READ MARK STEYN!
Live Free or Die – a speech given at Hillsdale College, via GeekWithA.45.
No teaser quote. Go. Read. NOW.
Tag: Leviathan
“Representative” Government?
Via GeekWithA.45:
A legislative alert from the NRA-ILA:
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***ALERT for All Florida CCW License Holders***Legislators Raid CCW Trust Fund – Try to Intimidate Governor
DATE: May 11, 2009
TO: USF & NRA Member and Friends
FROM: Marion P. Hammer
USF Executive Director
NRA Past PresidentIn a last minute sneak attack on gun owners, the Florida Legislature raided the concealed weapons and firearms licensing trust fund. This not only effects resident CCW license holders, but non-resident Florida license holders as well!
They took $6 million from the Division of Licensing Concealed Weapons and Firearm Trust Fund that is intended, by law, to be used solely for administering the concealed weapons and firearms licensing program. (Read background information below)
Please Call, Fax, or Email Governor Charlie Crist IMMEDIATELY, and ask him to veto the $6 Million trust fund sweep from the Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services Division of Licensing authorized under Section 59 of the Conference Report of SB-2600.
Please send your email today!!!!!
And/or please contact the Governor’s office by phone or fax ASAP.
Phone number: (850) 488-4441 or (850) 488-7146
Fax number: (850) 487-0801Send your email to the Governor at this address: [email protected]
BACKGROUND:
Right now, the concealed weapons and firearms licensing program is backlogged and overloaded, due in part, to the refusal of budget officials and the Legislature to allow the Division of Licensing to use its own trust fund money to hire more employees and expand/upgrade equipment.
Crates of unopened mail containing license and license renewal applications sit in storage. The backlog of mail sitting unopened, at times, has extended beyond 90 days while existing licenses are expiring because renewal applications haven’t been opened and processed.
Currently (although the Division of Licensing has been working weekend shifts to clear the backlog), it is taking 13-14 weeks to process a “perfect” application once it has been opened. That is an unequivocal violation of the law that requires issuance or denial of a license by a specific time –– a violation of law that legislative leaders are condoning by their actions.
THE LAW REQUIRES THE DIVISION OF LICENSING TO ISSUE A LICENSE WITHIN 90 DAYS OF RECEIPT OF THE APPLICATION — or deny the license “for cause”, based upon the criteria set forth in the law. Theft of operating funds by the Legislature is not “just cause” for failure to issue licenses or renewals within 90 days.
While applications sit gathering dust, legislative leaders took $6 million of approximately $8 million held in the trust fund. That $6 million is supposed to be used to pay employees, buy upgraded equipment, upgrade or replace computers or software and to otherwise administer the concealed weapons and firearms licensing program.
BUT, feigning a desperate need for funds for education and health care, legislative leaders recklessly and ruthlessly confiscated trust fund money. Why? Because they were building a so-called “working capital” fund for the 2010-12 legislative term, reported now to be in the neighborhood of $1.8 BILLION DOLLARS. This so-called “working capital fund” is for the use of future legislative leaders.
They didn’t take that money for education. They didn’t take that money for health care. They didn’t take that money to save jobs. They didn’t take that money to avoid pay cuts, or budget cuts — they took the money to help build their own fund.
While Senate leadership reportedly fought to stop the ruthless raids on trust funds, in the end, they simply caved and let the House of Representatives prevail.
The bad behavior doesn’t end there.
Obviously fearing the Governor would use his line-item veto to stop trust fund raids, proviso language was inserted in the bill in a clear attempt to intimidate the Governor.
The proviso language, states that if any portion of the moneys swept from this and other trust funds does not become law (meaning it is vetoed), that portion of the money shall be deducted from the EDUCATION BUDGET. This is clearly designed to keep the Governor from vetoing trust fund sweeps, and prevent trust fund money from being taken back out the House leadership’s so-called “working capital” fund.
Money in the concealed weapons trust fund came from gun owners. No money to administer and run the concealed weapons and firearms licensing program has ever come from general revenue, or any other state fund or revenue source. The taking of these gun owner user fees is an unauthorized tax on the exercise of the Second Amendment.
AGAIN, Please call, fax and email Governor Crist IMMEDIATELY, and ask him to veto the $6 Million raid on the Concealed Weapons & Firearms Trust Fund!
Send your email to the Governor at this address: [email protected]
Please send your email today!!!!!
You may also call the Executive Office of the Governor at: (850) 488-7146.
