August 30, 2014

United Nations Declares That Humans are the Cause of Dangerous Global Warming

UN Panel: Global Warming Human-Caused, Dangerous

Police Officers Immune from Prosecution for Breaking the Laws That Govern Us

There is evidence that courts cannot or choose not to see systemic patterns in police misconduct. One barrier is the doctrine of immunity that protects individual police officers from lawsuits -- defendant officers are usually indemnified by the municipalities or unions if an alleged misconduct is within the line of duty. Therefore, there is no real incentive for police officers to change their practices to ensure that individual rights are protected.

It is believed that without substantial social change, the control of police misconduct is improbable at best.

In the United States, investigation of cases of police deviance has often been left to internal police commissions and/or district attorneys (DAs). Internal police commissions have often been criticized for a lack of accountability and for bias favoring officers, as they frequently declare upon review that the officer(s) acted within the department's rules or according to their training. The ability of district attorneys to investigate police deviance has also been called into question, as DAs depend on help from police departments to bring cases to trial.

Most civil actions against police officers for misconduct are filed under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. However, it is difficult to succeed in § 1983 claims against police officers, and the successes in § 1983 claims do not necessarily result in changes in police practices. Further, judicially imposed barriers limit the value of remedies under § 1983 so § 1983 claims have not been effective in deterring police misconduct. Without much change in police practices, § 1983 continues to be ineffective in deterring police misconduct.
 
Numerous human rights observers have raised concerns about increased police brutality in the U.S. in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center. The "War on Terror" has created a generalized climate of impunity for law enforcement officers and contributed to the erosion of what few accountability mechanisms exist for civilian control over law enforcement agencies. As a result, police brutality and abuse persist unabated and undeterred across the country.

Surveys of police officers found that police brutality, along with sleeping on duty, was viewed as one of the most common and least likely to be reported forms of police deviance other than corruption.

Other factors that have been cited as encouraging police brutality include:
  • institutionalized systems of police training, management, and culture; 
  • a criminal-justice system that discourages prosecutors from pursuing police misconduct vigorously; 
  • a political system that responds more readily to police than to the residents of inner-city and minority communities; and 
  • a racist political culture that fears crime and values tough policing more than it values due process for all its citizens.
Studies have shown that most police brutality goes unreported.

Police Officer Will Not Be Charged For Killing Napster Exec While Texting And Driving — Because It's Apparently OK For Police To Do That

August 29, 2014

Business Insider - Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy Andrew Wood will not be charged for fatally running over former Napster COO Milton Olin Jr. in his patrol car while the officer was typing a message into his computer.


The instance exposes the different way that law enforcement officials are treated versus civilians in cases where a person is killed because of texting while driving.

It's illegal to text and drive in California; the state has a specific law against it. Civilians caught doing it can expect to face charges. But a report from the Los Angeles District Attorney's office shows that the rules may be applied differently to cops.

The incident involving Olin and Wood happened in December 2013 in Calabasas, California. Olin, a key figure at the peer-to-peer music-sharing company that pioneered the online music download industry, was cycling in the bicycle lane when he was killed instantly by Wood's patrol car.

Wood drifted into the bicycle lane while typing a reply to a colleague who wanted to know whether any other officers were required to attend a fire reported at a high school he had just left. He was trying to tell the other officer that no further backup was needed.

The Los Angeles District Attorney's report into the incident says that even though it is illegal to text and drive, Wood was not negligent because police officers are expected to respond quickly to messages from colleagues:
LA County District Attorney
Wood had also been texting his wife from his personal phone minutes before the crash, but those texts were not thought to have contributed to Wood's inattention while driving, the DA's office said.

In a statement taken at the scene, Wood claimed that Olin had veered into his lane. The DA reported that the opposite was true.
Deputy who killed ex-Napster COO will not be charged b/c he was answering work email http://t.co/cbtnJdtzxU pic.twitter.com/ikk50MQmmD — daniel (@cyclingreporter) August 28, 2014
Many of Los Angeles' cyclists are furious at the lack of charges, according to the LAist.
"To say biking advocates are unhappy with the DA's decision to not press charges is an understatement."

August 26, 2014

Veteran Disability Claims Reach Historic Highs with U.S. Encouragement

With US encouragement, VA disability claims rise sharply

July 17, 2014 

Los Angeles Times - As Malvin Espinosa prepared to retire from the Army in 2011, a Veterans Affairs counselor urged him to apply for disability pay. 

List all your medical problems, the counselor said.

