Sunday, February 24, 2013

Who told them they could do that?

If you don't remember your government studies, the federal government is allowed to legislate in only four areas; Taxation, Interstate Commerce, National Security, and the Manufacture of Currency.  All other areas are reserved for the States.

My friend David has written an excellent opinion piece on what big government is doing.  I don't care about your political persuasion, you would do well to read this piece and think seriously about the consequences of allowing government to run unfettered.  It is affecting everything we do today and will continue unless we  demand that our leaders follow the U. S. Constitution.  Here's David.

Among the other idiotic and ludicrous rules passed by New York's Mayor Bloomberg recently, we now find that he is banning pizza deliveries from bringing along a two liter bottle of soft drink. It doesn't seem to matter how many pizzas you order for how many people.

How has this type of thing happened?

From a legal standpoint, I guess he can do this under authority granted to him by the State of New York, but with the federal government, the trend started way back in the civil rights era. For example, let's take what is called the "Public Accommodations Act", which prohibits private business from discriminating against customers by race. Constitutionally, the only federal law which could have been passed, and even it can be deemed of dubious legality by many because of the states' rights issue, was to throw out state laws enforcing racial segregation. Well and good, but to force private business owners to serve anyone they don't want to serve, as the act did, is a basic denial of property rights. I would stress the word "basic".

If I, as an owner of a restaurant, put a sign up stating that I don't serve redheads, short people, and illegal aliens, it is my right to do so. If certain members of the public don't like that, then they can eat somewhere else. The fact is, one can still not serve redheads, short people, and illegal aliens if one wishes, but one must adhere to federal law requiring the serving of an ever increasing list of "minorities" such as blacks and homosexuals. It's almost to the point to where one is only allowed discriminate against white males.

If a state has laws enforcing racial segregation, then it can be argued that the federal government has the authority to prevent that under the Equal Protections Clause of the 14th Amendment. However, there is no constitutional requirement for a private business owner to be limited in his right of whom to serve and whom not to. This is a concept invented by the Congress in 1964 and backed up later by the Supreme Court by stretching the 14th Amendment far beyond its original intent.

An example of how the 14th Amendment has been warped beyond its original meaning, if you care to research it you will find that the same Congress which passed the 14th Amendment passed a law the following year requiring racial segregation in the schools of Washington, D.C. Obviously, the amendment was not meant to apply to public schools, yet that is what the 1954 Supreme Court decision outlawing school segregation was based on. Well, that was the only Constitutional factor, most of the decision was based on sociological factors which are not supposed to be part of the court's purview.

The PAA (Public Accommodations Act) then evolved into prohibitions of discrimination in most any area one can conceive of, almost none of them Constitutional. It is interesting to note, and now almost forgotten, that the original PAA did not apply to bars, beauty shops, barber shops, and several other types of businesses which escape me for the moment. Apparently it was okay to discriminate some places but not others. These exceptions were deleted in later years. Federal laws were passed prohibiting racial discrimination in employment, lending, and many other areas. For the most part, the application of genuinely equal rights did not work. It was then that the federal government dreamed up the idea of forced school busing to equalize the races, racial quotas in employment, school admissions, and gerrymandering of voting districts to guarantee black majorities.

The goal became equal outcome, not equal rights. As one jurist put it, apparently without realizing the illogic, "It's okay to discriminate in order to get rid of discrimination."

So what do we have today as a result? We have more blacks in all black schools than we did in 1954....and they are not doing well. Three years ago Louisiana put out the results of the previous year's achievement tests and blacks scored lower on average than they did when the schools were segregated. And I would point out this is after tests have been considerably dumbed down.

In employment, many blacks hold positions they are incapable of handling. They are there because federal law requires there be no "disparate impact" on the black race in areas of employment. Qualifications simply no longer matter. In addition to production, the effect on morale in the work force has been devastating. As an example, I remember a few years ago when the Houston Police Department promoted 400 blacks to sergeant who could not pass the required exam. As a result, other applicants did not get deserved promotions and the blacks took over as supervisors with all of the men under them knowing they were not qualified. This is happening in private industry, the military, and government civil service.

Folks, this is one of things destroying our system.