I am reminded of these quotes:
The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and peace, and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of men, at all times, and under all circumstances. No doctrine involving more pernicious consequences was ever invented by the wit of man than that any of its provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of government. Such a doctrine leads directly to anarchy or despotism. – U.S. Supreme Court, Caldwell v. Parker (1866), 252 U. S. 376
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Decency, security and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subject to the rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen. In a government of laws, existence of government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the potent, omnipresent teacher. For good or ill, it teaches the whole people by example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a law-breaker, it breeds contempt for the law. It invites every man to become a law unto himself. It invites anarchy. — U.S. v. Olmstead, 277 U.S. 438 (1928), Justice Brandeis, dissenting
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Experience teaches us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government’s purposes are beneficent. – Louis D. Brandeis
—
The government consists of a gang of men exactly like you and me. They have, taking one with another, no special talent for the business of government; they have only a talent for getting and holding office. Their principal device to that end is to search out groups who pant and pine for something they can’t get and to promise to give it to them. Nine times out of ten that promise is worth nothing. The tenth time is made good by looting A to satisfy B. In other words, government is a broker in pillage, and every election is sort of an advance auction sale of stolen goods. — H. L. Mencken
Quote of the Day
Quote of the Day
Quietly, but not surrepitiously, the numbers of dissatisfied American individuals is growing, and many of them are armed, but not offensively dangerous. Meaning these American individuals have come to the conclusion that America is heading down a path it should not be on, trespassing so to speak, pillaging along the way, and armed resistance may, unfortunately, be required. They’ve had all they can stand, and they can’t stand any more. – John Venlet, Improved Clinch – Quietly on my Mind
Quote for the YEAR
Quote for the YEAR
It’s past time to vote these criminals out of office. It’s time we peasants got a wild-eyed mob together. We gather our pitchforks and our torches, we go to Washington, and we track these people down with hunting dogs. – Bill Whittle, Afterburner – Mountains of Money: Do you know how much $1 trillion is?
I fully expect Bill to be arrested shortly for sedition or inciting to riot, or some other similar charge.
But he’s right. And we’re fooked.
See also this post by Joe Huffman.
Quote of the Day
Quote of the Day
I am in no way implying that this is some formidable armed force that will rise up and recover America to her Constitutional greatness. what I AM saying though, is that I’m seeing a level of dissatisfaction and concern that was not even approached in the years of the Clintons. – Mostly Cajun, A Considerable Number
And we’re just over 100 days in . . .
Vanderboegh Speaks Sense:
We are not ready. Not politically, not militarily. I don’t know about you, Anonymous. Are YOU ready to take on an even greater military force than the British Empire of the Eighteenth Century? I’m not. No one I know is. Well, there ARE a few folks up in Winston County. 😉 Anyway, FEW people I know are. The Minutemen and common militia at Lexington and Concord and long road back into Boston had been preparing for YEARS. Read General Galvin’s book, The Minutemen. The ability to blunt and harry a British column was not an accident. I tell you plainly, WE ARE NOT READY. The military groundwork has not been laid. The political groundwork has not been laid. We are not ready and you want to start something that will make our defeat easy?
“A long train of abuses and usurpations.” When did Jefferson write those words? MORE THAN A YEAR AFTER LEXINGTON. Olofson’s case certainly falls into that category. But it is not yet time. This fight, if all else fails politically to prevent it, MUST be undertaken reluctantly. We must accept the burden of the abuses and usurpations as long as they can be borne, so that when we round on the whipmaster and feed him his whip it will be seen as justice by as many onlookers as possible. The Regulars MUST march out of Boston of their own accord. They MUST fire the first shot. Or the second. Or the third. THEN, and ONLY then, we will finish them and their tyranny. If they pass laws to accomplish this (they think) without direct confrontation, we will defy the laws and goad them into attempting to force us to comply. Think Boston Tea Party. Their whole system depends upon willing subjects. They don’t react well to defiance. They WILL give us the moral high ground. Their appetites will demand it.
Because what happens the moment after that shot is fired is so horrible than any sane person would do anything to avoid it. I have NO patience for someone who WANTS A FIGHT. It usually means they’ve never been in one. Do you understand what horrors await us all after that terrible moment? Have you ever seen the bloated bodies of children on the road? Entire neighborhoods in flames? Heard screams of dying innocents in the night? Smelled roasting flesh of men, women and children, people, innocent people, even as you, or me, or our loved ones?
I doubt it. But you know what? Neither have I. My son has. But I have not. Still, I am smart enough to understand that that’s what happens when you open up the Pandora’s box of civil war. Why wouldn’t you do everything in your power to put that off as long as possible, until you could not delay a second longer this side of defeat and slavery?