Espinosa, a mechanic at Fort Lee in Virginia, had never considered himself disabled. But he did have ringing in his ears, sleep problems and aching joints. He also had bad memories of unloading a dead soldier from a helicopter in Afghanistan.
"Put it all down," he recalled the counselor saying.
Espinosa did, and as a result, he is getting a monthly disability check of $1,792, tax free, most likely for the rest of his life. The VA deems him 80 percent disabled due to sleep apnea, mild post-traumatic stress disorder, tinnitus and migraines.

The 41-year-old father of three collects a military pension along with disability pay _ and as a civilian has returned to the base, working full-time training mechanics. His total income of slightly more than $70,000 a year is about 20 percent higher than his active-duty pay.

Similar stories are playing out across the VA.

With the government encouraging veterans to apply, enrollment in the system climbed from 2.3 million to 3.7 million over the last 12 years.

The growth comes even as the deaths of older former service members have sharply reduced the veteran population. Annual disability payments have more than doubled to $49 billion _ nearly as much as the VA spends on medical care.

More than 875,000 veterans of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars have joined the disability rolls so far. That's 43 percent of those who served _ a far higher percentage than for any previous U.S. conflict, including World War II and Vietnam, which had significantly higher rates of combat wounds.

Disabled veterans of the recent wars have an average of 6.3 medical conditions each, also higher than other conflicts.

Incentives to seek disability ratings have increased due to changes in VA policy, including expanded eligibility for post-traumatic stress disorder and a number of afflictions that affect tens of millions of civilians.

Nearly any ailment that originated during service or was aggravated by it _ from sports injuries to shrapnel wounds _ is covered under the rationale that the military is a 24/7 job.

The disability system was unprepared for the massive influx of claims, leading to backlogs of veterans waiting months or longer to start receiving their checks.

But once the payments begin, many veterans say, they are a life-saver.

Ray Lopez struggled to keep a steady job after leaving the Marines in 2001. Stints as a TSA screener, insurance agent and soft drink salesman ended badly.

At 35, Lopez is rated 70 percent disabled for back, shoulder and knee pain, as well as post-traumatic stress disorder from having witnessed a deadly helicopter crash off the coast of San Diego.

He couldn't support his wife and two children, he said, without the monthly $1,800 disability check.
"If it wasn't for that, I'd be on the streets," he said.
Lopez trains boxers three days a week and is pursuing a community college degree.
___

The generosity of veterans benefits is on an upswing in a pendulum arc as old as the republic.

During the Revolutionary War, disability payments were limited to soldiers who lost limbs or suffered other serious wounds.

Lobbying by Civil War veterans led to coverage that included peacetime injuries and illnesses.

After World War I, compensation was scaled back to cover only combat injuries and diseases contracted in war. But World War II brought an expansion to include all conditions that appeared during service or shortly afterward.

In the 1950s, President Dwight Eisenhower _ a former five-star general _ tried to rein in the costs. He found little support in Congress, and the basic system has remained the same ever since.

The VA uses a formula that combines a veteran's conditions into a rating of between 0 percent and 100 percent _ in 10 percent increments. The higher the rating, the larger the disability payment.

Nearly half of those in the system have ratings of 30 percent or below. They can apply for higher ratings if ailments grow worse.
"The disability system has this escalator quality," said David Autor, an economist at MIT. "Once you get on, you just keep going up."
The current benefits boom began with a political battle over Agent Orange and other herbicides used to clear jungle brush in Vietnam.

In 1991, Congress and the VA started paying veterans who had served on the ground there _ meaning possible exposure to Agent Orange _ and went on to develop diseases that eventually included lung and prostate cancer.

Then in 2001, the VA added Type 2 diabetes to the list. The disease affects 1 in 4 U.S. senior citizens and has not been definitely linked to Agent Orange. But veterans groups lobbied to include it.
"The feeling was, let's give them whatever they need and move on," said Anthony Principi, the VA secretary at the time. Through 2013, the number of veterans receiving compensation for diabetes climbed from 46,395 to 398,480.
The Obama administration added three more conditions in 2010: Parkinson's disease, a rare form of leukemia and ischemic heart disease. Since then, more than 100,000 cases of heart disease _ the leading cause of death in the U.S. _ have been added to the disability rolls.

Veterans of all generations also have been encouraged to apply for compensation for post-traumatic stress disorder, with Vietnam and the recent wars driving the growth in roughly equal measure over the last decade.

