Independent American News

I am a resident of Wasilla, Alaska. I have known Sarah since 1992. Everyone here knows Sarah, so it is nothing special to say we are on a first-name basis. Our children have attended the same schools. Her father was my child’s favorite substitute teacher. Â I also am on a first name basis with her parents and mother-in-law. I attended more

City Council meetings during her administration than about 99% of the residents of the city.

She is enormously popular; in every way she’s like the most popular girl in middle school. Even men who think she is a poor choice and won’t vote for her can’t quit smiling when talking about her because she is a ‘babe’.

It is astonishing and almost scary how well she can keep a secret. She kept her most recent pregnancy a secret from her children and parents for seven months.

She is ‘pro-life’. She recently gave birth to a Down’s syndrome baby. There is no cover-up involved, here; Trig is her baby.

She is energetic and hardworking. She regularly worked out at the gym.

She is savvy. She doesn’t take positions; she just ‘puts things out there’ and if they prove to be popular, then she takes credit.

Her husband works a union job on the North Slope for BP and is a champion snowmobile racer. Todd Palin’s kind of job is highly sought-after because of the schedule and high pay. He arranges his work schedule so he can fish for salmon in Bristol Bay for a month or so in summer, but by no stretch of the imagination is fishing their major source of income. Nor has her life-style ever been anything like that of native Alaskans.

Sarah and her whole family are avid hunters.

She’s smart.

Her experience is as mayor of a city with a population of about 5,000 (at the time), and less than 2 years as governor of a state with about 670,000 residents.

During her mayoral administration most of the actual work of running this small city was turned over to an administrator. She had been pushed to hire this administrator by party power-brokers after she had gotten herself into some trouble over precipitous firings which had given rise to a recall campaign.

Sarah campaigned in Wasilla as a fiscal conservative. During her 6 years as Mayor, she increased general government expenditures by over 33%. During those same 6 years the amount of taxes collected by the City increased by 38%. This was during a period of low inflation (1996-2002). She reduced progressive property taxes and increased a regressive sales tax which taxed even food. The tax cuts that she promoted benefited large corporate property owners way more than they benefited residents.

The huge increases in tax revenues during her mayoral administration weren’t enough to fund everything on her wish list though, borrowed money was needed, too. She inherited a city with zero debt, but left it with indebtedness of over $22 million. What did Mayor Palin encourage the voters to borrow money for? Was it the infrastructure that she said she supported? The sewage treatment plant that the city lacked? or a new library? No. $1m for a park. $15m-plus for construction of a

multi-use sports complex which she rushed through to build on a piece of property that the City didn’t even have clear title to, that was still in litigation 7 yrs later–to the delight of the lawyers involved! The sports complex itself is a nice addition to the

community but a huge money pit, not the profit-generator she claimed it would be. She also supported bonds for $5.5m for road projects that could have been done in 5-7 yrs without any borrowing.

While Mayor, City Hall was extensively remodeled and her office redecorated more than once.

These are small numbers, but Wasilla is a very small city.

As an oil producer, the high price of oil has created a budget surplus in Alaska . Rather than invest this surplus in technology that will make us energy independent and increase efficiency, as Governor she proposed distribution of this surplus to every individual in the state.

In this time of record state revenues and budget surpluses, she recommended that the state borrow/bond for road projects, even while she proposed distribution of surplus state revenues: spend today’s surplus, borrow for needs.

She’s not very tolerant of divergent opinions or open to outside ideas or compromise. As Mayor, she fought ideas that weren’t generated by her or her staff. Ideas weren’t evaluated on their merits, but on the basis of who proposed them.

While Sarah was Mayor of Wasilla she tried to fire our highly respected City Librarian because the Librarian refused to consider removing from the library some books that Sarah wanted removed. City residents rallied to the defense of the City Librarian and against Palin’s attempt at out-and-out censorship, so Palin backed down and withdrew her termination letter. People who fought her attempt to oust the Librarian are on her enemies list to this day.

Sarah complained about the old boy’s club when she first ran for Mayor, so what did she bring Wasilla? A new set of ‘old boys’. Palin fired most of the experienced staff she inherited. At the City and as Governor she hired or elevated new, inexperienced, obscure people, creating a staff totally dependent on her for their jobs and eternally

grateful and fiercely loyal–loyal to the point of abusing their power to further her personal agenda, as she has acknowledged happened in the case of pressuring the State’s top cop (see below).

