ALERT-UP-USA.COM

Indefinite detention provisions are wrong and un-constitutional

2011-12-02T19:35:00.001-05:00

Please read this relase today.

Regarding the indefinite detention provisions of Senate version of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012...

"The Obama administration has already claimed that the president has the authority to kill Americans overseas, if he believes they are terrorists.

"Now, in the latest National Defense Authorization Act, Congress is trying to give the president power to imprison Americans indefinitely, without charges or respect for habeas corpus, if he claims they are terrorists.

We have to watch it, here. If this power is granted to the President, we are all potentially at risk. These powers were NEVER intended for a US President.

http://www.lp.org/news/press-releases/indefinite-detention-provisions-are-wrong

The New Economic Imperialism - WATCH IT! China is the new Pawnbroker Loan Shark

2011-09-12T22:33:00.002-05:00

The New Economic Imperialism

ITALY TURNS TO CHINA FOR BAILOUT....

China Woos Caribbean With Offer of $1 Billion in Loans...

Yes, China may have the cash, but LET THE BORROWER BEWARE!

CHINA is out buying up countries and governments during hard economic times. Stressed out countries with ailing economies are easy prey for the Chinese Lenders.

They may be your new MASTERS tomorrow. This is a wave of Global Economic IMPERIALISM with the Chinese at the helm.

I have been watching China slide in to a myriad of countries where either the 3rd world dictator is an intellectual pygmy or the economy is rife with overspent budgets and corruption. This has been going on now for over the past 10 years in a very low key way.

The Chinese have been slowly buying up property in Urban Areas and developing the interest in building an active urban lifestyle. Check out Toronto, or any city on the upswing and you will find Chinese cash. Bombay previously under-valued has become a gold mine for condo investors as well.

I have nothing against the Chinese, but I have noted their presence in the realty market in Texas, Canada, almost everywhere. The recent news of China holding all sorts of notes with the USA is unsettling, and now they are courting 3rd world countries with flagging economies.

China may be the new GLOBAL IMPERIALIST - the very thing they abhorred about the USA.

So, I'm just sayin'........

I have been watching the Chinese for the past 30 years slowly creeping in and quietly investing in our land and economy.

WATCH IT!

UnLawful Raids by DOJ on Gibson Guitar - Harrassment and Prejudice

2011-09-10T14:04:00.003-05:00

Here is a posting from another blogger following the DOJ Raid on Gibson Guitar for using imported wood.

SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2011

I fear that our federal government is guitarded.

I have been watching the Gibson guitar issue with great interest, collecting the media stories about it and trying to get to the bottom of what is happening. To make a long story short, the US government has raided Gibson twice (the first time in 2009; no charges have ever been filed) for alleged environmental violations over imported wood. The problem has virtually nothing to do with the wood being harvested illegally; it is not. The problem has everything to do with the fact that the wood purchased is only two-thirds of the way finished, as Gibson (naturally) prefers to finish their own fretboards for purposes of quality control. There is no US law prohibiting this, yet the Feds are claiming that Gibson may be violating an obscure Indian law which they (the US gov't) are interpreting to state that only Indian workers can finish Indian-sourced woods. The last raid involved similar shipments from Madagascar; according the Gibson's CEO, Henry Juszkiewicz, the Feds have told him that if he will allow foreign labor to finish the wood, "the problem will go away." Does this make sense in America, particularly given the current unemployment rate and the stagnant economy? It is also interesting to note that Gibson's major competitors use the same wood without retaliation from the federal government. The difference is which political party the competitors support. This smacks of political retribution to me, and I don't like it.

Now here's the real rub: owners of Gibson guitars are now at risk of having their instruments seized at the border if they are unable to provide documentation that sources the wood and bone used to make the instrument. I don't know about you, but while I can document when I purchased my guitar, and from who, I know that I cannot document the source of every little piece of wood used to build it. Does this mean that I can no longer travel with my instrument of choice? Will this ridiculous trend affect owners of other makes and models of instruments, or only those loyal to the Gibson brand? Are we willing to take the risk of having our legally purchased instruments confiscated by overzealous government agents? Where does the abuse end?

I remember what it felt like to live in a free country; it was nice while it lasted. It'll be a great story for the grandkids.

References:

Gibson: Feds Want Guitar Work Done By Foreign Labor
Chris Daniel Interviews Gibson CEO Henry Juszkiewicz
Gibson Guitar CEO Responds to Federal Raid
CEO of Gibson Guitars' Main Competitor is a Huge Democrat Donor; Also Uses Same Wood Without Any Complaint From Feds
CEO of Gibson Guitar a Republican Donor; Democrat Competitor Uses Same Wood - Landmark Report
Guitar Frets: Environmental Enforcement Leaves Musicians in Fear

Some scathing related satire:
New Scandal at DoJ as Illegal Guitars End Up In Hands of Mexican Drug Lords

Updated 9/10/11:
http://savannahnow.com/exchange/2011-09-09/federal-seizure-wood-products-used-gibson-guitars-concerns-local-guitar-makers#.Tmt7xXPHoj6

2 comments:

squeezebox4jazz said...: Teresa, I have been posting articles and videos on the Gibson debacle for some time. I have played every kind of Gibson from LG1s, J-45s, Melody Makers, L-5, ES-335, ES-165 just to name a few, not to mention my Martin D-35 of 30 yrs, two Eastmans and a Benedetto. Naturally, I would be considered a criminal as I have bought and sold these both retail and wholesale. I am a repeat offender. This obscure law from the Lacy Treaty protecting manufacturers in India or some other foreign natural resouce material by making our US Manufacturers liable and criminal for making FRETBOARDS? What insanity!! I am so saddened to see the nitterings and off-the-rails government dissociation with the real world, and most especially our constitutional rights. Granted we gave up our sovereign citizenship rights when we had our foot stamped on our birth certificates without our permission. Granted we are only Equity citizens and have rights as long as there are no objections to them. Even these are being whittled away in favor of more government controls, not only nationally, but internationally. See the Law of the Sea (LOST) now probably passed and enacted relinquishes part of US sovereignty of the seas in favor of UN International Courts to settle. These courts are 85% populated with anti-american sentiments. here are a couple of links: http://www.rejectlost.blogspot.com/ my blog (one of them) http://alert-up-usa.blogspot.com/2009/10/obama-poised-to-cede-us-sovereingty.html http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/03/12/lost-senate-moves-ratification-uns-law-sea-treaty/ That ought to give those who are concerned about soveriengty rights something to think about. Thanks again for your interests!! Bill Fulbright http://alert-up-usa.com http://squeezebox4jazz.com http://hotguitar.org http://facebook.com/bfulbright http://facebook.com/billfulbrightfanpage http://reverbnation.com/billfulbright http://youtube.com/bfulbright http://squeezebox4jazz.tumblr.com; September 10, 2011 3:42 PM
squeezebox4jazz said...: it is most important to watch the NGO activities around the world (Non-Governmental Organizations) who go about the earth trying to have their way by proposing riduculous Treatys that have long range and most likely not to our benefit consequences. NGOs were responsible for the failed launch of the Copenhagen Treaty which was supposed to be a "wealth leveling" between countries with a large "carbon debt" and those countries with little "carbon debt". In other words, large powerful countries economies would have to PAY the struggling 3rd world underdeveloped nations a "guilt" tax based upon the inequities of who is producing the larger carbon debt. Naturally, this was based upon the ridiculous and mal-informed global warming fiasco. The NGOs are these self appointed, over-estimated, and usually ill-prepared noisemakers who try to foster legitimacy with the words Treaty and Conference. OMG. PLEASE MAKE IT STOP!!! We have much more important business to be about. Bill; September 10, 2011 3:49 PM

http://indiecareertips.blogspot.com/2011/09/i-fear-that-our-federal-government-is.html?showComment=1315680547034#c658931859449809145

roland v-accordion demo with extensions

2011-08-20T12:14:00.000-05:00

TSA Security Issues are a diversion from real issues

2010-11-20T11:00:00.002-05:00

I travel every week. I get it about security. It is the way of the world today. I work hard, and use my brain everyday, and just want to have a good and quiet life with my family. I travel because my job requires it. So, I am not a wild extremist from either the left or the right. I saw all this coming over 25 years ago, and after trying a number of solutions to avoid the onslaught of laws diminishing our rights, and promoting more and more National Security Directives... I chose to stop being completely wigged out and start having a life. Still knowing all this was and is going on.

These "media Bombs" of late regarding the TSA Security Searches are artfully being directed and propagated by our friends with 'long term' federal security interests. They are also pretty much being promoted only within the United States (since I do travel alot). We are now experiencing the use of humiliation and anger regarding the new and now sexually invasive 'hand raping' to encourage travelers to travel less. All based upon fear of a terrorist attack.

The control of our mobility is the issue, and degradation of our rights (if we actually have any left) and personal liberty (which is much different than 'freedom') by the use of 'national security' measures. The backlash of the resistance to the hand searches will be the use of the X-Ray whether you like it or not.

I have been traveling internationally since I was 10. I have seen our ability to move about at will become more compromised, tedious and 'security' conscious under the guise of providing us with "safety" from terrorists. Instead, the terror is being propagated by our own insidious government, and the travel equivalent of Marshal Law is being foisted upon us in the name of 'security'.

By limiting our movement, we become captives of the state.

When money went digital (also a 40 year process of numbing people down with the convenience of digital transactions) - our financial privacy was lost. We have no financial privacy as we can be traced down to the penny of what was spent where - for the convenience of using credit and debit cards instead of cash.

Which brings me to the main point - We are now potentially monitorable via the following methods of electronic surveillance:
1. Mobile Phones
2. Internet
3. Digital Money
4. Travel - Passport digitization, X-Ray scanners, personal searched just short of cavity search.
5. Satellite 'zoom in' and infra-red monitoring.

We are now being numbed down to being humiliated and herded so that we are truly "sheeple".

Do not think this is accidental or without far reaching implications. Let me pose a couple of rhetorical questions:

First, however let me explain how the psychology is working
- the idea is to focus enough difficulty around an issue so that YOU the OBJECT of the whole effort will literally BEG for the Electronic Alternative to being searched, or tracked, or opt for what ever will seem to make it all easier - so you can continue to be further anesthesized. With enough discomfort, anger, and humiliation your behavior is being shaped over time to do exactly as those who are controlling you want you to do. (Simple "watch the birdie" techniques - while the more nefarious plots unfolds in the background). This is mass psychology being used on the masses. stick and carrot.

So - rather than being detained or body searched so that you can travel, would you prefer to have an x-ray of your body? Now is it making any sense?

Would the use of a Retina Scan assist you?

Would the implantation of a simple electronic chip under your skin that contains access all your personal information assist you in not having to fumble for change, paper money, or the plethora of credit cards make it all seem better?

One more thing... now that we have the Satellite Tracking technology down, what is preventing the capture of Al-Qaida leaders? Do you think they are actually serving a purpose in all this? YOU BET.

Without the Boogy Man creating havoc in the world indiscriminately and at focused venues - even with warnings.... The Security game would have no teeth.