Some veterans said they have lived with the disorder ever since leaving the military. Others kept it at bay until recent wars or major life changes released old demons. The economic uncertainties of retirement age also gave veterans more incentive to apply.

As post-traumatic stress disorder claims boomed, the Obama administration made them easier to win.

The VA had long required documentation of a traumatic event that resulted in post-traumatic stress disorder. But in 2010, in keeping with the current science, the administration said a qualifying trauma could simply be a fear-inducing situation such as traveling through enemy territory.

Karen Olszewski, who works in Long Beach for the nonprofit Vietnam Veterans of America, said that once the rules changed, she started calling men whose cases she had rejected.
"I told them to come back," she said.
More than 1.3 million veterans of the Vietnam era received $21 billion in disability pay last year. From Afghanistan and Iraq, the cost was $9.3 billion _ but it is growing fast.

Among disabled veterans of recent wars, 43 percent have tinnitus, the most common condition. Rounding out the top 10 are back or neck strain, knee problems, post-traumatic stress disorder, migraines, arthritis of the spine, scars, ankle trouble, defective hearing and high blood pressure.
"They're filing for the basic wear and tear of military service, not combat injuries," said Phillip Carter, a veterans expert at the Center for a New American Security, a nonpartisan think tank.
One of the latest trends, resulting from another policy change, is a rise in disability determinations related to sleep apnea _ from 11,742 to 164,107 over the last decade.

The Pentagon had long prohibited veterans from receiving disability pay in addition to their military pensions. But in 2003, officials lifted the ban if a veteran had a disability rating of at least 50 percent. The change triggered a surge in claims costing billions of dollars _ including many by veterans with sleep apnea, which is typically rated as a 50 percent disability.

The condition tends to strike in middle age due to weight gain and can usually be managed by wearing a breathing mask while sleeping, but the VA does not consider such external devices in its disability decisions.

Retired Navy veteran David Adams said he was surprised that sleep apnea, for which he wears a breathing mask, qualified him for disability pay. At 49, he works as an electrician in an aluminum factory in Davenport, Iowa. He said his monthly disability pay of $910 gives his family financial security by boosting his $1,800-a-month military pension.
"Most of the time, the rules are against you," Adams said. "You get one that's for you, you don't question it."
___

The expansion of disability benefits signals a change in attitude about the purpose of the payments, long intended to compensate veterans for lost income. Studies have found that many disabilities in the system have no effect on average earnings. One showed that veterans receiving disability pay tend to have higher total incomes than those who do not.

In the age of an all-volunteer military and after two unpopular wars, disability pay has come to be seen as a lifetime deferred payment for service.

Roderick Atkinson, who spent 26 years on active duty and as a reservist, said he views it as compensation for the hardships he endured.
"The real kicker was the time I spent away from my family," Atkinson said.
The 53-year-old's voice flattened when talking about how he developed post-traumatic stress disorder after living in fear of mortar attacks in Iraq _ and how it rendered him unable to work around other people. The Santa Monica mail carrier counts knee and ankle problems among his ailments.

He has a 100 percent disability rating, entitling him to a monthly check of $3,200.

Espinosa, the Fort Lee trainer, said his monthly $1,792 disability check is scarcely making him rich. All of it goes for his son's college education.

He has filed new claims for back and knee pain, gastrointestinal problems and vertigo in an attempt to boost his 80 percent disability rating.
"I believe my disability rating _ and I'm not trying to sound greedy _ should be 100 percent," he said. "I know what I went through."
Related:

A Guide to U.S. Military Casualty Statistics: Operation New Dawn, Operation Iraqi Freedom, and Operation Enduring Freedom, February 19, 2014 

August 24, 2014

Police Forces are Receiving Military Training But the Two Groups Have Very Separate Roles

Police militarizing with few checks on power, expert says

August 23, 2014 

Washington Times - Police forces around the United States are militarizing at an alarming rate, often without the knowledge of those who pay them, a criminal justice expert said Friday.
“Some of these city councils only become aware of what their police have and what they’ve been doing in the wake of a tragedy,” said Tim Lynch, the director of the Project on Criminal Justice at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think-tank.

“Then members of the city council start asking questions that should have been asked initially,” he said.
“Does this community that hasn’t had a murder in ten years need an armored personnel carrier?”
The debate about increased militarization of police drew renewed attention this month ever since the Aug. 9 shooting of an unarmed teenager in Ferguson, Mo. Although there has been a large amount of looting and rioting in the town, there have also been incidents captured on film of peaceful protesters being confronted by police in full riot gear using tear gas and rubber bullets.

