What do NY's Smoking Ban and NY SAFE Act Have in Common?

Simply put, they are both egregious infringements on individual rights to own and use property as seen fit.

Smokers have lived with numerous assaults on their personal decisions for years, but the smoking ban rose to another level and attacked small business owners throughout the state effectively denying them use of their personal property, that they worked hard for and built, for a specific purpose as if they were nothing more than caretakers of public property.

This is certainly not a partisan party issue.  The final votes in the Assembly and Senate were greatly mixed showing both parties infiltrated with control freaks.

Democrats:    Assembly  84 yes - 11 no  ~  Senate  20 yes - 4 no
Republicans:  Assembly 13 yes - 33 no  ~  Senate  37 yes - 0 no

Assemblyman Daniel Hooker’s comments made on the floor of the Assembly during debate on the smoking ban, Wednesday, March 26th, 2003:

I am from a rural district as well, and while we don’t have any cities, we do have a lot of restaurants, taverns, and diners, and this bill will hurt their business. We also have a lot of VFW Posts, American Legion Posts, and Marine Corps League Posts. I can’t help but think of the irony of the situation where a soldier or Marine comes home from the war, goes into a local VFW for a beer and a cigarette, and the bartender says "I’m sorry, young man, while you were overseas fighting for freedom, your State Assembly was quietly legislating it away here at home."

However, Mr. Speaker, I am chiefly opposed to this bill because it presumes that people are incapable of thinking and acting for themselves without the government telling them what to do.

At present, people are free to choose to work in an environment that is smoke free or not. A lot of waitresses who smoke choose to work in a bar specifically because it is a smoke-friendly environment. This bill would limit that freedom.

I don’t smoke but believe that others should be free to smoke if they choose to.

I am not insensitive to the health hazards of smoking. My Dad smoked, and he died of lung cancer. Cause and effect? Probably, but he died a free man who made his own choices.

My general philosophy is that our government spends way too much time telling people what to do and this seems like a good example of that practice.

I am opposed. 

Even though I wasn't from his district, I had written Mr Hooker to thank him for his stand, and he replied with a hand-written and personally signed note providing me with the full text of his speech.  All I got back from my own two representatives were form letters praising the great courageous stand they took standing with the majority to figuratively lynch a minority constituency.

 

We don't want to merely die like Dan Hooker's dad as free men, we want to live our lives as free men, unmolested by tyranny.

 

Why am I writing about this long dead issue now?  Well, first of all, it's NOT dead, it was just a lost squirmish in the never-ending battle for liberty.  And when it was a raging battle, we were severely chastized during that crusade for even insinuating that this assault on individual property rights would snowball down the slippery slope.  Yet today, we have Mayor Bloomberg assaulting individual rights nearly every day with stop and frisk and even denying your right to choose how big of a soft drink you'd like to buy.  Bloomberg rules NYC with an iron fist, but his crusades, especially against the 2nd Amendment are affecting people outside his jurisdiction.  We also have Gov Cuomo, rushing through the ill-conceived NY SAFE Act to attack another group of citizens to deny them their 2nd Amendment rights to own certain property to defend themselves, their families, and their property.

 

The assaults won't ever end until enough people wake up to just say NO!  We must honor the Constitution's legal framework that was set up to defend individual rights against usurpations of the collective and the tyrannical majority.  And just saying no once or twice here or there isn't enough.  We must demand that all such laws be reviewed and those that infringe on individual liberty must be rescinded or repealed.  A single such law makes a precedent for others to follow.

 

There's a reason for the many levels of government and the central powers are enumerated and severely limited.  Even statewide laws should be extremely limited.  Where freedom of association comes in is at the local level.  Don't like the colors your neighbor may paint his house, then join a local homeowners association and dictate away to attract like-minded people to your neighborhood sort of like what's going on in Kiryas Joel.

 

I can go on and on comparing the smoking ban and the NY SAFE Act to a myriad of social issues pertaining to individual rights such as one with the Defense of Marriage Act and the individual right of a citizen to marry whomever he or she pleases that is essential to maintain your right of free association.

