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- I forgot to warn you about the ridiculous title, I'm guessing one of his students posted it to Youtube, however the content is very informative and should only be judged after viewing. The professor shows how something like Agenda 21 is destined to fail on every level, how there can be no such thing as a planned sustainable community. I thought the argument was very powerful. Part 3 made the best mathematical analogy I've seen in a while.
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- I've watched it, a few times a few years ago. I'm remembering it highlighting Peak Oil alot, but also other things I'm more in agreement with - such as the point you're making. But even mathematically proven logic won't penetrate their mindsets or stop the progressive agenda - IMO. We won't convince them to stop, we'll have to stop them.
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- Now that's where we agree, the mindset will not be changed by a silly video. I only meant it for those of us with brain cells enough to see past the hype. Maybe useful as a tool of logic in your next argument.Agenda 21 is very popular with the less enlightened, libs, progressives and the like, and Atlas makes a good point about how "we" are paying for it. Sometimes I'm glad I'm old and won't have to be around to see this one become law.
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- You and I may not be around to see A21 become law but the process to (subversively) bring it about in the US is in high gear. Even in Alaska: Homer, Juneau and Sitka have signed on to the 'sustainable cities' program.
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Through its local, regional and international programs, and projects, ICLEI works with local governments to generate political awareness of key themes in the area of sustainability.
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The UN Convention on Biological Diversity,
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Agenda 21
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- This will fire your rocket for the day - this is where the trillions go -
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The Piatts Would Approve
Demonstrators filling downtown's Piatt Park on Garfield Place as part of the anti-corporate, Occupy Wall Street protests should take heart: The park's namesakes likely would support your actions.
In an excellent post on The Daily Bellwether blog, writer Bill Sloat looks at the history of the Piatt brothers, Donn and Abram, and the causes they held dear. Abram Piatt was a wealthy farmer and poet who served as a general for the Union Army during the Civil War. Donn Piatt was a staff officer for the Union Army.
After the war, the brothers published Belford's Magazine, which had a decidedly populist bent. Despite their posh background, the Piatts used their position to rally opposition against corrupt Wall Street executives and politicians including President Ulysses S. Grant.
The land for the park was given to the city in 1817 by Benjamin M. Piatt, a federal judge who was the father of Abram and Donn.As Sloat writes, “While wealthy and prominent themselves, the Piatts of the 1870s and 1880s raged against Wall Streets's influence over Washington politicians. Two Piatt brothers, Donn and Abram, published and edited Belford's Magazine after the Civil War, which reported that Wall Street was screwing soldiers out of their benefits by manipulating elected officials and the U.S. Treasury. The magazine's owners also denounced President Grant's administration as corrupt and controlled by financiers. It said the Republicans sold out to the big money crowd. Donn Piatt so inflamed the D.C. political establishment that he was indicted for fomenting insurrection in 1877, a charge that was eventually tossed out of court. He complained about the 'kings of Wall Street' with their chests of money in the Gilded Age.”
Somewhere, Abram and Donn are smiling at the demonstrators and wishing them well.
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- If you had a chance to stop Obamacare, AND advance the Tenth Amendment right of the various states, to interpose and even to nullify actions that restrict the liberties of individual citizens, would you want to take it?There has been a flurry of activity in the Supreme Court as the U.S. Department of Justice and other litigants have filed petitions seeking review by the nation’s highest court of the constitutionality of Obamacare. There is no doubt that the Court will agree to hear most of these cases. But one case might not make the cut.The Commonwealth of Virginia has challenged the Obamacare provision that mandates individual Virginians must purchase a health insurance policy approved by the federal government.The Virginia suit was decided on the merits, in favor of Virginia, in the district court, but was then reversed on appeal by the 4th Circuit Appeals Court. The appeals ruling was NOT on the merits (or Obamacare probably would've lost), but on the ground that Virginia had no legal "standing" to sue. This panel, all of whom were appointed by a Democratic President, ruled that . . .
- Virginia wasn't harmed because the individual mandate doesn't require the Commonwealth to do anything.
- Virginia had no right to defend its citizens against unconstitutional federal laws.
Had these appeals court judges NEVER heard of the Tenth Amendment?Can the various states move to protect, that is interpose or even nullify, those laws which . . .- impeded on the individual liberties of their citizens, AND
- are beyond the enumerated powers of the Constitution?