As Mayor, Sarah fired Wasilla’s Police Chief because he intimidated her, she told the press. As Governor, her recent firing of Alaska’s top cop has the ring of familiarity about it. He served at her pleasure and she had every legal right to fire him, but it’s pretty clear that an important factor in her decision to fire him was because he wouldn’t fire her sister’s ex-husband, a State Trooper. Under investigation

for abuse of power, she has had to admit that more than 2 dozen contacts were made between her staff and family to the person that she later fired, pressuring him to fire her ex-brother-in-law. She tried to replace the man she fired with a man who she knew had been reprimanded for sexual harassment; when this caused a public furor, she withdrew her support.

She has bitten the hand of every person who extended theirs to her in help. The City Council person who personally escorted her around town introducing her to voters when she first ran for Wasilla City Council became one of her first targets when she was later elected Mayor. She abruptly fired her loyal City Administrator; even people who didn’t like the guy were stunned by this ruthlessness.

Fear of retribution has kept all of these people from saying anything publicly about her.

When then-Governor Murkowski was handing out political plums, Sarah got the best, Chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission: one of the few jobs not in Juneau and one of the best paid. She had no background in oil & gas issues. Within months of scoring this great job which paid $122,400/yr, she was complaining in the press about the high salary. I was told that she hated that job: the commute, the structured hours, the work. Sarah became aware that a member of this

Commission (who was also the State Chair of the Republican Party) engaged in unethical behavior on the job. In a gutsy move which some undoubtedly cautioned her could be political suicide, Sarah solved all her problems in one fell swoop: got out of the job she hated and garnered gobs of media attention as the patron saint of ethics and as a gutsy fighter against the old boys’ club when she dramatically quit, exposing this man’s ethics violations (for which he was fined).

As Mayor, she had her hand stuck out as far as anyone for pork from Senator Ted Stevens. Lately, she has castigated his pork-barrel politics and publicly humiliated him. She only opposed the bridge to nowhere after it became clear that it would be unwise not to.

As Governor, she gave the Legislature no direction and budget guidelines, then made a big grandstand display of line-item vetoing projects, calling them pork. Public outcry and further legislative action restored most of these projects–which had been vetoed simply because she was not aware of their importance–but with the unobservant she had gained a reputation as anti-pork.

She is solidly Republican: no political maverick. The State party leaders hate her because she has bit them in the back and humiliated them. Other members of the party object to her self-description as a fiscal conservative.

Around Wasilla there are people who went to high school with Sarah. They call her Sarah Barracuda because of her unbridled ambition and predatory ruthlessness. Before she became so powerful, very ugly stories circulated around town about shenanigans she pulled to be made point guard on the high school basketball team. When Sarah’s mother-in-law, a highly respected member of the community and experienced manager, ran for Mayor, Sarah refused to endorse her.

As Governor, she stepped outside of the box and put together of package of legislation known as AGIA that forced the oil companies to march to the beat of her drum.

Like most Alaskans, she favors drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. She has questioned if the loss of sea ice is linked to global warming. She campaigned as a private citizen against a state initiative that would have either a) protected salmon streams from pollution from mines, or b) tied up in the courts all mining in the state (depending on who you listen to). She has pushed the State’s lawsuit against the Dept. of the Interior’s decision to list polar bears as threatened species.

McCain is the oldest person to ever run for President; Sarah will be a heartbeat away from being President.

There have to be literally millions of Americans who are more knowledgeable and experienced than she.

However, there are a lot of people who have underestimated her and are regretting it.

CLAIM VS FACT

Hockey mom: true for a few years

PTA mom: true years ago when her first-born was in elementary school, not since

NRA supporter: absolutely true

Social conservative: mixed. Opposes gay marriage, BUT vetoed a bill that would have denied benefits to employees in same-sex relationships (said she did this because it was unconstitutional).

Pro-creationism: mixed. Supports it, BUT did nothing as Governor to promote it.

Pro-life: mixed. Knowingly gave birth to a Down’s syndrome baby BUT declined to call a special legislative session on some pro-life legislation

Experienced: Some high schools have more students than Wasilla has residents. Many cities have more residents than the state of Alaska .

No legislative experience other than City Council. Little hands-on supervisory or managerial experience; needed help of a city administrator to run town of about 5,000.

Political maverick: not at all

Gutsy: absolutely!

Open & transparent: ??? Good at keeping secrets. Not good at explaining actions.

Has a developed philosophy of public policy: no

A Greenie: no. Turned Wasilla into a wasteland of big box stores and disconnected parking lots. Is pro-drilling off-shore and in ANWR.

Fiscal conservative: not by my definition!

Pro-infrastructure: No. Promoted a sports complex and park in a city without a sewage treatment plant or storm drainage system. Built streets to early 20th century standards.

Pro-tax relief: Lowered taxes for businesses, increased tax burden on residents

Pro-small government: No. Oversaw greatest expansion of city government in Wasilla’s history.

