Casual BS is what's really destroying America
Saturday, 28 March 2009
I was just sitting here minding my own business, and got this illegally and dishonestly altered version of Charley Reese's immortal article "Looking for someone to blame? Congress is a good start", written in 1995, in my email this morning. 

(This article was written in reply to a forwarded email from a well-meaning friend.  I sent it back to all of the people who were on the list.)

I took about one hour of my life and $3.95 of my hard-earned money to track down the source, and found the original in the archives of the Orlando Sentinel.  I am sending the original to you to read.  I hope that you will take the two seconds that it will take to forward this email back up the line, and ask them to do the same. 

I have attached a screen shot of the article that I paid for, so that you know that I did not change one single word of what Charley wrote.  This is a very different article than the one forwarded to me. 

I have also attached a Word document that compares the emailed article to the actual article.  The crossed-out lines were not part of Charley (not Charlie) Reese's article.  Those crossed-out lines represent more than one-half of the emailed article.  Whoever wrote this email did not just change a few words...they changed the entire meaning.

Now, ask yourself, why would someone do something so sneaky and dishonest?  Perhaps because they wanted to dress up some lies and half-truths by changing someone else's words to fit their own propaganda agenda?  And they wanted to make it sound credible by attaching a popular writer's name to it?  How low can you go?

I get many messages like this every day.  I could find the source of each one, demonstrate its dishonesty and disinformation, and send it back whence it came.  But I have a job, a family, and a place to take care of.  If each one of you would research one of these emails once a week and send it back up the line, instead of forwarding it without consideration, there would be a lot less misinformation on the internet. 

I did not use any special powers to do this work.  It just took some time.  If you think that it is wrong of me to seek out the facts, I would like to talk about that with you. The degradation of personal and public integrity is the root cause of most of America's problems, in my humble opinion.

Best regards,

Deb Lagutaris

Screenshot of article


Comparison

*****
Following is the text of Charley's article as copied from the Orlando Sentinel's archives.  A screen shot of the website is attached so that there can be no question about whether I altered the article to fit some agenda of my own.
Below that, please see the email I received.
LOOKING FOR SOMEONE TO BLAME? CONGRESS IS GOOD PLACE TO START
[METRO Edition]
Orlando Sentinel - Orlando, Fla.
Author: Charley Reese of The Sentinel Staff
Date: Mar 7, 1995
Start Page: A.8
Section: EDITORIAL
Text Word Count: 615
Document Text

Politicians, as I have often said, are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.

Everything on the Republican contract is a problem created by Congress. Too much bureaucracy? Blame Congress. Too many rules?

Blame Congress. Unjust tax laws? Congress wrote them.

Out-of-control bureaucracy? Congress authorizes everything bureaucracies do. Americans dying in Third World rat holes on stupid U.N. missions? Congress allows it. The annual deficits?

Congress votes for them. The $4 trillion plus debt? Congress created it.

To put it into perspective just remember that 100 percent of the power of the federal government comes from the U.S.

Constitution. If it's not in the Constitution, it's not authorized.

Then read your Constitution. All 100 percent of the power of the federal government is invested solely in 545 individual human beings. That's all. Of 260 million Americans, only 545 of them wield 100 percent of the power of the federal government.

That's 435 members of the U.S. House, 100 senators, one president and nine Supreme Court justices. Anything involving government that is wrong is 100 percent their fault.

I exclude the vice president because constitutionally he has no power except to preside over the Senate and to vote only in the case of a tie. I exclude the Federal Reserve because Congress created it and all its power is power Congress delegated to it and could withdraw anytime it chooses to do so. In fact, all the power exercised by the 3 million or so other federal employees is power delegated from the 545.

All bureaucracies are created by Congress or by executive order of the president. All are financed and staffed by Congress. All enforce laws passed by Congress. All operate under procedures authorized by Congress. That's why all complaints and protests should be properly directed at Congress, not at the individual agencies.

You don't like the IRS? Go see Congress. You think the Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms agency is running amok? Go see Congress.