Enter Bond v. United States. This recent June, 2011 decision has potentially monumental OPPORTUNITY written all over it.In a 9-0 decision the Court held that not only states, but also individuals have standing to challenge federal laws as violations of state sovereignty under the 10th Amendment. This decision could be a dramatic leap forward for liberty, reversing decades of decisions tracing back to the 1930's.Back then, Franklin Delano Roosevelt threatened to pack the court with more Justices who'd rule in favor of unconstitutional New Deal programs. In 1936, in order to protect the integrity of the high court, Justice Owen Roberts, the swing vote, started ruling in favor of FDR's programs. It is called "The stitch in time that saved nine."While these rulings may have prevented Roosevelt's judicial manipulation scheme, they eviscerated the limits of the Interstate Commerce Clause and the Necessary and Proper Clause of the Constitution. They quickly brought us to the point that a man growing food in his own garden could be regulated by the FEDERAL government, because even though he wasn't selling anything, his actions affected interstate commerce.Talk about tortured logic!Since then, the logic has been tormented and stretched further, so that now the Obamacare forces are arguing that a FEDERAL mandate on individuals, requiring them to buy a private good or service (a health insurance policy), is constitutionally permitted under the interstate commerce clause.Shouldn't the various states intercede on behalf of their citizens? Can't they see to it that their rights are protected from federal overreach? Can the states block an unconstitutional mandate?The 4th Circuit said NO.And the Bond decision just might be the reversal tool we've been waiting for. Bond is a green light from this Supreme Court for INDIVIDUALS, as well as states, to bring more cases under the Tenth Amendment.In Bond, individuals are essentially being given standing. Old precedent held that Tenth Amendment arguments could only be raised by states. But here's how the Court ruled in Bond . . .In other words, individuals have a right to use their state government, to stand up to federal usurpations of power.Indeed, Virginia interposed on behalf of its citizens. The state passed the Virginia Health Freedom Act, which prohibits any act by any person, even the federal government, to compel any Virginia citizen to purchase a health insurance policy.We believe the Commonwealth's petition to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court on the subject of Obamacare should be approved, over the 4th appeals court's objections. Do you?They are quite familiar with the controversy and the decision. They stand VERY ready to prepare an excellent brief.Right now, we believe that . . .- Virginia needs all the help they can get in order to get the Supreme Court to take up their case with the other anti-Obamacare lawsuits
- The Commonwealth's arguments are unique and important as to the constitutionality of Obamacare
But, we ALSO believe there's something MORE at stake here . . .. . . the future of state nullification as a tool to protect our rights.A friend of the court brief could be very helpful to Virginia's odds, if only we had the resources to file it.
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- I think you wear blinders for horses on your eyes and you must remove them to see the whole picture. Who controls the money purse strings, who puts bills on the floor for a vote, and who pass's the bills and sends them for the president to sign. One answer, the majority rulers that control congress of the United States. Now lets look at that time frame for control of congress. In the last 70 years, 1940 thru 2010 the U.S. Congress has been controlled by: U.S. House of Representatives, Democrats 80%, Republicans 20% of the 70 year time. U.S. Senate, Democrats 71.4%, Republicans 28.6% of the 70 year time. WHO DO YOU REALLY BLAME?
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference.
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- Everything has its limit - iron ore cannot be educated into gold.
Mark Twain
It is health that is real wealth and not pieces of gold and silver.
Mohandas Gandhi
The most pitiful among men is he who turns his dreams into silver and gold.
Khalil Gibran
A sense is what has the power of receiving into itself the sensible forms of things without the matter, in the way in which a piece of wax takes on the impress of a signet-ring without the iron or gold.
Aristotle
The desire of gold is not for gold. It is for the means of freedom and benefit.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
All the gold which is under or upon the earth is not enough to give in exchange for virtue.
Plato
More gold has been mined from the thoughts of men than has been taken from the earth.
Napoleon Hill
I've spent, I think, close to the last decade effortlessly and magically converting your tin cans into pure gold.
Charlie Sheen
The idea that to make a man work you've got to hold gold in front of his eyes is a growth, not an axiom. We've done that for so long that we've forgotten there's any other way.
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold.
Leo Tolstoy
Read more:http://www.brainyquote.com/words/go/gold169805.html#ixzz1cCsBxU5t
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- Goldwater Institute Daily
November 1, 2011
Justice in every sense
by Clint Bolick
This month marks Justice Clarence Thomas’ 20th anniversary on the U.S. Supreme Court. Emerging from one of the most tumultuous confirmation battles in history, Justice Thomas has become one of the greatest Supreme Court justices in the Court's history.
What makes Justice Thomas both unique and inspiring is his approach to constitutional analysis. In every case, he starts literally at the beginning, with the text and intent of the provision at issue. More than any justice, he is willing to do the job he is sworn to do: to enforce and uphold the Constitution, regardless of whatever errors the Court may have made in interpreting it since its ratification.
