PJ 104
CHAPTER 9
NEWS DESK
BIGOTS AND JOURNALISTS
By A.M. Rosenthal of THE NEW YORK TIMES
From J. C. PRESS of February 7, 1994
TIME magazine has printed a news story disclosing that fighting black anti-Semitism by asking black leaders to stand against it is a way of "enforcing racial correctness" and, "it might be argued, is just another kind of bigotry".
Yes, that is what TIME actually says. Page 37, issue predated Feb. 7.
In its news section is a story about how an anti-Semitic speech made by a "semi-obscure" spokesman of the Nation of Islam before just a "few dozen" college students is made into a big deal. It becomes pressure against "black leaders across the country", and that "rankles" with "some" blacks. It comes at a bad time for black-Jewish relations, says TIME, particularly in New York, always "fretting" about race.
Then the "news story" discloses "how it works"--first the speech, then the columnists A.M. Rosenthal of THE NEW YORK TIMES and Richard Cohen of THE WASHINGTON POST call for black leaders to "repudiate" the speech. Then the Anti-Defamation League prints the speech in an ad.
Then black leaders, "feeling the heat," begin the "ritual of condemnation and racial correctness". Got it? Jews whip it up and blacks have to bow.
Journalistically, enough said of TIME's staff writer, his assisting reporters and their assorted editors. Professionally, the article is worth noting simply as a warning to other magazines, newspapers and TV news programs: This is what can come out when "news stories" are allowed to cross over into editorialization by choice of words, angling and stacking. Politicization, distortion, ethical junk. So: vigilance, all!
But the story also reflects something else: the sickeningly condescending attitude of so many whites, and some blacks too, toward black intelligence, independence, individualism and honor.
Not a word did TIME print to indicate that it ever crossed its collectivized-journalism mind that black leaders who denounced the speech really might despise it, that maybe they stood up because they liked that stance in life.
TIME team saw them simply surrendering to pressure. Time Warner: Could it be that tells more about the story's perpetrators than about the black leaders?
The speech brought black condemnation after it reached print in news stories--real ones, T.W.--the opinion columns clearly marked as such and in the ADL ad.
But that's no plot, son. It is how journalism exposes bigotry. What would happen to America if journalism, other than TIME, decided that to point to bigotry was itself bigotry?
And that correctness bit,--cute, but come on, team, those of us who insist on fighting bigotry are usually lifetime opponents of political correctness and its lifetime targets, as surely know TIME and staff writer.
On Feb. 3, the real Lewis W. Farrakhan slapped custard all over TIME's face. He himself showed the importance of exposing bigots. After black leaders denounced his aide and his vicious anti-Semitism, Farrakhan fired the fellow and said his language was "repugnant". But he stood by the "truths" the said aide spoke.
Since those "truths" were a foul mess of religious and racial trash, Farrakhan's weaseling moves me no more than his earlier announcement that he would play a violin piece by Mendelssohn.
I hope that the statements against the viciousness of Farrakhan's man by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, members of the Congressional Black Caucus and the NAACP lead them to a public evaluation of the dangers of the Nation of Islam itself.
The country needs a full African-American expose of how the Nation of Islam injects poison into the U.S. by constant spewing of separatism, hate of whites, Asians, Judaism, Catholicism--and its attacks against African-Americans who oppose it.
Already among some Americans and in the press, there is a kind of mumblemouthed acceptance of Farrakhan and his organization. It goes: Well, maybe he is an anti-Semite, and that's not nice, but think about his good work among drug addicts and his speeches about black self-responsibility. You have to admire that, don't you?
No, we don't, not any more than we admired Nazism's economic success or Stalin's vacations for assembly-line champions. Do we still have to learn that hatred stinks, even when it perfumes its armpits?
SPLITTING HAIRS HAS A PURPOSE
From THE ORLANDO SENTINEL of February 18, 1994
FREDERICKSBURG, VA - Did George Washington get a trim here?
Nearly 200 years after his death, scientists are testing whether the genetic code of the first president survived in snippets of what may be his hair.
Using new genetic technology, experts at the Federal Bureau of Investigation hope to conclude whether the hair is authentic. And as technology advances, they may even discover clues about Washington's health.
"You can actually look at something and say, 'You're right, this is real,' or 'It's a sham", said Douglas Deedrick, a hair and fiber expert at the FBI's crime lab in Washington.
The DNA tests came about after Diane Dunkley, director of the Daughters of the American Revolution Museum, began sifting through potential items for an exhibit this month that focuses on Washington's private life and surroundings.
She asked the FBI to verify the samples. Deedrick's hair and fiber unit, eager for a high-profile test of their new technology, agreed to help.
Using a microscope, Deedrick has examined 11 hair samples submitted by the DAR and four other museums.
Next, the samples will be shredded and the DNA will be removed for comparison with samples provided by two descendants of Washington's sister, Betty Washington Lewis.
In a procedure developed in the past year and used increasingly at crime scenes, the FBI will examine mitochondrial DNA, or the genetic building blocks that lie outside the cell nucleus. That type of DNA is quite hardy, surviving indefinitely in hair, bones, teeth or fingernails.
In Washington's case, there are two seventy-generation descendants to supply the hair; Eleanor Funkhouser, 67, and her cousin, Eleanor Johnston, 70. "Of course, I don't look anything like George Washington or at least I hope I don't". Funkhouser said.