Line of Propaganda:
"We are only here to assist you and make all these terrible inconveniences go away for you. Let us protect you, and take care of you, and most of all encourage you to become dependent upon us for your safety, monetary security, and comfort needs."

Who are the proponents of this? Why do they want this?
At our day to day economic level: Credit Bureaus, Banks, Merchants, Police, Ad Agencies, Marketing Companies, large producers of basic essentials, food producers... who ever is feeding the supply chain.

At the Global level the proponents are: Governments with visions of World Government, NGOs (Non-Governmental Organizations) that want to set up watchdog groups.... let's say ..... for Global Warming... you know the Carbon Credit theory of re-distributing the wealth??? It goes on and on.

Why? Greed. Power. Control. Basic Human Conditions. We are our own worst enemy. We are now seeing our entire mass consciousness being played out before us in the media every day.

Institutionalized Gangster Government

2010-07-08T14:25:00.000-05:00

Institutionalized Gangster Government
July 5, 2010 - by Tom Blumer

Someone I’ve known for a long time who formerly didn’t follow current events or politics very closely used to ask me, “Are we still okay?” when particularly disturbing news items would make the headlines. My response until the late 1990s was usually a slightly overconfident, “Sure. This is a great country. We can handle this.”

That person hasn’t asked me that question for many years. We both know, as do millions of other Americans, that we haven’t been okay for some time and that the foundations supporting what has made this country so exceptional for so very long are crumbling.

We stopped being okay over a decade ago. In 1998, the country’s president repeatedly lied under oath in front of the American people. As George Will correctly asserted in January 2001: “There is no reasonable doubt that he committed and suborned perjury, tampered with witnesses and otherwise obstructed justice.” Additionally, credible allegations surfaced that, as Will noted, made it “reasonable to believe that he was a rapist 15 years before becoming president.” The failure of the United States Senate to remove Bill Clinton from office was a landmark defeat for the rule of law. Clinton himself didn’t merely survive impeachment; he has since thrived not in spite of it, but arguably because of it.

From that point forward, those whose stated agenda is to undermine this country’s essence knew that if they could only achieve sufficient power, they could probably get away with just about anything.

Meanwhile, over at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Democratic Party cronies were already a half-dozen years into executing the first prong of their strategic offensive targeting the ruin of the housing industry, the financial sector, and ultimately the economy. Beginning in 1993, Fan and Fred systematically deceived the bond rating agencies and defrauded investors by seriously exaggerating the quality of the mortgage loans underlying their debt securities. Then, mere months after the Senate failed to carry out its constitutional duty with Mr. Clinton, Fannie Mae announced that it would begin serving as a conduit for loans to unqualified and undeserving borrowers. Fan and Fred, which followed a short time later, facilitated hundreds of billions of dollars in such risky loans.

Thus, in November 2008, assisted by the crisis Fan and Fred primarily created (which conveniently had come to a head just two months earlier), millions of dollars in unaccounted-for campaign contributions (many of them more than likely from foreign sources), an ineffective opponent, and a derelict Fourth Estate, Barack Obama won the presidency.

After only seventeen months in office, the rule of law, where it hasn’t been routed, hangs by a mere thread.

One of the earliest assaults came when the administration and its car czars took control of financially insolvent General Motors and Chrysler, and then orchestrated bankruptcy plans that deliberately shortchanged disfavored creditors to the benefit of the companies’ unions. Columnist Michael Barone characterized the campaign of intimidation against certain of Chrysler’s secured lenders as an “episode of Gangster Government.” Barone wrote that it was “likely to be part of a continuing series.”

Sadly, Barone has been vindicated in more ways than can be counted. The most visible, and most risible, is the $20 billion BP shakedown.

That the government has incompetently thwarted most attempts to keep the oil from the company’s incapacitated rig from reaching shore is beyond dispute. The most blatant failure was reported at Canada’s Financial Post:

Three days after the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico began on April 20, the Netherlands offered the U.S. government ships equipped to handle a major spill … each Dutch ship (had) more cleanup capacity than all the ships that the U.S. was then employing in the Gulf to combat the spill. …

The voracious Dutch vessels … continuously suck up vast quantities of oily water, extract most of the oil and then spit overboard vast quantities of nearly oil-free water. (But) nearly oil-free isn’t good enough for the U.S. regulators, who have a standard of 15 parts per million — if water isn’t at least 99.9985% pure, it may not be returned to the Gulf of Mexico.

Incredibly, U.S. regulators would rather have hundreds of square miles of water and priceless shoreline polluted than contain the spill with equipment that might allow slightly less than perfect water back into the Gulf of Mexico.

When Venezuela’s state-run grocery chain recently allowed tens of thousand of metric tons of food to rot, Hugo Chavez’s solution was to conduct raids on privately run grocers, confiscating replacement goods as punishment for trumped-up charges of hoarding and gouging. When the Obama administration by its own inaction allowed a serious problem at a single oil rig to turn into an economic and environmental catastrophe, it conducted a demonizing blitz against BP that culminated with a $20 billion raid on the company’s treasury. Obama’s action is in substance far more lawless than the authoritarian Venezuelan’s raids.

Meanwhile, the press’s alleged watchdogs have turned into cheerleaders. David Sanger at the New York Times gleefully described Obama’s reestablishment of “command and control,” adoringly celebrated “the use of raw presidential power” against BP, and shamelessly excused the president’s unilateral action:

(The White House) conceded that Mr. Obama had no legal basis to force BP to create the $20 billion fund; they said he was making a moral argument, and used the jawboning power of the presidential pulpit to push the company.

Pravda in its Communist heyday couldn’t have outdone Mr. Sanger.

With the establishment press asleep and the blogosphere still in its investigative reporting infancy, imagine what we can’t see, and won’t see. Mark Levin raised the warning flag about this over a year ago:

Do you know how much of this must be going on in the shadows, with the banks and the financial systems? What must be going on with one business after another, threatening them, warning them, punishing them?

Now imagine what the statists in government can accomplish to further their agenda and stifle dissent in their arbitrary and largely unappealable rulings on what is and isn’t a “grandfathered” employer health care plan; what is or isn’t acceptable executive pay; and now, with the imminent passage of what Investors Business Daily called “financial deform,” which “financial services” firms, no matter how currently healthy, should be taken over for taking on too much “risk.”

What we have is institutionalized gangster government. There’s a single word for it — and it’s not okay.

Tom Blumer owns a training and development company based in Mason, Ohio, outside of Cincinnati. He presents personal finance-related workshops and speeches at companies, and runs BizzyBlog.com

No Leadership in Prez Seat

2010-06-16T13:20:00.000-05:00

Unfortunately, our president is not a leader. He is a law professor, who had some local success as a politician, before he was 'selected' by the post Kennedy faction of the Dems to carry the minority vote on a socialist platform that promised everything, and has delivered nothing but national debt.

The recent excuses for taking action (or not) to get the Gulf cleaned up are overshadowed by the trail of money and lobbying by BP leading to BO's front doorstep.   Once again, it's all about the money. Nothin' but.

I am not against drilling by any means, but the series of dumb-ass errors that led to the burn-out of the drill assembly down at the hole was completely avoidable. To many numb-nuts on site.stumbing around the rig. Not enough procedure, not enough alertness. Kind of like our present Executive leadership.

We shoiuld always drill for oil, anywhere we can find it. But, seriously, let's keep the numb-nuts off these multi-billion dollar rigs and enterprises.   I am from SE Texas, near Louisiana, and we have all grown up with rigs in the Gulf. I have sailed across the Gulf right through them on an 80 mile rhumb line from Galveston to Tampa many times.

Drilling for oil has always been a part of our lives.   Following numb-nuts over the cliff has not - Presidential or otherwise.

Creating an ideology pegged to carbon dioxide is a dangerous nonsense

2010-02-09T23:06:00.002-05:00

"... The present alarm on climate change is an instrument of social control, a pretext for major businesses and political battle. It became an ideology, which is concerning."

-- Environmental Scientist Professor Delgado Domingos of Portugal, the founder of the Numerical Weather Forecast group, has more than 150 published articles.

Newt Gingrich reminds CCT delegates that our Constitution begins with "We the People..."

2009-12-18T00:38:00.003-05:00

I am glad to see that Newt is up on it. I am not so far off when I say our Constitution has been trampled by our POTUS.... and with audacity.

See his comments at: http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=34850

U.S. to contribute to $100B climate fund to help developing countries: Hillary Clinton Announces

2009-12-18T00:17:00.007-05:00

See the Article about: US will commit $100b to climate fund for developing countries Hillary Cllinton

OMG!!! Make it stop!

Obama and company are making outrageous commitments around the world without any support base at home - and this is just another one.

Did Mr. Obama consider for a moment that we have huge issues at home that need his attention, and by the way, we could use the $100 BB here. Oh, and another thing, that is your money and my money he just spent without getting permission to do so!!!

What is with all these decisions being made in the dark of night, and announced the next day... so much for transparency.

Before we make a $100 BB commitment anywhere, we should have the opportunity to like - run it by Congress, dude.

The treaty has little chance of reaching any agreement as it is, and our POTUS is already agreeing to it and funding it before there is any agreed plan for the use of the money.

I thought this CCT NGO was a little flimsy, but this announcement by HRC takes the cake.

No Taxation without Representation! I am not being represented in this funding offer

Conspiracy of the century? Hackers 'expose' climate change [HQ]

2009-11-24T02:21:00.000-05:00

Check this out.

Not only is Lord Christopher Monckton right, here is more evidence that Global Warming is a bunch of bunk.

The basis for the Copenhagen Climate Treaty is hogwash.

Climatic Research Unit Hacked E Mails & Data
Wikileaks
Sunday, November 22, 2009

Summary
This archive presents over 120Mb of emails, documents, computer code and models from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, written between 1996 and 2009.
The CRU has told the BBC that the files were obtained by a computer hacker 3-4 days ago.
This archive includes unreleased global temperature analysis computer source code that has been the subject of Freedom of Information Act requests.
The archive appears to be a collection of information put together by the CRU prior to a FoI redaction process.
DOWNLOAD/VIEW FULL FILE FROM

fastest (Sweden), current site, slow (US),

Rules for Radicals by Saul Alinsky - The Obama / Clinton administration's play book

2009-11-17T22:38:00.001-05:00

Here is the playbook used by Alinsky's protege Hillary Rodham and TAUGHT for years by Obama

Read for yourself the background of preparation embraced by our leaders - Marxist / Communistic ideals clearly stated in these main points excerpted from this book:

Rules for Radicals

By Saul Alinsky - 1971

Hillary Clinton's 1969 Political Science Thesis ("There is Only the Fight") refers to an earlier version of Alinsky’s training manual. "In 1946,” she wrote, "Alinsky's first book, Reveille for Radicals, was published."