There’s a lot more, before and after.
The only real difference that exists between me and Mike in this case is that I don’t believe the Republic and the Constitution can be restored. As Ambrose Bierce put it, revolution will resort – at most – only in “an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment.” My choice, and the choice of people like me, will be whether to live in servitude or die resisting it. As Mostly Cajun put it, “Retire? I will probably get killed in the early battles of the coming revolution.” And the reason for that is illustrated by JD of Ballistic Deanimation and many others (including yours truly) in posts like Dumbing Down and The George Orwell Daycare Center. We’ve been outmaneuvered, and now we’re overwhelmingly outnumbered. The Founders could at least depend on a third of their countrymen to support them. We cannot. And I don’t think we’ll ever again be able to, because Leviathan can Olofson anyone, at any time, (or worse) and we’ll never be ready. Remember Atlas Shrugged:
There is no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is to crack down on criminals. When there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking the law. Create a nation of lawbreakers and then you can cash in on the guilt. Now that’s the system!
So people like Mike and like me are considered “anti-government extremists.” No we’re not. We’re Constitutionalists, who think that our elected and appointed officials ought to mean it when they swear their oaths to “uphold and defend the Constitution.” They ought to at least be somewhat familiar with the thing. But that time has passed, sometime around FDR’s first term. The next “shot heard ’round the world” will never be fired. There will just be a few more Carl Dregas, a few more Marvin Heemeyers, and probably a Timothy McVeigh or two. And the screws will tighten further, and the long train of abuses and usurpations will continue. Eventually a breaking point will be reached, and we still won’t be ready.
And we’ll lose.
And that’s why my line-in-the-sand is my front door, but not, necessarily, yours.
On that happy, note: Sleep tight.
The Ballad of Timothy Geithner
The Ballad of Timothy Geithner
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAdJLLmpWBU&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&w=425&h=344]
“Only in America, folks. Pass it on.”
Consider it passed, Ms. McKinney. Consider it passed.
This Makes More Sense Now . . .
This Makes More Sense Now . . .
. . . well, if sense is the right word.
One of the books I picked up recently is Matthew Bracken’s Enemies Foreign and Domestic. Actually, I ordered Domestic Enemies via Amazon and it came in on Thursday, but I bought Enemies Foreign and Domestic at the Funshow Saturday. I’m reading it first. I’m about halfway done.
I now understand the Department of Homeland Security’s “Rightwing Extremism” report we were all talking about a couple of weeks ago.
Apparently someone in the department read it recently.
I bet they had kittens.
Good.
The concept of Personal Sovereignty must scare the piss out of them.
Just not enough, you know, to actually stop.
Seen this?
Seen this?
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJkXl4wG2eU&hl=en&fs=1&w=425&h=344]
(Embedding has been denied, and the only version available runs seven minutes. The portion of interest – well, of greater interest, comes at about 3:30-4:30.)
I am so confident in the superiority of the public health care option that I think he has every reason to be frightened.
I’m certainly frightened. P.J. O’Rourke nailed it long ago:
If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it’s free.
Rep. Schakowsky said it out loud:
This is not a principled fight.
Indeed not.
I’m reminded of another quote, Henry Louis Mencken this time:
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.
BOHICA
As I Head Off for Boomershoot . . .
As I Head Off for Boomershoot . . .
Something for you to think about, from Billy Beck:
All the political initiative now is with the forces of Amsoc. Where the so-called conservatives have fought generations of piece-meal rear-guard action against the integral resolution of socialism to corrode its worst enemy — the practical and living ideal of freedom: America — out of existence, and as they have done so as effects of disintegrated philosophy, the socialists are assuming the commanding heights in full political battle gear.
It is important to understand that this can only and inevitably mean physical battle gear, right in front of your eyes, right here in America. The spirit of this place that was not born of the slave’s obeisance will require this government to bare its fangs. I still believe that. The ways in which and the singular souls from Americans select their values are not yet so beaten to any alien molds so well that they will peaceably stand for the conformations that this government will eventually require and demand — not “ask”.
Do read the whole thing. Oh, and this:
A Thought For Your Day
“Officers of the police or revenue easily adapt themselves to any form of government.”
(Edward Gibbon, “The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire”, Vol. I, ch. 3, footnote 20, p. 59)
Also from Billy.
I’ll be on the road the next couple of days, but if at all possible, I’ll be posting at least a little something in the evenings.