Pro-labor/pro-union. No. Just because her husband works union doesn’t make her pro-labor. I have seen nothing to support any claim that she is pro-labor/pro-union.

WHY AM I WRITING THIS?

First, I have long believed in the importance of being an informed voter. I am a voter registrar. For 10 years I put on student voting programs in the schools. If you google my name (Anne Kilkenny + Alaska ), you will find references to my participation in local government, education, and PTA /parent organizations.

Secondly, I’ve always operated in the belief that ‘Bad things happen when good people stay silent’. Few people know as much as I do because few have gone to as many City Council meetings.

Third, I am just a housewife. I don’t have a job she can bump me out of. I don’t belong to any organization that she can hurt. But, I am no fool; she is immensely popular here, and it is likely that this will cost me somehow in the future: that’s life.

Fourth, she has hated me since back in 1996, when I was one of the 100 or so people who rallied to support the City Librarian against Sarah’s attempt at censorship.

Fifth, I looked around and realized that everybody else was afraid to say anything because they were somehow vulnerable.

CAVEATS

I am not a statistician. I developed the numbers for the increase in spending & taxation 2 years ago (when Palin was running for Governor) from information supplied to me by the Finance Director of the City of Wasilla , and I can’t recall exactly what I adjusted for: did I adjust for inflation? for population increases? Right now, it is impossible for a private person to get any info out of City Hall–they are swamped. So I can’t verify my numbers.

You may have noticed that there are various numbers circulating for the population of Wasilla, ranging from my ‘about 5,000′, up to 9,000. The day Palin’s selection was announced a city official told me that the current population is about 7,000. The official 2000 census count was 5,460. I have used about 5,000 because Palin was Mayor from 1996 to 2002, and the city was growing rapidly in the mid-90s.

Anne Kilkenny
August 31, 2008
http://www.washingtonindependent.com/3671/the-reform-candidate

Hello Everyone!!

I was having problems with my Internet service so I am running a little behind. It has been busy here in Southern Nevada, the kids back in school, etc. I trust all readers have been eating healthy and fighting the good fight. So without to much fanfare, let’s jump right in.

Over the last weekend the weather started getting cooler here (103 degrees!) but the nights here in the desert drop down to the high 50’s. So fall planting is afoot. Now assuming that you have plotted out your space, and worked abundant amounts of compost into your soil, you are ready to get planting!! Here where I live we have another short growing season that allows you to get in some more tomatoes if you so desire. When the soil temperature gets down to 75-77 degrees, there are a couple of varieties of lettuce that are excellent producers, we have had success with butter lettuce and red leaf. Spinach is ready for another go around as well. Being from the “sativa” genus the planting and growing of lettuce and spinach are very close. Also, carrots and a little later on cabbage, and other root vegetables.

There are countless sources for seeds no matter where you live. Local nurseries, home improvement stores , hardware stores, and of course, on-line. If you can find a person in a nursery, or hardware store that can hook you up with heirloom seeds than by all things righteous buy them with your last dollar! Heirloom seeds ( if you do not know) are just what they say they are. You can collect the seeds from your grown plants and replant them again and again. Thay are more expensive but well worth it. You only buy them once. If you buy anything else it is probably a hybrid. Hybrids are not all that bad, but please read the package before you purchase and plant. Hybrids have been cross-bred to have more desirable traits. You know, like more flavor, drought tolerant, etc. It is like a lot of things folks, you have to do your homework before you eat something you have grown and it ends up being FRANKENFOOD!!! So be very aware of companies like Monsanto and there ilk. I don’t want to scare anyone but some things these big agriculture outfits do is just not good for anyone but there bottom line. So the best thing to do guys,is go heirloom seeds, you will have a better harvest, a better taste, and you have seeds for as long as you are willing. In may next article I will be talking about fertilizers. Sounds exciting doesen’t it?? One other thing………

The initial articles that I am writing are very general, we will in the future get down and literally dirty on specifics. I like to close these little items I am submitting with a tag line of sorts, ” One Man and a Shovel” well last weekend, I got access to an old 5hps tiller. I have to do some maintenence on it, but my son Ian says I have to change the tag-line. Oh well I thought it sounded kinda cool. Till next time gardeners.

Feed your Family, Feed Your Soul
One Man and a Shovel(almost a Tiller)
The Green Guy

By: D. H. Williams

Secret Service confiscates books & buttons from Ron Paul delegates

Today at the Republican National Convention, as the Ron Paul Delegates were taking a picture in front of the model White House inside the Convention Center, they were surrounded by Secret Service which proceeded to search the bags of all the delegates. They took any and everything related to Ron Paul including signs, buttons, videos, slim jims, cards, even books.
Dennis Rothacker from Florida said “We were done taking the picture when Secret Service started walking into the room and surrounded us. There were about 30 of them. When they searched my bags they took my Ron Paul sign and turned a deaf ear to my complaints, they just walked away.”

