Archive for March, 2011

The Nebraska Oath Keepers President, Mike Lemieux and Oath Keepers founder , Stewart Rhodes , will be on the Restore the Republic’s “Mad As Hell” webethon tomorrow night . Mike is on at 9 PM and Stewart is on at 10PM.

Go to: http://madashellmoneybomb.com/ for complete details, speaker list, and to tune in on Saturday March 12th, 2011.

Please check the site as a good many other well known speakers are involved with this.

Oath Keepers would like to take a moment to express our profound sadness to learn of the suffering and massive loss of life resulting from the earthquake and following tsunami that recently devastated Japan. In addition to many civilians, America has approximately 28,000 of our troops and an estimated 40,000 of their family members stationed there.

At the time of this writing we have no word of any casualties or injuries among them, but we are certainly concerned for their well being and that of the Japanese people.

In the wake of such a tragedy, it is a source of pride to know with certainty that our finest will be on the front lines of assistance to all effected, providing the best of the best in assistance and technology. No matter what our personal differences might be here at home, whether or not we all agree that our troops should be stationed around the world, or kept here at home – we can all come together in the knowledge that when the chips are down and someone is in need, Americans can and will get the job done!

Today, the Utah Senate passed HB317, a bill which will legalize gold and silver as tender within the state of Utah and exempt the exchange (purchase) of such specie from sales and capital gains taxes. Having already passed the House, the bill will now be sent to Governor Herbert to be signed into law, should he so decide.

This type of bill is one that is becoming increasingly popular throughout the country, with multiple states introducing and considering such legislation. Though Utah is now the first state to have a legislature approve of the idea, the sustained momentum of getting other states to review the proposal demonstrates the resiliency of the campaign for sound money. With the U.S. Dollar plummeting in value, this is an issue that will become more popular as time goes on.

As the author of the bill noted in a Fox News article on the subject, this bill will allow Utahns to better prepare for financial turmoil ahead, more easily diversifying into currency with a long history of stability.

This bill, however, is a watered down version of the original submission by the author, Larry Hilton. As we reported previously, the goals of this effort are far more comprehensive and specific. The limited provisions included in this final bill, while certainly welcome, are merely a first step. Expect to see successive legislation in upcoming sessions to expand and broaden the scope of what the legislature passed today.

(Reuters) – Wyoming state lawmakers on Wednesday approved a proposal to allow residents to carry concealed guns or other deadly weapons without a permit.

The proposal already cleared the state Senate, and the vote of 48-8 in the House virtually assures that the measure will get final approval after two more readings this week. It will then go to Republican Gov. Matt Mead for his signature.

If signed into law, Wyoming would follow Alaska, Arizona and Vermont with very permissive gun laws allowing residents to carry concealed weapons without a permit.

Mead, a former U.S. Attorney for Wyoming who has prosecuted federal firearms cases, has said he supports gun rights but will wait until the bill reaches his desk before deciding whether to sign it, spokesman Renny MacKay said.

Some in law enforcement had opposed the bill, saying the state’s existing permit system worked well by allowing citizens to carry concealed weapons after they prove proficiency in using firearms and pass a background check.

Representative Jonathan Botten, a Republican, had proposed amending the bill to prevent residents from carrying concealed guns while drunk. The House rejected that amendment.

“If you’re too drunk to hurtle your 3-ton car down the interstate at 75 miles per hour, I submit to you that you’re too drunk to be safely carrying a firearm,” Botten said.

“We have a very strong sense of protecting individual rights, and in particular, the Second Amendment rights,” said Representative Lorraine Quarberg, a Republican who supported the bill but opposed Botten’s amendment. The Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution preserves the right to bear arms.

“‘Project Gunrunner,’ the controversial operation in which U.S. agents may
have been ordered not to intervene as American guns flowed to Mexican
gangs, may have been going on for years. Sharyl Attkisson reports.”

“A controversial operation in which U.S. agents were allegedly ordered not to intervene as American guns flowed to Mexican gangs may have been going on for many years,” Sharyl Attkisson of CBS News reports.

Multiple sources now tell CBS News the questionable tactics were used in more than one operation, and date back as far as 2008 in the Tucson area. One case was called “Wide Receiver.”

See the above video player for this latest report.

“Sen. Charles Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, demanded Tuesday that an independent watchdog be used to investigate the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives decision to let hundreds of guns fall into the hands of straw buyers for suspected Mexican weapons traffickers in hopes of making a bigger criminal case,” Rick Solomon of the Center for Public integrity reports.

