jump to navigation

June 29, 2007

Posted by reformedville in : culture, Theology , add a comment

Celebrating a life

 Last week we journeyed down to New Jersey to celebrate the life of my 90 year old aunt, a family matriarch, who though she had no children of her own, was a mother to many. She was a special aunt whom I greatly admired and respected.

She was also responsible for introducing my wife and I.  She had been their former pastors wife and my aunt and uncle were their ‘adopted grandparents’ . Our families knew one another, but my wife and I had never met.

The church was packed with people at both the viewing and the funeral, with a memorial service where all things pointed to Christ, just as they did in her life. It was never about Vivian, it was about the Lord and she showed how she loved Him by sharing that love with others.

We had the old fashioned funeral procession to the last church they served in ( that insisted that instead of taking her 200 miles away to her burial plot, they donated the plot at the church). It was good to be in and experience a tradional funeral service, that doesn’t microwave and rush the process, but provides time for the family to celebrate the life of one who honored Christ and trusted Him alone. Many non-believers wept openly at the service as a salvation message was preached in celebration of her going to meet her master.

We had a family and friend reception afterwards. My mom, 84, had spent two of the last three years to care for her sister who had a form of dementia, and the last year my cousin who is a RN took over for her as she needed advanced care. It was good that my son and his family could get off work to come down, and my wife did a quick roundtrip with my brother and his wife as they had to do the 600 mile round trip, funeral and service in a day routine, so couldn’t stay for the reception. 

Nuclear devastation in American society today June 28, 2007

Posted by reformedville in : culture, Uncategorized , add a comment

 American has never been hit with a nuclear weapon you say! We bombed Hiroshima (link) and Nagasaki (link) on August 6 and August 9, 1945 bringing about the unconditional surrender of the Japanese in World War II.

That is correct, we have never had a nuclear bomb dropped on the United States but we are experiencing nuclear devastation in American society today and it is having a greater effect on us as a people than the two nuclear weapons we dropped on Japan over 62 years ago.

In my second semester of college, I took my first college sociology course, called ” Marriage and the family”. One of the first concepts that we began to study was that of the nuclear family. (link) We studied how progressive the conjugal family structure was,  as we evolved from the extended family (consanguinal family) (link) and kindred approach to the family unit.

But harvest time has come for the nuclear family, as it has not only brought destruction of the extended family in american culture, but it is breaking down itself, with only an estimated 1/4 of american households fitting into the pattern. Bittman asks why do sociologists promote the idea of the nuclear family when “so few have any practical attachment to a nuclear family?” The decline of the nuclear family is highlighted by:

In The United States nuclear families now constitute a minority of households with rising prevalence of other family arrangement such as blended families, binuclear families, single-parent families. Today nuclear families constitute roughly 24.1% of households, compared 40.3% in 1970.   ”The nuclear family… is the idealized version of what most people think when they think of “family…” The “old definition of what a family is… the nuclear family”- no longer seems adequate to cover the wide diversity of household arrangements we see today, according to many social scientists (Edwards 1991; Stacey 1996). Thus has arisen the term postmodern family, which is meant to describe the great variability in family forms, including single-parent families and child-free couples.”-(1) 

So  as we have pared the family down to it’s smallest unit, we have noticed , generally, a loss of the extended family overall. In the nuclear family, too many children become burdensome and “stupid”, even advised against by church leaders. Our parents, aunts and uncles as they become elderly are no longer viewed as the matriarch or the patriarch in society but as a bother, ones who should have prepared better for their twilight years (while they were investing their time, money and energy into their children and grandchildren many times).

The breakdown of the American family into its smallest possible unit has had nuclear effects on the fabric of American society with the shockwaves and effects leaving almost no stone unturned in its devastation.

A perverse usage of the term ‘right’ June 25, 2007

Posted by reformedville in : culture, Government, Media , add a comment

I recently read a few interviews from churchmen and from a former President slamming the United States government over peoples rights and standing up for peoples rights both home and abroad; from the poor, to the illegal immigrant, to Hamas overseas. They use the word ‘rights’ as loosely as the use the word ‘democracy’ (something the United States is not.) As Christians I believe since we have allowed so many duties of the Christian community to be assumed by the government (deaconal), we too have lost sight of rights and responsibility. Today I saw a good quote from Walter Williams that sums “rights” up.