RELIGIOUS SYMBOLS DELETED FROM ADS
From ORLANDO SENTINEL of February 19, 1994
ST. CLOUD, MN - A telephone company decision to eliminate religious symbols in yellow page ads has sparked controversy here.
Objecting to the new policy are two religiously affiliated nursing homes that were told to remove religious symbols from their ads to ensure that the yellow pages are nondiscriminatory.
According to Susan Poulos, media relations manager for the phone company, US West Direct, the elimination of religious symbols is part of a continuing update on advertising policies to ensure that the yellow pages "in no way, shape or form could be conceived as discriminatory" or inconsistent with federal guidelines.
St. Benedict's Center, a Catholic facility, had to remove a logo that contained a cross. And the center was told it could use the name "Benedict" in its ads only once and not repeat it when listing other affiliates.
St. Benedict's also was told to substitute its traditional phrase "Spiritual care for all faiths" with the phrase "All faiths welcome without preference".
The logo of Good Shepherd Lutheran Home was eliminated because it consists of a shepherd's cross.
Diane Hageman, director of communications and marketing for St. Benedict's Center, charged that US West's policy amounts to a violation of constitutionally protected rights to freedom of religion and expression.
She said the phone company wants to make ads "as religion-free as possible" but, in issuing, its latest guideline, has "gone overboard".
"Ultimately, the new standards will confuse yellow page users," said Suzanne Harley, community relations coordinator for Good Shepherd Lutheran Home.
By not designating itself as a religion-based facility, Good Shepherd could lose clients seeking that environment and attract others who don't want it, she predicted. The Catholic and Lutheran homes both were told their ads must include the phrases: "We comply with the Fair Housing Act" and "All Faiths Welcome Without Preference".
The Rev. Timothy Wenzel, executive director of Catholic Charities of St. Cloud, said the restrictions are unnecessary because agency affiliates already follow a policy that prevents discrimination.
He argued that US West is interpreting the Housing Act's provisions too strictly and said he plans to write the company to express his disagreement.
In an editorial, the ST. CLOUD VISITOR, the diocesan newspaper, cited inconsistencies that have developed in attempts to follow government anti-discrimination policies: "The same U.S. government that favors proliferation of the word 'condom' has, through the Fair Housing Act, convinced US West that refusal to allow proliferation of religious terminology is not to be construed as censorship or as
a violation of freedom of religion or freedom of expression".
ARMY OBJECTS TO STATE PANEL EVALUATING
CHEMICAL-TESTING PROGRAM AT DUGWAYBy Lee Siegel
From THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE of February 18, 1994
The Army will try to cooperate with a Utah state watchdog committee but wishes the panel would keep its nose out of tests involving nerve gas and other toxic chemicals at Dugway Proving Ground.
The Dugway Technical Review Committee previously examined only experiments in which microbes and microbial toxins were used to test detectors and gear designed to protect soldiers from biological weapons.
But the committee adopted a statement in November saying that its mission also included evaluating how chemical testing at Dugway affects "the health and safety, risks and benefits to the citizens of Utah".
"We object to the inclusion of chemical testing in the mission statement", Col. James King, Dugway's commander, told the panel Thursday.
He said Dugway's chemical activities already are reviewed by the Utah Department of Environmental Quality, and he hasn't yet received Army permission to provide the committee with specifics on chemical tests.
Nevertheless, King said that if the Army approves, he will invite the panel to visit Dugway on March 30 for a tour and briefing on the chemical-testing program.
At the suggestion of committee chairwoman Suzanne Winters, who is Gov. Mike Leavitt's science adviser, the panel voted to wait until after the briefing before discussing the scope of its job.
Panel member and university of Utah physicist Eugene Loh told King the committee "is not here to do the Army a world of good. We're working for the state".
When the committee last met in November, Ken Buchi, medical director of Holy Cross Hospital, complained the Army was with-holding information. Another member, Nancy Melling of the League of Women Voters, said the panel had been a rubber stamp for the Army.
Winters and Army officials were furious when those comments were reported in
The Salt Lake Tribune, saying the story emphasized criticisms and ignored the
Army's cooperation with the committee's requests.
When Leavitt recently made his own appointments to the Dugway committee, he named six new members and retained three. Buchi and Melling were among those
who lost their seats.
Winters said they were replaced with members who have more expertise on toxicology. She said there was no attempt to mollify the Army by eliminating critics.
Maj. Bruce Evans, an attorney and legal adviser to King, said the Army must be careful about what it reveals about the effectiveness of U.S. defenses against chemical and biological weapons.
"What we're talking about is things that can cause soldiers to die", Evans said.
Jerry Montgomery, another panelist who wasn't reappointed, attended Thursday's meeting and said he was misquoted in November when The Tribune quoted him as saying, "We're not getting enough information to provide anybody any feedback".
Montgomery said Thursday he was commenting on what some panel members thought and didn't feel that way personally.
Buchi, however, said during an interview this week that there were "plenty of things
I requested that we receive that we never received [from the Army]. The same is true
of Jerry".
On Thursday, Winters said, "Maybe these meetings are worthless".
Loh disagreed, saying the panel got the Army to provide information on biological tests and to agree to design its planned Life Sciences Test Facility so that the base wouldn't be able to test the most hazardous organisms.