As I continually stress, if you petition the government to limit the rights of any other individual to do anything you personally dislike, you empower them to come after you to limit yours.  Think long and hard about it and please ~ Help stop the madness!

NY SAFE Act - A Crime in Itself

My letter to my county legislator requesting support in condemning this egregious act.

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Sir,

I'm writing to you, as the county legislator for the district in which I reside, to register my disapproval of the NY SAFE Act and request you please support a County resolution to condemn it.

With the fast and furious loss of so many of our rights as citizens of a free republic in the past decade under the guise of necessity in the war on terror that brought us the Patriot Act, NDAA, targeted assassinations, proliferation of swat team raids, stop and frisk, TSA gropings, and DHS immigration checkpoints and suspicionless searches miles inland from our physical borders, to mention just a few, our second amendment rights are the last defense that we can ill afford to lose. When is it going to stop?
 

The right to defend ourselves, our family, and our property is a natural right. The police forces cannot physically perform such a duty, for if it is even possible to contact them during a life-threatening situation, they often arrive well after the crime has been committed and the perpetrator long gone. Even if they could always arrive in time, the Supreme Court of the US has consistently ruled that police forces have no special duty to protect anyone but themselves. Mayor Bloomberg's own NYC lawyers are using such defense in a lawsuit by Joseph Lozito against the NYPD, where officers present and actively engaged in a citywide manhunt for the murderer Maksim Gelman allegedly hid behind a locked subway door to protect themselves and watched as Gelman attacked and seriously wounded Mr Lozito until after he had subdued the culprit himself.

http://gothamist.com/2013/01/27/city_argues_nypd_had_no_special_dut.php

I find it amazingly ironic that so many like Governor Cuomo and Mayor Bloomberg are mindlessly and emotionally engaged in trying to disarm American citizens and have succeeded here in NY in rushing through this horrendous act. Yet the NY State Constitution still clearly states "The defense and protection of the state and of the United States is an obligation of all persons within the state." So our government servants expect us to be required to help defend the state and our country even after they've disarmed us from bearing any of the most effective self-defense tools, but police departments and officers they commission to enforce the laws that they've enacted have no legally binding duty to protect us citizens from criminals while we are taxed to pay for their services. That's insane.

It's even more disturbing in light of seeing Mayor Bloomberg's own security forces made up of NYPD officers follow a reporter who was armed with nothing more than a soda for simply asking the mayor a question and attempting to harrass him, demanding he show identification while acting well outside their jurisdiction .

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCC-rEx81PE

Again, I request you please support condemning this egregious Act and help us keep our state and country free.

Thank you,

v/r

Frank Koza

State of the Union - Ideological Subversion Nearly Complete

President Obama's State of the Union (SOTU) address was business as usual.  More government proposed to fix what more government broke.  You just can't fix a problem with the same mindset that created it in the first place.  Seriously, I was hoping Obamacare would provide him with some free contraception to slow down his procreative abilities of spawning additional government programs, but alas...

Soviet KGB defector, Yuri Besmenov, already had a better grasp of today's SOTU nearly 30 years ago than the current sitting president.  Please watch his interview with with G. Edward Griffin from back in 1984 at the link below.  It will give you a much better idea of where we are today than any of the political posturing you've heard tonight from President Obama or any of the mainstream media analysis of what we saw.  It's like he predicted everything Obama was going to say.

Soviet Subversion of the Free World Press

In that interview, Besmenov described the process of ideological subversion, a simple legitimate and overt four step process consisting of: 1) Demoralization, 2) Destabilization, 3) Crisis, 4) Normalization.   Interestingly, Besmenov used the terms of social justice and equality to describe the mindset behind what he called the useful idiots so demoralized to hate the ideology of their nation.  For destabilization, the subverter works on the main essentials such as the economy, defense systems and foreign relations.  It's purpose is to change the perception of reality, which we witnessed in the SOTU.  Besmenov pretty much predicted 30 years ago that we would allow the schmuks to bring the country to crisis and promise the people all sorts of goodies in promise of a paradise on earth to destabilize the economy, eliminate the principles of free market competition (Obamacare and bailouts, as well as the decimation of small businesses like family farms) and to put a big brother government in DC with benevolent dictators like Mondale (now Obama) who will go to Moscow to kiss the bottoms of a new generation of Soviet assassins (Obama's new after-election flexibility whispered to Putin)... 