Delegate Ron Warner from Fairbanks Alaska added that as he was walking into the convention center today with about 15 Revolution Manifesto books, 20 DVD’s for Delegates, 20 Ron Paul buttons and a handful of other things, we were stopped by security which called on an obviously important higher up, who directed all the materials to be confiscated. She told him, and I quote “You can’t bring that in here, this is McCain territory”

Dennis, Ron and the other delegates report being openly followed by secret service. He says that they had been monitored from the beginning of the convention, but that now they are being shadowed constantly.

There are also reports of delegates being approached by security and told that they will be summarily thrown out if they leave their assigned chair.

The alarm was sounded at 6:07 PM EST when a text message was hurriedly sent from the convention floor by Republican delegate Dennis Rothacker to Boris in Miami.

“We just had a group shot of all the RP delegates and alternates, the secret service came and started searching everyone and took anything RP related. We got it on video though…”

Ron Paul delegates report that they have been shadowed by Secret Service since the beginning of the Republican National Convention at the Xcel Center, following the confiscation of their political materials they are now being surveilled openly with an agent assigned to each delegate. When one of the delegates asked if they could retrieve their property after the convention they were told, “No.” not satisfied with that answer the delegate tried to follow the agent to make additional inquiries. He was told this action was causing a disturbance and a security agent was told to stay with him for the rest of the evening. For their safety the Ron Paul delegation have decided to stick together as a group while approaching the media with their story.

McCain delegates at large have approached Ron Paul delegates throughout the day in attempts to separate them from their all important delegate credentials.  Adam Weigold, delegate from Minnesota, reported he has been approached at least five times by other Republican delegates supporting McCain-Palin who asked him to borrow his pass to go the bathroom. Nathan Hanson (MN) delegate and attorney suspects this is an organized effort by the GOP establishment.

Several Republicans attending the convention have reported to Daily Newscaster mass confiscation of bumper stickers, literature and paper signs such as, “Calling the GOP back to its Roots.” The GOP has put together an organized machine of federal security forces, McCain operatives, delegates, floor monitors and other staff creating an effective political ministry.

Neocon loyalist for McCain are hounding any Republican delegate known to support the conservative principles of Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX). Delegates for Ron Paul are being kept silent, if they dare approach one of the microphones it is turned off and any attempt to discuss Ron Paul results in a threat of removal from the convention floor.

In today’s computer world a picture can look real but be as fake as “voluntary compliance.”

But is the picture really a fake. It is claimed that a picture can paint a thousand words. This faked picture of Sarah Palin is indeed a fake but the reason it is so easy to believe is because Sarah Palin fits the bill.

If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck it probably is a duck. So even though the picture is a fake that does not change the fact that Sarah Palin is a fake too.

What Belongs to Caesar?
by Mark R. Crovelli
Posted on 9/2/2008

Render Unto Caesar: Serving the Nation by Living Our Catholic Beliefs in Political Life, By Charles J. Chaput.

As a former parishioner of the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Denver who has had the pleasure of attending scores of masses presided over by Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, I can personally attest to the great moral strength, courage, and wisdom of the archbishop. It was for this reason that I eagerly awaited the release of Archbishop Chaput’s new book, Render Unto Caesar: Serving the Nation by Living Our Catholic Beliefs in Political Life, which was released this month.

I was anxious to read the book for a more personal reason as well, stemming from a brief email exchange between the archbishop and me that occurred approximately a year ago. I had written to the archbishop in the hope that he could explain to me how Christians could morally countenance the practice of taxation by states. I said that it appeared to me that taxation was morally synonymous with robbery, (since taxation necessarily involves taking men’s justly earned property by force and without their consent), and thus ought to be condemned by Christians as a violation of the 7th commandment. I asked the archbishop to clarify this for me, and he replied that taxation is not synonymous with robbery, citing the famous “Render unto Caesar” passage in the New Testament (Matt. 22).

When I recently learned that the archbishop had written a new book entitled, of all things, Render unto Caesar, my heart lept at the idea of finding a more thoroughgoing analysis of the moral relationship between Christians and the tax-funded state. I anticipated that I would encounter in the book a moral defense of taxation and the state that would lay bare our responsibilities as a Christians to pay taxes and support the existence of the state.