Soviet Education under Lenin Models U.S. Education for the New millennium

From Marx to Lenin, Gramsci & Alinsky

Conspiracies- Past & Present

Background information
"Obama learned his lesson well. I am proud to see that my father's model for organizing is being applied successfully beyond local community organizing to affect the Democratic campaign in 2008. It is a fine tribute to Saul Alinsky as we approach his 100th birthday." --Letter from L. DAVID ALINSKY, son of Neo-Marxist Saul Alinsky
Hillary, Obama and the Cult of Alinsky: "True revolutionaries do not flaunt their radicalism, Alinsky taught. They cut their hair, put on suits and infiltrate the system from within. Alinsky viewed revolution as a slow, patient process. The trick was to penetrate existing institutions such as churches, unions and political parties....
      "One Alinsky benefactor was Wall Street investment banker Eugene Meyer, who served as Chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1930 to 1933. Meyer and his wife Agnes co-owned The Washington Post. They used their newspaper to promote Alinsky....Her series, called 'The Orderly Revolution', made Alinsky famous....
      "Alinsky’s crowning achievement was his recruitment of a young high school student named Hillary Rodham. She met Alinsky through a radical church group. Hillary wrote an analysis of Alinsky’s methods for her senior thesis at Wellesley College. ...
      "Many leftists view Hillary as a sell-out because she claims to hold moderate views on some issues. However, Hillary is simply following Alinsky’s counsel to do and say whatever it takes to gain power.
       "Barack Obama is also an Alinskyite.... Obama spent years teaching workshops on the Alinsky method. In 1985 he began a four-year stint as a community organizer in Chicago, working for an Alinskyite group called the Developing Communities Project.... Camouflage is key to Alinsky-style organizing. While trying to build coalitions of black churches in Chicago, Obama caught flak for not attending church himself. He became an instant churchgoer." [by Richard Poe, 11-27-07] See also Community Oriented Policing

Hillary, Obama and the Cult of Alinsky: "True revolutionaries do not flaunt their radicalism, Alinsky taught. They cut their hair, put on suits and infiltrate the system from within. Alinsky viewed revolution as a slow, patient process. The trick was to penetrate existing institutions such as churches, unions and political parties.... Many leftists view Hillary as a sell-out because she claims to hold moderate views on some issues. However, Hillary is simply following Alinsky’s counsel to do and say whatever it takes to gain power.

       "Barack Obama is also an Alinskyite.... Obama spent years teaching workshops on the Alinsky method. In 1985 he began a four-year stint as a community organizer in Chicago, working for an Alinskyite group called the Developing Communities Project.... Camouflage is key to Alinsky-style organizing. While trying to build coalitions of black churches in Chicago, Obama caught flak for not attending church himself. He became an instant churchgoer." (By Richard Poe, 11-27-07)

Opening page - Dedication

“Lest we forget at least an over-the-shoulder acknowledgment to the very first radical: from all our legends, mythology, and history... the first radical known to man who rebelled against the establishment and did it so effectively that he at least won his own kingdom — Lucifer.”

Prologue
"The Revolutionary force today has two targets, moral as well as material. Its young protagonists are one moment reminiscent of the idealistic early Christians, yet they also urge violence and cry, 'Burn the system down!' They have no illusions about the system, but plenty of illusions about the way to change our world. It is to this point that I have written this book."
1. The Purpose
In this book we are concerned with how to create mass organizations to seize power and give it to the people; to realize the democratic dream of equality, justice, peace.... "Better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.' This means revolution." p.3
"Radicals must be resilient, adaptable to shifting political circumstances, and sensitive enough to the process of action and reaction to avoid being trapped by their own tactics and forced to travel a road not of their choosing." p.6
"A Marxist begins with his prime truth that all evils are caused by the exploitation of the proletariat by the capitalists. From this he logically proceeds to the revolution to end capitalism, then into the third stage of reorganization into a new social order of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and finally the last stage -- the political paradise of communism." p.10
"An organizer working in and for an open society is in an ideological dilemma to begin with, he does not have a fixed truth -- truth to him is relative and changing; everything to him is relative and changing.... To the extent that he is free from the shackles of dogma, he can respond to the realities of the widely different situations...." pp.10-11

Notes on Saul Alinsky and Neo-Marxism:
     Alinsky's tactics were based, not on Stalin's revolutionary violence, but on the Neo-Marxist strategies of Antonio Gramsci, an Italian Communist. Relying on gradualism, infiltration and the dialectic process rather than a bloody revolution, Gramsci's transformational Marxism was so subtle that few even noticed the deliberate changes.
     Like Alinsky, Mikhail Gorbachev followed Gramsci, not Lenin. In fact, Gramsci aroused Stalins's wrath by suggesting that Lenin's revolutionary plan wouldn't work in the West. Instead the primary assault would be on Biblical absolutes and Christian values, which must be crushed as a social force before the new face of Communism could rise and flourish. Malachi Martin gave us a progress report:
"By 1985, the influence of traditional Christian philosophy in the West was weak and negligible.... Gramsci's master strategy was now feasible. Humanly speaking, it was no longer too tall an order to strip large majorities of men and women in the West of those last vestiges that remained to them of Christianity's transcendent God."
2. Of Means and Ends [Forget moral or ethical considerations]
"The end is what you want, the means is how you get it. Whenever we think about social change, the question of means and ends arises. The man of action views the issue of means and ends in pragmatic and strategic terms. He has no other problem; he thinks only of his actual resources and the possibilities of various choices of action. He asks of ends only whether they are achievable and worth the cost; of means, only whether they will work. ... The real arena is corrupt and bloody." p.24
"The means-and-ends moralists, constantly obsessed with the ethics of the means used by the Have-Nots against the Haves, should search themselves as to their real political position. In fact, they are passive — but real — allies of the Haves…. The most unethical of all means is the non-use of any means... The standards of judgment must be rooted in the whys and wherefores of life as it is lived, the world as it is, not our wished-for fantasy of the world as it should be...." pp.25-26
"The third rule of ethics of means and ends is that in war the end justifies almost any means...." p.29
"The seventh rule... is that generally success or failure is a mighty determinant of ethics...." p.34
"The tenth rule... is you do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral garments.... It involves sifting the multiple factors which combine in creating the circumstances at any given time... Who, and how many will support the action?... If weapons are needed, then are appropriate d weapons available? Availability of means determines whether you will be underground or above ground; whether you will move quickly or slowly..." p.36

Notes: Apparently, Michelle Obama referred to these words during her Democratic National Convention speech:
"She said, 'Barack stood up that day,' talking about a visit to Chicago neighborhoods, 'and spoke words that have stayed with me ever since. He talked about 'The world as it is' and 'The world as it should be…' And, 'All of us driven by a simple belief that the world as it is just won't do – that we have an obligation to, fight for the world as it should be."
Do you wonder who -- or whose values -- should determine what "the world... should be?"

4. The Education of the Organizer
"To the organizer, imagination... is the dynamism that starts and sustains him in his whole life of action as an organizer. It ignites and feeds the force that drives him to organize for change....
      "The organizer knows that the real action is in the reaction of the opposition. To realistically appraise and anticipate the probable reactions of the enemy, he must be able to identify with them, too, in his imagination, and foresee their reactions to his actions....
     "The organizers searching with a free and open mind void of certainty, hating dogma, finds laughter not just a way to maintain his sanity but also a key to understanding life."pp.74-75
"...the organizer must be able to split himself into two parts -- one part in the arena of action where he polarizes the issue to 100 to nothing, and helps to lead his forces into conflict, while the other part knows that when the time comes for negotiations that it really is only a 10 percent difference." p.78
"...the organizer is constantly creating new out of the old. He knows that all new ideas arise from conflict; [See Dialectic Process] that every time man as had a new idea it has been a challenge to the sacred ideas of the past and the present and inevitably a conflict has raged." p.79

5. Communication [Notice the emphasis on conflict, dialogue, relationships, etc. Team "service" is essential to building strong relationships through "common involvements"]

"And so the guided questioning goes on without anyone losing face or being left out of the decision-making. Every weakness of every proposed tactic is probed by questions.... Is this manipulation? Certainly...." p.88

"One of the factors that changes what you can and can't communicate is relationships. There are sensitive areas that one does not touch until there is a strong personal relationship based on common involvements. Otherwise the other party turns off and literally does not hear....
     "Conversely, if you have a good relationship, he is very receptive.... For example, I have always believed that birth control and abortion are personal rights to be exercised by the individual. If, in my early days when I organized... neighborhood in Chicago, which was 95 per cent Roman Catholic, I had tried to communicate this, even through the experience of the residents, whose economic plight was aggravated by large families, that would have been the end of my relationship with the community. That instant I would have been stamped as an enemy of the church and all communication would have ceased.

     "Some years later, after establishing solid relationships, I was free to talk about anything.... By then the argument was no longer limited to such questions as, 'How much longer do you think the Catholic Church can hang on to this archaic notion and still survive?' ...the subject and nature of the discussion would have been unthinkable without that solid relationship." pp.93-94

6. In the Beginning: The Process of Power [Notice the compromise needed to build the power base. Yet, since pragmatism has eroded all values, it's simply a matter of ends justifying means. It's not unlike churches that attract members through the world's entertainment -- then continue to soften or hide Truth in order to keep them happy and lure more. ]

"From the moment the organizer enters a community he lives, dreams... only one thing and that is to build the mass power base of what he calls the army. Until he has developed that mass power base, he confronts no major issues.... Until he has those means and power instruments, his 'tactics' are very different from power tactics. Therefore, every move revolves around one central point: how many recruits will this bring into the organization, whether by means of local organizations, churches, service groups, labor Unions, corner gangs, or as individuals."
     "Change comes from power, and power comes from organization." p.113
"The first step in community organization is community disorganization. The disruption of the present organization is the first step toward community organization. Present arrangements must be disorganized if they are to be displace by new patterns.... All change means disorganization of the old and organization of the new." p.116
"An organizer must stir up dissatisfaction and discontent... He must create a mechanism that can drain off the underlying guilt for having accepted the previous situation for so long a time. Out of this mechanism, a new community organization arises....
     "The job then is getting the people to move, to act, to participate; in short, to develop and harness the necessary power to effectively conflict with the prevailing patterns and change them. When those prominent in the status quo turn and label you an 'agitator' they are completely correct, for that is, in one word, your function—to agitate to the point of conflict." p.117
"Process tells us how. Purpose tells us why. But in reality, it is academic to draw a line between them, they are part of a continuum.... Process is really purpose." p.122

7. Tactics
"Tactics are those conscious deliberate acts by which human beings live with each other and deal with the world around them. ... Here our concern is with the tactic of taking; how the Have-Nots can take power away from the Haves." p.126

Always remember the first rule of power tactics (pps.127-134):
1. "Power is not only what you have, but what the enemy thinks you have."
2. "Never go outside the expertise of your people. When an action or tactic is outside the experience of the people, the result is confusion, fear and retreat.... [and] the collapse of communication.
3. "Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy. Look for ways to increase insecurity, anxiety and uncertainty. (This happens all the time. Watch how many organizations under attack are blind-sided by seemingly irrelevant arguments that they are then forced to address.)
4. "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules. You can kill them with this, for they can no more obey their own rules than the Christian church can live up to Christianity."
5. "Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. It is almost impossible to counteract ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, which then reacts to your advantage."
6. "A good tactic is one your people enjoy."
7. "A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag. Man can sustain militant interest in any issue for only a limited time...."
8. "Keep the pressure on, with different tactics and actions, and utilize all events of the period for your purpose."
9. "The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself."
10. "The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition. It is this unceasing pressure that results in the reactions from the opposition that are essential for the success of the campaign."
11. "If you push a negative hard and deep enough, it will break through into its counterside... every positive has its negative."
12. "The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative."

13. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it. In conflict tactics there are certain rules that [should be regarded] as universalities. One is that the opposition must be singled out as the target and 'frozen.'...

     "...any target can always say, 'Why do you center on me when there are others to blame as well?' When your 'freeze the target,' you disregard these [rational but distracting] arguments.... Then, as you zero in and freeze your target and carry out your attack, all the 'others' come out of the woodwork very soon. They become visible by their support of the target...'
     "One acts decisively only in the conviction that all the angels are on one side and all the devils on the other." (pps.127-134)

Alinsky's Rules for Radicals: "Known as the 'father of modern American radicalism,' Saul D. Alinsky (1909-1972) developed strategies and tactics that take the enormous, unfocused emotional energy of grassroots groups and transform it into effective anti-government and anti-corporate activism. ... Some of these rules are ruthless, but they work."

Notes from an article by Phyllis Schalfly titled "Alinski's Rules: Must Reading In Obama Era," posted at www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?id=318470857908277 (2-2-09)
       "Alinsky's second chapter, called Of Means and Ends, craftily poses many difficult moral dilemmas, and his 'tenth rule of the ethics of means and ends' is: 'you do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral arguments.' He doesn't ignore traditional moral standards or dismiss them as unnecessary. He is much more devious; he teaches his followers that 'Moral rationalization is indispensable at all times of action whether to justify the selection or the use of ends or means.'...
       "The qualities Alinsky looked for in a good organizer were:

ego ("reaching for the highest level for which man can reach — to create, to be a 'great creator,' to play God"),

curiosity (raising "questions that agitate, that break through the accepted pattern"),

irreverence ("nothing is sacred"; the organizer "detests dogma, defies any finite definition of morality"),

imagination ("the fuel for the force that keeps an organizer organizing"),

a sense of humor ("the most potent weapons known to mankind are satire and ridicule"), and an

organized personality with confidence in presenting the right reason for his actions only "as a moral rationalization after the right end has been achieved.'...

"'The organizer's first job is to create the issues or problems,' and 'organizations must be based on many issues.' The organizer 'must first rub raw the resentments of the people of the community; fan the latent hostilities of many of the people to the point of overt expression. He must search out controversy and issues, rather than avoid them, for unless there is controversy people are not concerned enough to act. . . . An organizer must stir up dissatisfaction and discontent.'"

A WARNING TO ALL AMERICANS

2009-11-16T17:58:00.003-05:00

From Naval Aviator, Commander Jerry Wilson

We lived in California during the winters of 2007 and 2008. We became addicted to Fox News and watched O'Reilly and Hannity and Colmes every night. When we got back home, we upgraded our cable to get Fox. I watched the Presidential campaign very closely, initially because I thought the Democrats would nominate Hillary Clinton, and then in astonishment when they chose an even more hard-left candidate. All of last year I told everyone I could that Obama was not a Democrat, he was a Marxist. He is far to the left of any European leader and even our far left party, the NDP.

I read Saul Alinsky when I was in University. I studied him and his writing carefully. When Bill Ayers and his idiot wife were bombing and killing people at random in the Weather Underground, Weather Underground and the Black Panthers were closely allied. I read David Horowitz's account of changing from a Marxist to a conservative after seeing that the government was afraid to prosecute members of the Panthers for murdering his personal assistant. He suddenly understood the evil that Marxism really was.

After the student radicals failed in creating a Marxist revolution in the United States by violent means, they embraced Alinsky. You would be wise to read "Rules for Radicals" because it outlines how Hillary and Obama planned to get into power, and what they intended to do when they got it.

Socialism is not the correct descriptor for what Obama and the Democrats are doing. They are going to be much more far reaching than anything Sweden has ever been able to do. Obama is following Alinsky's plan, those set out in "Rules for Radicals" and his other writing. The Democrats are attempting to create one party rule in the U.S. and in achieving that, will create crisis after crisis by their own actions and use those crisis to nationalize the means of production in the U.S. You are in the middle of a Communist revolution and few in the U.S. can actually see it for what it truly is.

The U.S. is now on the path of financial destruction. The Constitution has been shredded and individual human rights are being trampled. In less than 8 months. Obama has used a recession to take over the two largest industries in the U.S. He will debase the Dollar and is on the road to creating an incredible energy shortage that will allow him and Congress to take over the energy
industry.

But by and large I think that by the 2010 elections, the Democrats will have gerrymandered electoral districts to the point that it will be impossible for them to lose control of both houses of Congress. The incredible increase in the money supply is going to create Zimbabwe and Venezuela style inflation, and with it, controls on the currency and the amount of money that can be taken out of the country.

I love America , I cannot believe how the ignorance of the American public has created a situation whereby they are going to lose their Republic and slip into an age of repression and tyranny.

I may be nuts, but so far I have been 100% correct in my predictions of what Obama was going to do, because I merely had to look at "Rules for Radicals" to see what was coming next.

I read Glenn Beck's book, "Common Sense" and in it re-read Thomas Paines pamphlet with the same name. I recommend the book.

----------------------------------------------------------

When the storm finally hits (and it will), those of you who supported the Obama administration will be affected as well. It won't just be us gun owners or Flat-Taxers, or Pro-Lifers that get hit. You'll be right there next to us.

You all thought the Conservatives were nut cases. You know, all of us who believe in God, small government, the Second Amendment, etc. You thought you could just go back to sleep after the election was over. In your world, America will continue as before. You'll still have the same rights,
the same nice house, the same big screen television. After all, your high school football team won and the other team lost - go team! Even if you have bothered to look up from the daily grind since Nov 4th, you dismissed everything that has occurred as "politics as usual - the same old stuff".

In the end, it'll all be OK won't it? Not this time.

There are a growing number of citizens in the US that are ready to fight to shut down the government's grab of personal freedom, it's blatant abuse of the constitution, and it's attempt to replace the American way of life with socialism. You have to listen carefully to hear them, but they are there. I won't start that fight, but when it goes down I will join it.

As for you, why, you'll be shocked because you didn't see it coming. And eventually you'll be saddened when you see that we have truly lost the way of life with which you grew up. You'll be saddened that your children and grandchildren live in a socialist, government-controlled gulag where their every movement from cradle to grave is tracked by the government. But most of all,
you'll be saddened by the death of friends and relatives who are brave enough to fight and die for something they believe in.

You know, McCain wasn't much of a candidate. I'll give you that. He was the lesser of two evils for most of us. I don't blame you for not voting for him since, at the time, you didn't know what we all know now. But at least John McCain was an American. He was a supporter of the American way of life and he understood that you can't negotiate with terrorists. He understood and appreciated the sacrifice made by my father and other members of the Greatest Generation.

Mark my words friends. All across America groups are forming. They are forming out of anger and out of desperation at the thought of losing America . They're not militia groups, terrorists as the Department of Homeland security would have you believe; they are Americans, loyal to the constitution. They are mothers and fathers and grandparents. They belong to groups like the
Minutemen Civil Defense Corps, the Peaceful Resistance, the Constitution Party, the Young Conservatives, the 9/12 Project, and Grassfire. Right now they are fragmented, each focused on their own cause. But sometime in the next two years, our government is going to do something really stupid and these groups will come together. Watch for it, wait for it-get ready. It will happen.

When that event happens, whatever "it" is, our great country is going to plunge into chaos for a while. I pray to God that we make it through that time and emerge a stronger, smarter country.

Naval Aviator, Commander Jerry Wilson, jerrywilson@centurytel.net http://www.thewoodlandsteaparty.com/2009/09/02/a-warning-to-all-americans

The 18 Cent Solution - "Re-Management of US Oil to end Oil Wars"

2009-10-30T15:47:00.001-05:00

The 18 Cent Solution

MAY 2008

Robert McElroy's proposition of positive solutions to the wars in the Middle East over Oil, and how we can conserve our own natural gas and oil resources.

It has not been said enough – ‘To support the troops, use less energy’.
Many Americans believed the US invaded Iraq to remove a threat from Saddam Hussein, but it is not an acceptable conclusion in light of 1997 United Oil of California testimony before a US House subcommittee on the need for and challenges to a proposed oil and gas pipeline through Afghanistan (now being proposed without US participation by Iran). Prior to that, Richard Nixon drew a clear conclusion in his 1994 book, Beyond Peace that the US must continue to control, even if it involves military action, access to Middle East oil in order to protect the US domestic economy.

That is why we are in Iraq and have been in the region for at least five decades. It is about oil and it is about our individual energy consuming habits. We have been feeding at the cheap energy trough for nearly 100 years and now find we can’t afford to continue that lifestyle. High gas prices may help wean us away from impulsive and unnecessary energy use and that won’t hurt us, perhaps strengthen us personally, but it is an election year and Americans are complaining about the price of gas and candidates naturally want to solve the problem.
To ease our pain Senators Clinton and McCain propose a three-month moratorium on the 18 cent per gallon federal gas tax. Such a savings when the price of gas is still going to be around $4.00 per gallon raises the question if those candidates are telling us that there is simply no other solution to high gas prices or consider us to be energy addicts who will scramble gratefully when thrown a bone.

Perhaps because energy policy is a convoluted mesh of foreign policy, domestic economic policy, political ideology, and catering to special interests, the 18 cent solution is easy to peddle but it is not a solution and it is offered when there are immediate and effective solutions available.
In her recent testimony before the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming Massachusetts Institute of Technology energy expert Melanie A. Kenderdine, who was a former official at the Department of Energy, explained that there are things government can do and can do immediately.

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve is nearly full at 700 million gallons but President Bush continues to purchase millions of gallons of crude thereby increasing demand and rising prices, Ms Kenderdine explained and added that simply releasing millions of gallons from the Reserve on the market would immediately increase supply and drive prices down. She supported her conclusion by contrasting President Bush’s actions to those taken by Bill Richardson when he was Secretary of Energy in the Clinton Administration. Richardson dumped 30 million gallons of crude on the market. “The results were immediate, in spite of the fact that oil had not yet moved into the market--demonstrating the psychological impacts on the market when the U.S. signals its intention to act. . . By the end of the year, actual oil prices had dropped from $30.94 to $20.38 per barrel, a 34% decrease.” She testified.

A more nuanced approach Ms. Kenderdine described would be swapping out the light crude in the Reserve for less expensive dark crude, capturing an immediate profit without lowering the Reserve content. Her suggestions showed saving or profits upwards towards $9 billion.
What seems to be overlooked in the President’s and Congress’ wean-away-from-foreign-oil strategies is 2005 information from the US Energy Information Administration calculating that North America has 100 years of oil resources. Canada is the largest supplier of crude to the US now that the price has made it profitable to extract from Canadian sand. Mexico is an OPEC aligned country but does not have to function under OPEC price controls and the US itself has untapped oil reserves in which investments were justified when oil passed the $40 per barrel price. Where would we be now if the $600 billion we have spent in Iraq had been directed to nurture an energy relationship with our neighbors?
If we used our own oil we would have nearly 100 years to figure out how to meet our energy needs with the estimated 300 trillion cubic feet of natural gas on the continent, solar and bio-energy solutions.