IMHO, we're well into the normalization phase with the Patriot Act, NDAA, Agenda 21, drone wars, targeted killings, checkpoints, swat raids, stop and frisk, the Fed destroying the value of our currency and many other freedom stealing actions coming at us with blinding speed or already now in standard operation across the US.  Once they succeed in disarming us, it's all over...

The only solution and hope is to educate ourselves and our children to better understand what is going on around us.  We're in a state of war and have been for a long time against enemies determined to destroy the remnants of what was the last free country on the face of the earth.

The interview is about an hour and a half.  Also a worthy read is Besemov's Love Letter to America.

Enjoy...  Good luck and God Bless...

ARMAGEDDON - Mark Steyn

Mark Steyn gave a particularly insightful speech (links at bottom) about the decline of America as a world power in various concepts in his book, "After America, Get Ready for Armageddon", which drills down towards the roots of what we see going on today.  In it, he touches on subjects that fit neatly into the categories he has crafted into an acronym for Armageddon:

• A - Addiction
• R - Redistribution
• M - Monopoly
• A - Arteriosclerosis
• G - Global Retreat
• E - Educational Social Engineering
• D - Decay
• D - Disintegration
• O - Open Season
• N - Nuke's Away

In this speech, he talks about many things that I have been highlighting some examples here, but I still fail to capture the intrinsic interrelations as well as Mark has in this speech. 

Take a look, for it's well worth your time.  I'm not going to add anything here in this post, but if you see anything in his speech that warrants additional discussion based on what you know, feel free to leave a comment or two.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

Uncle Joe's Shack

We have a strange slang word , Uncle Tom, in our language that has come to be a slur to mean according to on-line Merriam-Webster: 

1. : a black who is overeager to win the approval of whites (as by obsequious behavior or uncritical acceptance of white values and goals)
2. : a member of a low-status group who is overly subservient to or cooperative with authority <the worst floor managers and supervisors by far are women … Some of them are regular Uncle Toms— Jane Fonda>

That certainly was not Harriet Beecher Stowe's intent, but that is lost on the prevailing attitudes of the heavily indoctrinated minds of today.  Joan Hedrick discusses a little of how it has come about:

Grafted onto the minstrel tradition, the stage versions of Stowe’s novel often portrayed Stowe’s hero as a shuffling, humorous Sambo. 

The Christ-like pacifism that ennobled Stowe’s Tom appeared to many in the increasingly confrontational racial politics of the twentieth century as subservience, or as James Weldon Johnson wrote in 1912, “foolishly good”—behavior that became branded as “like Uncle Tom.”

Stowe’s literary reputation, very high in the nineteenth century, was also declining as modernist critics viewed the work of Stowe and other politically motivated women writers as “melodramatic” and "sentimental.”
 

Such critic's views and the slur that gained acceptance are pure poppycock.  Uncle Tom's overt subservience was simply a survival technique in the face of an unbearable situation.  It's no different than people today swallowing their pride, integrity, and opinions to please their masters and keep their job.

Say Goodbye to Liberty

Nice song.



 

 

I See Drones Fly, That We Don't Need in the Sky.

The Preserving Rural Resources Act: Reducing Regulatory Burdens On Our Family Farmers

Nathan Hammock claims he's spent approximately $30,000 to multiple government agencies for approval to build a farm pond and not a shovel full of dirt has been moved after 2 1/2 years of fighting the approval process.

This is disgusting.

How 'Pro-Choice' Are You?

Reason.tv created an intriguing short video at the Democratic National Convention asking people about their thoughts on choice.

Now this is not to denigrate Democrats or liberals for there is plenty of hypocrisy in everyone's opinions on the way things ought to be to go around.  There are considerable numbers of Republicans and conservatives who are staunchly pro-life, yet they certainly don't mind dropping a bomb or two here or there.  As one lady said at 3:40 in that video, "So maybe there are some contradictions, but people are made up of contradictions."  Ain't that the truth!  But the larger question is:  Do we have to put up with it?  Of course not!

