COMMON SENSE -- UPDATED

That is the question that was asked as an agonized scream by those who could not understand why the world was going down hill so fast throughout Ayn Rand's landmark book, Atlas Shrugged. It was in this book (Still available in bookstores, usually in the classics, philosophy, or political section, or wherever liberals in the store can hide it. I once found the only copy in the store in the "children's books" section.), in which she introduced the amazing (new?) philosophy of Objectivism as a thread running through an amazingly fascinating fiction story. A story in which John Galt, the inventor of the world's first perpetual motion motor vowed to stop the motor of the world when the company he was working for took the ownership of his invention from him and gave it to the collective they had created.

He succeeded in doing so by the simple act of convincing others whose creative and productive endeavors were being stolen by the looters in society and given to the moochers, whose need became a demand that had to be supplied by those who had the ability to supply it, to go on strike and remove their expertise from the world.

CREATING A "DEPENDENT SOCIETY"

Workers claim that without them, the world would stop. They say their muscle is what causes things to be built. But what they seem to forget is that without the creative ideas of the creators and the inventors, and without the work of the producers who actually design the systems their muscles operate, there would be no work for their muscles to perform and therefore their muscles would be useless to society. This makes their claim a false one. Need does not create a claim on the earnings of those who are capable of earning to prop up those who will not. Newt Gingrich said: "It is immoral to pay able-bodied people for not working." That's just what this society is doing. Not to be nice to those people, but to create a society that is dependent on the government for their daily survival. This creates millions of people who will vote to keep the looters in power so they will continue to write checks to the moochers.

It is a fact that there are a lot more (supposedly) poor people than there are rich people, so the looters pander to the poor and set them against the rich. Each "poor" person has a vote. That's what the moochers are after, so they can stay in power. So the answer to the question: "Who is John Galt?" is this: he is the symbol of the individualist in a collectivist world. Of the creator and the producer in a world full of moochers and looters who want what he earns without having to work and earn it themselves. Collectivism will ultimately rule us if we don't go out of our way to stop those who would force it upon us.

COMMON SENSE

In 1768, Thomas Paine wrote a pamphlet entitled: "Common Sense," which woke up a lot of people to the fact that they were being raped by their government, and to the fact that things did not have to be that way. This simple pamphlet did, in fact, lead to the American Revolution and to the creation of the United States of America. With the proviso that I am not promoting armed rebellion, I hope this report has much the same result. To wake people up to the fact that they are being raped by people in their own government in a far worse manner than were the colonists who created this country. That it is not now, as it was not then, the "natural way of things." To cause them to take action to change things so they may stop being raped and might cause a return to the constitutional protections we should have enjoyed from the first.

CONSTITUTIONAL PROTECTION? YEAH, RIGHT!

You say the Constitution protects you from that? Don't make me laugh! People in our government have been ignoring that august document from the first, when they hastened to make laws similar to the British Admiralty Laws that allowed the British to loot our shipping without much more than the pretense that we were breaking the law. To confiscate (and sell, ship and cargo on the unsupported word of an informer who was often one of the government agents involved in the confiscation, who usually got a cut of the loot. Laws which forced the owners to sue at their own expense to get their property back, and be forced to pay the government's legal costs in the bargain, win or lose. All this without the government even having to prove wrongdoing on the part of the shipper.) So what we did was trade one set of crooks for another. Today's RICO Laws contain many of the same provisions. But in very few cases have I seen any evidence of any real action having been taken as a result of what I've written. I get many letters of congratulations on the work I'm doing, and surprisingly few condemnations. I am regularly involved in many discussions with a number of different people through the mail, on the Internet, and face-to-face. But little evidence of any good that has come as a result. This is very frustrating.

After you've read this report, I want you to resolve to do something to help stop what they're doing to you, and others. Even if it costs you. Even if it has not affected you. Many of the signers of the Declaration of Independence lost their homes and property, were imprisoned, beaten, tortured, and their families were broken up as a result of signing that document. They realized the enormity of their act when they signed a document that ended: "...we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor." (And they did. Many of them were killed or imprisoned and their property confiscated by the British.) Can we do any less in defense of the liberties many of them died for? Become an obstacle to the looter's plans at every opportunity. Don't allow them to make any more headway in their efforts to enslave you. Do everything you can to cause them to lose ground. Then maybe we can win this thing -- and win it we must, if we are to remain our own masters.

BUT NOT ANY LONGER, RIGHT? WRONG!