So far as voting rights, there is a Congressional district in North Carolina created so that there will be a majority black district. It stretches almost the entire length of the state and is less than 5 miles wide at several points, all designed to squeeze the greatest number of blacks into the district. While this is an extreme case geographically, the concept is not different at all throughout the country where such districts are created specifically to have black voting majorities, yet this is not viewed as racial discrimination.

By the same token, a number of colleges now have all black dormitories, black student unions, and other black organizations. These were created by choice and approved by the colleges; however, any such white organizations are prohibited.

Blacks from the "New Black Panthers" guarded voting precincts Philadelphia and kept whites from voting there with clubs. They were videotaped, yet this administration refuses to prosecute them. Two attorneys from the Justice Department have testified before Congress that on orders from the current Attorney General, no blacks will be prosecuted for civil rights violations. Black mobs roaming the streets in dozens of cities have been attacking whites and Hispanics, beating, robbing, and in several cases killing them, on a regular basis since last summer. Prosecutions have been negligible.

OK, I have gotten carried away from my original point here. That being that the federal government has completely overstepped its bounds in the past 50 years, albeit on a gradual basis, to get us where we are now. In my view, they have used the precedents established to enforce civil rights to do it, even though these new precedents, for the most part, threw out precedents long established over the years. For example, two Supreme Courts and over 30 federal judges down through the years had ruled that racial segregation in public schools was perfectly legal....until 1954.

Precedent is one of the bedrocks of our legal system. The Founders knew that things would change and evolve over the years. If something in the Constitution needed changing, they provided a way to do that through a Constitutional Amendment. That is the only way our Constitution can be legally changed. Unfortunately, the courts and the Congress have ignored this hard fact and we have gone from a Rule of Law to a Rule of Men. History has proven over and over that a Rule of Men always leads to tyranny.

How has Congress reached this point? I just answered that in the previous paragraph. They ignore the Constitution and Rule of Law. They pass any bill they wish which covers any area they wish. Are you aware that there has been a law in effect now for several years which regulates the size of your toilet tanks? Are you aware that the government is now telling you what kind of light bulbs you can own, and they are all made in China? Find those things in the enumerated powers of the Congress. The Constitution does not grant Congress the power to get involved with energy, education, health, welfare, or any of a myriad of other things we now take for granted. They are not allowed to spend one penny on any of these things, yet they do it anyway.

These are matters the Founders reserved for the states. We forget that our nation was founded as a Republic. The federal government was granted very few powers and the states were granted all of the rest. In other words, the states were voluntarily part of a union which they were to control and in which the federal government had no more power than was granted it by the states and the Constitution.

That Republic is long gone. It has been replaced by an all powerful national government, not a federal one, which pays only scant attention to the Constitution.

For example, in the Executive Branch, this president has assumed powers simply not granted him by the Constitution. After all, he said in an interview prior to his first election that, "The Constitution is greatly flawed." So, he simply ignores it. In the past year or so he issued an executive order to the Justice Department to not enforce the Defense of Marriage Act because he did not consider it Constitutional.

One of the few powers granted to the Executive, and it is more of a requirement than a power, is to enforce all of the laws of the United States. Yet, he orders laws not to be enforced such as with the Immigration Act. He ordered parts of it not to be enforced and added a few provisos of his own through Executive Orders. He took control of two auto companies, fired the president of one, gave them money he was not authorized to give, and did all of this even though the Supreme Court ruled in 1952 that a president had no power to do such a thing.

He broke the law. In fact, what he did are impeachable offenses. Nonetheless, with the exception of a few lone voices, there has been nary a peep of protest from the Congress, the Press, or the people.

All three branches of the government and both parties are culpable for the disaster which awaits us. In fact, it is breaking over our heads at this moment. If it is not stopped, and I am pessimistic that it can be at this time, the greatest, freest, most generous nation in the history of the world will vanish. We will have a nation where everyone, except for the ruling elite, is equal....that meaning equally miserable. We will have a government which will control our every movement from birth to death. A government in which there are few, if any, individual liberties. In fact, it will be just like the government we fought a revolution against to establish the original Republic of the United States. The problem is, we will have no frontier to escape to as well as no will to fight where we stand. The circle will have turned.

On that happy note, I bid you adieu for the day.