Unfortunately, however, the archbishop does not endeavor in the book to put forward an argument designed to demonstrate that taxation is not morally equivalent to robbery. Nor does he endeavor to demonstrate why all states are not, as St. Augustine famously put it in The City of God, “gangs of criminals on a grand scale.” Despite the title of the book, Archbishop Chaput leaves the reader without any argument as to why the state has a right to rule over us, why we have a moral obligation to submit to such domination, or why the state possesses the moral authority to extract money from us at the point of a gun. Put in even simpler terms, Archbishop Chaput offers no compelling arguments against those of us who happen to be, in Jerome Tuccille’s words, “sane, moderate, middle-of-the-road anarchist[s].”

This review will focus on one particularly troubling (and glaringly obvious) contradiction in the book. Specifically, I will focus on the problem of asserting on the one hand, as does Archbishop Chaput, that all human beings are endowed by God and nature with equal dignity and sanctity, while asserting on the other hand such things as “rulers who commanded obedience to just laws, peaceful conduct, or honesty in business dealings posed no moral problem for Christians” (p. 64), or “even in classic Catholic thought, the church must respect the institutions of the state” (p.135).

If we are to take seriously the idea of equal human dignity and the sanctity of every single human life, then, contrary to Archbishop Chaput, we must necessarily denounce the tax-funded, coercive state as the single most egregious violator of human dignity and the most dangerous enemy of human life and civilization. This is true, moreover, of each and every state that gains its revenue through taxation ­ including so-called “liberal democracies.”

If all men are endowed with equal dignity, how is the state morally justifiable?

The reason Archbishop Chaput’s assertions are problematic and ultimately incompatible is that the tax-funded state is, in the final analysis, a group of men who have arrogated to themselves the “right” to rule, impress, rob, imprison, and regulate their subjects ­ without the subjects’ consent.

As St. Augustine noted, anticipating the work of such later scholars as Franz Oppenheimer, the state originated in the world, not through social contract or voluntary arrangement, but rather through force, robbery and murder:

A gang is a group of men under the command of a leader, bound by a compact of association, in which the plunder is divided according to an agreed convention. If this villainy wins so many recruits from the ranks of the demoralized that it acquires territory, establishes a base, captures cities and subdues peoples, it then openly arrogates to itself the title of kingdom, which is conferred on it in the eyes of the world, not by the renunciation of aggression, but by the attainment of impunity. For it was a witty and truthful rejoinder which was given by a captured pirate to Alexander the Great. The king asked the fellow, ‘What is your idea, in infesting the sea?’ And the pirate answered, with uninhibited insolence, ‘the same as yours, in infesting the earth! But because I do it with a tiny craft, I’m called a pirate: because you have a mighty navy, you’re called an emperor.’

Although it might be tempting to view the state romantically as an organic institution, emerging Athena-like from the body of people residing in a given territory, the truth is quite different ­ even in states that supposedly originated in a so-called “social contract.” As the political scientist Terry Moe has observed in this regard, the social contract theory of government is wholly at odds with the political reality subjects confront and submit to in their lives:

Centuries of political philosophy notwithstanding, there is no social contract in any meaningful sense that can account for the foundations of government… The typical situation in all modern societies is that people are born into the formal structure of their political systems, do not agree to it from the outset, and cannot leave if they find it disadvantageous (unless they are prepared to leave the country) … This being so, the fact that some groups may lose in domestic politics ­ and may, in particular, have new institutions thrust upon them that they don’t want and don’t find beneficial ­ cannot be glossed over by saying that they have agreed to the larger system. They haven’t.

This is true not only in despotic, dictatorial, communistic, fascist, or monarchical states; it is true in all states ­ including democratic ones. For in democratic states, just as in every other state, the subject is never given an option to submit to the authority of his self-appointed leaders, or the option to keep out of the exploitative relationship altogether. Instead, he is given the unenviable choice of selecting which among several competing scoundrels will harm him the least. As the 19th-century American lawyer Lysander Spooner noted in this regard, the voter in a democratic state is forced to “choose” his leader in a democratic system as a form of self-defense against the worst of the scoundrels who wish to subject him to their whims and exploitations:

In the case of individuals, their actual voting is not to be taken as proof of consent… On the contrary, it is to be considered that, without his consent having ever been asked, a man finds himself environed by a government that he cannot resist, a government that forces him to pay money, render service, and forego the exercise of many of his natural rights, under peril of weighty punishments. He sees, too, that other men practice this tyranny over him by use of the ballot. He sees further that, if he will but use the ballot himself, he has some chance of relieving himself of this tyranny of others, by subjecting them to his own. In short, he finds himself, without his consent, so situated that, if he use the ballot he may become a master, if he does not use it, he must become a slave. And he has no other alternative than these two. In self defense, he attempts the former.