Grassley’s press release states:

Senator Chuck Grassley today said that he did not have confidence that the Justice Department Inspector General’s office could produce a report that the public would view as frank and unbiased in its investigation of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) policy of letting guns “walk” along the Southwest border—a policy that may have contributed to the death of a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agent.

In a letter written to Kevin L. Perkins, Chair Integrity Committee Council of Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency, and citing perceived conflicts of interest as well as past disinterest in the allegations, Grassley requests “that the Acting Inspector General recuse her office and that a disinterested inspector general’s office be selected to conduct the review,” and makes two profound charges:

(NaturalNews) Newly-released documents obtained by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) reveal that the US Depart of Homeland Security has been working on plans to roll out a new wave of mobile surveillance technologies at train stations, stadiums and streets. These new technologies will track your eye movements, capture and record your facial dimensions for face-recognition processing, bathe you in X-rays to look under your clothes, and even image your naked body using whole-body infrared images that were banned from consumer video cameras because they allowed the camera owners to take “nude” videos of people at the beach.

Most importantly, many of these technologies are designed to be completely hidden, allowing the government to implement “covert inspection of moving subjects.” You could be walking down a hallway at a sports stadium, in other words, never knowing that you’re being bathed in X-rays from the Department of Homeland Security, whose operators are covertly looking under your clothes to see if you’re carrying any weapons.

The Homeland Security Department paid contractors millions of dollars to develop and study surveillance systems that could covertly track pedestrians and check under people’s clothing with airport-style body scanners as they enter train stations, bus depots or major events, newly released documents show.

Two contracts the department signed in 2005 and 2006 were part of its effort to acquire technology to find suicide bombers in a crowd of moving people, according to documents given to the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), a privacy-rights group that is suing Homeland Security.

The department dropped the projects in a “very early” phase after testing showed flaws, Homeland Security spokesman Bobby Whithorne says.

EPIC lawyer Ginger McCall says the project is disturbing nonetheless because it shows the department “obviously believed that this level of surveillance is acceptable when in fact it is not at all acceptable.”

A $1.9 million contract with Rapiscan Systems, which makes airport body scanners, asked the company to develop similar machines for “covert inspection of moving subjects” and to find explosives on suicide bombers “through clothing, backpacks and other packages.” The contract was signed in 2005.

Rapiscan’s airport body scanners require subjects to stand still while the machines create an image of passengers underneath their clothing to reveal hidden weapons. EPIC has sued the department to stop their use, saying the machines violate privacy.

Now that CBS News has delivered its second definitive report on the scope of “Project Gunwalker”* and Senator Grassley has expressed his determination to not allow the Department of Justice to stonewall his investigations, the damage control at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives have begun in earnest.

From one of the behind-the-scenes confidential sources advising Mike Vanderboegh of Sipsey Street Irregulars and this correspondent, someone who has been instrumental in bringing this story to light from long before major media became involved:

This just hit minutes ago. Panic and chaos are taking place at ATF headquarters in advance of the anticipated media releases today and tomorrow. Below is a message just sent from the subordinate of Jim McDermond from the ATF Office of Public and Governmental Affairs. An emergency request is being issued to all ATF Public Information Officers to find ATF stories with a positive spin to counter-influence was is expected today. Very insulting and very much the character of ATF management. Please respond to me that you received this. I think it will be critical to your stories and for Senator Grassley to further see demonstrated ATF’s continued desire to spin and cover up.

March 3, 2011. CBS Evening News. Gun Walking. Interview with ATF Federal agent John Dodson. ATF was intentionally sending heavy weaponry to Mexican drug cartels. The secret operation was called Fast and Furious.

It’s been nearly 80 years since the U.S. stopped using gold coins as legal currency, and nearly 40 since the world abandoned the gold standard, but the precious metal could be making a comeback in the United States — beginning in Utah.

The Utah House was to vote as early as Thursday on legislation that would recognize gold and silver coins issued by the federal government as legal currency in the state. The coins would not replace the current paper currency but would be used and accepted voluntarily as an alternative.

The legislation, which has 12 co-sponsors, would let Utahans pay their taxes with gold and also calls for a committee to study alternative currencies for the state. It would also exempt the sale of gold from the state capital gains tax.

The bill cleared a state legislative committee on Wednesday, the first of 13 similar bills in statehouses across the country to do so. If the bill clears the House, it would have to pass the Senate before the governor could sign it into law.

Attorney and Tea Party activist Larry Hilton, author of the original bill, said he doesn’t foresee any roadblocks.

“There’s enough uneasiness going on in the economy to trigger people to feel that, hey, having a little Plan B, kind of a backup system, is not a bad idea,” he told FoxNews.com.

