Lost Freedoms

It is often recited with religious fervor that America is "The land of the free and the home of the brave".

We constantly hear the military nation tell us how much they sacrificed to protect our freedoms.

Looking at this image of our local law enforcement dressed in military gear, even wearing 'combat' boots, (are they going hiking?) and an armored car for their use, makes one wonder where our freedoms went. These civilian government employees have become military like in their behavior. They can walk onto your private driveway and attach a GPS to your car, without a warrant, to track your travels.

The President of the United States can order the assassination of an American citizen! No evidence. No trial. Just execute. Where are the freedoms our military say they protected for us?

The FBI investigates anti war groups. They want the government to be free to commit war because war gives the government power. The FBI thinks the anti war groups may be violent or will interfere with the government policies of invading and occupying other smaller countries by the U.S. bully. The FBI thinks it is fine for the government to be violent.

Individual freedoms restricts the the government mob from gaining power and perks.

Who will bring back our freedoms? Don't expect those democrat or republican candidates running for office to reduce the size of government that infringes on ever aspect of your life.

Sometimes when I hear my friends advocate support for these government mobsters I think I would be better off if I chose the trees in my neighborhood as my friends.

"I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." ~James Madison, speech, Virginia Convention, 1788

Charles Tolleson

President Obama on Education

On Monday, September 27, 2010, President Obama said in an interview on the Today Show that money alone cannot fix the problem in government schools. The President called for poor teachers to be fired and more days per year in school. The President sends his two daughters to a private school.

The President did not say “less” money is needed in the government schools because the government always wants more money for the government employees’ salaries and benefits.

The President said more days in school are needed. The more days in school will appeal to parents who think the government should baby sit their children. More days in school will allow the government more opportunity to indoctrinate the young minds on how important and benevolent the government is. It sounds like President Obama is offering the voters something for the November election.

Government schools replace the family. The family is a strong bulwark against a nanny government, as Marx so noted.

The federal government should get out of the education business. Article I, Section 8 of the constitution does not give the federal government any right to be involved in education. The states may confiscate money for education but should not. Governments love to promote their part in education because it appeals to parents who want someone else to share in the cost of educating their children.

Any individual should be allowed to sell their skills as a teacher, without a license from the state. Parents, the consumer, will find the best teachers. There will be plenty of charitable organizations who will teach poor children who cannot afford a private teacher. Television programs and free online sites will teach children.

Businesses are big promoters of government schools. If the government did not teach children to read, businesses think no one would know how to read. Business fear they would have to teach their employees how to read. Nothing could be further from the truth. The market would determine the value of an education and people would get an education by the most efficient means possible. Online education will replace the government schools if the government employees will get out of the way.

"By preventing a free market in education, a handful of social engineers - backed by the industries that profit from compulsory schooling: teacher colleges, textbook publishers, materials suppliers, et al. - has ensured that most of our children will not have an education, even though they may be thoroughly schooled." John Taylor Gatto

Charles Tolleson

The Traditional IRA Trap

The first Individual Retirement Act was passed in 1974. This is a link to the history of the IRA.

The traditional IRA was designed to encourage savings. This was unnecessary. All the government mob had to do was not tax interest on savings and people would have saved.

The government does something for the sometimes obvious reasons. The unseen consequences of government actions are seldom considered. When people first heard of the IRA they thought the government was kind and magnanimous. The government was just responding to the request of Wall Street brokerage houses that were looking for a way to generate customers. The Wall Street crowd knew the IRA holders would need “custodians” for which the Wall Street crowd would receive a fee. That is why the IRA was created.

Interest, capital gains and other income in an IRA is not taxed. This is good for low income earners who withdraw the funds after retirement. However with high income and net worth, an IRA may not be so good. For a high wage earner the trap is that interest income and capital gains in a regular account may be taxed at a low rate of 20% while interest income and capital gains in an IRA is tax deferred. Tax deferred does not mean you will pay 20% tax on the income when you withdraw the funds. When you withdraw the interest that was earned you will now have to pay a higher tax rate on the withdrawn funds because the government mob has set a trap for you. When withdrawn the interest and capital gains income are treated by the government mob as if they are ordinary income, taxed at a higher rate than interest, dividends, and capital gains.

For the high income person with a large IRA balance he may be looking for high interest investments because the interest in his IRA is not taxed. However, when he withdraws these earnings they are taxed, at the higher rate of ordinary income. What the government giveth the government taketh away.