DUGWAY IS ADDING DEADLY
BACTERIA TO TESTS
by Lee Siegel
From THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE
Bacteria that cause plague, anthrax and other diseases soon will be used at Dugway Proving Ground during indoor tests of a device designed to detect chemical and biological weapons on the battlefield.
"The goal is to have a detector that can recognize the presence of biological threat agents despite the presence of other materials such as gas fumes, smoke and weapons fire", the Army said Thursday.
Plans for earlier tests of the device--called a Chemical Biological Mass Spectrometer
--were announced in April and again last summer.
The latest round of experiments involves five additional species of bacteria, including several strains that cause potentially deadly diseases and other strains used in vaccine to prevent infection.
"The tests will start sometime after March 17 and last roughly two months", Dugway spokeswoman Melynda Petrie said.
The bacteria include plague microbes, anthrax, tularemia, or "rabbit fever" bacteria, and two species of brucellosis bacteria.
The tests will be performed in protective "biosafety cabinets" at Dugway's Baker Test Facility.
Gary Resnick, Dugway's chief scientist, said the tests are done so that the detector can build a computerized "library" of information that will allow it to identify substances in a battlefield situation.
A TRILLION-DOLLAR POT OF GOLD
UP FOR GRABS
By Joseph A. Califano
From THE ORLANDO SENTINEL of February 14, 1994
Not since Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal in the 1930s and Lyndon Johnson's Great Society in the 1960s has Washington seen such an attempt to redistribute wealth in America as the Clinton administration's proposal to restructure health-care delivery and financing.
Roosevelt and Johnson aimed to redistribute wealth from rich to poor. What makes the 1994 battle over health-system reform the street fight of the '90s--and a financial bonanza for members of Congress--is that President Clinton seeks to redistribute wealth among the most powerful, well-heeled interests in the nation. These interests are armed to protect their financial jugulars--and to go for the other guy's.
Think of health-care reform as throwing a trillion-dollar pot of gold up for grabs.
At bottom, this is not a political contest between Republicans and Democrats or an ideological one between liberals and conservatives. It's a bare-fisted brawl over who gives to and gets from the rich business of health.
For those who pay the health-care bills--federal, state and local governments, employers and patients--reform is a game of hot-potato economics. The feds want
to toss the hot potato of costs to states and private employers. The states and large corporations want to pass it back to the feds. Business, the feds and the states want to lay it on individuals. American taxpayers, perpetually on the prowl for a free lunch, want to dump costs back onto their employers and government.
The beauty that three presidents--Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter and Clinton--saw in requiring employers to provide health benefits to workers is that it lays the costs onto private, state and municipal employers--and keeps it off the federal budget. Clinton was especially attracted to this beauty when he realized he could dress the biggest payroll tax hikes in American history in the drag of premiums for health insurance. The beast that scares state and corporate employers is a package of benefits mandated by a Congress that has no responsibility to finance them.
Private employers have in recent years tossed the hot potato of costs to their employees by requiring them to pay a bigger share of insurance premiums and medical bills and by trimming retiree health benefits. These employers toss the hot potato to one another, as well as to federal and state governments. As a result of cost shifting in 1993, business with more than 100 workers paid at least $15 billion in health-care costs for employees at companies with less than 25 workers (who usually have no insurance).
The National Association of Manufacturers, which represents more than 80 percent of the nation's manufacturers, estimates that each year its members fork over more than $12 billion, almost 30 percent of the bill they pay, for the medical care of individuals who are not on their payrolls. Seven billion dollars of that amount picks up the health-care tab for workers in other sectors of the economy, notably employees of service and retail industries, including major hotel, retail and fast-food chains. The rest supports public programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, which no longer pay most hospitals and doctors enough to cover their costs.
General Motors, Ford and Chrysler were first to jump into bed with the Clintons because the administration's plan, when fully in place, would be worth about $3 billion a year in savings that they can reinvest or distribute in dividends to shareholders and wages to workers. By mandating employers' coverage and dumping more costs for the poor onto the states, the Clinton plan would pretty much end cost-shifting to companies with rich plans. Having the feds pick up the health-care tab for the early retirees would be a boon to industries such as auto and steel that routinely lay off workers at age 55.
Even before the administration released its 1,342-page bill, federal employees with richer benefits at less cost than the Clinton package offers, and big unions with first-dollar coverage and no premium copayments, scrambled to get out from under it.
When New York Gov. Mario Cuomo realized the bill would add $6 billion to his budget, he demanded more federal funds for Medicaid and whipped off a note to 200,000 state employees, warning that they would pay more for less if Clinton prevails.
So much for those who pay the bills. What about those who have their hands in this trillion-dollar cookie jar?
For the nation's insurers, doctors, hospitals, health worker unions, pharmaceutical companies, medical equipment manufacturers, health-maintenance organizations, nurses, mental health providers, chiropractors, pharmacists and radiologists, reform is a junk-yard dog fight for bigger scraps of financial meat.
The bureaucratic behemoths of Clinton's plan are the state purchasing alliances that would buy most health care and monitor every physician, procedure, prescription and provider. The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, the nation's most powerful and effective union, sees these alliances as the biggest bureaucracy since the disintegration of the Soviet Union, and a once-in-a-generation chance to shift most of the nation's insurance function into an arena in which they know how to organize workers.
The five largest commercial insurers, including Aetna and Prudential, see bureaucracies just as big but they view alliances as an opportunity to expand their administrative operations if they can keep them private and away from the states, as the Cooper plan (which they favor) would.