The simple yet profound truth that these insights point to is that all states are nothing more than groups of highly organized and extremely effective bandits, since they do not, and in practice never can (as A. John Simmons, Murray Rothbard, Lysander Spooner, and Robert Paul Wolff have amply demonstrated), actually garner the consent of every person, or even a fraction of the people, over which they claim the authority to “rule.” Archbishop Chaput himself comes close to recognizing that force is indeed the core ethic of the state when he writes, “Politics involves the exercise of power” (p. 217).

This sets up a serious problem for those who, like Archbishop Chaput, are committed to the idea that every single person on the face of the Earth is endowed by God or nature with undeniable and equal dignity. For, in the face of the cold, hard fact that states necessarily rule by force and coercion, any world occupied by states will thus be a world in which some men are supposedly entitled to more dignity than others.

In a world governed by states, there exist two categorically distinct groups of men: the self-proclaimed rulers and the hapless subjects, who are entitled to a lesser degree of dignity. For the ruling caste, in a world of states, possesses not only the right to determine their own fate in this world but also the fate of their citizen-slaves. The subjugated castes, on the other hand, possess neither of these rights; on the contrary, they possess only the right to abide by the decrees and whims of their self-proclaimed rulers, or suffer merciless penalties. This was the choice given to St. Thomas More, whom Archbishop Chaput cites approvingly, when he was given the option of accommodating his supposed ruler ­ or death. This is hardly a choice that comports with the idea of equal dignity of all men.

The fallback position of Catholic social teaching, when confronted with these sobering facts about the state as a necessarily coercive institution, has been to affirm that there exists a difference between so-called “proper” or “legitimate” authority and wrongfully employed authority. Thus, Archbishop Chaput claims that Paul’s Letter to the Romans,

is a call for proper obedience, not mindless submission. The key line in these verses from Paul’s letter is ‘For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.’ Christians obey secular rulers not because of anything inherent to the rulers. Rather, when rulers properly use their power, they draw their authority from God. (p. 205)

The problem with this sort of argument is that it is almost stupefyingly question begging. It would be one thing to assert that God has bestowed different gifts on people, and that some men are blessed by God with the gift of leadership, while others are not; it is quite another thing, however, to deduce from this that some men are given the right by God to impress their will on their less-fortunate neighbors, take a portion of their neighbors’ income by threatening to jail or kill them if they refuse to obey, and impress their neighbors into military service, jury duty, or any other service for that matter.

Furthermore, the idea that some rulers are “legitimate,” while others are not would leave unanswered the most critical political question of all. As Robert Paul Wolff puts it, “We must demonstrate by an a priori argument that there can be forms of human community in which some men have a moral right to rule.”

It is not enough to assert that some men rule by the authority of God Himself, and not provide any argument or criteria by which to judge so-called “legitimate authority,” or any criteria by which we might be able to determine which of the over six billion people on this planet have been singled out by God Himself to rule over the rest of us without our consent.

Are we not better off assuming, with the Declaration of Independence, that all men are created equal in the eyes of God, endowed with exactly the same amount of dignity and exactly the same rights, rather than trying to deduce special rights of coercion and subjugation for certain privileged castes?

Caesar has a “right” to my hard-earned money? Why?

I am currently employed as a roofer in the city of Denver. I earn my daily bread by the strength of my arms and the sweat of my brow. I also happen to believe, with Archbishop Chaput, in the sanctity of human life and the utter immorality of aggressive wars. At present, however, I am forced to spend a portion of every day, month, and year working to fund the very practices that I abhor. This is because I am taxed by the various governments that claim a right to a part of my labor and then proceed to spend that portion of my hard-won money on state-funded abortion and aggressive war (among very many other things my conscience cannot abide). Where do they get the right to take my money and spend it on practices that I abhor?

The fact that I, like virtually every conscientious American Catholic, am forced to contribute to state-funded abortion and aggressive wars presents a serious problem for Archbishop Chaput’s theory of the state. For the archbishop writes, citing the Vatican II document Dignitatis Humanae, “[man] must not be forced ‘to act contrary to his conscience, especially in religious matters’ (DH 3)… All persons have a God-given right to believe as their conscience demands. Truth can only be proposed. It cannot be imposed without violating the sanctity of the individual person and subverting the truth itself” (p. 115).

If men are endowed with the God-given right to act in a manner consistent with their consciences, how can the tax-funded state ever be morally justifiable? Because taxation is necessarily coercive (that is, all taxes are paid to the state under the threat of severe punishment), subjects are prohibited from employing the fruits of their labor in a manner consistent with their consciences. On the contrary, the subject makes his contribution to the state coffers merely in an attempt to avoid jail or the gulag, and the ruling caste subsequently apportions his contributions to those things that it, for whatever reasons, deems expedient.