One of the unseen benefits to the government of creating IRAs was the estate tax, at the time higher than ordinary income. People who built up and estate through IRAs, remember you cannot take money out without a penalty before age 60, would have to pay an estate tax rate higher than ordinary income, and much higher than interest or capital gains.

The government mob also taxes the traditional IRA twice. First the heirs must pay estate taxes on the value of the IRA at the time of death. Then when they withdraw the remaining funds it is taxed as ordinary income.

The latest attempt to get business for Wall Street is the Roth IRA. I suspect that legislation was also written by the lobbyists of the financial industry.

“Morality is the custom of one's country and the current feeling of one's peers. Cannibalism is moral in a cannibal country”. -Samuel Butler, writer (1835-1902)

Charles Tolleson
September 23, 2010

The Federal Consumer Financial Protection Agency

September 17, 2010

Politician just cannot help meddling in private contracts between buyers and sellers. The Washington, D.C. liberal democrat politicians created The Federal Consumer Financial Protection Agency to protect consumers from themselves because the consumers cannot understand their credit card contracts. Consumers now have more debt than past generations of consumers. This debt carries high interest rates to justify the cost to the lenders. The consumer has the option to say no to use of a credit card. They just prefer to have their desires satisfied today instead of waiting. Somehow the liberal democrats think these voluntary transactions are something the federal government should be involved in.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is liberal Elizabeth Warren's brainchild, will have broad powers to write and enforce regulations covering mortgages, credit cards and other financial products. She is a “humanitarian with a guillotine”. (Isabel Paterson) A humanitarian is someone who can never sleep and leave you alone to live your own life. They always have a need to meddle in and control your life.

Elizabeth Warren is popular with many people because she is upset about the Wall Street bailout that saved many rich people who had failed. My response is there should never have been a government bailout.

If the government wants to get the people to go along with another power grab all they have to do is call it a “protection” agency and the people will willingly submit to being “protected.

If consumers want to remain free they should assume the responsibility for their actions. If they want to be treated like children, sheltered and protected, then they have to submit and give up their freedom to make individual contracts. Must people will take protection over freedom. The consumers think they are getting the best side of the deal, the deal to give more power to the government mob. The consumer thinks by giving up more power and freedom to the government mob the consumer will come out ahead. The consumer fails to realize that power given to the government is never given back. The government never abdicates. Power is corrosive and addictive. It will eventually corrode the consumers.

Elizabeth Warren vows to end the financial “tricks and traps” (fees) played on consumers by bankers. This will only dumb down the consumers. Consumers will never learn how to protect themselves and pass on this learning to their children. Many consumers cannot figure simple interest rates after 12 years of government schools! No wonder they need protection from what Warren calls “tricks and traps”. The consumers will become docile tamed house pets, depending on their keeper for protection.

The people do not want freedom as much as they want other things. Milton Friedman’s classic interview with Phil Donohue about capitalism and freedom to choose has less than a million hits at youtube.com. What people want is to improve their sex lives as shown by over 89 MILLION HITS for this mundane site at youtube.com.

I have one credit card. I've never read the contract with my credit card provider. If I don't like the charges and fees I will cancel it. I usually pay cash for my purchases. So do many other people. Maybe that's what concerns the government mob, that the government mob cannot keep track of what people buy when they use cash.

"Freedom aggravates as much as it alleviates frustration. Freedom of choice places the whole blame of failure on the shoulders of the individual. And as freedom encourages a multiplicity of attempts, it unavoidably muliplies failure and frustration...Unless a man has talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden...We join mass movements to escape individual responsibility...." Eric Hoffer, The True Believer

Charles Tolleson

1 in 4 College Women will be raped

September 12, 2010

CNN had a news story that one in four college women will be raped. They said a whopping 95% of the rapes go unreported! The assumption that 25% of college women will be raped during four years of college comes from a study by the Department of Justice that ESTIMATED this data.

If so many women do not report the rape and there is no criminal prosecution or conviction, how can one say it is rape? Just because a woman says she was raped does not mean she was.