To be sure we would not have lost over 4,000 troops.

##

Are insurance co's against the public option because they're afraid the gov't might actually run health care BETTER than they have? - post by John Watson

2009-10-27T19:02:00.002-05:00

Soraya Navarez - Afraid they may have to cut profits 750%
8 hours ago

Holly Kittleman Nope.
7 hours ago

John Watson - I don't know why everyone just assumes the government would do a bad job. Look at the mess insurance co's got us into. Maybe it's time to give someone else a chance.
about an hour ago

John Watson@Holly: doesn't the military have a govt-run health plan?
about an hour ago

Bill Fulbright
John, there is a misconception here. The insurance companies did not get us here. I used to sell group insurance with my family's general agency during the mid-70's. Health insurance used to cost about 30.00 per family in a group, and about 50.00 for non-group family coverage.

Lawyers started taking cases and encouraging a litigious atmosphere where huge settlements were obtained for relatively normal malpractice suits. Sure, there were some crappy doctors who left sponges and scissors in people, but these low level cases made it harder and more expensive to settle the cases that were serious. Due to the huge increase in numbers of medical malpractice suits levied by less than ethical lawyers (and there were and are some very ethical ones - so no bashing here), the cost of settling these suits began an upward spiral of costs, covered by insurance companies, including the cost of medical malpractice insurance. The doctors were shocked, but in order to keep their practices open, they passed the cost along to the insurance buyer by raising their cost schedule. I watched the state of Texas have to create a pool of insurance for basic limits of liability for Doctors only available at 100/300 for basic limits. This initial level of coverage was no longer offered by insurance companies. Once obtained, the Doctors had to go out to the second and third layers of liability umbrella providers of medical malpractice insurance to get the limits of coverage needed to stay open for business.

If that wasn't enough the Auto Workers Unions and the Oil and Chemical Workers Unions were going on strikes for more benefits, the Arab Emirates were raising the price of oil - in short prices were starting to soar....

In my opinion the upward spiral of costs in the health insurance begain due to uncontrolled/non-regulated medical malpractice suits.... hence the need now some 40 years later to press for Tort Reform.

Insurance works on the law of numbers, where many pay a lower cost for the coverage received by a few.. all actuarially proven.

Sure, the insurance companies make a profit, and they should. Did you want to support the beginning of a dis-incentive program that will affect lawyers, doctors, insurance companies - effectively chasing away the good guys because some bad guys went nutty and greedy? (this is now underway with the banks not even in the TARP program) . If the talented people are chased away due to no incentive, and the reins of the institutions are left in the hands of the less capable...... what do you think will be the case? Better quality or less quality?

Look, there is a happy balance for it all, and I think we will find it, but not at the point of a gun. We are being asked to accept a half-baked plan that may not be so good at the moment. There are some very good examples of social health care in europe, from which we can learn alot, and implement a lot.

We are being rushed into a second or third rate solution due to politics, rather than the realistic assessment of real health reform, for which I am in favor.

I have been out of work and dependent upon unemployment insurance, but was not allowed to receive any medical care because I had earned too much money previously. So because I worked for many years and had contributed into this public system, when I needed it for me and my family, it was not there for me.

I do not challenge you lightly, but with real world experience.

The Ten Cannots

2009-10-20T12:51:00.001-05:00

TEN CANNOTS - - by William J. H. Boetcker

Here are 10 timeless truths that transcend all politics:

You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot help little men by tearing down big men.
You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
You cannot establish sound security on borrowed money.
You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn.
You cannot build character and courage by destroying men's initiative and independence.
And you cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they can and should do for themselves.

BTW
(Quoted in a Ronald Reagan Speech in 1992 and often mis-attributed to Abe Lincoln because of its similarity in spirit to Honest Abe’s other writings)!

Obama Poised to Cede US Sovereingty

2009-10-17T07:28:00.009-05:00

Lord Christopher Monckton, Climate Scientist reveals treaty plans to create a world enforcement government structure!!
Here are links to the Co penhagen Climate Treaty so you can read it for yourself.
NGO Copenhagen Climate Treaty (pdf)
NGO Copenhagen Climate Treaty Full Legal Text (pdf)
NGO Copenhagen Climate Treaty (Word) vol. 1
NGO Copenhagen Climate Treaty Full Legal Text (Word) vol.2

Lord Christopher Monckton, a highly respected Climate Specialist, has delivered an address in which he summarizes a "Climate Debt" Treaty to be signed in December 2009 in Copenhagen in which there will be established:

1. a World Government in which there is no election, and no way to cancel out once it is signed.

2. a redistribution of wealth to 3rd world nations on the premise that we have burned too much CO2 and they haven't so we owe them.

3. the ability to ENFORCE THE TERMS OF THE TREATY.

OUR CHOICES ARE TO:

1. BLOCK THE PRESIDENT FROM SIGNING THIS TREATY - Very Unlikely - as a Nobel Peace Prize winner and extreme left leanings he WILL Sign it.

2. BLOCK THE RATIFICATION OF THE TREATY IN OUR CONGRESS - A real possibility if we ACT by letting our representatives know where we stand - NO WAY will we be sub to a World Governmental Entity put in place by a treaty.

3. A long shot would be for States to secede from the USA. Texas is the most prepared to do this. Others will need time to figure it out.

There are a number of these types of Treaties floating around. The most recent of which is the L.O.S.T treaty, in which we cede our Naval Authority in the Northern Seas around Russia and the Seas between that and Canada. The Sovreign rights that are ours would have been ceded to a World Enforcement Agency with the power to Enforce the Treaty, under which we would be judged by some 75 countries who are NOT our friends. So that is a dangerously similar treaty not yet ratified, but could be. President Reagan vehemenently opposed this treaty, and it was very well known during his administration. Law of The Sea Treaty 2007; Law of the Sea Treaty - Senate Moves to ratify March 2009 - still in debate

Three is another Treaty regarding the leveling of our economic value by creating a North and South American currency - an "Amero" to link our economies together into a larger, and very likely weaker currency.

Please give Lord Monckton a listen. He is INFORMED and not afraid to speak up.

Follow the money.... another article on Dollar Devaluation

2009-10-13T11:15:00.000-05:00

No, these are not rumors. They are perceptions that drive rumors, which then affect policy. World perceptions. not necessarily USA perceptions. We are not the only actors on the stage, nor can we afford to think like that.

Arabian nations look to Euro rather than Dollar for trading oil
China and Russia talk about another type of world currency

Recent comments published on Bloomberg

Dollar as "Also Ran" or read on below

Demise of the Dollar or read on below

So as it is being said in as many ways as possible... WAKE UP AMERICA

We must re-organize the premise of our economy and dollar.

Let's talk about a plan to save the dollar, initiate and implement the plan, and take it to the market.

Global Currency in the Making - Dollar slide gives rise to new reserve

2009-10-08T00:06:00.000-05:00

Watch it!

Here is the beginning of the shift of the monetary base movement.

A new Global Currency is in the making. A change in the medium of monetary reserve = a change in the culture. China seeks to protect its large exposure against the declining dollar by calling for a stronger currency than the euro...If China manages to restructure a Global Currency ....read on...

Dollar's Slide Gives Rise to Calls for New Reserve

By Frank AhrensWashington Post Staff Writer

Wednesday, October 7, 2009

The U.S. dollar continued its six-month slide Tuesday amid a growing international chorus that wants the dollar replaced -- or at least supplemented -- as the world's reserve currency, a move that would end the greenback's six decades of global dominance.

The dollar has come under attack from abroad as the economic crisis has played out, thanks to the Federal Reserve's decision to flood a seized-up financial system with liquidity last fall. The central bank's moves likely staved off deflation, but the massive influx of new dollars has devalued existing ones. Foreign nations are worried that the massive U.S. national debt and rising deficits are not being addressed. And though inflation is not yet a concern in the United States, a prolonged slide in the dollar's value could lead to higher prices for consumers.

Further, large emerging economies -- such as China, Russia, Brazil and India -- are tired of kow-towing to the American buck, and sense an opportunity to knock a weakened dollar off its imperial perch.

"The U.S. dollar is headed for also-ran status, and it will continue to lose its value against many other currencies and assets," Miller Tabak equity strategist Peter Boockvar said. "The rest of the world wants the U.S. dollar to lose influence, but no one wants it to be abrupt, as it's in no one's interest. An evolutionary process is what is wanted."
The question is: When will that happen?

"In the next two to three years, it is highly unlikely to see the dollar replaced," said Eswar Prasad, an economics professor at Cornell University and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. "Over the next decade, though, we would expect to see other currencies play a much more significant role."

The dollar fell to nearly its lowest point of the year against the yen and euro on Tuesday, which sent the price of gold surging to a record intraday high above $1,045 per ounce, as investors sought a hedge against inflation and foreign nations continued to stockpile the precious metal.

For the American consumer, a falling dollar means U.S. exports sell better overseas, which can lead to more jobs here. But it also means imports costs more, which means higher prices at U.S. stores.
"For the average Joe, the implications of a crisis of confidence in the dollar could end up in higher borrowing costs, lower government expenditures -- so that means reduced services -- and higher taxes," Prasad said. "Most likely, some combination of all of the above."

Stocks, which typically move opposite of the dollar, staged a strong rally on Tuesday, continuing their fast Monday start. The Dow Jones industrial average and the broader Standard & Poor's 500-stock index both gained 1.4 percent, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq surged 1.7 percent.

The U.S. dollar has been the world's reserve currency since World War II. Central banks and financial institutions in other nations hold dollars to pay off foreign obligations, or to influence their currency's exchange rate. Commodities, such as oil, are priced in dollars, which spreads the dollar's influence around the world.

But the dollar's dominance is being challenged, thanks to the crisis.

China was the first major power to attack the greenback, calling in March for the dollar to be replaced as the world's reserve currency. China holds more U.S. debt than any other country -- about $800 billion -- and the further the dollar drops, the less the value of the U.S. debt owed to China.

Other nations have followed China's criticism. In March, Kazakhstan criticized the dollar and called for the creation of a new currency it calls the "acmetal" (a coinage combining "acme" and "capital"). Last month, Iran shifted its reserve currency from the dollar to the euro, a move that is likely more political than economic and a response to harsh U.S. criticism of Iran's nuclear moves.

But major powers have spoken against the dollar, as well. In September, Russia said it remains satisfied with the dollar as a reserve currency but said others are also needed. At an international investment summit last month, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin criticized the United States -- and implicitly, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, who controls the money supply -- for "uncontrolled issue of dollars."
Both China and Russia have called for a new "global supercurrency," similar but larger in scale to the euro, that would replace the dollar.

Even the world's big financial institutions are piling on.

"The United States would be mistaken to take for granted the dollar's place as the world's predominant reserve currency," World Bank President Robert Zoellick said in a speech last week.