The nastiest street fights are likely to come among those who have the most at stake; hospitals ($409 billion), doctors ($195 billion), nursing homes and home health care ($108 billion), pharmaceutical companies ($100 billion), insurers ($62 billion), and others such as dentists, podiatrists, optometrists, physical therapists, pharmacists (more than $100 billion). They can be expected to fight in the back alleys of Capitol Hill with a roughness rarely seen in Washington.
The most blood may be spilled within these groups because the Clinton plan shrewdly sets the stage for intermediane warfare. Doctors can be expected to go against doctors, with family physicians favoring a plan that would give them higher incomes and surgeons and other specialists opposing one that would cut their fees. For-profit hospitals stand to gain from competition on the basis of price and restrictions on the ability of patients to seek care outside their home areas. Teaching hospitals would lose patients and doctors because of such competition, geographic restraints and government limits on the number of specialists they could have as residents each year.
I write this not out of cynicism derived from dealing with healthcare issues during the past 30 years. I write to remind the better angels in all the players--politicians, payers and providers--that we patients have a lot at stake in their scramble to protect their chips in the trillion-dollar health-care pot. At its core, health care is a ministry, not an industry. If we lose sight of this essential characteristic, the worthy goal of affordable, high-quality care for all will once again get trampled in the melee over money.
Joseph A. Califano was secretary of HEW during the Carter administration. He serves on the boards of several corporations and nonprofit institutions with interests in health care.
TAKING ON STANISLAUS COUNTY OFFICIALS
By Tom Lake (Lake is a resident of Modesto, CA)
From the MODESTO BEE, of February 18, 1994.
The Bee recently was replete with articles about the "illegal" filing of liens. The whole of the series began with the tragic, unthinkable attack on our Karen Mathews, Stanislaus County's clerk/recorder.
It is apparent from the articles and what those in government are saying that such liens are considered "illegal" liens.
In reality, by law, the only illegal lien filed is that lien filed where the lien debtor was not given a reasonable chance or opportunity to respond to the lien creditor (lien filer) in some kind of forum, either in or outside the court system, to the charges or damages that created the lien.
Those in government seem to think and claim the filing of liens against them is a form of harassment.
That does not matter as the filing of a lien is permitted by law after there is a default in responsibilities or deliberate action by the lien debtor that has injured the filing party.
The law clearly provides for the creation of liens under at least two conditions--1) by operation of law and 2) breach of contract to command specific performance as required by law.
There is an inalienable historical right that exists for filing liens against individuals,
to temporarily deprive them of their property.
In a case decided by the Supreme Court, that such liens can be filed "without any judicial determination of probable cause dates back not only to medieval England
but also to ancient Roman times".
This was stated in the 1968 case Sniadach vs. Family Finance Corp. case citing and quoting the Wisconsin Supreme Court. The only stipulation was that there was an opportunity granted to the lien debtor to answer for some wrong or damage done before the filing of a lien. The state Supreme Court reiterated that in Randone vs. Appellate Department in 1971.
In this writer's case, the lien debtors were given ample opportunity to respond and failed to do so.
Attempts were made to file liens against the defaulted action of the lien debtors, in which criminal charges were in fact previously taken to the U.S. District Court, which the county/recorder absolutely refused to record.
Now, there is a problem in the county recorder's office regarding the recording of documents. The county recorder does not have judicial capacity. She can not make
any legal determination on the legality of any document.
The state attorney general declared the county recorder could not determine the legal sufficiency of any document, which includes liens, "only to whether a document has been drafted to achieve its purpose and not to whether it might contain the particular information demanded by the 'recording' sections of the Government Code".
In his 1984 opinion, then Attorney General John Van De Kamp clearly stated there were only three reasons the county recorder could refuse to file a document: (1) The document was not indexable; (2) the document was not photographically reproducible for the microfiche machines; or (3) the party filing the document refused to pay the required filing fees.
There were no other grounds given for her to legally refuse to record any document
--including liens. And these were not an issue. The county recorder simply refused
to obey the law.
The California Government Code states that if the recorder refuses to record a document, the recorder personally is liable for three times damages sustained by the refusal to record such documents.
When the recorder refused to file liens as authorized by law, a $210 million suit was filed against the county counsel and the recorder.
The papers did not report this suit as being filed according the California laws, codes, statutes and regulations governing the county recorder, or that this remedy was available in law, or that the recorder had willfully and deliberately violated the law.
The court, in gross error, dismissed the suit.
The dismissal violated the very laws the court was sworn to uphold, extending the liability for and compounding damages sustained by the criminal actions of others.
That action by the court now denies the injured parties a redress of grievances, and specific remedies provided for in the statutes, codes, regulations and laws of California that govern those in government.
The question now is: Where is the illegal activity?
COUNTY: LIENS ARE ILLEGAL
Editor's Note: The following statement was released by the Stanislaus County Counsel's Office
Recently, U.S. District Court Judge Robert E. Coyle ruled that a "lien document" filed against an Internal Revenue Service Agent was null and void and without legal effect.
In Stanislaus County, Superior Court Judge David G. Vander Wall recently denied a request by Thomas Lake and others for a writ of mandate ordering Clerk/Recorder Karen Mathews to file documents entitled "Notice of Default and Claim of Lien".
Such documents have been held by the courts to be invalid liens and are not authorized or required by law to be recorded.