Is it still happening today? The answer is an emphatic yes. There are so many ways in which the government at all levels is ignoring the Constitution that I wouldn't even have enough room here to list them, even if I could keep your attention for that long. But I will call your attention to just a few ways in which they're doing it:

• Ex Post Facto Laws: The Constitution, in Article 1, Section IX, paragraph 3, states categorically that: No bill of attainder or ex post facto law shall be passed. You can't be any clearer than that, can you? (Ex Post Facto was a common term at the time meaning: retroactive) Has this stopped them? Not in the least. One of the most recent cases of the national government ignoring that provision of the Constitution is Clinton's retroactive tax increase. The one he passed as quickly as he could after becoming president on the promise of no tax increases.

  Another example of the common use of retroactive laws is the Environmental Protection Agency's use of a law that allows them to confiscate the property of people who own property for violating environmental laws on that property. Never mind that these "laws" weren't even in effect at the time they were "broken," and which were broken as much as one hundred years ago. It doesn't matter that the current owner wasn't even born at the time, and he or she did not own the property then. If a bureaucrat decides that environmental laws now on the books were broken as much as 100 years ago, they can confiscate the land and force the current owners to pay big fines. It's nothing but a big property grab.

• Confiscation Laws: Let's look at the very concept of confiscation of property of "lawbreakers" to keep them from enjoying the benefit of their "ill-gotten gains." That this very concept is a violation of the Constitution's insistence that we are innocent until proven guilty need not even be said. But the practice of allowing the government to simply say someone is a lawbreaker and be able to take their property without having to prove them guilty of anything is not only a violation of our Constitution, it is morally wrong.

• RICO Laws: The RICO laws are the bureaucrats' way of extending the old Admiralty Laws that allowed the government to plunder on the high seas onto land so they can now plunder us everywhere. The original intent of the RICO laws was to keep drug dealers from being able to tap their huge fortunes to pay high-powered lawyers who routinely made the Feds look like fools in court. This concept, in itself, is unconstitutional, no matter who it involves. But the laws that originally allowed them to rape the real bad guys are now being used to do the same to honest people for the most trivial of "crimes." Example: recently, a man was caught in the act of receiving oral sex from a prostitute in the back seat of what turned out to be a car jointly owned by himself and his ex wife. He and his ex wife lost the car and the courts ruled that her lack of knowledge of the act made no difference. Soon, they'll be confiscating cars for traffic violations (A law that was proposed in Colorado in 1995 would have allowed the police to impound the vehicle of any motorist caught driving, not without insurance, but just without proof of insurance. Fortunately, it did not survive -- this time -- even though it did pass the House Transportation and Energy Committee on an 8-5 vote.). Do you think a $10,000 (or even maybe a $50,000 fine) fine for not having a piece of paper in the car is fair? [Update: Since this was originally written in 1996, it has now become legal for the state to confiscate cars for nonpayment of traffic fines and to do so if the driver is found to be driving without proof of insurance. -RT]

CRIMINALIZE YOUR ENEMIES

Actually, I'm taking a big chance in writing this, and my other condemnations of the looters in our government because under RICO, all they have to do if they get enough of me is to claim I am committing a crime -- any crime -- and raid me to confiscate my computers and all my files, never to be seen again outside of their offices. And they don't even have to charge me with a crime in order to do this (Of course, with all the "copy centers" such as Kinko's I can use, they'll have to imprison me to stop me). All they have to do is claim a crime. Think it can't happen? Think again. It has already happened in Boulder, Colorado, where Federal Marshals broke into a private home and confiscated the computers and all the files belonging to a man who was in the process of exposing the depredations of the Scientology Church -- in a copyright infringement case! A civil case in which a determination of guilt had not even yet been made, and has not yet as this was written (In June, 1996). They later gave the computers and files back after he sued, but with the offending files deleted by the Scientology Church, who were in control of the files all during the time they were confiscated.

This was an unconstitutional act, but did that stop them? And what if the owner of these computers and files had (rightly) pulled a gun (in his own home) to defend himself from what may have been criminals? They'd have shot and killed him as casually as they would swat a fly, and never be bothered by conscience or by law. (They proved that at Ruby Ridge. The criminals who killed Weaver's wife, their son, and their family dog have not only not been charged with a crime, some of them have even been given commendations!) [Update: Lon Horiuchi, the gunman who murdered Weaver's wife, was charged in state court. But the feds got it moved to federal court where it was done away with. Later, hwe was given a commendation for his crime. -RT]

A PRACTICE RUN?