Arabs Plot to Drop Dollar from OIL TRADING

2009-10-05T19:16:00.006-05:00

The Demise of the Dollar

In a graphic illustration of the new world order, Arab states have launched secret moves with China, Russia and France to stop using the US currency for oil trading

By Robert Fisk

Tuesday, 6 October 2009

REX

Iran announced late last month that its foreign currency reserves would henceforth be held in euros rather than dollars.

In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning – along with China, Russia, Japan and France – to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar.

Secret meetings have already been held by finance ministers and central bank governors in Russia, China, Japan and Brazil to work on the scheme, which will mean that oil will no longer be priced in dollars.

The plans, confirmed to The Independent by both Gulf Arab and Chinese banking sources in Hong Kong, may help to explain the sudden rise in gold prices, but it also augurs an extraordinary transition from dollar markets within nine years.

The Americans, who are aware the meetings have taken place – although they have not discovered the details – are sure to fight this international cabal which will include hitherto loyal allies Japan and the Gulf Arabs. Against the background to these currency meetings, Sun Bigan, China's former special envoy to the Middle East, has warned there is a risk of deepening divisions between China and the US over influence and oil in the Middle East. "Bilateral quarrels and clashes are unavoidable," he told the Asia and Africa Review. "We cannot lower vigilance against hostility in the Middle East over energy interests and security."

This sounds like a dangerous prediction of a future economic war between the US and China over Middle East oil – yet again turning the region's conflicts into a battle for great power supremacy. China uses more oil incrementally than the US because its growth is less energy efficient. The transitional currency in the move away from dollars, according to Chinese banking sources, may well be gold. An indication of the huge amounts involved can be gained from the wealth of Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar who together hold an estimated $2.1 trillion in dollar reserves.

The decline of American economic power linked to the current global recession was implicitly acknowledged by the World Bank president Robert Zoellick. "One of the legacies of this crisis may be a recognition of changed economic power relations," he said in Istanbul ahead of meetings this week of the IMF and World Bank. But it is China's extraordinary new financial power – along with past anger among oil-producing and oil-consuming nations at America's power to interfere in the international financial system – which has prompted the latest discussions involving the Gulf states.

Brazil has shown interest in collaborating in non-dollar oil payments, along with India. Indeed, China appears to be the most enthusiastic of all the financial powers involved, not least because of its enormous trade with the Middle East.

China imports 60 per cent of its oil, much of it from the Middle East and Russia. The Chinese have oil production concessions in Iraq – blocked by the US until this year – and since 2008 have held an $8bn agreement with Iran to develop refining capacity and gas resources. China has oil deals in Sudan (where it has substituted for US interests) and has been negotiating for oil concessions with Libya, where all such contracts are joint ventures.

Furthermore, Chinese exports to the region now account for no fewer than 10 per cent of the imports of every country in the Middle East, including a huge range of products from cars to weapon systems, food, clothes, even dolls. In a clear sign of China's growing financial muscle, the president of the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Trichet, yesterday pleaded with Beijing to let the yuan appreciate against a sliding dollar and, by extension, loosen China's reliance on US monetary policy, to help rebalance the world economy and ease upward pressure on the euro.

Ever since the Bretton Woods agreements – the accords after the Second World War which bequeathed the architecture for the modern international financial system – America's trading partners have been left to cope with the impact of Washington's control and, in more recent years, the hegemony of the dollar as the dominant global reserve currency.

The Chinese believe, for example, that the Americans persuaded Britain to stay out of the euro in order to prevent an earlier move away from the dollar. But Chinese banking sources say their discussions have gone too far to be blocked now. "The Russians will eventually bring in the rouble to the basket of currencies," a prominent Hong Kong broker told The Independent. "The Brits are stuck in the middle and will come into the euro. They have no choice because they won't be able to use the US dollar."

Chinese financial sources believe President Barack Obama is too busy fixing the US economy to concentrate on the extraordinary implications of the transition from the dollar in nine years' time. The current deadline for the currency transition is 2018.

The US discussed the trend briefly at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh; the Chinese Central Bank governor and other officials have been worrying aloud about the dollar for years. Their problem is that much of their national wealth is tied up in dollar assets.

"These plans will change the face of international financial transactions," one Chinese banker said. "America and Britain must be very worried. You will know how worried by the thunder of denials this news will generate."

Iran announced late last month that its foreign currency reserves would henceforth be held in euros rather than dollars. Bankers remember, of course, what happened to the last Middle East oil producer to sell its oil in euros rather than dollars. A few months after Saddam Hussein trumpeted his decision, the Americans and British invaded Iraq.

Letter to Senator Baucus on Health Reform - a "pro" view that makes sense

2009-09-21T09:03:00.004-05:00

I generally have a more conservative view than my brother, however on the issue of Health reform, we have transcended politics to see a common point of view.

I trust the rest of the country can begin to transcend politicization and emotionalism, deal with the facts, and fix the problem.

Here is his letter:

FULBRIGHT & ASSOCIATES, P.C.
Clinical Neuropsychology * Cognitive Rehabilitation
Supervised by Richard L. Fulbright, Ph.D.
Elizabeth A. Thompson, M.S., L.P.A.
Candace M. Genest, Ph.D.
Case Management
Jody L. Fulbright, M.S., L.P.C.

Clinical Neuropsychology
Richard L. Fulbright, Ph.D.
Mary C. Anise, Psy.D.
6210 Campbell Rd., Suite 100, Dallas, Texas 75248-1371
Tel: 972/250-1705 Fax: 972/250-1710
E-mail: n eur on1@sbcglobal.ne t Website: www.praxisrehab.com

September 20, 2009

Dear Congressman/Senator:

As a healthcare provider, a small-business owner, and an employer who provides healthcare benefits to my employees and my family, I am most concerned about the provision in the Baucus bill that would tax insurance premiums. This is unfair and inappropriate, punishing the wrong party.

I hope that you do not let the length of this letter deter from reading it. This is not simply political palaver, but a very detailed explanation of real-life concerns of myself and many small business owners.

My issues are categorized as follows:

Please amend healthcare premium taxes in the Baucus bill

Understand how premiums are set and are out of the purchaser's control

Normal coverage is not a “Cadillac plan”

Why choosing a cheaper plan is not an option in the current system

Real costs of insurance coverage to a small business owner

Why I am in favor of a public option health care plan

I am a clinical neuropsychologist, an employer of four people, and provider for Medicare and managed care insurance services. When you talk about the small business owner struggling to provide health care benefits to his employees, I am that guy. I make a modest income, work about 75 hours a week, provide a valuable service to the public, and participate in government-funded health care plans, such as Medicare, state-funded vocational plans, and the VA (through an outside provider contract). I feel that I have an "on the ground" perspective of the small business owner that is so frequently discussed in Washington as a straw man for demagoguery. I would like to tell you about what it's like to be the real man in that position.

Maybe I am atypical in that I feel that I have a responsibility toward my employees to provide them a respectful work environment, appropriate pay, and 75% subsidy of their healthcare insurance benefits (I pay 75% of the premium, plus some contributions to the HSA deductible). Below, I'll discuss my perspective on dealing with healthcare benefits from the standpoint of the small businessman, the healthcare provider, and the family breadwinner.

Premium Rates: The insurance carriers set the premium rates based on age, pre-existing conditions, current conditions, prior year usage, and the size of the business. Political pressure made them discontinue gender-based rate setting on childbearing age women. Finally, rates vary from state to state, based on state insurance boards' regulation of insurance carriers. Businesses with fewer than 50 employees are charged much higher insurance premiums per person than bigger businesses, when in reality, we could all be pooled into one small business group. Neither the insurance industry nor the state government has fixed this problem, no matter how much the legislators voiced sympathy for the small-business owner. Given all these factors, how can the Baucus bill set a limit on nontaxable premiums when the people being taxed have no control over the premiums the company charges them?

Since I currently provide coverage for six people under my plan (3 employees and 2 dependents), we are highly vulnerable to rate increases due to illnesses or conditions of even one person. A complicated pregnancy can radically increase our rates. Given that psychology has become much more feminized, (all but one employee is female), our rates could go up dramatically (and have) because of a complicated pregnancy. If you think that I could find a cheaper carrier, I would be open to this. However, I have several medical conditions (and my son has a serious one), and we would certainly not be insurable by another carrier, so shopping for another policy would not be an option for me. Once again, the policymakers need to wake up to the realities of life in the field. Are you aware of these conundrums that your constituents face?

Cadillac or Lemon? It is extremely arrogant for a congressman (with excellent government-funded benefits) to call my private healthcare plan, for which I make considerable sacrifices for my family and my employees, a "Cadillac plan", since the actual coverage is more like a Dodge Dart than a Cadillac. I have never seen an insurance plan that would cover my family of four with reasonable services for less than $22,000. Given any increases that occur in my premiums (which are out of my control), I would be taxed for my insurance coverage, which is already prohibitive. When I review my annual insurance plan options, I don't see any plans that would reliably fall under this $24,000 rate. I currently pay around $23,700 per year. The insurance carrier can increase my rates by 27% on any given year up to the maximum rates allowable by law. Let's assume that the insurance carrier increases my rates a modest 10% for next year. My family's coverage will then go to $26,000 per year. I would then be taxed 35%, which would raise my family premium alone to $35,100 per year! The cost of my premiums for my employees would be $59,940, resulting in a $20,000 "Cadillac tax" for the government. Why not tax the insurance carrier for the exorbitant profits they make? Or better yet, just raise income taxes, since we are all paying for public health care through school and property taxes to county facilities. No one ever mentions that the cost of indigent care is paid for through county and hospital district taxes, to which I contribute about $7000 or $8000 a year.

The Real-World Small Business Perspective (Not Joe the Plumber): In terms of our insurance plan being a "Cadillac plan," you should know that we currently pay $39,956 per year in premiums to cover six people. This is with a high deductible ($3000 per person), so that we can afford monthly premiums. We have an HSA plan, consistent with the Republican agenda that Americans enter the healthcare marketplace with their own dollars. What this really means is that we have a $3000 deductible, to which I contribute an additional $1200 to my employees to ensure that they have only an $1800 deductible. You should know that most of my employees never get to use their insurance, since they do not work through their deductible to access benefits. That means the insurance carrier makes 100% profit on the premiums we pay them on most of my employees, and they certainly end up spending a lot less on health care than they receive in premiums. In essence, I am paying $7200 per employee with my contribution to their HSA. As a family, we have a $6000 deductible, meaning that I have to spend $6000 in health-care before any of my family's routine medical care is reimbursed by the carrier. If I were the stereotypical rich doctor, I guess I would have $6000 readily available for healthcare. As it is, we've had to borrow from family and use credit cards and savings to get through the deductible each year. As I have always said, if we practiced psychology the way they practice insurance, we would have had our licenses stripped and spent time in jail.