Whether the issue is Second Amendment rights, racial preferences, property rights, federalism, or religion, Justice Thomas recourses to the Constitution’s original meaning. Though he is often perceived as acting in lockstep with another excellent justice, Antonin Scalia, in fact he is far more likely to follow original intent than tradition or majority will, recognizing that the principal purpose of the Constitution is to limit government power and protect individual rights.
In the 2000 decision in Troxel v. Granville, for instance, Scalia dissented from the decision striking down a Washington law that gave grandparents visitation rights over the parents’ wishes, disparaging the notion of “unenumerated rights.” Thomas, by contrast, found that the parents’ right to control the upbringing of their children is fundamental and can be overcome only by a compelling purpose.
Similarly, while Scalia voted to strike down California’s medical marijuana law in Gonzales v. Raich, Thomas voted to uphold it because it involved purely intrastate commerce. “If Congress can regulate this under the Commerce Clause, then it can regulate virtually anything,” Thomas proclaimed. “Federal power expands, and never contracts, with each locution.” Nowhere was this insight more prescient than with the enactment of the federal health care law, on which freedom advocates must hope that Thomas’ views prevail.
Nowhere was Thomas more eloquent than in his concurring opinion in McDonald v. City of Chicago, in which he not only voted to strike down Chicago’s gun ban, but also to overturn the Slaughter-House Cases, the 1873 ruling that demolished the privileges or immunities clause and judicial protection for economic liberty.
I was very lucky early in my career to have Clarence Thomas as a mentor. We are all lucky to have him serving on the U.S. Supreme Court. May he serve another 20 years, with continued health and unsurpassed integrity and devotion to principle.
Clint Bolick is director of the Goldwater Institute’s Scharf-Norton Center for Constitutional Litigation.
Learn More:
U.S. Supreme Court: Troxel v. Granville
U.S. Supreme Court: Gonzales v. Raich
U.S. Supreme Court: McDonald v. City of Chicago
Clint Bolick: David’s Hammer
Clint Bolick: Death Grip
Read the online version of this daily email here.
Goldwater Institute DailyNovember 1, 2011Justice in every senseThis month marks Justice Clarence Thomas’ 20th anniversary on the U.S. Supreme Court. Emerging from one of the most tumultuous confirmation battles in history, Justice Thomas has become one of the greatest Supreme Court justices in the Court's history.What makes Justice Thomas both unique and inspiring is his approach to constitutional analysis. In every case, he starts literally at the beginning, with the text and intent of the provision at issue. More than any justice, he is willing to do the job he is sworn to do: to enforce and uphold the Constitution, regardless of whatever errors the Court may have made in interpreting it since its ratification.
Whether the issue is Second Amendment rights, racial preferences, property rights, federalism, or religion, Justice Thomas recourses to the Constitution’s original meaning. Though he is often perceived as acting in lockstep with another excellent justice, Antonin Scalia, in fact he is far more likely to follow original intent than tradition or majority will, recognizing that the principal purpose of the Constitution is to limit government power and protect individual rights.In the 2000 decision in Troxel v. Granville, for instance, Scalia dissented from the decision striking down a Washington law that gave grandparents visitation rights over the parents’ wishes, disparaging the notion of “unenumerated rights.” Thomas, by contrast, found that the parents’ right to control the upbringing of their children is fundamental and can be overcome only by a compelling purpose.Similarly, while Scalia voted to strike down California’s medical marijuana law in Gonzales v. Raich, Thomas voted to uphold it because it involved purely intrastate commerce. “If Congress can regulate this under the Commerce Clause, then it can regulate virtually anything,” Thomas proclaimed. “Federal power expands, and never contracts, with each locution.” Nowhere was this insight more prescient than with the enactment of the federal health care law, on which freedom advocates must hope that Thomas’ views prevail.Nowhere was Thomas more eloquent than in his concurring opinion in McDonald v. City of Chicago, in which he not only voted to strike down Chicago’s gun ban, but also to overturn the Slaughter-House Cases, the 1873 ruling that demolished the privileges or immunities clause and judicial protection for economic liberty.I was very lucky early in my career to have Clarence Thomas as a mentor. We are all lucky to have him serving on the U.S. Supreme Court. May he serve another 20 years, with continued health and unsurpassed integrity and devotion to principle.Clint Bolick is director of the Goldwater Institute’s Scharf-Norton Center for Constitutional Litigation.Learn More:U.S. Supreme Court: Troxel v. GranvilleU.S. Supreme Court: Gonzales v. RaichU.S. Supreme Court: McDonald v. City of ChicagoClint Bolick: David’s HammerClint Bolick: Death GripRead the online version of this daily email here.
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