Congress is the originator of all government problems and is also the only remedy available. That's why, of course, politicians go to such extraordinary lengths and employ world-class sophistry to make you think they are not responsible. Anytime a congressman pretends to be outraged by something a federal bureaucrat does, he is in fact engaging in one big massive con job. No federal employee can act at all except to enforce laws passed by Congress and to employ procedures authorized by Congress either explicitly or implicitly.

Partisans on both sides like to blame presidents for deficits, but all deficits are congressional deficits. The president may, by custom, recommend a budget, but it carries no legal weight. Only Congress is authorized by the Constitution to authorize and appropriate and to levy taxes. That's what the federal budget consists of: expenditures authorized, funds appropriated and taxes levied.

Both Democrats and Republicans mislead the public. For 40 years Democrats had majorities and could have at any time balanced the budget if they had chosen to do so. Republicans now have majorities and could, if they choose, pass a balanced budget this year. Every president, Democrat or Republican, could have vetoed appropriations bills that did not make up a balanced budget. Every president could have recommended a balanced budget. None has done either.

We have annual deficits and a huge federal debt because that's what majorities in Congress and presidents in the White House wanted. We have troops in various Third World rat holes because Congress and the president want them there.

Don't be conned. Don't let them escape responsibility. We simply have to sort through 260 million people until we find 545 who will act responsibly.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.

Abstract (Document Summary)

Partisans on both sides like to blame presidents for deficits, but all deficits are congressional deficits. The president may, by custom, recommend a budget, but it carries no legal weight. Only Congress is authorized by the Constitution to authorize and appropriate and to levy taxes. That's what the federal budget consists of: expenditures authorized, funds appropriated and taxes levied.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.

* This article is redistributed under the Fair Use Act, which permits copyrighted material to be distributed for educational purposes. -DL

The text of the email I received follows:

PEOPLE WITH COMMON SENSE WILL AGREE.
EVERY CITIZEN NEEDS TO READ THIS AND THINK ABOUT WHAT THIS JOURNALIST HAS SCRIPTED IN THIS MESSAGE. READ IT .
Charley Reese has been a journalist for 49 years.



545 PEOPLE
By Charlie Reese
Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them.

Have you ever wondered, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, WHY do we have deficits?

Have you ever wondered, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, WHY do we have inflation and high taxes?

You and I don't propose a federal budget. The president does.

You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of representatives does.

You and I don't write the tax code, Congress does.

You and I don't set fiscal policy, Congress does.

You and I don't control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank does.

One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president, and nine Supreme Court justices, 545 human beings out of the 300 million are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.

I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered, but private, central bank.

I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman, or a president to do one cotton-picking thing.. I don't care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator's responsibility to determine how he votes.

Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.

What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits. The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it.

The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes. Who is the speaker of the House? She is the leader of the majority party. She and fellow House members, not the president, can approve any budget they want. If the president vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to.

It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million can not replace 545 people who stand convicted -- by present facts -- of incompetence and irresponsibility. I can't think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people. When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.

If the tax code is unfair, it's because they want it unfair.

If the budget is in the red, it's because they want it in the red .

If the Army & Marines are in IRAQ, it's because they want them in IRAQ

There are no insoluble government problems.

Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power. Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like "the economy," "inflation," or "politics" that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.

Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible.

They, and they alone, have the power.

They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses.

Provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees.

We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess!

Charlie Reese is a former columnist of the Orlando Sentinel Newspaper.

What you do with this article now that you have read it.......... is up to you.


A Castle Built in the Sand
Saturday, 28 March 2009
A Castle Built in the Sand

By Deborah Lagutaris and the Reframers

If we are going to rebuild an economic system, we should build one that rests on a solid foundation. Not like the last time. It amazes me that anyone who thought that an economic system based on relentless expansion could survive forever. One of the primary tenets of capitalism is that it must grow, or die. Sort of like…ummm…cancer.