Re: Buying a Cheaper Plan: Even if we were insurable under another plan, there are significant limitations in cheaper plans. Cheaper plans give me a very limited choice over my doctors. They also limit mental health care coverage in terms of the numbers of sessions and reimbursement percentage to the provider (most pay 50% to in-plan providers, which are very limited). My son has a complicated set of conditions that require considerable care and extremely expensive medication. The expensive medication is a whole other story (we can buy it yet from Canada for $100 per month or buy it through our insurance carrier for $5000 per month due to some crazy pricing scheme). More on this later. As a psychologist, I will not buy a plan that excludes mental health care from its coverage. Doing so would be synonymous with a congressman voting for a bill that would cause their constituents to vote them out of office (When is the last time you fell on your political sword and took one for the team?). Why should I pay nearly $40,000 a year for an insurance plan that fails to serve my needs and is aimed at putting people like me out of business? When I hear concerns that President Obama's plans have provided little details, I can only think of all of these details I am discussing that fail to be mentioned in the Republican-backed private healthcare reform option. None of these details have been specified as target areas to be reformed. I hear a lot more about keeping the current system in place, meaning ongoing profits for the insurance companies and deteriorating health care delivery for our country. This concerns me a lot.

The Real Cost of Health Care: I am sickened when I hear self-righteous statements from politicians about the need to protect suffering small businesses. To date, neither the state-regulated insurance industry nor state legislators have made any headway in easing the healthcare expense burden of the small businessman. And to think that they blame the doctors. The state-regulated lack of insurance reform has caused extreme duress in my small business. We have adapted. It’s the insurance industry’s turn.

"Predatory Pricing" heyday with predatory pricing on businesses with fewer than 50 Employees, which make up the majority of enterprises in the United States. In addition, healthcare providers tend to be older and increasingly feminine, particularly among the professionals.

"Administrative Costs" Justify Higher Premiums: Another opportunity for the carrier to increase rates to the maximum allowed by law. Small businesses pay the highest premiums for insurance per person, purportedly due to "administrative costs". It seems that Medicare doesn't incur any unusual expenses by having millions of individual insureds.

Shifting the Burden to the Taxpayer: Many small businesses don't provide any healthcare benefits to their employees, which means that the boss is making more money and hiring lower quality employees who are willing to take jobs without benefits. When these people need medical care, they go to hospital emergency rooms. If they are publicly funded, we taxpayers pay exorbitant emergency room rates for routine medical care, a totally remediable problem. If no one gets paid, hospitals raise their rates to sources who do pay, meaning insurance carriers. Why do you think that an aspirin cost five dollars in the hospital? This is called cost-sharing, meaning somebody has to pay the light bill and the staff in order to provide services. You rob from Peter to pay Paul. In short, we are already paying for public health care through a very disorganized, exorbitantly costly, and poor quality system by which services are provided to the uninsured without direct reimbursement. As healthcare providers, we all do it. Ethically, we can't or shouldn't stop it. Without higher dollar private work, I couldn't afford to see patients paying with insurance and state funds. That's why many mental-health professionals quit taking insurance altogether. Instead, we pay through higher insurance premiums, higher deductibles, higher hospital costs, and county taxes (that's what the hospital district taxes on your property taxes are for).

Dollars and Sense Versus Nickels and Dimes: If a public health option would cost the average American household $1500 a year in taxes, that would be a net cost savings, especially if this resulted in a decrease in hospital district taxes and shifted the burden directly to a system made to care for a range of health care needs rather than expensive emergency room settings. It's a lot cheaper to operate a public primary care clinic than an emergency room. When 35% of uninsured Texans are relying on the system of care, we are burdening our taxpayers significantly. You don't see these taxes referred to as "healthcare taxes" due to good packaging by legislators. It's a loaded issue, and no legislator who wants to be re-elected will bring it up. Ron Anderson, M.D., director of Parkland Memorial Hospital for the past 30 years, has been saying exactly this for many years, largely to deaf ears. I think he knows of what he speaks.

A Real-Life Example: (This is a true story). A 20-year-old uninsured male with limited finances develops an abscessed tooth and has no money to pay for a dentist to treat it. The infection goes to his bloodstream and causes bacteria to form on his heart valve. This throws him into an acute cardiac crisis and causes him to have anoxia due to cardiac arrest and several strokes, causing him brain damage. He underwent a heart valve replacement surgery. He had residual deficits in his cognitive, physical, and behavioral functioning. He underwent inpatient rehabilitation and was discharged as soon as possible. Overall cost of the hospitalization probably ranged to around $50-$60,000, plus another $30,000 in inpatient and outpatient rehabilitation costs. Taxpayers in the East Texas County where he was treated funded the entire hospitalization. Ironic lesson: if this man had access to dental care, he would have had his tooth treated, and we would have saved about $90,000. Multiply this case times 10,000 or more each year, and you begin to see what types of massive medical expenses simple and timely primary care could prevent or reduce. 10,000 of these cases would give us $90 million back in preventable health care expenses. And why is the cost of healthcare increasing, and why is utilization of healthcare services increasing? It's not just greedy doctors. They are plenty busy. It's a broken system.

System Paradigm Flaws: What If We Treated Cars and Armies like This? Providing primary care in the emergency department is like taking a flat tire to the Ford dealer to be fixed. Firestone replaces your tire a lot cheaper, since that's what it's designed to do. The dealer will charge you not only for the tire, but pretty building, the high overhead, and the high-priced mechanic who is costing you $40 an hour to change a tire. You can either feel that it is ideologically wrong to take your Ford to Firestone and then pay $150 for a tire change, or you can go to Firestone and pay $80 for the same thing. If we're talking ideology, one has a right to be a Ford purist. If we’re talking logical and economical use of tire changing resources, go to the place that does it fast and cheap and save the Ford dealership for Ford-specific work. Same thing goes in healthcare.

Likewise, imagine the American military being made up of thousands of private military corporations that theoretically report to state regulatory boards and theoretically follow orders from the Pentagon. Imagine that these companies are primarily responsible only to the state in which they are regulated, and only secondarily responsible to the Pentagon. Also imagine that the individual corporations profit by spending less on the safety of their men and maximizing revenues from the government, who pays them to serve. And, oh yeah, the heads of these corporations make a significant profit. Can you imagine what it would be like for this ragtag bunch to go to war? Welcome to the current healthcare insurance system. This is no hyperbolic analogy. It is dead on to the way it actually works. Sound crazy, like a Balkanized country on bad moonshine? It is.

What Has To Happen: I have always felt that we need a hybridized system of healthcare insurance in the United States. This is why I voted for Obama rather than Hillary Clinton. Obama's plan involves taking the current healthcare system and imposing more standardized set of rules and regulations on the carriers set by the federal government. This would ensure inclusive coverage, portable coverage, and some standardization of minimum reimbursement rates and utilization review (what care gets approved). This doesn't destroy the current healthcare system but adds some order and security to it. A public health care option is not only cost-efficient but leads toward cost-containment of the insurance industry. A public option will not limit care but will in fact increase care and reduce costs through lower point-of-service costs (i.e., not the ER) and better healthcare maintenance to prevent more costly conditions. This will work. It works in other countries. It will work here.

Why I Am in Favor of the Public Option Healthcare Reform Plan: I am all for health reform for many reasons. First of all, people need health care, and it is morally right to do so. Secondly, an organized health care plan will ultimately save this country significant money and improve the quality of life. Ideology has no place in this argument. This argument should be carried out on the basis of practical problem-solving, not ideology or fealty to the insurance industry which, as we all know, spends more on lobbying than any other profession in the United States. I can see how they have influence with Congress.

In America, lack of healthcare coverage and unfair insured selection rules imposed by the insurance carriers (and allowed by the state) are all wrong. Also, insurance carriers' claim that healthcare costs are rising baffles me, since I do not know any healthcare provider who is making more money today than they were 10 years ago. Can you say that for any other profession? Congressmen, Senators, attorneys, and certainly insurance executives are making more money than they were in 1999, as is appropriate given their professions, the value of their work, and increased costs of living. Most individuals make more money as they progress in their profession.

In the healthcare field, providers' incomes have been very flat or declining. I receive the same amount of money for a full-day neuropsychological evaluation now as I did 17 years ago. Of course, my cost of providing services has not stayed in line with the reimbursement I receive. It's clear that the increasing cost of health care to insurance carriers has primarily been through increasing hospital and pharmaceutical costs, not direct provider services. In addition, hospitals have to charge a lot for their services, since a large percent of them are not reimbursed due to providing humanitarian care in their emergency departments and other departments to uninsured people that cannot or will not pay. Also, they lose money to insure people whose actual insurance will not pay for necessary expenses. Or, they eat up many man hours trying to get an insurance company to pay for authorized services that they subsequently refused to pay. That adds a lot to your health care bill and seriously cuts down the amount of time your doctor spends with you.

I believe that I serve my country by providing services to Medicare, state vocational services, and the VA at a substantial discount to my normal rates. Many doctors do not provide services to these populations, particularly those in private practice. In fact, our local state-funded medical school does not take workers compensation payment. Neither do about 90% of the doctors in Dallas County. Can you imagine the outcry that would follow if UT Southwestern Medical Center suddenly refused to accept Medicare? Most of their multimillion-dollar benefactors would not be able to get Medicare coverage for the care they receive at this world-class medical institution. Yet they are the ones who cry about government takeover of health care. Again, let me redirect your attention to the average person trying to live within the system as it is.

By the way, Medicare, state vocational services, and the VA are "big government, single-payer" plans that are my favorite to work with, since they require a minimum hassle, appreciate our work, and provide a modest paycheck without insurance games. You never hear Texas politicians complaining about the Department of Assistive and Rehabilitative Services as a drain on the state budget. They actually put taxpayers back to work purely with public funding to providers like me who do the work. Good Medicare providers keep people out of the hospital. Doctors in these systems typically provide outstanding care for their clients, and their providers are typically very happy with them. These systems provide the service with a far lower overhead than do managed care companies (about 3% Medicare versus 27% managed care for the same thing). What's wrong with that? If that's socialism, count me in. If this is reasonable healthcare policy, don't call it socialism to scare people away.

Conclusion: I can only urge you to support a government option and to amend this part of the Baucus bill which is sorely out of touch with reality (the provision, not the bill). Maybe policymakers have been in Washington for too long to understand the real-life plight of the vaunted small businessman on which many stump speeches are made. I suggest that you listen to some of us who are actually supporting this economy by keeping people employed and find out what it's really like trying to provide healthcare benefits to our employees. It's pretty ironic that as healthcare providers, we can't really get our own care, especially mental health care, which given the state of affairs, we could all use!

So, to Summarize:

I'm doing all the right things by 1) contributing to our health care system as a low-cost provider, 2) containing my costs to the system as a provider, 3) employing four taxpayers, and 4) providing health care benefits and a 40% HSA deduction relief bonus to my employees.

We don't have a Cadillac plan, just one that covers the normal needs of a middle-class American family. Maybe we should compare our plans with the current government plan to see who really has a Cadillac and who has a Dodge.

Insurance carriers raise the cost of premiums annually based on age, pre-existing conditions, current conditions, previous year utilization, the amount of increase allowed by the state, and the size of the business. We consumers have no control over insurance rates, and many insureds cannot change plans due to medical conditions that arise with normal life.