If rape is such a horrible crime, as the feminists want it to be, then certainly there would be more than 5% of the victims who would report being raped. It must not be that horrible of a crime. Many women have sex during a night of binge drinking. Their conscience is clear. They can say they were raped, but still get to participate in the pursuit of pleasure. The National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism reported in 2009 that alcohol is a contributing factor in 97,000 cases of sexual assault or date rape each year. I believe there is plenty of sex that happens when one is drunk, but if this many cases of sexual assault actually happened each year then our jails and justice system would be overwhelmed.

The message is a constant harangue of how innocent and virtuous females are and how evil males are. The message is clear, women deserve more and men deserve less. The message is we need more laws to protect women. Soon it will be illegal for a man to have sex with an intoxicated woman, even if the man is also intoxicated. Women can always use the excuse of being intoxicated for her behavior. A man cannot use intoxication as an excuse for his behavior or anything else as an excuse for his behavior. Men have responsibility, women have authority and choices. Men think they are powerful and in charge. The opposite is true. “A woman’s weakness is her strength. A man’s strength is his weakness.”

“A woman's strength is the irresistible might of weakness.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Women are never stronger than when they arm themselves with their weaknesses.” Madam Marie Anne du Deffand

“We justly consider women to be weaker than ourselves, and yet we are governed by them.” Sebastien Roch Nicolas de Chamfort

Why is there never any media attention about the rape of males, an unnatural act? When male victims of rape in prisons are mentioned it is mentioned with laughter. Women have no sympathy for male victims of rape. Women want and have an exclusive use of victim status. Being a member of a victim class is power, and power corrupts.

This blog has a list of the top 10 feminists’ lies about men.
http://byrdeye.blogspot.com/2007/01/top-10-feminist-lies.html

1) 1/4 of college women have been raped (or rape attempted). WRONG!

2) Only 2% (or 8%) of rape charges are false. WRONG!

3) Women only make 77 cents per each dollar a Man makes for the same work. WRONG!

4) Men cannot be forced to pay child support for children that are not biologically theirs. WRONG!

5) Women have been oppressed by "Men" and the "patriarchy" for ~5000 years. WRONG!

6) Gender differences are all socialized (by the "patriarchy"), not biological. WRONG!

7) Women can happily & safely enjoy casual sex just "like Men." WRONG!, WRONG! and WRONG!

8) Men inflict more domestic violence than women. WRONG!

9) Single mothers have no problem raising healthy, functional, well-adjusted kids without fathers. WRONG!

10) Patriarchy is bad. WRONG!

Charles Tolleson
September 12, 2010

President Obama, Sept 11, 2010

In President Obama’s address on September 11, 2010, President Obama said in reference to the September 11, 2001 attack, “And on this day, we recall that at our darkest moment, we summoned a sense of unity and common purpose. We responded to the worst kind of depravity with the best of our humanity.”

“Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.” -Bertrand Russell

After 9/11 the U.S. Tribe was in frenzy for blood. They were waving the flag and standing at public events and singing the National Anthem with idolatry. They cheered when the mightiest military the world has ever known invaded a small country less than one tenth the size in population as the U.S.

Does the president really think by using the largest military in the world to invade, occupy, bomb, and kill thousands of Iraqi and Afghans that had nothing to do with 9/11 was responding with the “best of our humanity?” Does he think the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo was the best of our humanity? Does he think establishing the Department of Homeland Security and depriving us of our individual privacy and rights that “We” responded with the best of our humanity? Does he think his having assumed the power of a tyrant by claiming the right to assassinate U.S. citizens that he is using the best of “our” humanity?

I’m sure the president would answer these questions in the affirmative. That’s how narcissist demagogues always act. They never assume nor admit they are wrong.

The president said, “For if there is a lesson to be drawn on this anniversary, it is this: we are one nation – one people – bound not only by grief, but by a set of common ideals.”

I disagree Mr. President. Your ideals and mine do not bind us. My ideals and your ideals are common, but they are different. My ideals are common with Locke, Jefferson, Bastiat and Ayn Rand. Your ideals are common with Marx and Lenin and other collectivist who think they know how to run my life.

President Obama also said, “And that by giving back to our communities, by serving people in need, we reaffirm our ideals.” This is the usual exhortation to get the sheep to go along with the central planners by being meek and cooperative. The central planner’s message is do not resist, just submit and we will all be better off. These words are designed to get you to submit to taxation, rules, and regulations that implies your taxes and production confiscated by the government employees will then be returned to “our” communities and serving people in need. This gives us a comfortable feeling that the tribe will always take care of us in our time of need. It plays to our genetically wired fears that we need others to survive and we are willing for our tribal leaders to make sure others cooperate.