The County Counsel's Office has advised Clerk/Recorder Karen Mathews not to accept for filing any documents not authorized or required by law to be recorded.
The courts, both state and federal have held that such "lien documents" are not authorized or required by law to be recorded.
WEST'S LEADERS WARN WASHINGTON: GIVE
US LIBERTY -- OR ELSE
By Christopher Smith
DENVER, CO. - Evoking Revolutionary War analogies, Utah politicians Sunday urged fellow Western state leaders to declare their independence from Uncle Sam.
"We have to send another shot heard round the world", Utah House of Representatives Speaker Rob Bishop, R-Brigham City, said in the keynote address of the Western States Summit held here. "Washington, D.C., is 70 square miles surrounded by reality. It's time reality took control".
Sponsored by members of the Utah Legislature, the first-ever conference turned into a revival-style meeting of 200 ranchers, county commissioners, miners, legislators and recreationists from across the western United States who gave every speaker a standing ovation Sunday afternoon. The prevailing theme: Break the bonds of federal "tyranny" and reclaim states' rights to govern.
"Let's make the 10th Amendment not the most unused amendment but instead the most important section of the Bill of Rights", said Bishop, referring to the portion of the Constitution that reserves for states those powers not specifically delegated to the federal government.
Bishop, a teacher of U.S. government from Brigham City, rallied against federal arrogance.
He chastised the federal government for restricting access to public lands, compared federal grazing reforms to the colonial Sugar Act tax and complained of state legislatures being forced to pay for federal programs they don't want.
But just how the Western land "stakeholders," as they refer to themselves, will dam Uncle Sam's seemingly unending flood of regulatory edicts was drowned in the summit's opening-day rhetoric. Even Bishop acknowledged: "Venting our frustrations is easy. But to take action, it's near-insurrection".
"Some are gentle, some are a little spicy and some are red-hot", said the New Harmony rancher who coordinated the two-day summit session. Fellow Utah House members Mel Brown, R-Midvale, Bradley Johnson, R-Aurora, and Jim Gowans, D-Tooele, were organizing stakeholders for a videotaped message to President Clinton, extolling their complaints against Potomac rule.
"We've become territories managed by a ruler as remote as the king of England." said Bill Howell of Price, director of the Southeastern Utah Association of Local Governments. "We are witnessing a modern American tragedy".
Facing a sea of cowboy hats, Garfield County Commissioner Louise Liston of Escalante told the audience that the culture of the rural West is being "systematically destroyed" by "nature lovers and suitcase saviors".
"It comes down to wise use vs. no use", said the rancher's wife and retired schoolteacher. "Let's not forget the most valuable resource on our lands is the human resource".
A sample of some of the fightback strategies being considered could be found in the back of the Stapleton Plaza Hotel Ballroom, which was adorned with flags from 17 states west of the Mississippi. There, the Bountiful-based National Federal Lands Conference was selling books with titles such as Fight Back & Win: A Rancher's Guide and Toxicity of Environmentalism.
Videotapes instructed "positive confrontational strategies" and "how to use the power of county government to restore private-property rights".
Several participants wore buttons supporting "Clinton-Free Zones". A White House phone list was circulated encouraging stakeholders to join a "Fire Babbitt Phone-In",
a campaign to oust Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt.
Today, attorneys will coach the local government officials on drafting comprehensive land-use plans that specify local customs and cultures derived from the use of federal lands. Participants also will grill U.S. Sens. Bob Bennett of Utah, Malcolm Wallop of Wyoming and Hank Brown of Colorado on Washington's ongoing remodeling of the traditional West.
And planning will continue for the "next" American Revolution. "We pride ourselves in Arizona in doing everything we can to annoy the federal government", said Arizona House Majority Whip David Schweikert, R-Scottsdale. "The war has begun, now let's just make sure we win it".
BIG BROTHER
Dear Freedom Loving American,
As you know, Big-Sister and me dedicate our time making plans to fill your life with joy and happiness! They don't call us Big-Sister and Big-Brother for nothing! We are highly concerned! We want to shelter you in every way we can think of from problems which, if not solved by us, might spoil your fun. For example, if it annoys you that Congress makes laws which rob you of your earnings, you can stop worrying. I have great news! Thanks to our new disability law, you no longer have to work for a living with its constant risk of becoming a political-prisoner--for not paying enough taxes.
I want you to know, as usual, I have taken Big-Sister's sound advice, and made it possible for you to avoid this risk of working--by merely claiming to be a disabled alcoholic. I know it sounds too good to be true, but TRUST ME...IT'S TRUE!! Hearing my great news... I can just sense your bubbling excitement and joy, knowing that your life and future can be in my official experts' reliable hands. And you can depend on it!
From hearing such great news, you must be vibrating with happiness! But, I have even better news! Because of your alleged disability, you can become a member in good standing of my huge voting-block of dependent-free-persons; created to faithfully reelect those who have made your new "human-right" freedom-from-work possible. But, I must warn you!! After becoming a non-responsible, non-productive freeperson, there will be a few kooks, filled with hate, alleging that your government granted entitlements to clothes, food, shelter, cars, TV etc. that were produced by, and stolen via taxes from those who still work for a living. But when such un-American misfits try to spoil your carefree life of politically-correct freedom, you can easily silence these offenders by a knee-jerk scream of : racist, cultist, white supremacist ...HATEMONGER! Or a few of the other such effective buzzwords that we've thoughtfully planted in your subconscious via "the news" (to save you from thinking
--for your protection).