Maybe this was a practice run to determine the degree of opposition from the people they would run into if they did it to others who oppose them? If so, it was a complete success because people not involved personally just didn't seem to care unless, like me, they were already keeping track of the depredations of government agents. The fact that they can get away with these kinds of depredations against the people, and the fact that they would even try it, proves that this government is no longer a lawful government. It is a government of crooks, from the top down (Possibly not including some presidents, who come and go).

Many of the people who carry out these illegal acts don't even realize they are acting illegally. Bill Licatovich, a spokesman for the U. S. Marshals' Service in Washington, when they recently held up a K-Mart and emptied the cash registers of $53,000, again in a civil case (Washington Times, April 21, 1996), replied, when asked about the raid: "I'm not going to get into the question of power of government; that's beyond me." Beyond him? It would seem that anybody charged with doing something illegal for the government would at least question the legality of their actions. But apparently most don't know, and many just don't care.

RUSHING HELL WITH A TEACUP FULL OF WATER

That's what it's like trying to keep up with all the cons, scams, schemes, and "programs" the looters in our governments (at all levels) have going at all times, each one designed to take away one more small right on some pretext, slowly tightening the noose until they are in control of our every move. Here are some examples:

• Numbering us: Professor Kurk E. Koch, who has lectured at 100 universities in 65 countries on five continents about the efforts to control us has said: "Each person will have a registered number, without which he will not be allowed to buy or sell -- anyone who refuses to take part in this universal system will have no right to exist."

  Zbigniew Brezhinsky, former National Security Adviser (and certainly no friend to those who just wish to be left alone by their government) wrote in his book, "Between Two Ages," this: "The technetronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society would be dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values. Soon it will be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and maintain up-to-date complete files containing even the most personal information about the citizen. These files will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the authorities." So one of the first things they want to accomplish is to tie each and every one of us to a single number and force us to use that number in everything we do. In this manner they can, with a few keystrokes, call up a dossier for each of us and know what we've been doing, right up to this minute. By simply "revoking" this number, they can make us into an "unperson," unable to do the simplest thing, such as buying toilet paper in a grocery store. They are halfway to that goal right now, using the Social Security number.

THE THIRTY YEAR GOVERNMENT PROMISE

That's why FDR created the Social Security system. I'll bet you thought it was because of his concern for retirees, didn't you? Not even! His purpose was, in addition to getting access to billions of extra dollars without raising taxes, to create that number and require each of us to have it. And later on to be able to use it for universal identification -- the very thing he promised would never happen.

He promised that number would never be used for general identification. Sure he did. He even printed, right on the card we're all required to obtain, "NOT TO BE USED FOR IDENTIFICATION." But he "forgot" to make a law to back up this promise (surprise, surprise!) and, like most other government promises, this one began to be flagrantly violated about 30 years later (after the people to whom it was made were either dead or senile and others didn't even know about the promise) when they (quietly, with no fanfare and no announcement) took that notation off the Social Security card. Of course, even before this, the looters in our government were working like beavers to build government data bases using that number (before we found out), and were encouraging private businesses and local governments to do likewise so they (the feds) could legally "share" the information.

• The Privacy Act of 1974 Con: In the seventies, when people had begun to tumble to what was going on, they forced Congress to pass the Privacy Act of 1974 which ostensibly prevented the Feds from creating any new data bases based on the SSN. Unfortunately, the law didn't stop local governments and private businesses (including doctors and hospitals) from using the SSN as an identifier, and there was no other law against it (surprise, surprise!). It has now become the almost universal identifier those opposed to the Social Security system feared in the thirties. The Feds encourage its use by local governments, private enterprise (especially credit reporting agencies), and by utilities (which are usually the only game in town) so they (the Feds) can "share" the information and add it to their own data bases through the back door, thereby getting around the Privacy Act. (They use databases that were already in existence in 1974. They just change its use.) It was all a con. I don't have to tell anybody who has been paying the least bit of attention in recent years that you can hardly go to the bathroom any more without somebody demanding your Social Security number. I was even told one time in a "sales pitch" for an illegal pyramid scheme that I must send them this number.