“A right, such as a right to free speech, imposes no obligation on another, except that of non-interference. The so-called right to health care, food or housing, whether a person can afford it or not, is something entirely different. It does impose an obligation on another. If one person has a right to something he didn’t produce, simultaneously and of necessity it means that some other person does not have right to something he did produce. That’s because, since there’s no Santa Claus or Tooth Fairy, in order for government to give one American a dollar, it must, through intimidation, threats and coercion, confiscate that dollar from some other American. I’d like to hear the moral argument for taking what belongs to one person to give to another person.” —Walter Williams

So would I.

We have no exit plan because we don’t plan to exit June 23, 2007

Posted by reformedville in : Government, Media , add a comment

A cure based on a false diagnosis is almost always worthless, often worsening the condition that is supposed to be healed. If perception is power, and he that controls the perception has the power…then: Who’s the Daddy? The Big Boys and girls have been engaging us in a game of Perceptual “Peek-A-Boo!”

There is to be no withdrawal from Iraq, just as there has been no withdrawal from hundreds of places around the world that are outposts of the American empire. As UC San Diego professor emeritus Chalmers Johnson put it, “One of the reasons we had no exit plan from Iraq is that we didn’t intend to leave.”

The United States maintains 737 military bases in 130 countries across the globe. They exist for the purpose of defending the economic interests of the United States, what is euphemistically called “national security.” In order to secure favorable access to Iraq’s vast reserves of light crude, the United States is spending billions on the construction of at least five large permanent military bases throughout that country.

The DoD always tries to minimize the size of its budget by representing it as a declining percentage of the gross national product. What it never reveals is that total military spending is actually many times larger than the official appropriation for the Defense Department. For fiscal year 2006, Robert Higgs of the Independent Institute calculated national security outlays at almost a trillion dollars— $934.9 billion to be exact— broken down as follows (in billions of dollars):

• Department of Defense: $499.4
• Department of Energy (atomic weapons): $16.6
• Department of State (foreign military aid): $25.3
• Department of Veterans Affairs (treatment of wounded soldiers): $69.8
• Department of Homeland Security (actual defense): $69.1
• Department of Justice (1/3rd for the FBI): $1.9
• Department of the Treasury (military retirements): $38.5
• NASA (satellite launches): $7.6
• Interest on war debts, 1916-present: $206.7

Totaled, the sum is larger than the combined sum spent by all other nations on military security.When Ronald Reagan coined the phrase “evil empire,” he was referring to the Soviet Union, and I basically agreed with him that the USSR needed to be contained and checkmated. But today it is the U.S. that is widely perceived as an evil empire by others  and world forces are gathering to stop us. The Bush administration insists that if we leave Iraq our enemies will “win” or— even more improbably— “follow us home.” I believe that, if we leave Iraq and our other imperial enclaves, we can regain the moral high ground and disavow the need for a foreign policy based on premptive war. 

Agree or disagree?

A passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils June 16, 2007

Posted by reformedville in : Government , add a comment

Today how much harm are we doing to our own nation and our own people due to alliances we have made with foreign nations? How often have we falsely made the interest of one nation or one group of nations our own, to the disadvantage of our nation? This week I was reading the accounts of the G8 Summit and our current volatile situation with the Russian Federation. In reading the accounts of an interview with Putin he is speaking to the false need for our nuclear weapons shield in Eastern to protect against Iran, because Iran does not have missiles which can reach the United States.

The first question  that comes to mind,  is it to protect Israel? Putin and the Russian Federation feel the same about this deployment of missile shield as we did in Cuba in the Cuban Missile crisis, and said if we do in fact deploy they can not be responsible for their actions. They are hoping we will come to our senses and realize that Iran is no threat to the United States. One can not help but see that the current influence the State of Israel has over the United States government is not in the interest of the United States and her people as a nation. It is an alliance that has alienated from the world and all but destroyed our trade relations with
Russia. (Excerpts of the interview) But Sir George and the Nonconservative Cowboys keep running roughshod through the world threatening nations and in an effort to bring democracy and peace, may well be bring on nuclear war.

