parents should have been called and Redding should have been sent home for the day.

For the love of all that is holy, we don't permit our schools to spank, why in the world would we grant them the power to individually search? Yes, I know - many schools have metal detectors and some even have bag searches. Ideologically I have issue with that as it does not prevent someone from getting a gun or a knife in the school. It might prevent someone from bringing one just to show their friends how cool they are, but someone with a purpose is not going to be deterred by all the coolest detectors, bells, and/or whistles in the world.

The Supreme Court has also asked the United States Court of Appeals to reconsider other cases similar to this and consider granting "qualified immunity" to the searches in other such cases. "Hey, guys - now that we think strip searches are okay because we do not care about the Constitution anymore, neither should you." If you read the link where I pulled the quote from you'll see that the sixth circuit court cited some case law and squarely told the Supreme Court that they stood by their decision against the people who strip searched a group of 20 students.

What Americans do not realize is that noone has the right to search you without probable cause. A person says they saw you waving a gun around - the police have the right to ask you if you were indeed waving a gun around. At this point they do not have probable cause to search you. If you are acting hostile and confrontational they will probably arrest you and at that point conduct a pat-down search, not because you were accused of having a weapon, but because you gave them probable cause to suspect you may be dangerous. If a police officer sees you waving the gun around he will definitely subdue and search you. Once you get to the jail you will be changing garments and your effects will be cataloged. If you remained level headed during the questioning the police officer would have to get a court order to search you.

Okay, the police officer, as a government representative must follow the Constitution, but does a school official fall under that? No. They are not government officials and the only right they have is to deny access to the school until things can be investigated. Their duty is to protect the other students, and in order to do that they should send a suspected student home - not order up a search.

Of course, that would lead to another news story about a student being sent home for having a subscription drug on them. Still ridiculous in my opinion. Schools are not law enforcement officials and they need to get the idea that they are out of their heads.

Note to Alan Grayson

Re: Share Your Health Care Story With Me Inbox (email dated 9/22/2009)

What kind of survey just asks one loaded question? The survey your team setup at http://alangrayson.house.gov/Forms/Form/?ID=473, asks exactly one question. How is that going to garner useful information for you on the issue of health care. I would select "major changes", but that in no way would be the same major changes you may hear from other people.

To me the major change is getting the federal government out of healthcare completely. Remove it's failed ideas of stealing from one class of people to give insurance to another class of people. Give the industry freedom to do what it must so it can have a chance at providing the best service for the best cost to the most customers without constraints. Constraints that force us to use insurance and other "solutions" that actually make healthcare more expensive and less obtainable.

I know when I was a child my Mom spent $20 to take my sister and I into see the doc. That wasn't copay, that was paid in full for services rendered. Now I pay over $100 a visit, just for one child, and that's just if it was just a talk with the doctor. Did the dollar decline 160% since 1980? No. Then why does it cost ten times as much for a typical healthy checkup now? Don't try to make me believe it's because of greedy doctors and unfair insurance. It's because of government involvement and government failing in its role to protect doctors from fraudulent malpractice suits.

Today's doctors have to pander to insurance companies, record keeping that gives the government easier access to patient records than the patient them self, and malpractice insurance that gobbles up a huge chunk of their income. Want to fix healthcare? Get the government out of it!

Restore the Constitution and chain down the government. Consider your oath, good sir - it is to the constitution of this Republic and not to the public opinion surveys.

Ron Paul and End The Fed

A well written letter by Ron Paul that was also posted by Glenn Beck. Read it for a clearer understanding of how the Federal Reserve is destroying the dollar. As if knowing that it takes $22 to buy what a person could get with $1 in 1913 isn't enough to realize how ridiculous this is... For those who don't know history, the value of currency has never eroded over time consistently and reliably. That did not happen to the US until the Federal Reserve [the central bank] was created. Ever wondered why they don't have those "this is how much milk was in ____" cards going back beyond 1913? It's because milk would go up one year, down for a few, then up a bit, and back down, and if you looked it it over 50 years the price of milk stayed roughly the same. Now, with the federal reserve you can be assured that your savings will be rendered useless over time, and "rich" families of today will have poor descendants in the future. A million dollars was worth 22 times in 1913 what it is worth today. Even a millionaire family of 1913 isn't set today. Just think about that 401k (if you have one) and what it will be worth as the dollar continues to decline at an even faster rate than it has since 1913? How can I be sure of this? It's a certainty because the Federal Reserve has doubled the supply of currency in the last year. That means the dollar will likely be worth 50% of what it was as soon as all that currency makes it out into the normal money supply, thus house prices will seem to rebound as the dollar is further destroyed. Who would say that an annual 22% inflation rate is a good thing? On average that is what the federal reserve has given us. $22 dollars today buys what $1 bought in 1913. That's a loss of 2,100% in less than 100 years. 2008-1913 = 95yrs. 2100%/95yrs = 22.105% per year. Still fooled by the governments reports of 1%, 5%, and 11% (as a high end) inflation for a year? That is a number easily manipulated. In many cases it means as a rate higher than the year before, so 2% could mean it rose 2% more than the previous year, not an actual dollar loss of 2%, but rather 2% worse than the previous year. The government is great at putting spin on things to make them sound better. Why do you think they refer to it as inflation instead of deflation? In reality it is the deflation of the dollar. What is it the inflation of? Inflation just sounds good - like filling a balloon. Kids know what inflating a balloon is - it just sounds like fun! But inflation of the market, thus deflating the value of the dollar is not a good thing. The only thing government is good at is putting lipstick on a pig and convincing us all we need the pig in our living rooms. They are *very* good at it. They have nearly 50% of the nation convinced they can tax the rich and support the poor. It's not possible, nor plausible, but then cartoonists and government are very good at getting people to accept the plausible impossible, just ask Disney, Carl Marx, Adolph Hitler, and Joseph Stalin to name a few. At least Disney was only selling some entertainment - I mean, really, an elephant fly? But then a few too many people have taken his "Dream a dream and follow your heart" concept a bit too far.