• National Identification Card: They've tried many ploys over the years to get some kind of a system going that allows them to issue every American a national ID card based on the SSN. One of the most recent is Clinton's National Health Care scam. Since that failed (so far) they're now claiming an immigration crisis (which doesn't exist) and calling for a national ID card to help identify illegal immigrants. [They tacked a measure onto the new Immigration Bill that will force state DMVs to "collect" and print on the face of your driver's license, your Social Security number by the end of 1999. -RT]

  They'll keep on trying as long as we allow them to stay in power, or until they succeed in numbering us all. And with technology what it is today, they can encode a chip in the card to contain all the information there is on each of us, from the earliest records there are, up to right now. We'll be required to produce that card to be able to do anything, possibly including operating a public restroom door, right up to paying taxes. When that day comes the looters will control us -- absolutely.

• Control of the schools: The looters have been working since day one to gain complete control over our children and what is taught them in school, from the earliest age. They know that if you can teach them that collectivism is the best way at an age when they don't have sufficient knowledge to be able to dispute it, they will have, by the time they become adults, been conditioned to be dedicated socialists. I was a conditioned and dedicated liberal in 1958 when I, along with a friend, tried to promote the establishment of an international disaster rescue organization -- with nothing in mind (I thought) except to help people -- that would have to be, by its very definition, a sovereign state. The state would be created through the ratification of its charter by many other sovereign states (as the United Nations was created), and financed through money those states were to give it as well as through charitable donations (Sound familiar? Remember UNESCO?).

  Then my brothers handed me a copy of Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged," and changed my life forever. Reading this book not only convinced me that socialism (aka: collectivism,[forced] altruism and fascism) was not only illogical, it was also criminal in that it depended on the looting of the earnings of those who produced new wealth through their own endeavors and gave the earnings thus looted to those who do not, or will not earn it themselves, in order to buy their votes and thus stay in power. I thank God our idea was not accepted, although I still believe Jack Kennedy appropriated parts of it when he created the Peace Corps.

• National Education Association: It was in the sixties that they came up with the ploy to create a national teacher's union that would not be, in fact, a union so much as it would be a way for the collectivists to gain control of the school curriculum and be able to con the money out of the public to finance it. It was -- and is -- a collectivist political action group designed to not only make sure collectivism is taught in schools but to control the teachers themselves through their livelihood so as to force them to teach collectivism, whether or not they knew it.

• Conditioning our children: You have but to look at your children's schoolbooks to see that they're being conditioned to be collectivists every day in school. What's more, you can't turn on the television, the radio, or read a (mainstream) newspaper or magazine without being bombarded with collectivist propaganda from all directions.

• Children's rights: One of the cons they're using today is to stir up support that will allow them to not only control what our children are taught, but the children themselves. The whole children's rights campaign now raging (in 1996 and beyond) has that as its basic goal. Bureaucrats in the business of taking children away from their parents are very interested in just how many children they can take away from parents because their very funding depends on the number of children they can take.

• Discrediting parents: To discredit parents is one of their number one goals because if the parent has no say in how his or her children are raised, there is no way they can control what they're learning. Gaining control of the kids and getting them out of private schools whose teachings don't adhere to the collectivist line is essential to them. That's why one reason "home schooling," while still legal (in 2009) is "frowned upon" by "child protection" agencies and other government agencies.

• Beyond Common Sense: One of their common ploys is to carry a concept to a point where it goes beyond common sense and insist that everybody look at it that way. One example of this is a federal judge in Texas who ruled that: parents "give up their rights when they drop the children off at public school." (Wall Street Journal, Oct. 8, 1996, bottom of the editorial page.) The fact that there is no constitutional or statutory support for this decision doesn't seem to matter to Judge Melinda Harmon. Nor does it matter that such a ruling goes way beyond common sense. She doesn't care. All she is interested in seems to be the advancement of the Child Protective Services agenda of destroying parental authority in the raising of their children so the government can gain complete control over what is taught them. In this manner, the elitists can condition them to all be good little collectivists without interference from the parents.

• Control of the news media: People who were educated under the auspices of the NEA are now working in, and controlling the news media, both print and television, as well as most of radio, movies, and as many other outlets as they can gain control of. It's not a conspiracy, it is simply that most of the people who are running things have been taught that collectivism, altruism, and socialism are the right way, and this is obvious in the slant they put on the news and in the plots for TV and movies, which vilify the industrialist and deify the "helpless" so as to raise mediocrity to a higher level.

• 98% of media people are liberals: According to their own polls, 98% of media personnel voted for the liberal (read collectivist) candidate, yet they still claim to be objective in their coverage, while they continue to give the news a collectivist spin.