Big-Sister suggested that I also warn you about some offensive chain letters being widely circulated. It appears from these letters, that in spite of our loading their promulgators with unbearable taxes (in order to penalize such foolishness as working to support themselves and their families), they never stop writing such letters. Just for example, one of their recent letters begins with these stupid questions:
"Have you foolishly trusted your life, liberty and property to an 'Imperial Congress' that has made tax-slaves of American workers; whose production feeds, clothes and shelters a horde of dependents existing on government handouts for re-election votes
--enabling self-serving career-politicians to live like KINGS!? Is this buying of votes from taxes on your earning--stealing the fruits of your labor"?
Being a patriotic, politically-correct freeperson, I am certain these hateful ranting are as offensive to you as they are to Big-Sister and myself. I want you to know, such insensitivity makes me livid with anger! And I intend to have my Attorney General do something about it...just like the cultist creeps in Waco, Texas, were ZONKED! But until the General and our militarily-armed storm troopers have the time, I am relying on you to do your politically-correct duty; by destroying any such hate-spreading chain letters that you may receive. This duty is: top-priority ! We must stop such chain letters from rapidly multiplying and spreading. For if we don't destroy these letters, they will soon be read by multi-millions of voters, who perhaps, not as caring and sensitive as yourself, could, because of their overwhelming numbers, prevent our beautiful dreams for you and loved ones from becoming a reality.
With Highest Regards, Your "Politically Correct" Servant,
Big Brother Bill
THE REAL CAUSE OF OUR PROBLEMS
"The Power to Tax is The Power to Destroy"!
(former Supreme Court Justice, John Marshall)
ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in all of history has ruined so many lives...wrecked so many families...increased so many prices...eliminated so many opportunities to many sayings...forced so many industries into leaving our country...destroyed so many wealth-creating jobs...robbed so many workers...impoverished so many millions...made so many homeless...caused so much crime...created so many AMERICAN TAX-SLAVES to support foreign wars and to enable career-politicians, foreign-rulers and global-bankers to become filthy-rich, as has: the FEDERAL INCOME TAX!
In spite of the above truth, and that all paper-dollars are printed for the mere-cost of paper and ink by the United States Government in any quantity it chooses, most Americans have gullibly swallowed the BIG-LIE that they must pay their "fair share" of income taxes to support "their" government. But being it's the sole-source of all paper-dollars, which today, are not backed by anything and are not redeemable, the government does not need such taxes! We are being...HAD!!!
If this is true, which it is, then why does the government borrow "dollars" and tax us for repayment?
It is because Congress unlawfully allows twelve private banks to buy ALL of the "dollars" printed by the U.S. Treasury Dept. for less than three cents per $100 bill! Then, they loan the "dollars" (which cost them next to nothing) into circulation and BACK to the government at full face amount plus interest!
This "smoke and mirror" money and power-grab has created a fraudulent national debt and the resulting income-tax for repayment; which is gradually but methodically strangling our economy! But thanks to a centrally-controlled "news" Net-work, it's a best kept political secret!
The mentioned privately owned banks are the Federal Reserve Banks. Their name is used to deceive the American public into believing these banks are a part of the U.S.A. government, but they definitely are NOT! They operate independent of government, and exist for the unjust enrichment and power of their owners! Yet Congress allows these banks to be excluded from government audits and paying any taxes on their HUGE, UNJUST, MIND-BOGGLING "PROFITS"!!
Even worse, when every "dollar" is loaned into circulation as now in our country
--no one really owns any dollars but these banks! And, "...the borrower is the slave of the lender". Which makes every American a debt-shackled, economic slave of the secretive owners of the Federal Reserve Banks!
Because the impoverishing income-tax has destroyed so many businesses, there are now more paper-shuffling bureaucrats than all of the wealth-producing workers in the remaining American factories! (Wealth is not paper-dollars. Wealth is: necessary products that come from the earth by application of mind and muscle for the sustaining and enjoyment of life). Big government does not produce wealth. Instead, like an insatiable monster, it steals and consumes wealth created by the labor of builders, farmers, and factory workers; leaving them barely enough to exist on.
On top of this, business taxes are pyramided in the price of every American product; causing American products to cost two to three times more than they would be if their prices were not loaded with hidden taxes. This of course hurts (taxes) the poor the most, and effectively prevents them from escaping their cruel, life-draining entrapment.
Imagine what would happen if there were no "bankster taxes" annually stealing over half of the earnings of your community. Business would BOOM! Prosperity would ZOOM! And poverty would literally VANISH!! Would you like for this to happen? IT CAN IF...a majority of voters could be made AWARE of how they are being used and robbed to vastly enrich a few banksters and their career-politicians. Then, replace their "puppet" career-politicians with LOYAL AMERICANS to issue our money free of debt and interest...the banksters' income taxes could be ENDED! But to make it HAPPEN, EACH of us without fail MUST INFORM a few others...on and on! So please do your needed part by making copies of this truth and passing it on. But whatever you do, REMAIL this sheet to someone else.
CHAPTER 10
THE NEWS DESK
Rick Martin 7/28/94
FEDERAL TRACKING
In an article from the July 13 edition of THE ORLANDO SENTINEL,
Quoting:
Federal investigators have unraveled lucrative schemes to illegally convert food stamps into cash in Maryland, the only state that uses electronic banking technology to deliver welfare benefits.