Whether it be the alliance with Israel or the eschatology of George Bush and many of the dispensational evangelicals, I am not sure,;but whatever the reason we need to stop now and quite our interventionism policy and start to take a neutral stand in world affairs, placing our national interests first; not those of special corporations or special states, but American interest. We would do well to heed the excepted portions below of George Washington’s farewell address

“A passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld. And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation), facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding, with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation.

As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable ways, such attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent patriot. How many opportunities do they afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practice the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to influence or awe the public councils . Such an attachment of a small or weak towards a great and powerful nation dooms the former to be the satellite of the latter.

Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government. But that jealousy to be useful must be impartial; else it becomes the instrument of the very influence to be avoided, instead of a defense against it. Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other. Real patriots who may resist the intrigues of the favorite are liable to become suspected and odious, while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender their interests.

The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop. Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none; or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.

Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. If we remain one people under an efficient government. the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel.

Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of
Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor or caprice?

It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world; so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it; for let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements. I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy. I repeat it, therefore, let those engagements be observed in their genuine sense. But, in my opinion, it is unnecessary and would be unwise to extend them.

Taking care always to keep ourselves by suitable establishments on a respectable defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies.

Harmony, liberal intercourse with all nations, are recommended by policy, humanity, and interest. But even our commercial policy should hold an equal and impartial hand; neither seeking nor granting exclusive favors or preferences; consulting the natural course of things; diffusing and diversifying by gentle means the streams of commerce, but forcing nothing; establishing (with powers so disposed, in order to give trade a stable course, to define the rights of our merchants, and to enable the government to support them) conventional rules of intercourse, the best that present circumstances and mutual opinion will permit, but temporary, and liable to be from time to time abandoned or varied, as experience and circumstances shall dictate; constantly keeping in view that it is folly in one nation to look for disinterested favors from another; that it must pay with a portion of its independence for whatever it may accept under that character; that, by such acceptance, it may place itself in the condition of having given equivalents for nominal favors, and yet of being reproached with ingratitude for not giving more. There can be no greater error than to expect or calculate upon real favors from nation to nation. It is an illusion, which experience must cure, which a just pride ought to discard. ” (Entire speech linked here)

We have failed to follow the advice of our forefathers in foreign affairs and have both entangled ourselves in debt with other nations and forged alliances which are contradictory to the interest of our nation, we have toppled foreign governments and now are risking war again for another’s interests, all on borrowed dollars. What type of corrective action do you believe the people of the United States need to take to stop this policy of our government? Do you believe our foreign policy is influenced by our debt? If we do not correct our foreign interventionism do you believe it will be the demise of our nation? 

The greenhouse gases of G8 acted as a smokescreen June 15, 2007

Posted by reformedville in : Government, Media , comments closed

The 2007 G8 Heiligendamm Summit  was held June 6-8, 2007 in Heiligendamm, Germany with the media storming about American’s global warming policies and how George Bush had reversed his positions irritating many members of the worlds richest and most powerful nations.

However, the real story of this years G8 Summit was fogged by the greenhouse gases and mostly missed by the mainstream media.  The real story right now is Russia and the United States, so reminiscent of the Cuban Missle Crisis it is frightening. The fact that the media is not giving it the attention they give to Brittany Spears inability to deal with life is inexcusable.

In an interview prior to the Summit Putin was asked the following questions:

QUESTION: One of the biggest problems between Moscow and Washington is the American plan to install a missile shield in Eastern Europe. Russia has reacted very sharply to the plan. But the White House insists on having the weapons system, which in turn gives rise to even greater displeasure on Russia’s part. What does Russia achieve with such rigid opposition to the system? Do you hope that Washington will abandon its plan, or do you have other goals in mind?

Putin: We have not simply stated that we are prepared to fulfil this treaty — we have in reality implemented it. We have brought all our heavy weapons beyond the Urals and we have reduced our military forces by 300,000 and taken some other steps. But what do we have in return? We see that Eastern Europe is being filled with new equipment, with new military, in Romania and Bulgaria as well as radar in the Czech Republic and missile systems in Poland……

QUESTION: But does the system truly pose a danger for Russia?