• The Federal Reserve con: One of the most effective things the looters ever did in their efforts to control our every move is to create the Federal Reserve System. This took us off the gold (and later the silver) standard and put us on the "debt standard" where the only backing for the dollar is "the full faith and credit of the United States government," which is really nothing but a bureaucrat's word, and you know what that's worth. There are now millions of people alive who don't even realize that The Fed is not even a part of the government. It is a privately owned banking institution that completely controls our money supply and is, simply, a massive "check-kiting scheme." In the simplest possible check-kiting scheme, you put a rubber check for a large amount, say $20,000, into a new account you start in one bank. Then you go successively to three more banks, starting each new account with a check drawn on the last account. From the fourth bank, you write a check that is deposited in the original account, completing the circle and "backing" all four checks with money that does not exist.

  Now you can borrow (real?) money based on a net worth of $20,000 -- which doesn't exist except on paper, and use that money to create more check-kiting schemes, or to invest in other moneymaking scams. This is basically what The Fed does, but on a much larger scale, and in such a complicated way that it is impossible for someone who doesn't know what a check-kiting scheme is, or how it operates, to figure it out. Further, if it's the government doing it, with the full cooperation of the media, it is difficult to stop, even if you know exactly what they're doing and publicize that fact in parts of the media not controlled by the looters.

  Why are they doing it? Simple: in addition to faux profit (unearned profit), to control the currency of a country is to control that country, and The Fed does that. They manipulate it constantly for their own purposes, creating booms and busts, slowdowns and depressions at will. Every time they do, some of their people make (unearned) money. The only rich you should fear are the kind whose only profit comes from this kind of a scam.

• Ripping off your earnings: When they first proposed a federal income tax they promised that the rate of the tax would never exceed 3% of income and that only the rich would ever have to pay it (read: "loot the rich"). Today, the top tax rate is almost 40% (down from 90% and back up from Reagan's 28%) and they're auditing taxi drivers and waitresses for their tips. For their tips! Combine that with all the other kinds of taxes you're paying under all kinds of names designed to fool you (such as: fees, assessments, fines, user fees, excise fees, value added taxes, sales taxes, tolls, etc.), you're paying more than 50% of your income in taxes. Did you ever wonder why you can no longer raise a family on one income? Why it is now necessary for Mom to work when years ago she could stay at home and raise her children? That's easy: One income is to pay the bills and the other is to pay the taxes.

  You're being taxed in more ways than you could imagine, and most of it is hidden in the higher price you pay for merchandise and services that are taxed before you even enter the picture (The minimum wage is just another tax on the employer that you are required to pay in the form of higher prices for the goods and services that are provided by minimum wage workers.). And the American Revolution that created this country was started over less than a penny tax on a pound of tea.

• The IRS: This agency is "above the law." It is America's version of the Gestapo. It has total power in its treatment of taxpayers (euphemistically called clients). They can come to your home or business and take what they want with no warrants required, all on the unsupported word of a bureaucrat (do you see a pattern developing here?) that you owe taxes. Once they take it you have to go to (their) court (an IRS referee) where you almost automatically lose (After all, who's paying the referee's salary?). You may then appeal your loss to a higher authority within the IRS, and again almost automatically lose. All this is at your expense after they've already looted you of most, if not all you own. At this point, you may appeal to a real court. But before you do, you must pay anything they say you owe over what they've already taken. If you win there, you might get your property back, less their expenses, and in their own good time (of course, nobody is better at delaying the inevitable than is a bureaucrat).

• The trend in all their ripoffs: In case you hadn't noticed, that's the trend in all their dealings with their subjects (citizens) these days.

• They accuse you, with or without proof of wrongdoing

• Rip off your property, and even sometimes let you go without charges even being filed, but still keep what they've looted unless you can (still) afford to go to court at your expense to get it back. You still get to pay their legal costs, win or lose. And in many cases, you must post a bond guaranteeing such payment before you can file suit (How you do this without money is beyond me). They tax you into financial ruin, take anything they want, put you in prison or even kill you if you try to defend yourself from an invasion by not properly identified cops wearing black ski masks and, in many cases, ninja suits.

• Targeting People: They actually target people to be killed and/or neutralized (Waco, Ruby Ridge) because they don't like how those people think or talk. They target others because they want the money or property those people have to enhance their own budgets and even, in some cases, provide extra bonuses for their troops. Law enforcement is no longer "getting the bad guys." It's now "increasing confiscations" (otherwise known as "property ripoffs"). Their goal is to confiscate as much money and property as they can.