Perhaps, if we had had a truly equitable and humanistic basis for the capitalistic society, where everyone grew and shared economically with their local advantages in production, at the same rate, it may have had a chance. But nooooo! Instead, we have zombie banks. The mightiest and most powerful direct control over humanity ever devised...where trillions of dollars passed through every day…the banks…they are zombies.

All we have to do to stop it is to say that it is over.

People truly are smart and kind if let be, for the most part. Let us live and let live, but learn how to share deeply. Our communities will be the most important factor in our daily lives now. Here’s a short list of six things to do to help yourself and help your community at the same time!

1. Stop throwing away good food and wasting good water.

2. Gather up and learn how to play and teach musical instruments.

3. Talk to the unemployed and spread word of their skills; barter and give forward.

4. Pay your local merchants ahead.

5. Seek out new friends and aid them.

6. Gather books on practical topics like medicine, applied chemistry, and construction, as well as great books of any type. Save good magazines. Okay, that’s seven. So sue me : P

Debocracy & The Reframers

Creative Commons License

Fascism: creeping no more
Thursday, 17 July 2008
The essence of legal liberty in the United States of America is the ability to walk down the street without having to provide identification to anyone.  The founders added the Bill of Rights to the Constitution to enshrine that right.  That’s what most of us thought we were protecting when we joined WWII.  An official of the State is not entitled to require us to present identification unless that official has a rational, legally defensible probable cause.  Probable cause is not “just a hunch.”

 
Now, the Senate has granted the President the ability to commandeer corporations to spy on all of us based on a hunch that a handful of us may be saying something illegal.  Mussolini, the founder of 20th Century fascism, defined same as the “merger of the corporation and the state.”  Fait accompli.

 
Kyle Hence sent this message to thousands of people last week.  He included his email address and telephone number.  I forward it intact to you.

 
Deb Lagutaris

 
 
From: Kyle Hence < >

Date: July 10, 2008 1:37:33 AM GMT+02:00

To: undisclosed-recipients:;

Subject: R.I.P. - U.S. Constitution & Rule of Law -- An Open Letter on Illegal Surveillance and Telecom Immunity

 
 
R.I.P. -- the 4th Amendment & the Rule of Law -- An Open Letter to America on Illegal Surveillance and Telecom Immunity

 
7/9/08

 
Rumor is circulating that the House leader, Nancy Pelosi, is making a play to put Karl Rove above the law. Reportedly she is saying he should not be held in contempt for refusing to appear before the House Judiciary Committee.  Although Pelosi’s office now denies it, many are finding it hard to give the Speaker the benefit of the doubt and for good reason. She took impeachment off the table to prevent the House from responsibly examining likely impeachable violations, just one of which is the President’s warrantless wiretapping program.

 
As illustrated above, there is a disturbing pattern here. The Rove issue comes shockingly just a week after the Democratic House leadership caved-in to the Executive Branch over the FISA Bill. In the Bill’s passage today in the Senate the Executive Office gets what it wants, and the telecom companies get what they want—a get-out-of-jail free card for a massive, still secret surveillance program operating without warrants or oversight for years in order to spy indiscriminately on the phone, fax, and email communications of millions of Americans.

 
By passing this Bill, the telecoms gain effective immunity from civil prosecutions over their participation in NSA warrant-less wiretapping directed by the Bush Administration. Some 40 lawsuits, some of them class-actions representing millions of Americans, will be dismissed by District judges as a result of this legislation. To get off the hook, the companies need only produce written evidence of a “directive” (rule by fiat) by the White House affirming the program’s legality, thus ignoring and forgiving the actual violations of the law, and precluding further litigation and investigation. (see EFF lawsuit – Hepting vs. AT&T)

 
Bottom line on the FISA vote today: the Democratic leadership and a minority of Democratic members in both the House and the Senate aligned with the Republicans have, by their votes on the FISA Bill, declared that the telecom companies and the Executive Office are above the law.  The Bill also makes legal wiretapping of any and all Americans who communicate with friends or family overseas without being required to prove suspicion or just cause, without a warrant. Big brother is now sanctified and codified in the passage of this Bill. Hyperbole you say? Well, just ask AT&T whistleblower Mark Klein, who witnessed the installation of secret NSA controlled rooms at his AT&T facility. [http://www.blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/06/att-whistleblow.html]