Putin: Speaking about the missile defence system — of course this is not simply a missile defense system per se as it is — when it is created and installed, it is going to work in an automatic mode, in conjunction with all the nuclear potential of the United States. For the first time in the history of the European continent there will be elements of the nuclear potential of the United States, which fully changes the whole configuration of international security.

How is it being explained? That it is necessary to defend oneself against the Iranian missiles. But there are no such missiles. Iran does not have missiles with a range of 5,000 to 8,000 kilometres. We are told that the anti-missile defense system is being installed for protection against something which doesn’t exist. So we believe there are no reasons and no grounds for establishing the anti-missile system in Eastern Europe … and of course we will have to respond to that.

QUESTION: What exactly do you want?

Putin: What are we striving for? We want to be heard. We do not exclude (the possibility) that our American partners might rethink their decision. I think that everyone possesses common sense. But if this does not happen, we cannot be held responsible for our reciprocal steps. Because it is not us who have initiated the arms race that is pending in Europe. We want everyone to understand that we will not assume any responsibility for that. Nor will we allow ourselves to be blamed if we now improve our strategic nuclear weapons system. This system of missile defense creates the illusion of being protected, but it increases the possibility of unleashing a nuclear conflict. So there is a violation, an imbalance of strategic equilibrium in the world, and in order to provide for the balance we will need to establish systems that would be able to penetrate the missile defense system.

While the rest of the world is focused on greenhouse gases, we are busy pushing nuclear nations into a position like they did in Cuba and placing Putin in the position JFK was in. We narrowly avoided a nuclear war then, but we have our commander in chief seeing if he can return the favor.

Then the next question is begged:

Would you want to deploy similar Russian systems in Cuba or Venezuela?

Putin: We are not going to do that. We recently dismantled our own base in Cuba. And Americans are now trying to deploy their missile bases in Romania and Bulgaria in Europe. We dismantled that base because our post-Soviet policies changed their nature — because the nature of our society changed. We don’t want a confrontation, we want co-operation. We do not need any bases in somebody’s back yard. We are not planning to do anything of the kind. Those are purely political decisions.

QUESTION: How do you respond to critics who want to see Russia excluded from the G-8 for violations of civil and human rights?

Putin: This is another piece of nonsense. Our economic importance is growing and will continue to grow. We have the world’s third-largest foreign currency and gold reserves. We became the world’s No. 1 oil producer last year and have long been the top producer of natural gas. We are a nuclear power and a member of the Security Council of the United Nations. One cannot solve the problems of humanity by converting the G-8 into an exclusive club. On the contrary, some consideration has been given to enlarging (the G-8) to include, for example, China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa. (He also notes later in the interview of the hypocrisy of civil and human rights violations in comparison to the United States and Europe)

I am not naive enough to believe every interview I read in total, and that is a two edged sword. Our problems with Russia are stemming from our actions in their area of the world and our placing missles on their back door step. We have to start facing the stark reality that the majority of the world does not trust us. The stakes at this poker game are too high . Pray that we are not provoking a world war with our antics in eastern europe needlessly. While all the world is worrying about greenhouse gases, that may be the least of their troubles.

E Pluribus Unum describes an action June 12, 2007

Posted by reformedville in : culture, Ethnicity, Immigration, Government, Uncategorized , 1 comment so far

E Pluribus Unum reminds me of scriptural proof texting at it’s worst, ignoring all consideration of context and original intent and manipulating it to meet ones own agenda.

To understand the true meaning of  E Pluribus Unum understand the genesis of the phrase. Benjamin Franklin, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson proposed the phrase as a national motto of unity, as the thirteen colonies were uniting in common cause of independence and forming a new nation.

 

original design

Next, to further understand the meaning of this one needs to look at the sketch of the original seal. The mottos purpose is to express the imagery of the seal itself.  Center to the seal is the shield itself.  The center of the shield has six symbols; the rose (England), thistle (Scotland), harp (Ireland), fleur-de-lis (France), lion (Holland), and an imperial two-headed eagle (Germany) for the countries from which these uniting states were peopled. The exterior border is then formed in a circle of the thirteen shields with a letter on each representing the thirteen independent states in unity. Although their original design was not approved, the phrase E Pluribus Unum was incorporated into the Great Seal of the United States.