If you’re a resident of one of at least 24 states including Arizona, Georgia, and Washington, your driver’s license may no longer be valid for boarding an airplane or entering federal buildings as of May 11, 2011.

That’s the deadline that senior House Republicans are calling on the Obama administration to impose, saying states must be required to comply with so-called Real ID rules creating a standardized digital identity card that critics have likened to a national ID.

The political problem for the GOP committee chairmen is that the 2005 Real ID Act has proven to be anything but popular: legislatures of two dozen states have voted to reject its requirements, and in the Michigan and Pennsylvania legislatures one chamber has done so.

That didn’t stop the House Republicans from saying in a letter this week to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano that “any further extension of Real ID threatens the security of the United States.” Unless Homeland Security grants an extension, the law’s requirements take effect on May 11.

“If they don’t, people won’t be able to use their driver’s licenses to get on airplanes,” says Molly Ramsdell, who oversees state-federal affairs for the National Conference of State Legislatures. “They can use a military ID. They can use some other federal ID. But they won’t be able to use a driver’s license.” (See CNET’s FAQ.)

Sen. Rand Paul’s bold and honest address to the largest annual gathering of conservatives.

Do you Know How Many of Those Countries the United States Taxpayer Sends Foreign Aid To?

Happy days are here again! Stock markets are strong, company profits are up, bankers are making record profits and bonuses, unemployment is declining, and inflation is non-existent. Obama and Bernanke are the dream team making the US into the Superpower it once was.

Yes, it is amazing the castles in the air that can be built with paper money and deceitful manipulation of all economic data. And Madame Bernanke de Pompadour will do anything to keep King Louis XV Obama happy, including flooding markets with unlimited amounts of printed money. They both know that, in their holy alliance, they are committing a cardinal sin. But clinging to power is more important than the good of the country. An economic and social disaster is imminent for the US and a major part of the world and Bernanke de Pompadour and Louis XV Obama are praying that it won’t happen during their reign: “Après nous le déluge”. (Warm thanks to my good friend the artist Leo Lein).

Why choose to participate in a system that doesn’t work? A system that is designed to drain the people of wealth instead of enriching them and their lives? A system that is constructed upon irrational principles, faulty laws, and unstable values? A system on the verge of collapse?

This is the question that the Alternative Market Movement (AMM) poses to the American citizen. Why continue living under an economic structure that is poised to erupt, threatening you, your family, and your ability to provide a meaningful future for them? Would anyone voluntarily choose to live under the barrel of a gun their entire lives?

The only plausible answer is that most people participate in our current destructive financial system because they feel there are no other options. AMM plans to change this by offering a new choice, one which presents a solid foundation, an honest and legitimate sense of community, self sufficiency, and sound trade backed by tangible commodities instead of unsustainable debts. We will work to help each and every individual achieve greater independence and to connect with other like-minded participants in a newer, liberty based market. This market will be facilitated and administrated by communities themselves, away from bureaucracy, corporate influence, and overt regulation. It will serve the interests of the average man and woman, and not the interests of globalism and elitist hierarchy.

Several State legislatures are introducing resolutions to create commissions to study alternate money systems for their people in the event that the Federal Reserve System, Inc., implodes or otherwise mismanages its fiat currency programs. The term, “Hyper-Inflation” is used.

Economists and political devotees around the nation now are admitting that the Fed may have jeopardized its ability to maintain our annual rate of inflation at controllable levels, and the bailouts and stimulus packages give grave concern to those who study money’s relation to the laws of economics.

Tennessee’s legislature is following Virginia’s, South Carolina’s, and Montana’s legislatures in recommending that its State government look into creating an alternative money system to compete with the Fed’s fiat, debt-based “legal-tender” money system – or to replace the Federal Reserve Notes if the dollar is allowed to go into hyper-inflation.

From here, WSMV we read:

State Sen. Bill Ketron said he believes the federal government is implementing many things that are not sustainable, and he wants to make sure Tennessee is prepared in case the bubble pops. That’s why he wants to set up a committee to look into what it would take for Tennessee to come up with an alternate currency. He said there’s concern hyperinflation could render the U.S. dollar worthless and could throw the state’s budget and economy into chaos. Since the federal government hasn’t come up with a backup plan, Ketron thinks the state should exercise its 10th Amendment right to do so.

So that sentiment is now before the Tennessee State Legislature. The text of the legislation is here:

http://wapp.capitol.tn.gov/apps/BillInfo/default.aspx?BillNumber=SJR0098&GA=107

Is it paranoia, or fear-mongering, when various State legislatures talk about the Federal Reserve System’s imminent failure and begin preparations to study the implementation of alternate money systems for their respective States?