 
This is a prescription for lawlessness in our country, a prescription, shockingly, written by our own Congress. This is systematic, dissembling of the Constitution. This is violation of the American system of checks and balances. This is the death of a Republic in slow motion. This is usurpation of Constitutional rule of law by Presidential Directive. And by a compliant and complicit Congress and its members who failed to uphold their oath of office.

 
As Republican Senator Specter said on the floor in arguing for his amendment, “History will look back on this period of history as one of unprecedented expansion of Executive authority, unchecked expansion of authority.” Exhorting his colleagues Specter said “perhaps after the July 4th holiday, Congress will declare its independence from the Executive branch.” It didn’t happen.

 
How did all this come to pass? The simple answer: the dangerous merging of corporate and Executive power and a lack of courage in the face of the politics of fear.

 
The passage of this Bill was preceded by millions of lobbying dollars pouring into Washington, D.C. and corporate contributions to members of Congress, including a spike in telecom donations to the Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Jay Rockefeller. The lobbying dollars has now insured legal protection of a massive secret spying program accountable to no one but the President. And it has revealed a dangerous even treasonous liaison between unbridled, unchecked executive power and private corporate power that has led to gross violations of the rule of law and U.S. Constitution. This my friends, my fellow Americans, herald a rising Fascism, a merging of corporate and government power, that is now rising up in place of a dying Constitutional Republic, all delivered to the American people by the almighty corporate dollar and those elected to office who by their vote today have utterly and completely betrayed.

 
We are witnesses, here and now, with the passage of this Bill, to the arrival of dangerous merging of narrow unchecked corporate interest and those of an equally unchecked Executive Office that Congress has utter failed to hold to account, as is their sacred duty under the Constitution. We each are witness now to a de-facto coup by Executive fiat, rule by directives irrespective of the law or Constitution, all veiled by secrecy and to which all dissent is overcome by instilling fear.  It marks the death of the Republic unless we act now to tie off the autocratic fear-feeding cancer that afflicts our nation.

 
Make no mistake about what happened on the floor of the Senate today. With the passing of this FISA Bill the Congress is capitulating, lock, stock and barrel, to the merging of the interests of an unaccountable secret dictatorial Executive governing by “Directive” with the interests of the corporations that feed at the massive and growing private contracting trough. A few score of corporations now gobble up so much of the Federal budget that fully 70% of the intelligence budget is now outsourced to private contractors such as AT&T. [http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/06/01/intel_contractors]

 
This is the same AT&T that received a get out of jail card today, despite the fact that it violated laws on the books, by piping their communications network straight into secret rooms controlled by NSA. Whereas Qwest refused based on a clear understanding of FISA law, and was cut out of pending government contracts, AT&T continues to take government money to spy illegally on Americans since there can be no verification the NSA has shut its secret rooms or ceased its massively trolling of the private communications of innocent Americans.

 
Thanks to a minority of Democrats, the spinelessness of a Democratic nominee to back up his rhetoric with real leadership, the majority of the Republicans and the Executive Office has yet again employed the post 9/11 fear card to induce a tragic capitulation and betrayal of the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law.

 
“When laws ends, tyranny begins.” These are not the words of a enraged radical leftist, no, these are the words of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, just quoted minutes ago by Senator Dodd in his closing arguments before this unconstitutional Bill was passed into law, and our country turned brazenly and openly to Corporatism and rule by Executive fiat. 

 
There is no time for despair in the face of this treason so let us hope, pray and most importantly act so that this travesty, this trespass on our rights is not left unchecked and uncorrected by those of us who still believe in the sanctity of the Constitution and Freedom granted each us by our Creator, and who are courageous enough to stand up and defend it.

 
--Kyle F. Hence

401-935-7715

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