Today,  revisionist historians and apologists use to phrase E Pluribus Unum to denote that America was meant to be this great melting pot , the most diverse of all nations. In fact there was very little “diversity” among our founding fathers with the major migrations coming from the British Isles, France, Germany and Holland , with the notable exception of the forced migration of slavery.

This uniformity of heritage was a major factor in the foundational success of what is now the world’s longest surviving republican form of a democratic society. While I am a adamant anti-federalist, I can not allow those views alter my understanding of this unions formation. The Federalist Papers , a comprehensive set of apologetic for the Constitution, consisted of 85 essays.

John Jay in the second essay,  Concerning Dangers from Foreign Force and Influence , specifically cites:

“With equal pleasure I have as often taken notice that Providence has been pleased to give this one connected country to one united people–a people descended from the same ancestors, speaking the same language, professing the same religion, attached to the same principles of government, very similar in their manners and customs, and who, by their joint counsels, arms, and efforts, fighting side by side throughout a long and bloody war, have nobly established general liberty and independence.

This country and this people seem to have been made for each other, and it appears as if it was the design of Providence, that an inheritance so proper and convenient for a band of brethren, united to each other by the strongest ties, should never be split into a number of unsocial, jealous, and alien sovereignties. “

From 1675 to 1950, the vast majority of U.S. immigrants were English speaking and enjoyed similar heritage and customs, with the exception of some seven million Germans, Italians and Scandinavians who immigrated to the U.S. prior to 1930. Conservative estimates are that every day, about 3,200 illegal aliens (more than 96,000 of them each month) cross from Mexico into the U.S.

 

There’s an old saying in Washington that, in dealing with any tough issue, half the politicians hope that citizens don’t understand it while the other half fear that people actually do. … Be feared.

Botched Paramilitary Police Raids June 12, 2007

Posted by reformedville in : Criminal Justice, Government , add a comment

While reading the white paper, Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids,” by Radley Balko. I have actually been shocked, something that takes reaching a pretty high threshold to occur.

“Americans have long maintained that a man’s home is his castle and that he has the right to defend it from unlawful intruders. Unfortunately, that right may be disappearing. Over the last 25 years, America has seen a disturbing militarization of its civilian law enforcement, along with a dramatic and unsettling rise in the use of paramilitary police units (most commonly called Special Weapons and Tactics, or SWAT) for routine police work. The most common use of SWAT teams today is to serve narcotics warrants, usually with forced, unannounced entry into the home.

These increasingly frequent raids, 40,000 per year by one estimate, are needlessly subjecting nonviolent drug offenders, bystanders, and wrongly targeted civilians to the terror of having their homes invaded while they’re sleeping, usually by teams of heavily armed paramilitary units dressed not as police officers but as soldiers. These raids bring unnecessary violence and provocation to nonviolent drug offenders, many of whom were guilty of only misdemeanors. The raids terrorize innocents when police mistakenly target the wrong residence. And they have resulted in dozens of needless deaths and injuries, not only of drug offenders, but also of police officers, children, bystanders, and innocent suspects.

This paper presents a history and overview of the issue of paramilitary drug raids, provides an extensive catalogue of abuses and mistaken raids, and offers recommendations for reform.”

 I would strongly suggest reading this in your spare time for you to get the magnitude of how our law enforcement philosophy has changed. I can not think how we throw our hands up as thousand come into this country illegally but have no qualms about using a paramilitary force on our own people many times based on the word of a informant who has a reason to be dishonest.

Check out the map below to get an idea of the scope of the botched raids and the cost in citizens lives today, here in America. We are overseas protecting others freedoms while at home the government is becoming tyrannical. Go figure. Have American men become so neutered there is nothing in our homeland worth fighting for?
Botched Paramilitary Police Raids: An Interactive Map

Thomas Jefferson once said, “Those who would trade safety for freedom deserve neither.” When we start calling the miliraty police and use them on our own citizens we should see the bigger picture. How much will we tolerate as a people?

Post 9/11 it has gotten even worse. You can paint is as terrorism but it is expanding government and the force it uses on its own people. Patrick Henry summed up the feelings of his peers when he said, “Give me liberty or give me death.” Patrick Henry knew that liberty came with certain risks, but facing those risks was far superior to living safely in chains or under military guard for my safety. 