Brandon Raub - American Hero or Ticking Bomb?

The republican Mother is following the developing Brandon Raub story.  Her latest post Brandon Raub:  Crazy Like a Fox? gives us a most profound thought on what young Brandon may or may not realized he was doing when he predicted his detainment.  She says:

But getting back to Brandon and his comments, the one I found most interesting was the one made on August 14, a couple days before his arrest. "The Revolution will come for me. Men will be at my door soon to pick me up to lead it."
 

Adam Kokesh's interview with Brandon blows my mind, for he certainly sounds perfectly sane yet he's still being held after 72 hours on the opinion of someone who Ben Swann describes as a "special judge who is actually just a lawyer and part of what Virginia calls a Civil Commitment Board".

Now this is scary.  I've been looking at many other situations where Americans or permanent residents have been picked up and even convicted on skimpy evidence or coerced confessions.  They need to be tied to the escalating use of swat teams to prosecute the War on Drugs, which is spilling over into arrests of non-violent offenders in other areas such as student loan fraud and food co-ops.  There are so many more out there that I was planning on someday putting something together to better "connect the dots", but until then, here are a few.

 

• Justice for Yassin Aref - Monster or unwitting innocent victim?
• The Lackawanna Six - Many questions abound about how big of a threat they really were.  See also this.
• Robert Perske - Advocate for justice for those with learning disabilities.
• The Agitator - Radley Balko performs exhaustive investigative reporting on civil liberties and the criminal justice system.
• Sultans of Swat - Can they seriously come for you?

 

That's enough to give a glimpse into the serious implications of possible effects behind our government's imposition of the Patriot Act, NDAA, and other excesses into the usurpation of our Constitutionally protected rights.  Of course, without anyone left actively supporting their oath to abiding by that Constitution anymore, you have no rights.

Update (28 Aug 12) - Brandon, who was taken into custody on Aug 16, was ordered release by Circuit Judge W.Allan Sharret on Aug 23.

Brandon discusses his ordeal with John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute.

Welcome Back, Jim Traficant

For those who don't know him, Jim is a problem for the Feds who just won't go away even after they sent him away to serve 7 years in the prison system.  He was the thorn in the side of the Democrats as Ron Paul is to the Republicans.  He was scared then when they put him under indictment, but after having gone to prison, he no longer is and he's speaking out.  Welcome Back!

I saw a video of him giving a speech a Freedom Palooza in July 2011.  That speech is about 36 minutes long divided into 3 videos and it's well worth watching in its entirety.  In part 3, he recited this verse about a well-known incident that happened when he was in office which he claimed to have spoken on the House floor:

There was once a woman from Manassas

Who got tired of all the hassles

Claiming she'd been raped by her spouse

in her very own house

went in the kitchen to get a knife

fully prepared to take her husband's life

But realizing such a crime was too heinous

decided instead to cut off his "painless".

I don't know if this guy plays the piano

but from here on out, he'll sing like a soprano

But if he really, really did rape his wife

maybe, just maybe, he deserved that knife

After reciting it he says there was a much deeper message in there.  To me it is crystal clear that it is a stern warning to Congress to stop raping the American people for we, unimaginable to many of us ourselves because we're brainwashed to accept the repeated abuse, have many means available to help us emasculate the rapists. 

Jim details some of those ways when he talks about taxes and he has a plan.  Get rid of the IRS, repeal the 16th and 17th amendments, repeal the Federal Reserve Act, get rid of the Dept of Education, Energy, and the EPA.  Replace them all with a simple 25% sales tax, period.  What?!?  I won't explain it all here -- yet (even though I have been identifying parts of it and will continue to put it all together), for Jim details very well how it would work in his speech. 

Don't just shoot from the hip saying it won't work.  Watch the speech, then try to tell us why it won't work.