The Clinton Administration, seeking to reduce welfare fraud and abuse, wants to expand the paper-free electronic benefits transfer, or EBT, to recipients nationwide by the end of the decade.
But federal court records from four laundering cases in Maryland suggest the switch from paper food stamps to an electronic card has not deterred some recipients from selling their benefits to unscrupulous retailers for cash.
However, EBT may make it easier to catch the cheats.
Food stamp recipients in Maryland are given an electronic card and their benefits are automatically credited to their account at the first of the month.
To buy groceries, they present the Independence Card to an authorized retailer, who runs it through a tracking device that records the card number, date, time and amount. The recipient enters a personal identification number to complete the transaction.
Federal investigators and prosecutors say the EBT system provides a complete audit trail of all transactions, allowing them to better identify trafficking patterns and food stamp recipients who sell their benefits.
CORPORATE RESTRUCTURING
In an article from Southern California's DAILY NEWS, dated July 26 and written by David Dishneau, CHICAGO,
Quoting:
Paper pushers, beware. The rush to re-engineer Big Business is putting corporate bureaucrats on the firing line.
Lawyers, accountants, data technicians and other number crunchers are the latest layoff targets as big companies reduce their management staffs to become more responsive to customers.
The largely white-collar computer and telecommunications industries have announced at least 78,000 layoffs this year, and other industries are following.
At Amoco Corp., which announced 4,500 mostly white-collar layoffs last week--the petroleum company's second major round of cuts since mid-1992--Chairman H. Laurance Fuller said too many people were "tossing pieces of paper back and forth and not having a whole lot of impact on the business".
Such seemingly straight talk from a corporate chieftain is rare. Not since former IBM Chairman John F. Akers decreed in 1991 there were "too many people standing around the water cooler waiting to be told what to do" had the public heard a prominent executive decry employee deadwood and lard. IBM has since slashed nearly 50,000 jobs or nearly 16 percent of its payroll.
Still, such sweeping statements from the boss are oversimplifications, say many management consultants and strategists. In their view, businesses should do less chopping and more selective weeding.
Other big layoffs announced this year came from Digital Equipment Corp., GTE Corp., Pacific Bell, Nynex and AT&T.
SCANNERS
In an article from the July edition of the READER'S DIGEST, written by Lars-Erik Nelson for NEWSDAY,
Quoting:
The technology needed to detect guns invisibly is coming, an outgrowth of research done for U.S. Navy nuclear submarines. Raytheon Company's sonar division is working on a civilian device that could be used in schools, banks and convenience stores, or even by officers on the street.
"You could build the detectors into the walls", says a source with knowledge of the project. "You could walk by people while carrying a detector in your suitcase. You could drive by in a van. It would be totally nonobtrusive. People wouldn't even know they were being scanned".
The technological frisk is not the only high-tech crime-fighter in the works. Alliant Techsystems of Minnesota, which also does sonar work for the Navy, has a project to place microphones on city telephone poles. At the sound of a gunshot, computers would triangulate the exact location and radio it to police. No need to wait for a witness to dial 911. Police could be on the scene before perpetrators flee or before victims bleed to death.
David Boyd of the National Institute of Justice reports promising work on a "safe gun". With miniaturized recognition technology it could be fired only by its legal owner. Over the past 20 years, about one-fifth of police officers murdered by a
firearm were shot with their own weapons or guns taken from fellow officers.
NEW SQUAD ON CAMPUS
In an article from the July 27 edition of THE CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION, BERKELEY, CA,
Quoting:
The University of California here has formed a new tactical police squad to handle the kind of major emergences that have rocked Berkeley and other urban campuses in recent years.
The creation of the High Risk Entry Team was prompted by two incidents. In 1990,
a student was killed when a gunman held 33 people hostage in a campus-area bar.
In 1992, a community activist armed with a machete broke into the home of Chamg
Lin-Tien, Berkeley's chancellor, and was killed by police.
The team is part of the university police department's Special Response Unit and has been training at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and other campus locations.
VOODOO
In a bizarre article from the July 10 edition of THE SUNDAY EXAMINER AND CHRONICLE, written by David Usborne, ARCADIA, Louisiana,
Quoting:
The three sisters were on 1-20, just east of Dallas, in the early hours when it happened. Myra Crawford, who was driving, started to act strangely, trying to veer the car into oncoming traffic and off the sides of bridges.
Then the steering wheel squirmed into life and started to pummel her, before mutating into a monstrous demon. The apparition sprang from the dashboard, mounted the crazed Crawford and began its possession of her. It was exactly as the women had feared. The previous evening--March 17, St. Patrick's Day--they had fled from their hometown of Arcadia in northwestern Louisiana, convinced that an evil spirit was pursuing them.
Most of what is known of their journey--including a decision, halfway, to abandon
their terrified children with strangers--has been told by the women to lawyers, friends and the police.
But only one thing was recorded for certain: Myra Crawford's admission, just after dawn, to a suburban Dallas hospital. Both her eyes were missing.
Four months later, the events of that night still haunt Arcadia, a remote town with a population of 3,000, otherwise famous only as the place where Bonnie and Clyde were gunned down. The Crawford sisters--Myra, 30, who will be blind for life, Doretha, 34, and Beverly, 35--have retreated to a shuttered brick house on Evangeline Drive, a scrubby cul-de-sac on the black side of the railway tracks.