Examining the war on drugs June 12, 2007

Posted by reformedville in : Criminal Justice, Government , add a comment

Over a period of time I am going to be running a series on the war on drugs. I know that this series will upset some people deeply when I do run it, because it will require some thought, and really searching your soul on what is right and what is wrong.  I am very much against the war on drugs in this country today.

Before everyone jumps to the conclusion that if I am against the war on drugs, I am pro-drug , chill a bit. That is a logical fallacy that many of us tend to fall into today and it is a tool use by those who wish to impose their will upon us.

As a background, to be fair, my step-brother, whom I will not name, until his resignation in 1995 ran the field offices for the Treasury department in Savannah, GA, Scranton, PA and Transylvania, VA; as well as ran one of the border patrol training schools. At age 50 he took his early-out retirement convinced that the government took neither the war on drugs (or the immigration problem ) serious and that he refused to continue to risk either his life or his mens life in false wars to look good. He , along with many others were convinced that radical change in drugs laws were mandated and that it should be brought under government /medical control as was alcohol or other type of prescription medication if we were ever to get a grip on the problem. I would also mention that he is a Christian.

One of the sources of my research is going to be Eric E. Sterling, JD. Those familiar with Mr. Sterling will know that he while playing an integral part in bringing about the changes in drug law sentencing and enforcement, he has since seen where it was both errant and has been radically abused by the federal government and is an advocate for major overhaul and reform.

I have tremendous respect for men who are intellectually honest enough to admit that a proffered solution was wrong, rather than just stick fast to their guns, the truth be ignored. Check out one question from this interview:

How did these laws come about?

These laws came about in an incredible conjunction between politics and hysteria. It was 1986, Tip O’Neill comes back from the July 4th district recess and everybody’s talking about the death of the Boston Celtics pick, Len Bias. That’s all his constituents are talking to him about. And he has the insight, “Drugs, it’s drugs. I can take this issue into the election.” He calls the Democratic leadership together in the House of Representatives and says, “I want a drug bill, I want it in four weeks.” And it set off kind of a stampede. Everybody started trying to get out front on the drug issue. … I mean every committee … not just the Judiciary Committee–Foreign Affairs, Ways and Means, Agriculture, Armed Services. Everybody’s got a piece of this out there, fighting to get their face on television, talking about the drug problem. And … these mandatories came in the last couple days before the Congressional recess, before they were all going to race out of town and tell the voters about what they’re doing to fight the war on drugs. No hearings, no consideration by the federal judges, no input from the Bureau of Prisons. Even the DEA didn’t testify. The whole thing is kind of cobbled together with chewing gum and baling wire. Numbers are picked out of air. And we see what these consequences are of that kind of legislating. … Ten-year mandatory minimum, routine sentences are 15, 20, 30 years, without parole. … Then you have conspiracy, and suddenly … you have people facing 50 years, people facing either life in virtual terms or as a real sentence. That’s what’s happening. Fifteen thousand federal drug cases a year. Bulk of them mandatory minimum cases. Most of them minor offenders. Only 10% of all the federal drug cases are high level traffickers. You wonder, who’s asleep at the switch at the Justice Department? … What you have is conviction on the basis of testimony. You have drugless drug cases. You don’t need powder, all you need is the witness to say, “I saw a kilo,”… “

I know the automatic assumption is that a Christian must be for a war on drugs and how could a Christian not be? I understand the reasoning and the question quite clearly.  The research to be used is not from High Times or Grown Your Own Quarterly , or from someone who just wants to get high and will look for any reason or article to support their cause. As we take a close look at the war on drugs I want you to continue to ask yourself the question of the legitimacy of the war on drugs and to ask yourself as a Christian  if we are supporting a just war.

The art of distraction June 11, 2007

Posted by reformedville in : Immigration, Government, Media , add a comment

“A nation without borders is not a nation.” - Ronald Reagan

The entire immigration debate today is basically cast on two premises:

We can not allow the debate to proceed on these premises. The federal government , with the aid of the media reframed the debate to relieve themselves of culpability.  We should refuse to even engage in the debate on their terms, because it gives them false standing.