Freedom Palooza 2011, Traficant (1 of 3)
Freedom Palooza 2011, Traficant (2 of 3)
Freedom Palooza 2011, Traficant (3 of 3)

Three Commitments to Freedom

Sometime someone comes along and says exactly what is on your mind or in your feelings that you may often have difficulty in expressing yourself in your own words.  Yet they may find a way do it in words that are nothing less than pure poetry. 

Such is the case for me with Robery Perry Hardison (1933-2009) aka Barefoot Bob.  Barefoot continues to pass on many wisdoms he gained in his journey through life on his website, Barefoots World.  Bob has captured quite a few of his valuable lessons learned and the whole site is worth meandering through.  I focus here on his most intriguing thoughts on "Three Commitments to Freedom". 

1)  Dedication to Freedom - Foundational Commandment:  "Harm no one, then do what thou wilt"

2)  Stay in the Now - "The Now Moment is a Multidimensional Vehicle that can take you anywhere and anywhen you wish to go."

3)  Follow the Energy - making our lives into a flow rather than a struggle.

Take the journey through Bob's mind and you may find yourself being happier for the experience.  I know I am.  :)

Marriage, the Chick-fil-A debates

What a delight to see the outrage erupt from both sides over the relatively benign comments of Chick-fil-A's CEO, Dan Cathy.  Cathy said in his now famous interview in the Washington Times article, "Chick-fil-A chief’s views on marriage alienate gays, Muppets":

“We are very much supportive of the family — the biblical definition of the family unit. We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that. We know that it might not be popular with everyone, but thank the Lord, we live in a country where we can share our values and operate on biblical principles,”

Nothing wrong or particularly inflammatory with that, simply a man expressing his views.  However, this simple statement caused such an uproar in the gay community that several prominent Democrat office holders stepped up the dialogue proclaiming disdain towards Cathy for daring to speak publicly what was on his mind and threatening that they would use their "power" of office to make it difficult for the company to conduct business in their cities.  "How dare Cathy speak his mind?!?" is their message to us all.  Indeed the Mayor of Boston and Chicago both came out with scathing words against not only Cathy but the entire Chick-fil-A enterprise, which as far as we know, has broken no anti-discrimination laws.

Public Unions, the War on Smokers, and ACORN - What Do They Have In Common?

Daniel Bice over at the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel Online informs us that, "Firefighters union throws cold water on 9-11 float".  (h/t Bot for spreading the news)

The reason behind this union decision is the sponsor of this particular float, Matt Gorniak, has opted out of the union as allowed by a provision in his contract in that employees may elect to pay only their fair share of the union dues which are used for the associated costs of negotiating contracts.  Under Wisconsin state law, employees do not have to pay the portion of dues that funds the union's political lobbying, social, and ideological activities to the labor organization, but may instead donate that portion to a charity.  This applies as long as such a provision is approved by referendum under the bargaining unit agreement with the employees.

I've said before that we shouldn't judge all teachers (or cops or firefighters for that matter) by the spectacle of the union protests in Madison.  Many were silent for obvious reasons and it's a good development to see some start opting out and speaking out.  It warrants repeating:

What Woke You Up?

Meet a few of the Paulbots, as the MSM and supporters of the party-line of either party like to call practically anyone who says anything in support of Ron Paul, among other more derogatory terms.  A few of their stories are below, more can be found here.

cstuerke:

"I got back from Afghanistan in 2005 within a couple months my 4 years in the Marine Corps was up. I quickly realized I could not handle the US. I was mad at the world. I flew off the handle constantly. I went for help. I lasted about 5 min in the shrinks office and he was trying to give me drugs. I told him I didnt want drugs I wanted to be the old me. I decided to move. While in the Marine Corps I traveled all over Asia. I enjoyed Thailand the most and decided to move there. Fast forward to the last election. Sitting in Bangkok screaming at the TV watching the Fox News debate listening to the war mongering. Out of no where....."Just come home". Who is this guy I thought. I started to do research Dr. Paul and the libertarian philosophy. I started to look at people as individuals, unique in their own way. I wasn't mad at people anymore. Things made sense. I traveled back to the US about 10 months ago. I did it cause I believed in the cause of Liberty. I wanted to join the fight. I owe Ron Paul so much. I will be doing everything I can to see him get elected."

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