Neighbors, slumped in the boiling summer air on their porches, hesitate to talk of the affair. Some even run away, afraid, because this is hoodoo business.
But the secretive world of hoodoo--a rural variant of the voodoo religion practiced in Haiti and even New Orleans--may soon be laid open for all to see if, as expected, authorities in Dallas decide this week to pursue charges of criminal blinding against Doretha and Beverly.
The accused pair's lawyer, Lela Washington, confirmed that if prosecuted her clients would plead not guilty. Crucial to the defense would be the argument that all three women were victims of an evil hoodoo hex and the blinding was the work of the demon, or indeed of Satan himself.
What set the sisters on their course originally was a visit by Beverly Crawford to a local hoodoo doctor called Benny in the hope of finding a cure for recurring headaches. She was told that she was suffering because she was under assault by demons who were trying to possess her. The revelation terrified the women, and soon afterward their father, Chester, recommended that they flee and find sanctuary with another sister in Dallas.
But their journey was hellish from the beginning.
When they checked into a motel in Tyler on the other side of the state line in Texas, their five children started to see things. It was then that the women ordered everyone back in the car, found a house with a cross in front of it and left the children at the door.
As they were getting close to Dallas the possession of Myra Crawford occurred. Beverly Crawford and Doretha Crawford apparently beat the car into submission and managed also to calm their sister.
The three then hitched a ride closer into Dallas in a truck, and were directed to a house that also served as an ad hoc church. It is in this place, the home of one Maddy Bradfield, that Myra Crawford apparently, through whatever means, lost her sight for good.
It is a sequence that rings entirely true to David Otto, a professor of religion at Centenary College in Shreveport. He notes that in voodoo teaching, when a person becomes possessed by a spirit, he or she becomes the spirit's horse.
"In hoodoo lore, the spirit is riding on your shoulders, and to rid the person of that spirit, you either [don't try this] cut the head off, which was not appropriate in this case, or you gouge their eyes out.
"You won't be a good horse any more because you can't see, and so the spirit leaves.
If you ,believed in hoodoo, eye-gouging would have been the appropriate response to possession".
Otto is hesitant to answer the obvious question: Almost two centuries after the introduction from West Africa and Haiti of voodoo and hoodoo to the Southern United States, how widespread are these practices today? But he does venture that in rural corners such as Arcadia, reliance on hoodoo spiritualists, as a backup to the Christian religion and medical doctors, is likely still to be common.
RENO'S ASYLUM
In a column written by Lars-Erik Nelson, from the July 10 edition of THE DENVER POST,
Quoting:
While Coast Guard cutters were stopping boatloads of desperate Haitians on the high seas, Attorney General Janet Reno set a new basis for claiming refuge in the U.S.: homosexuality.
In a directive to the U.S. Board of Immigration Appeals, Reno wrote that "an individual who has been identified as homosexual and persecuted by his or her government for that reason alone may be eligible for relief under the refugee laws on the basis of persecution because of membership in a social group".
We have long granted political and religious asylum to oppressed peoples from around the world. There is even a precedent for sex-oriented asylum. Under the George Bush Administration, we had kind of heterosexual asylum: Chinese were granted refuge on grounds they opposed forced abortions. They only had to say they feared persecution for wanting more than one child.
Many homosexuals can demonstrate a more credible fear of persecution than some of the refugees who have already been admitted without much question. After all, Hitler targeted homosexuals along with Jews and Gypsies for extinction in the Holocaust. In a few countries--most notably Iran--homosexuals face repression and possibly death at the hands of their government.
But still...homosexual asylum? This smacks more of special-interest lobbying than of any strategy to bring logic to American's changeable, chaotic rules on political asylum.
Like the since-repealed Bush policy on abortion foes, the new category for homosexuals is an invitation to massive immigration fraud.
According to OUT magazine, hundreds of homosexuals have already filed asylum claims because they face persecution in such places as Brazil, Turkey, Colombia, Hong Kong, Iran and Russia.
Since there is already an asylum back-log of nearly 1 million people, a would-be immigrant could slip into the country by claiming homosexuality, getting a work permit and then waiting years before his or her claim is heard.
Not least, the new rules for homosexuals also give fresh ammunition to conservatives, especially the Christian right, who have worked up so much fury over Clinton's tolerance of gays and lesbians in the military. Now they see a president who would deny political asylum to Chinese opponents of abortion but would grant it to Chinese homosexuals. What fun the family-values folks will have with that!
GINSENG
In an article from the July 19 edition of THE MONTREAL GAZETTE,
Quoting:
It's not exactly an ancient Chinese proverb, but Maurice Levesque might have something here.
"When you grow ginseng, you go to the bank", said the marketing vice-president of Vancouver-based Canadian Imperial Ginseng Products. "When you grow marijuana, you go to jail".
The ginseng root can yield up to $165,000 an acre in gross revenues--making it the world's most profitable legal agricultural crop.
Cultivating ginseng for the Asian market has become a lucrative industry in British Columbia--about $30 million a year and growing.
At a retail level, the industry is worth about $2.7 billion worldwide, with North American ginseng comprising 20 percent ($540 million).
Although gaining popularity in other cultures, ginseng is used mainly by people in Asian countries or of Asian background. The Chinese have been using the root they call the elixir of life for more than five centuries.
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응답: PJ#104, FIRST STEPS