The real core issues are:

  1. When the federal government posits that they can no longer defend our borders, then why do we have a federal government ? Why is our military overseas defending states not our own when we say we can’t defend ourselves?

  2. The president has refused to fulfill his duty as chief executive officer and defend our national sovereignty, our borders and the laws of our land. So if he is not going to fulfill his job, why do we even need a president? To impose democracy on others?

The legislation in front of Congress is merely smoke and mirrors. We have all the legislation we need today. We only need to ENFORCE it, and that is the responsibility of the President and the executive branch of the government.

Many people were upset when I posited that Pedro is not the problem, as if somehow I am soft on immigration. Nothing could be further from the truth, but if we are running after Pedro’s we never solve the problem, especially with a pourous border. This is where the federal government wants us focused, on Pedro and the border, so they can play cat and mouse with us. It is their trump in the game of distraction.

There are many parts of this country that are literal paradises to live in, but to live there, one must either come from money, or be retiring to that area, as the area itself can not support one to live there. Normally in places like these employers will have to purchase housing and make provisions for employees if it is a tourist area, because a worker simply could not afford to live there.

The concept is the same for illegal immigrants. While humans require food, water and shelter to survive; the primary are food and water, as the shelter is meaningless if they can not feed themselves. The border does not provide food and water; employers do.

Having been an employer, both in management working for a national contractor and in my own business, I am well aware of the documentation that is required to hire an employee, including a proof of citizenship form .  Everyday, employers are hiring people without legitimate papers.  I have heard many argue that you do not know if you are hiring someone with bad papers, you have no way of knowing. Wrong, there are I-9 compliance services to safeguard you from this. 

Your company normally receives a letter from the U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA). The letter states that the Social Security number you have on file for one of your employees doesn’t match his number on file with the SSA. Reasons for a mismatch may include an unreported name change, a change in marital status, a stolen identity or a clerical error on your part (while processing the employee’s paperwork) or even at the SSA.

Nevertheless, the receipt of an SSA mismatch letter must prompt an employer to take some action to ensure compliance with the SSA, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

For example, first check out the employee’s 1-9 Form, which establishes the employee’s eligibility for employment. Under the Immigration Reform and Control Act (RCA), employees must fill out an I-9 form the first day on the job, arid must provide documentation proving their employment eligibility and identity within three business days of starting work.

The law does not require employers to file I-9 forms with any government agency. As a result, only you have immediate access to this information and only you can tell if the information submitted for an I-9 matches the information an employee provided on other forms.

If your review shows that these documents are incomplete or incorrect, you have a duty to investigate. If the employee cannot present acceptable documents, you  have to terminate him. Under the IRCA, employers can be legally liable for the “knowing” employment of unauthorized aliens.

 Even though I-9 forms are not submitted to federal agencies, they still can provide evidence that an employer intentionally hired an illegal alien. Each year the INS performs more than 60,000 audits of I-9 forms.

The danger of an improperly completed I-9 Form may not go away in the short term. Under the IRCA, when an employee leaves or is terminated, employers must retain I-9 forms for at least three years from the date of hire or one year after termination, whichever is longer. Second, employers are required to report accurate information to the IRS.

But again, this is all smoke and mirrors today. The regulations and the forms are there only to make us feel safe. Large employers know at worst they are going to pay fines. The INS is open to widespread corruption because it is self funded from fines it levies. Now one may think fines would be a deterrent, but a fine is a cost of doing business in the illegal immigrant trade.  No manager pays the fine, it is absorbed or reflected in either higher price or lower yield on stock earnings, but the amount save in wages and ancillary expenses make it very profitable.

If we want to get serious about solving the immigration problem we go to the source of the illegal immigrants employer, and start sending the management of the company to prison for hiring illegal immigrants. Go straight to the oasis and cut the source of the food and water for illegals and they quit coming.If employers knew they face going to prison or having their plants shut down for hiring illegals it is no longer worth it to them to hire illegals.

If illegal immigrants can not get employment they will not stay in the United States and they certainly won’t keep coming. Word gets out when the oasis dries up, but it doesn’t look like we are in any serious danger of that happening anytime soon!