In the present American context, this means disbursing Catholic tax contributions to state-funded abortion and aggressive wars ­ including war against civilians in Iraq. This is true not only in a dictatorship or monarchy, but also in a democracy, since there has never been, and probably never can be, a situation in which each and every democratic subject completely and unequivocally agrees with the disbursement of his tax contributions.

This problem is all the more acute when we reckon the actual cost in human life that the modern, tax-funded state has imposed on the City of Man. The number of people who were murdered in cold blood by their own governments, (that is, they were murdered by the very institutions they were forced to fund at the point of a gun), is estimated by R.J. Rummel to be 170 million in the 20th century alone.

Archbishop Chaput attributes the recent massive loss of human life through “wars, repressions, and genocides” to unbelief in Jesus Christ (p. 74). But, surely this is an unsatisfying explanation, since there have always been unbelievers and murderous thugs in the world of man. What has changed in the 20th century, however, is that the modern state has come to pervade the entirety of human life, has arrogated to itself the ability to tax its subjects to the hilt to fund its monstrous programs, and then turn the murderous apparatus of the state on its own people, as I have attempted to demonstrate elsewhere. Download PDF

It is thus not surprising that Michael Walzer, the most prominent modern philosopher of war, writes, “it isn’t too much of an exaggeration to say that the greatest danger most people face in the world today comes from their own states.”

What needs to be done?

I hold the worthy archbishop of Denver in the highest esteem. He is, and has been for some time, a beacon of courage for Catholics throughout the United States. I do, however, find the theory of the state propounded in his recent book lax in several important regards. In saying this, I feel it is incumbent upon me to make two notes about the state in conclusion.

First, let me disclose that I am convinced that man does not need government in order to live a peaceful, pious and productive life in society. Indeed, as I have endeavored to demonstrate in this review, the state is an institution that is and forever shall be opposed to the interests of the nature of man: the state necessarily subsists through coercion, robbery and murder, while the actual interests of men lie in peace, trade, and secure private-property rights. I am furthermore convinced that anarchism (specifically, anarchocapitalism) as a system of social organization is demonstrably workable, and is, moreover, the only system that can be reconciled with the idea that all men are endowed by God with equal dignity and equal rights. My convictions are based upon the economic arguments provided by the Austrian economists, most notably Murray Rothbard and Hans-Hermann Hoppe.

Second, allow me to address one final issue that is relevant to both Archbishop Chaput’s recent book and the obligation of man to the state in general. If man has a right to live his life as his conscience sees fit, and he may well share his beliefs with a great number of his friends and neighbors, he and his neighbors have an indisputable right to separate themselves and their property from the depredations of a state that claims their allegiance. They have, in other words, a right to secede from a state they deem immoral, for whatever reasons. The so-called “American experiment” was born precisely in this recognition that men have a right to determine their own destiny and strive to serve God as their consciences deem appropriate. The first and greatest step toward affirming man’s right to conscience in the City of Man is thus to let him leave the state that currently clamps a yoke around his neck, and let him set off in the direction of his own conscience. All men are created equal in the eyes of God, and all men are entitled to this right of self-determination.

By Christopher Hansen,

Vin Suprynowicz wrote a wonderful article today on jury rights.

It convinced me that I should comment on my favorite solution to American’s problems… so I have.

It is said we have four voting boxes and that we must use the first three properly to avoid the need to use the fourth.

Those four are:
#1 The good ole, seldom used properly voting box which has, in Nevada, been turned into an electronic vote stealer that no one in the right mind could trust.
#2 The Grand Jury box. This box was meant to protect Citizens from over zealous prosecutors. The old saying now is that you can indict a ham sandwich but that is not always the case. In many cases the IRS has to go to a grand jury several times before getting an indictment. They refine their case each time and can go back until the get what they want. If Grand Juries would just stop allowing for indictments by tyrant supporting Department of [in]Justice attorneys freedom could be restored to America but few Grand Jury members understand much of anything because they attend government schools that do not teach about jury rights.
#3 This is the Jury box. The one you see on TV where you watch prosecutors violate the law and no one does anything about it because it is okay and allowable to get the bad guys off the street by breaking the law and violating the Constitution…just like it happens in real courts. If the public would just stop convicting people on tax law violations where the judge cannot show the jury the law that was violated (because there usually isn’t one) or on drug charges which are, as Vin put it, unconstitutional, or weapons violations that usually are in violation of the 2nd amendment, or other non-violent crimes that do nothing but generate prison jobs and do nothing to actually protect the public then freedom could be restored no matter who was elected because bad laws passed by these tyrants (Republicans and Democrats makes no difference) because there would be no real enforcement and the government would fear the people which Jefferson said was the only way to have liberty.
#4 is, of course, the cartridge box. That is one that no sane person wants. I know I do not.