• The Conservation Con: It has been said that the conservation movement is the communism of today. That since communism collapsed (And I don't buy that for a minute. There are still many communist dictatorships in the world.), the power brokers are using the conservation movement as a means to continue to erode our rights and our control over our own affairs. They are. But conservation isn't the only cover they're using. Even so, let's look at how they're using it and what they're gaining from that use:

• Wetlands: A bureaucrat declares your property (which may be dry as a bone) to be a wetland. From that moment on, they effectively own it. You no longer get to make decisions as to what use it is put to without having to go hat in hand to another petty bureaucrat to get permission to do something to land that you own, and in which the bureaucrat has no financial or even moral interest. But that's OK because like as not, a little grease under the table will get this bureaucrat (who should never have been in your way) to see things your way. Kinda like a commission you pay so they'll let you do what should have been your decision to do in the first place (or is it a bribe?);

• Habitat and Protected Species: The same thing applies as in the wetlands con, except here you can also be sentenced to prison and have your property confiscated for accidentally running over and killing a protected kangaroo rat while plowing your field. An Indian artist made a gift for Hillary Clinton in which she used an eagle feather that she picked up off the ground. The feds investigated her thoroughly, including raiding her home, tapping her phone and questioning all her neighbors and friends, finally filing charges against her and fining her (extorting) thousands of dollars. All over an eagle feather found on the ground. This is the way the feds overreach their authority and spend thousands of dollars in taxpayer funds on unimportant things while making victims of, and hurting innocent people. They just don't care who they hurt while they're exercising that little bit of authority each of them has;

• The Disabled: They use the disabled as a lever to allow them to force idiotic things on businesses and individuals. In one well-known case, they made a restaurant owner move a handrail one-fourth of an inch before they would allow him to open his restaurant (At a cost of thousands of dollars). In San Francisco, they insisted that the new urinals to be built on Market Street be built so that people in wheelchairs could use them. Never mind that there are such a statistically small number of people in wheelchairs who might need to use them as to make it an exercise in futility. Last I heard, the plan was cancelled because of too high a cost. In one case, they forced a bank to put Braille on the controls at a drive-up bank!

• Sexism: There are really some people (not just men) out there who are really boorish about sex. But the government, as usual, has gone completely overboard in their efforts to eradicate it and have made men afraid to even ask for a date for fear of being accused. Today, sexual harassment is what a bureaucrat or a "victim" says it is, and you can be sued and in some cases, even arrested on the unsupported word of one person. The crime is not defined by law, but by what a person thinks it is.

• Racism: Racism is a handy lever to use in getting things that are unearned for anyone "a bureaucrat claims" has been discriminated against. It is yet another area in which the government has taken the power to interfere in our lives unnecessarily. Racism is not increasing. It's decreasing, no matter what the professional "race-baiters" such as Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and "Calypso Louie" Farrakhan may say. People in all minorities are holding high office at a rate unprecedented in history. The minority middle class is growing, and minority income is up. The only reason the ranks of the poor are also growing is because the government keeps raising the ante so they can continue to claim that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. That is so they can pit the poor against the rich and from that gain votes (there are more poor than there are rich);

• The Gays: Again, they pit the gays against the straights to get them fighting amongst themselves and while doing so, ignore what is being done to both groups. Divide and conquer (or rule);

• The Federal Drug Administration: The FDA administrator once told Congress that if they didn't give him the power to control tobacco, he'd just do it administratively. How arrogant! Seems to me that if the Congress doesn't think it should be done, a bureaucrat, whose job was created by Congress in the first place, should have better sense than to threaten to do anyway what Congress refuses to allow him to do. But a bureaucrat sometimes quickly comes to believe him(her)self to be immune to Congressional control;

• Guns: The bureaucrats find this an excellent place to take power because there is a ready group of gullible people who hate guns and subscribe to the irrational belief that people who break the law as a routine thing will obey a law that says they can't do it with a gun. This group also ignores the fact that if there had been a person with a gun and the will to use it in several places where madmen shot up groups of people without opposition and with guns that were either legally obtained or obtained through the underground (illegally), those madmen would now be dead instead of twenty or thirty innocent people. The looters don't care how many people die in support of their power trip;

• Smoking: I don't care how many bureaucrats tell you, over and over, that smoking is a proven killer. It's not true. It doesn't matter which end of the argument you're on, all they have is a statistical indication that there may be a connection between smoking and all kinds of illnesses with no real proof.. But they keep repeating this lie, and as with all big lies, people come to believe it after it has been repeated often enough. A few years ago, the World Health Organization commissioned a study about "second-hand smoke" and suppressed it after only one day because it said "there is no reason to believe 'environmental smoke' (their word for it) is a danger, and might even be a good thing." To this day, most of the items on their web site claim "environmental smoke" causes cancer;