Davidhttp://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/soda_ban_to_sap_your_4t5pEK0hvo3PoNZEBOdZ2L

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Writing


"I am happy to inform you that your submission to our Second Writing Competition has qualified as an entry and is posted: http://pixelhose.com/the-wolf-among-us-by-dennis-price/. We have also posted it to our Facebook page and Twitter feed.

Because community reaction impacts our final decision, I would suggest that you share the above link with your friends/followers and encourage them to comment on the piece. Please note we weight comments more than “Likes” because, typically, those commenting on a piece have read the post whereas most people are happy to “flick a like” just because someone asked. That said, please do note that while comments/likes do influence our decisions, they are not the only criteria and do not, by themselves, determine shortlist selections or winners."  

For those of you who don't have other media contact with me, I am doing some shameless self promotion.  I entered a piece in the pixelhose.com writing contest and it was selected as a qualified entry.  I would like for you to read it and tell me what you think. Using the hot key above, you can go to the site and read the piece.  If you are connected by any of the listed social media sites you can leave a comment below the story.  Your participation will be appreciated.  If you can't comment on site you can send me an e-mail.  Thanks in advance for reading and commenting.  Pappy

Saturday, February 9, 2013

The Finale


c : the last and often climactic event or item in a sequence.

I have led you down the primrose path with my two previous posts.  The first post was entitled, "The Sound Byte".  This is what most people want today in the way of answers.  It is what we get most of the time and it satisfies our need for immediate consolation and confirmation.  It either confirms our beliefs and helps us not feel so alone, or it raises our awareness of a view that is diametrically opposed to ours and energizes us to take action in response.  

The second post was Guns - Part II.  This post introduced some of the things I see that are currently happening as men seek to move the whole of mankind to some centrally controlled, New World Order.  This view is the Utopia of secular humanism.  It has been tried before, but without success.  However, with the mega-leaps in new technology and instant communication it was bound to be tried again.

The picture I chose for this final post is a "backlashed" bait casting reel.  In the hands of an amateur fisherman, the bait casting reel spool can spin out of control and cause the line to become hopelessly tangled.  This has always been the condition of human life when creator God was removed from the equation.  As a young boy trying to learn how to fish I often found my reel in this condition.  I would try and try to free the reel by myself, but to no avail.  My dad could patiently approach the problem and start to work through the mess until the line was once again properly aligned on the spool.

We have reached the point in this world's existence where our father "God" has been ignored and we find ourselves hopelessly "backlashed."  In Ecclesiastes 1: 1-11, King Solomon, who was considered to be a very wise man, concluded after all his attempts to understand life that "nothing is worthwhile; everything is futile."  "...no matter how much we see, we are never satisfied; no matter how much we hear, we are not content."  In the end of this book however, he concludes with this statement; "...fear God and obey his commandments, for this is the entire duty of man."

I could spend an entire year telling you everything I know about guns and we still wouldn't have the answer to our problems.  The same is true of all the other hot button issues that I had time to mention in the first two posts.  Why?  

Ephesians 6:12

New International Version (NIV)
12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities,against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

We should be fighting this battle on a spiritual level.  In Philippians 4: 6 Paul says that as Christians we shouldn't worry about anything, but turn everything over to God.  It is the only way to find real peace.

If you don't know how to access this spiritual power, the answer is given in John 3:16 -17; For God loved the world so much that He gave his only Son so that anyone who believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.  God did not send His Son into the world to condemn it, but to save it.

If you are tired of trying to find the answers on your own, then give up.  Tell God that you have given up and you want to accept the sacrifice of His only Son Jesus Christ as payment for your sins.  You don't have to understand it at all.  God will be true to his promise and send his Holy Spirit to help you understand.

This is life and as much as we like to think we may have some control over it, we don't.  It is not about us, it is about our Creator.