Let's see how simply I can put this....

I do not care what a person thinks or believes, as long as they do not force me to give up my freedoms.

:)

Global Warming....

The democrats invite opposition to speak with Al Gore in Congress, but then after he gets here they tell him to go away....lovely! Read this link to see more of what sparked my entry.

Science is the new religion of our nation, I challenge anyone to state otherwise. We are now to accept Darwinism on faith. That theory offers nothing but a short glimmer of living, with no purpose, no reason, and nothing to strive for. No thanks! I'll stick to faith in God and our Lord Jesus who give us Liberty, Salvation, reason and purpose to our lives, especially our after life. Does that mean that Darwin was an idiot with no idea of what he was speaking of? No! I believe he was correct that we evolve and adapt to our environment, but species jumping? Show me the proof!

Now, with this news, I can rest easily with the reassurance that Al Gore is a fraud.

Science is meant to be only a study of what we can measure - it is a tool thats only purpose is the help us understand our environment. It, by definition, requires no leap of faith - only proof.

Carl Sagan was one of the first big celebrity scientists that shunned actual science and instead sold faith in science. Without conducting one experiment he concluded that a nuclear war would lead to nuclear winter. There was no way to experiment with that theory, yet he sold it to nations as fact. Global warming is another theory unsubstantiated by fact. In reality it exists in opposition to the fact that the world temperatures on average are indeed *not* rising. (unless of course you lie and use September's temperatures for October.)

Global warming is nothing more than an excuse for wealth redistribution which steals from *all* to give to the government. If the ideas of this administration become law, the poorest of our nation will quickly become poorer as they pay the carbon taxes.

Al Gore should be allowed to speak, but he should be considered without credit or merit until he and his ilk can produce one shred of evidence that can be reproduced in a lab. Should we try to find ways to reduce pollution? Hell, yes! Should we do it by forcing people into poverty? No!

Marc

Letter to my Rep...

I sent this to my house representative today...

Rep Grayson, I am glad to see you have decided to co-sponsor HR1207. Auditing the Federal Reserve is truly an important first step in proving that they should not exist at all. Of course, it will be nigh-impossible to find any information that they will be willing to turn over to the House. It is indeed time to fire them and time for this government to wake up and follow the Constitution. If only you had not sold us all out when you sponsored HR 1664. Do you not realize that you laid the foundation for the brother of minimum wage, better to be known as the maximum wage? You should be ashamed for your naive acts against Liberty and Freedom when you sponsored such a terrible bill. I implore you as someone who voted for you, and as an American Patriot, please wake up and take your oath to the Constitution as seriously as I do the one I took. Whenever you introduce or vote for legislation that does not stick within the confines of the Supreme Law of the Land, you are acting as an anarchist. I demand that you honor your oath, and no matter what your party tells you that you do what is truly just for this nation and the workers....limit the Federal government to the powers it was given and get our State and all states back where they belong - in control of their destiny. Moving the tax burden to the rich is not the answer! Placing the tax burden to an all time low is what will work. We need to get the Federal Government back to working on the budget that excise and tariffs can support. Join The People and forever end the insane income tax. I request, demand, and hope that you will go back to the real Democrat Party platform of personal freedom and also find out that only a free market can work, not a socialized one. Doctor visits used to be inexpensive when I was a child, now they are ridiculous thanks to government and private insurances and frivolous malpractice suits. Help us with real change by fighting against the problems and not using the big-government created problems to create more big government. Let me leave you with one last thought: "The government is not here to ensure our financial welfare by borrowing against our future. No one can borrow their way out of debt. Doing nothing is exactly what our Constitution required this anarchist government to do. They think they know better than the founding fathers. The truth is they are the reason we are in this mess and they are just making it worse. Wake up! Government is never the solution it is the disease! It is fire, not warmth. It consumes, it does not create." -Marc Bessent Thank you for your time. I'd appreciate a response and a bit of personal insight in regards to what it is like for you as a Rep. in Washington. Together we can restore America to truly be the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, but not if we are willing to throw away what got us here in trade for a horrible agenda that Bush put into play and Obama is surfing on. The Constitution is not a joke, good sir, and I advise you to do your duty. By The Way, I voted for you to fire the republican that voted for the bailout. Your vote for HR.1 has me ready to vote for anyone that runs against you when your seat comes up. Continue voting for bigger government, more oversight, and less freedom and you will absolutely insure that. Quit spending *MY* money and start reducing the size of government. Thank you, Marc Bessent American Veteran, Patriot, and lover of Liberty