So what are you going to do about this. Will you tell your friends? Will you show the the trust. Will you have them read Vin’s article or read about Jury Nullification or learn more about Fully Informed Juries?

If you are an average Public School taught Republican or Democrat then you will follow the normal path and do nothing, just like you have done your whole life.

Freedom is dying and Americans doing nothing are to blame.

VIN SUPRYNOWICZ: Friday is Jury Rights Day — Do you know yours?

To grasp why the Bill of Rights leads off by barring Congress from “establishing” any religion, “or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” you must understand that in 18th century England there was no “separation of church and state.” The English monarch to this day includes in her title “Fidele Defensor” — Defender of the Faith. Which helps explain why even our right to a jury trial stems directly from this era.

In 1670, it was declared illegal to hold a religious gathering or preach a sermon in England which was not a “Church of England” sermon. Dissident churches, including the Quaker meeting houses, were closed.

Unable to get into his London meeting house, William Penn led a Quaker meeting in the street outside. He was arrested and put on trial — on Sept. 5, 1670, 338 years ago this week.

The judges explained to the jury that preaching a nonconformist sermon was illegal, and Penn had been caught doing just that. They instructed the jury to convict.

The jury asked to be read the wording of the law Penn was said to have violated. The judges told them they didn’t need to read any stinking law, they were to “take the law as we give it to you” — an insufferably aristocratic phrase that’s cropping up a lot in our own courthouses, these days.

Read the rest of Vin’s article

Naturally this is another IRS case in which the Government were, once again the criminals.

Here is the whole ruling.

But here is the best part of the ruling:

1 We affirm the district court’s
2 ruling that the government deprived Defendants-Appellees of
3 their right to counsel under the Sixth Amendment by causing
4 KPMG to place conditions on the advancement of legal fees to
5 Defendants-Appellees, and to cap the fees and ultimately end
6 them. Because the government failed to cure the Sixth
7 Amendment violation, and because no other remedy will return
8 Defendants-Appellees to the status quo ante, we affirm the
9 dismissal of the indictment.

Could it be that the Courts are starting to understand that if they do not protect Defendants’ rights that the rights of their own children will be lost?

Is the CULT of the Black Robe waking up? Do they hear the sounds of the chains on their children clinking in their dreams?

U.S. District Court SATURDAY, AUGUST 23, 2008 5:37:00 PM

Judge sets hearing for challenge to McCain’s candidacy

BY CHRIS RIZO

SAN FRANCISCO (Legal Newsline)-A federal judge has ordered expedited briefing in a case that contends that John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, cannot become president because he was not born on U.S. soil.

The American Independent Party is seeking to have the Arizona senator’s name removed from ballots in California.

The group says in court papers that federal law would bar the former Vietnam War POW from taking office were he to be elected in November because he was born in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936 while his father was stationed at Coco Solo Naval Air Station.

U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup of the Northern District of California will hear arguments in the case Sept. 11, said AIP attorney Gregory Walston of the law firm of Walston Cross of San Francisco.

The American Independent Party claims it will be “irreparably harmed by Senator McCain’s illegal and illegitimate presence on the ballot.”

The plaintiffs in the case want McCain enjoined from running for president.

In 1937, Congress enacted a law granting citizenship to people born in the Panama Canal Zone after 1904. But critics say the law still does not confer “natural-born” citizenship on McCain, which would be required for him to take the Oval Office.

Also named in the AIP lawsuit are the Republican National Committee and the California Republican Party. The lawsuit argues the GOP is engaging in “unfair competition” by putting forth an “illegitimate” presidential nominee.

“The harm sustained by being forced to compete against-and potentially be defeated by-and illegal and illegitimate campaign cannot be monetarily remedied nor can it be remedied after the November general election in any manner,” the petition said.

The lawsuit was brought by Markham Robinson of Vacaville, Calif., chairman-elect of the American Independent Party. The AIP has nominated author Alan Keyes for president.

Keyes was appointed ambassador to the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations under Republican U.S. President Ronald Reagan, and served as assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs from 1985 to 1987.

From Legal Newsline: Reach reporter Chris Rizo at chrisrizo@legalnewsline.com.

Filed Under: U.S. District Court

COMMENTS ON THIS ARTICLE:

NOT ASSOCIATED WITH AIP The legitimate leadership of the AIP is not Markham Robinson.

Chairman Jim King and the AIP party neither espouses this position, nor endorses it.