EPA LIES, PRESS SWEARS TO IT

The second-hand smoke contention itself has been proven to be a case of the government spinning figures to suit itself, proven by a government agency! The government's own Congressional Research Service, after doing a two-year study of the same data used by the EPA, concluded that: "The statistical evidence does not appear to support a conclusion that there are substantial health effects of passive smoking." They further said: "It is possible that very few or even no deaths can be attributed to ETS (Environmental Tobacco Smoke). That this report flatly contradicts the very basic premise on which the anti-smoking fanatics are relying in their con is completely ignored by the press and the anti-smoking fanatics as they continue to quote the skewed results and tell people what they want to tell them while knowing it is a lie. They just want to control people and force them to stop smoking. (For your information, I don't smoke. So I have no dog in this fight.);

• OSHA: Now here is an area where they've been sticking their noses unmercifully into other people's affairs for many years. Some of their regulations are fair, I admit. But as usual, they've gone off the deep end in the total number and the stupidity of the regulations that are in force today. Any time you let a bureaucrat start making regulations without some control on what he (or she) does, they go off in all directions. They love to control people;

• Total Control: They want to have total control over your every action, day and night, seven days a week. And they want to control the government as a means toward that end.

• Conflicting Laws and Regulations: Ayn Rand said: "There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one "makes" them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What's there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced nor objectively interpreted -- and you create a nation of law-breakers -- and then you cash in on the guilt." (Ayn Rand, "Atlas Shrugged")

  Today there are so many laws and regulations you must be breaking some: Their basic scam in making so many different regulations in so many different areas is this: If you are in compliance with one regulation forced on you by one agency, you are likely, by this compliance, in violation of one or more put on you by one or more other agencies.. The idea here is to be able to get you at any time they wish. This gives them total control, because they can make a decision not to enforce any regulation if they wish, and if you pay them enough under the table.

• The Pull Peddlers: Which brings us to that really odious animal, the "pull peddler." When bureaucrats control all (and they're near to that position now), the guy who can influence the bureaucrat who controls your actions can sell you the right to do what should not be his to sell in the first place.

Am I an extremist? Am I just stirring people up over nothing? Do I see a conspirator under every bed? I'll let you decide. But what I do want to do with this report is to wake you up. To teach you how to read between the lines in whatever propaganda they offer you. So you can begin to recognize their cons and scams every time they come up with a new one and be able to put roadblocks in their way every time you see one coming.

What can you do? You're only one person, right? So am I. But I seem to have the ability to put ideas on paper in a coherent manner, much the same as did Thomas Paine (the author of the original "Common Sense," a pamphlet that literally created this country and an entirely new way to govern) back in the eighteenth century by making people think about what was being done to them in the name of the law. So I use that ability to hopefully influence many more people so they'll obstruct the looters at every turn instead of docilely allowing themselves to be led to the slaughter by a skilled and continuing pattern of lies, cons, and scams.

• Pay attention: First of all, you must pull your head out of the sand and start paying attention so you'll be constantly alert to their scams and schemes. If you find a talent for it, get involved in politics on a local level -- or even on a state or national level -- where you can become an obstacle to their plans, and where you can influence as many people as possible to do likewise.

• Discussion groups: Get others together and create informal discussion groups. Have these groups take political action to oppose the looters on every front. Keep them small. If they start getting too big, break them up into smaller groups that can, while being small, all work together toward the same ends. Smaller groups don't attract as much attention from the entrenched bureaucrats as do large ones, but a bunch of small groups working together can have a big effect on what happens.

• Become and stay well-informed: Make it your business to become well-informed on these matters and help your discussion groups to do likewise. Search out and subscribe to newspapers, newsletters, and other media where the news is not filtered through collectivist eyes. Stay up on what they're doing at all times and keep your discussion group informed of what you learn.

• Use network marketing: Amway, AmsOil, and other network marketing companies have built massive organizations of grassroots people to sell products through the simple means of getting people to talk to their friends about those products and by each one selling a small amount of their product while attempting to sponsor new people for their group. You can do the same for your discussion group and build a groundswell of people who are paying attention and being obstacles to the collectivists' plans.