Charles Tolleson, September 11, 2010

American Hit Men in Afghanistan

American hit men are at work in Afghanistan, according to the commander there. KABUL, Afghanistan -- The new top commander in Afghanistan is talking up a weapon that has been kept in the shadows for years -- special operations missions to kill or capture key insurgents -- to try to convince skeptics the war can be won.

More than previous commanders, Gen. David Petraeus has released the results of special operations missions -- 235 militant leaders were killed or captured in the past 90 days, another 1,066 rank-and-file insurgents killed and 1,673 detained -- to demonstrate the Taliban and their allies are also suffering losses as NATO casualties rise.

It is amazing that the U.S. will admit to such killings of foreigners who have not attacked the U.S. Nor has the U.S. Congress declared war on Afghanistan as required by the U.S. Constitution.

We glorify this primitive behavior, humans killing other humans. We call this murder, "Special Ops". It is a brilliant public relations plan. The majority of Americans approve. We think it is honorable for the largest military in the world to kill a few natives who do not want foreign invaders in their country. We praise the men who, like automatons, murder strangers when told to. Their excuse, I was just following orders.

Killing the Taliban is the same as if the Taliban came to America and tried to implement their form of government, but one party, the Tea Party, would resist. The Taliban would then send out their hit men to kill or capture the insurgents from the Tea Party. If you are one of your family were a member of the Tea Party who wanted the foreigners out of your country I suspect the Special Ops of the Taliban would fuel hatred for generations to come.

If we look closely at the war against terrorism I think we could say the American people have realized you cannot win a war against an idea. Now the war has morphed into a war against Islam. People are controlled by fear. American Christians now fear Islam more than they feared the Soviet Union during the Cold War. The fear will make them condone murdering innocent Muslims.

“Man can be the most affectionate and altruistic of creatures, yet he's potentially more vicious than any other. He is the only one who can be persuaded to hate millions of his own kind whom he has never seen and to kill as many as he can lay his hands on in the name of his tribe or his God.” -Benjamin Spock, pediatrician and author (1903-1998)

Charles Tolleson

By GENE JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer September 2010-SEATTLE – The father of a U.S. soldier serving in Afghanistan says he tried nearly a half dozen times to pass an urgent message from his son to the Army: Troops in his unit had murdered an Afghan civilian, planned more killings and threatened him to keep quiet about it. By the time officials arrested suspects months later, two more Afghans were dead. And much to Christopher Winfield's horror, his son Adam was among the five Fort Lewis-based soldiers charged in the killings.

"Don't Tread on Me", flag

The news of September 1, 2010 has a story about some people displaying the "Don't Tread on Me" flag instead of the United States Flag. Some members of society want no other flags shown except the State and Federal flags.

A homeowners association has a ban against displaying the DTOM flag, citing an Arizona law- that allows Arizonans to fly "the Stars and Stripes, the state flag, flags representing Indian nations as well as the official flags of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard," the New York Times reports.

Most flag worship is about unity of the tribe. Each member has a primitive fear of other tribes so they try to unite their own tribe for self preservation. Even Benjamin Franklin, who first designed the flag as a snake cut into 8 pieces, (Image above) representing the 8 colonies, said, "Join or die". Those are pretty bold words, but those words echo the sentiments of tribes all over the world who want unity for self preservation. When they become successful as a larger tribe, like the United States, then they can invade and conquer other tribes.

No one had to die Mr. Franklin. If King George had a Federal Reserve Bank that could print money so he could provide the colonists with Medicare, Social Security, Pubic Housing, and Medicaid, there would have been no revolution. Instead the colonists would have acted like docile sheep, willing to be sheared.

Why are people afraid of competition to their flags, beliefs, and gods. It shows a lack of faith in the merits of their idols if they cannot stand the competition. It could mean that someone who has worshipped the Stars and Strips all their lives has worshipped a symbol of empirical tyranny. Destroy our illusions of what we believe in and you destroy our happiness.

I prefer a flag that displays individual freedom instead of group behaviour with centralized power, which is why my personal flag is the Jolly Roger.

"A very popular error: having the courage of one's convictions; instead, it is a matter of having the courage for an attack on one's convictions!" -- Friederich Nietzsche

Charles Tolleson