Friday, February 8, 2013

Guns - Part II

Now what on earth does this photograph and quote from David Rockefeller have to do with guns?  This is what the liberal side power brokers want - World Control.  They want to be the ruling entity and as the quote says, "...All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order."  Free republics with a heavily armed citizenry might not stop their play, but they could postpone it for quite a while.  They know this, and they also know that a direct approach to disarming the citizens would generate a nightmare.  So, how do they achieve their goals?  They co-opt the major media sources and turn them into their bureau of misinformation. In every major event where firearms are used, the focus becomes the firearm and not the overall moral degradation of our country.  When a country leaves the kind of moral base we were founded on a lot of things happen. The co-opted press and complicit entertainers cover stories involving law enforcement, the military, and the judiciary in such a way as to lessen the citizen's respect for these necessary governmental institutions.  They devise methods of driving the various sub-groupings of Americans (they have created) apart by subtly creating laws that favor first one group and then another.  For example, "Hate Crime" laws.  What are "Hate Crimes?  They are crimes whose predicate offenses are already on the books and already carry adequate penalties, but they favor only certain protected classes and one of their main elements of proof is what the actor was thinking when he/she committed the crime.  This element is totally subjective and impossible to prove.  "Hate Crimes" are apparently never committed against white citizens unless they are members of some other artificially created sub-groupings like Gays, Lesbians, Transgenders, etc., etc.  They also have a more sinister purpose and that involves taking away our first amendment rights to free speech.  If a pastor wants to preach on what the bible has to say about homosexuality, then he/she can be charged with "Hate Speech."  The whole idea is to divide and conquer.  If people sell their birthright in a free republic to protect their right to openly engage in aberrant sexual behavior then these power brokers of the New World Order can do what they want as long as they protect a specific immorality.  The list goes into infinity with new dependents being added every day.  Both major political parties have their powerful pawns who rail against prosperity while filling their coffers with the tax dollars of the working citizens.  The entertainment media is rife with social re-engineering.  Every new dramatic offering has very overt New World Order social messages.  I can not watch them anymore.  This is the second predicate explanation, and I hope it will serve to keep my explanation of how guns are involved short and simple.

Thursday, February 7, 2013

The Sound Byte

I have held it in as long as I can.  I am concerned about the current nature of information dispersal in our country.  I read the news accounts and the editorials, but I avoid "all" of the national television media.  Just use your thinking caps.  Ask yourself some questions when you read something that on the surface seems absurd.  This exercise could apply to lots of things, but I'm going to touch on the Second Amendment fervor in this missive.  As most of you know, I spent twenty five years working for ATF.  We enforced some of the most unpopular laws ever passed by the United States Congress.  But, the operative thought here is that they were passed by "OUR" elected representatives and they were the law of the land.  Most of the original 1968 Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 (also known as the Gun Control Act) was a rehash of laws, related to firearms, that had been on the books since the early 1930's.  Some stronger penalties were added, but most of the legal infrastructure was already on the books.  When started work in the early 1970's, ATF was a step-child of the IRS.  They hated us because we spent some of our allocated funds on guns and bullets.  I think it was in the summer of 1972 when we became a separate agency.  We also enforced laws related to the manufacture, sale, and transportation of un-taxed distilled spirits, and possession and sale of un-taxed tobacco products.  We were a very small investigative agency at the time and had a very small budget when stacked up against others in federal law enforcement. Because many of our violations related to the non-payment of federal taxes, we were under the United States Treasury Department.  The other nexus areas of the Gun Control Act were related to National Security, and Interstate Commerce.  We had our share of boobs, alcoholics, and unqualified special category hires, just as all other agencies did, but overall, the folks I worked with were very conservative and right thinking.  I know a lot has changed since I left in 2002, and some questionable changes have been made outside the regular process for making laws, but a lot of good guys are still on the job and doing what they swore they would do and that is uphold and defend the laws of our land.  We joked a lot with those who were vocal about the gun laws and how they were affecting gun owners, but a lot of their angst was from disinformation from people who made lots of money keeping their base stirred up.  When they were close to a stroke, I would tell them that we were just issued pry bars.  When they asked why, I would say, "so that we can pry your cold dead fingers off the barrel of your gun."  We would all laugh knowing that option was an impossibility given the Second Amendment of our U. S. Constitution.  I hope it still is an impossibility.  However, it has become very popular for some entrenched career politicians and their wealthy overseers to ignore those portions of our Constitution that get in the way of their greedy grabs for more power.  I intend to use this introductory piece as a base for some further commentary on the gun situation in coming posts.  You might want to read it again before you read the other posts, or remember that what you hear and read from even well respected sources isn't always the truth.  No one can claim to know everything, but everyone can use logic and history to predict the reliability of what they are reading, hearing, and thinking.