• Use cells: The John Birch Society had an excellent idea when they set up their organization in cell form, similar to the system used by the communists. In this manner, with each group containing only a small number, you don't have the problems usually suffered by large groups, yet you can still maintain contact. While I don't subscribe to many of the "excessive" ideas the Birchers preached, and none of what the communists preached, I think this is an excellent way to keep communication going between many small discussion groups. This way, if they decide you're subversive and start investigating you, there is no massive list they can capture so as to get everybody. It only works if the people in one cell only know one person in another.

• Not collectivism: Some have said this is as much collectivism as that practiced by liberals. Not so. This is a bunch of individuals with similar interests, who work together voluntarily toward a common goal. The major difference here is the word "voluntarily." In collectivism, they work together because it's the law. That means no one is volunteering. They're being forced. In your discussion group, no one is being forced. And if they work well together, and each member of your group can influence one or more people, your ideas will spread like wildfire.

• Objectivism: As a long-time student of Objectivist philosophy, I can tell you that the main struggle is between Objectivism and SUBjectivism. It's not a massive conspiracy, but the result of many years of subjectivist philosophy in the guise of altruism (collectivism) having been taught as the ideal in our schools. But you don't have to understand Objectivism as a philosophy in order to understand when you're being ripped off by bureaucrats in your own government. But you should have at least a basic understanding about how subjectivism (collectivism) is different from Objectivism (individualism), and you can gain that understanding, not by reading philosophical treatises and tomes, but through reading a fascinating fiction story, Ayn Rand's masterwork, "Atlas Shrugged.

  This book shows in fictional form what would happen if the creators and producers in society (those who invent the products which make jobs for everyone else, who have the original ideas that push society) went on strike and refused to continue their creative and productive work under the chains that collectivists put on them. It shows graphically how government regulation not only stifles creativity and productivity, it can stop it altogether. The central figure in the story is a railroad, and if you don't believe the same things (in different form) are happening today, just look at the plight of today's railroads, which have almost been regulated out of existence. As an underlying part of the story in this book, the author introduced a new philosophy: Objectivism. The antidote to subjectivism, which is the philosophy that is destroying the world as we know it. Ayn Rand's "producer's" strike merely accelerated the process that the collectivists are (knowingly or unknowingly) working toward: the collapse of our society.

  It's a long book, but it is a fascinating one. It is what woke me up made me see collectivism for what it really is, and turned my life around. It enabled me to understand that it wasn't a contradiction for fabulously rich people such as Rockefeller to be in favor of socialism as a means toward gaining power over others. It showed me why he, and others like him, work together so seamlessly that people think there is a single conspiracy to take total power -- while in actuality, there are many conspiracies fueled by "forced" altruism, an evil philosophy that is taught in the schools and is used to fool people into allowing them to take total power, with those people's permission.

  • The answer is the same: It also taught me that it is just not important to discover or determine whether or not there is one massive conspiracy or a thousand, based on the same philosophy. The cure is the same in either case:
  • Investigation and exposure: That's what they cannot stand, which is why they work so hard to discredit those who are on to them so as to minimize the damage (damage control) such people can do to their nefarious plans. If you are one of those, you can expect them to ridicule you and try to hurt you in any way they can. The more they do, the more you have hurt their plans. You are being effective. That's what they hate most about George Bush (the younger). He's being effective.
  • Stay informed: Keep yourself informed, and help keep as many others informed as you can. One way to do that is read the "THOMA$ REPORT," WHICH IS designed to help you see through the daily "drumbeat" of lies by the admittedly 98% liberal (socialist) press. It is also a place where you can put in "your own two cents' worth" to the entire readership by sending one "letter to the editor, which are posted right along with news items in the "Bull Cutter's Blog section.. This free, and you can subscribe to the "Alert List" to be notified every time the page is updated. Read, then do something! I've written many articles, both within and without my report that should set people seething with anger at the things that are being done to them. To read the "THOMAS REPORT," just click here.

    You can also obtain and read one of my books. the first, "What's Wrong IN America," which should have been the second, tells you about the "cancer" that is eating away at this country and how you can "cure" it. The second, which should have been the first, "Pay ATTENTION to Politics!" tells you about the reason why liberals (Democrats) are "in control" as this is written. Most Americans are just "not paying attention" to what their politicians and bureaucrats are doing to them. They're too busy with their own affairs and with making a living. Meanwhile, politics IS paying attention to them. Their politicians and bureaucrats are "working like beavers" to control them absolutely, while making them pay for it with ever higher taxes. Both are available on Amazon.com.