50% of my employees never reach their deductible, meaning the insurance carrier makes about $6000 annual profit per employee at a cost of $7200 to me. Some Cadillac. Sounds like a lemon to me.

The Baucus plan's provision to tax premiums over $24,000 per family is absolutely the most illogical response to the healthcare crisis imaginable. Adoption of this provision would essentially obligate me to drop coverage for my employees in order to cover myself. Isn't it going against the grain of increasing health care coverage to Americans? If you punish the insureds, what incentive do the insurance carriers have to lower their rates? A little logic please…

Interstate purchasing will never work due to a state-regulated insurance industry. This would result in absolute chaos and countless reasons for insurance carriers not to pay providers or reimburse insureds.

Current government-funded plans (state vocational services, Medicare, VA) provide excellent services, minimum hassle to the provider, and low, but no-hassle reimbursement. The congressional plan of the United States Congress is a government-funded plan.

My final statement is a well reasoned request that you support healthcare reform plans containing the public option.

Sincerely,

__________________________________
Richard L. Fulbright, Ph.D.
Clinical Neuropsychologist
Plano, Texas
214/212-0059 (mobile)
972/398-6891 (home)
972/250-1705 (office)

Views on Health Reform and other kinds of Insurance

2009-09-20T17:10:00.001-05:00

After reviewing some blogs on liberal as well as conservative points of view on Health care reform, I just noticed something.... there are some important points NOT being focused on as well:

A fair debate between liberals and conservatives about the nature and needs of health care reform is a healthy and good thing. But what about life insurance? Should that be free, or without consideration for health conditions (cancer, aids, high blood pressure, diabetes, chronic and terminal issues), parachuting out of an airplane, racing motorcycles? Will the baby (life insurance) be thrown out with the bathwater on this whole health care issue, or will it remain the same?

The nature of our health care has been insidiously controlled by the limitations placed upon it by its providers (AMA), the doctors trying to stay in practice, drug manufacturers, lobbyists, politicians, the insurance companies seeking to make a profit, and lastly the federal government.

All this compounded by the onset of frivolous lawsuits starting in the 70's, and the equally ridiculous settlements provided, were the first cause of malpractice rates to rise and begin a forced upward spiral of cost. It got so bad back then, that the State of Texas had to create a pool from which Doctors could buy basic liability limits so they could buy umbrellas of higher levels to stay in practice. The villans here are not so much the insurance companies (while they have their share of blame now) but the Ambulance Chasing attorneys seeking their fortune in 30% in fees from won settlements and class action suits (Jefferson County, Texas is known for being the home of the highest settlements ever returned in history). Tort Reform should equally be the focus, as well as some (some, I said) health reform.

This issue is a very complex and thorny one. Not to be settled by emotional politics run from one party or another, rather by careful and objective analysis. Many European countries have government run or subsidized health care that works hand in hand with private insurors who have to live with the rules of the road.

I have had to live with and without health care, and have also been at the effect of a public option while unemployed that forced me to pay for everything. So, while I have a good job with good insurance, I am satisfied with it. For those without, there should not be such regulatory barriers. The one thing that is for sure, the abuse of this system needs to stop. Everyone seems to be "gaming" everyone else, and that is one of the biggest issues.

Ok. I'll stop now.

New ideas for Stimulus

2009-02-12T21:26:00.000-05:00

What a great article and ideas!

The Open-Door Bailout

2009-02-12T13:51:00.005-05:00

Here is a very good article on how to stimulate the economy... none of which is being pursued by the present Obamafied Administration

Op-Ed Columnist
The Open-Door Bailout
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: February 10, 2009
Bangalore, India

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Thomas L. Friedman

“All you need to do is grant visas to two million Indians, Chinese and Koreans,” said Shekhar Gupta, editor of The Indian Express newspaper. “We will buy up all the subprime homes. We will work 18 hours a day to pay for them. We will immediately improve your savings rate — no Indian bank today has more than 2 percent nonperforming loans because not paying your mortgage is considered shameful here. And we will start new companies to create our own jobs and jobs for more Americans.”

While his tongue was slightly in cheek, Gupta and many other Indian business people I spoke to this week were trying to make a point that sometimes non-Americans can make best: “Dear America, please remember how you got to be the wealthiest country in history. It wasn’t through protectionism, or state-owned banks or fearing free trade. No, the formula was very simple: build this really flexible, really open economy, tolerate creative destruction so dead capital is quickly redeployed to better ideas and companies, pour into it the most diverse, smart and energetic immigrants from every corner of the world and then stir and repeat, stir and repeat, stir and repeat, stir and repeat.”

While I think President Obama has been doing his best to keep the worst protectionist impulses in Congress out of his stimulus plan, the U.S. Senate unfortunately voted on Feb. 6 to restrict banks and other financial institutions that receive taxpayer bailout money from hiring high-skilled immigrants on temporary work permits known as H-1B visas.

Bad signal. In an age when attracting the first-round intellectual draft choices from around the world is the most important competitive advantage a knowledge economy can have, why would we add barriers against such brainpower — anywhere? That’s called “Old Europe.” That’s spelled: S-T-U-P-I-D.

“If you do this, it will be one of the best things for India and one of the worst for Americans, [because] Indians will be forced to innovate at home,” said Subhash B. Dhar, a member of the executive council that runs Infosys, the well-known Indian technology company that sends Indian workers to the U.S. to support a wide range of firms. “We protected our jobs for many years and look where it got us. Do you know that for an Indian company, it is still easier to do business with a company in the U.S. than it is to do business today with another Indian state?”

Each Indian state tries to protect its little economy with its own rules. America should not be trying to copy that. “Your attitude,” said Dhar, should be “ ‘whoever can make us competitive and dominant, let’s bring them in.’ ”

If there is one thing we know for absolute certain, it’s this: Protectionism did not cause the Great Depression, but it sure helped to make it “Great.” From 1929 to 1934, world trade plunged by more than 60 percent — and we were all worse off.

We live in a technological age where every study shows that the more knowledge you have as a worker and the more knowledge workers you have as an economy, the faster your incomes will rise. Therefore, the centerpiece of our stimulus, the core driving principle, should be to stimulate everything that makes us smarter and attracts more smart people to our shores. That is the best way to create good jobs.

According to research by Vivek Wadhwa, a senior research associate at the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School, more than half of Silicon Valley start-ups were founded by immigrants over the last decade. These immigrant-founded tech companies employed 450,000 workers and had sales of $52 billion in 2005, said Wadhwa in an essay published this week on BusinessWeek.com.

He also cited a recent study by William R. Kerr of Harvard Business School and William F. Lincoln of the University of Michigan that “found that in periods when H-1B visa numbers went down, so did patent applications filed by immigrants [in the U.S.]. And when H-1B visa numbers went up, patent applications followed suit.”

We don’t want to come out of this crisis with just inflation, a mountain of debt and more shovel-ready jobs. We want to — we have to — come out of it with a new Intel, Google, Microsoft and Apple. I would have loved to have seen the stimulus package include a government-funded venture capital bank to help finance all the start-ups that are clearly not starting up today — in the clean-energy space they’re dying like flies — because of a lack of liquidity from traditional lending sources.

Newsweek had an essay this week that began: “Could Silicon Valley become another Detroit?” Well, yes, it could. When the best brains in the world are on sale, you don’t shut them out. You open your doors wider. We need to attack this financial crisis with green cards not just greenbacks, and with start-ups not just bailouts. One Detroit is enough.

De-Obamafy me

2009-01-22T16:49:00.003-05:00

One would think we have just coronated a King (sorry about the play on words). However, it is only another President of the United States - "Leader of the Free World", but not a king. Yes, he is the answer to many liberals dreams, and many dreams of the black nation in the USA. It apparently resonates with many of the other races in the US which have a liberal basis for being excited.

That said, I still believe there are some fundamental issues I am unable to overlook. Like the fact that one of his first actions as president has been to repeal the Abortion Laws and Gag Rules on other countries who accept abortion. At first, I thought ok, it is good for the nation that all are being brought together. But killing unborn babies is still murder in the womb, or murder partially out of the womb. Our nation is under the PALL of the Culture of Death. It is certifiably, undeniably, positively, absolutely so. He is agressively seeking the most liberal stance to have our culture accept abortion/murder as the norm. It is not the norm, but un-natural.

The rate of abortions per day in the US is approximately 43,836, or 1824 per hour or 30.44 per minute - IN THE USA alone - not counting the rest of the world. AND we are at the lowest point since 1974 according to a Jan. 18, 2008 recent report from the Guttmacher Institute.

In addition to this, King Obama has decreed that the government will pay for it. With MY tax dollars. I did not vote for Obama, and in fact wrote my candidate in, as he was not on the ballot.

Let us be clear, not only will this exceed FDR's wildest dreams, it will exceed the imaginations of those who put him in power.

Let's not forget about Jihadists

2008-07-17T09:16:00.002-05:00

As always the Blog "Jihad Watch" is on the mark. Check out the latest in-credible remarks and responses from around the world about Islamic Terrorism.

Also watch the free video "FITNA" down below on this site or in the Links area.

President Bush: What took you so long to take action?

2008-07-17T09:08:00.002-05:00

President Bush,

Why have you waited so long to remove the ban from drilling in our own country?

- Duh! Imagine the drop in price if we start producing oil here. Why have we waited so long? Why allow the dependence on foriegn oil. We got what we deserved with the present values in oil prices. Thanks to lack of innovative action on your part and thanks to greedy speculators.

Why haven't you opened Diplomatic Relations with Iran before now?

- I am not a liberal. But I do think we need to box the Iranians in diplomatically to up-level their visibility in the diplomatic world. I am sure we are doing plenty behind the lines and covertly, but we need to do plenty on the visible level, IMHO.

Our Candidates for President Have BOTH Missed the Mark

2008-06-13T16:48:00.001-05:00

While I will never vote for Obama - mainly due to his leftist views with little or no substantiation to support them, I am not over convinced about McCain either. While McCain's values are conservative, I am not sure they are progressive enough. Or sure they represent my views.

Is our country really ready for progressive politics or is it simply seeking "historic moments" through a thinly veiled core of Kennedyesqe planks.

I am not a swing voter, but a saddened voter due to the lack of substance and leadership on either side. Ron Paul may not be relevant in this election, but he does strike a chord with me. I am still undecided, but simply due to sheer lack of any hope or vision for any of my values, I may have no choice but to vote for Dr. Paul. Because he speaks to the original nature of our country's founding documents, he is considered out of step, shrill, and irrelevant. Perhaps he is not the right guy to have the job, but we can listen and hope for the right combination of dynamics within a candidate who could be elected.

So with this in mind, is McCain going to lag behind because of votes like mine? Do I just vote for McCain to add to the effort to prevent Obama from being in the White House? Once again, I am voting for the least of evils. Once again for the THIRD TIME!

We all know the issues, and the stands taken by both candidates - we are bombarded with it minute by minute. I am suffering from campaign news media fatigue.

It is not that hard to understand the principles on which our country was founded. Why have we deviated into a policy based purely on present day political spin. Our great leaders understood our core values and had the backbone to stand up for them. Where are these leaders with vision?