Mr. Lynch said he saw one photo of a police sniper set up atop an armored vehicle, watching the protests.
“That’s an image I won’t soon forget,” he said.
Police forces are increasingly receiving training from members of the military, which Mr. Lynch said was very troubling because the two groups have two very separate roles.

The military is used internationally when there has been a conscious decision to use lethal force. They are focused on completing the mission and are “not thinking about constitutional rights on the other side of a battlefield,” he said.

But in a country where people are innocent until proven guilty, police officers should do just the opposite and always be thinking about a suspect’s rights.
“We want the police to avoid the use of force, and then use the very minimum use of force that may be required to bring a suspect into a court of law,” Mr. Lynch said.
The laws of the United States still apply to the police, he said, something that separates America from authoritarian regimes. But when an officer steps out of line, prosecutors and police leaders must be ready to punish the wayward officer, not try to sweep the issue under the rug.

Police forces use to keep special teams — like SWAT — for only certain dangerous situations like hostage crises, Mr. Lynch said. But now those teams are getting involved in more routine operations and regular police patrols.
“We use to refer to police officers as ‘peace officers’ in this country, but with the para-militarism, we’re starting to get the opposite,” he said. “They don’t look like police officers to us. They look like soldiers who are getting ready for battle.”
People think that SWAT teams barging into homes in the middle of the night may be an occasional event, but it’s actually much more common than many believe, Mr. Lynch said, adding that it is common for officers to barge into the wrong address.
“They’re also throwing flash bang grenades into the windows of these raids and sometimes there are tragic consequences,” he said.
He pointed to an incident in May where a flash bang was thrown into a house without warning and landed in a baby’s crib, seriously injuring the child who, at last report, is still in a coma.

The mother said that she wasn’t allowed to see how badly her son might be wounded, as police officers handcuffed her and took her out of the house.

Psychopaths Run the World

"If a person is in the federal government, either as a politician or a high level bureaucrat, then that person is clearly a power seeker, and there is no more satisfying use of power than military force. There's this automatic tendency among people who want to get into the government to want to fight. Power seekers want to use their power. And I think with that observation alone you can explain at least half of any war Washington is in. My three war books, World War IWorld War II, and The Thousand Year War in the Mideast, discuss these issues thoroughly." - Richard Maybury, Daily Bell Interview, April 2013

"People who are power-seekers want more power, and they’ll sacrifice other things in order to get that power. One of the things power-seekers in a large government almost always sacrifice is the financial integrity of the country. They will simply bleed the whole economy dry in order to increase their power. That’s a main reason empires fall… If you look at any previous empires I write about all the time – the French Empire, the British Empire, the Russian Empire – these countries are all much better places today than they were when they had empires. America will be too…Typically, in every empire, it all continues until one day somebody looks at the books and says, 'Gee, we’re broke. We can’t do this anymore.' That’s when it all starts to come apart. One of my favorite stories is about William Gladstone – the Prime Minister of England in the mid-1800s – and that’s essentially what he did. He just said, 'Look, we’re going broke trying to prop up this empire. This is ridiculous.' He started dismantling the British government’s power. He probably made more progress in abolishing political power than any other lone individual in history. It’s an amazing story. Gladstone is one of the few peaceful examples of how all empires go down. They eventually realize they can’t play the game anymore. They realize they’ve exhausted their resources… They’ve bled the population dry… My best guess is we’re in the process of going under now. That’s the economic trouble the average American is noticing… the unemployment, the business failures, the financial crash, the real estate collapse… plus the mental and emotional strain – the psychological depression, marital problems, divorces. It’s the process of the empire going under. The economic problems are symptoms of the manipulation of the currency, and all sorts of other economic tomfoolery, to try to keep the federal bureaucracy well fed at the expense of the rest of us." - Richard Maybury, The Daily Crux, April 2011

Pathocracy: Tyranny at the Hand of Psychopaths

By Jack Mullen, Activist Post
January 25, 2011

Were people consciously aware something was about to change in a very bad way just before Lenin and Trotsky appeared on the scene in Petrograd in the spring of 1917?

Did the German people realize accepting the 'hope' of Hitler would result in something so hideous and evil that tens of millions of people would die and a permanent bloodstain would appear on the history of Germany?

What was life like months or years before the Armenians suffered genocide at the hands of the Turks, did they know that government imposed gun control was really disarmament before extermination?

How about the Chinese before the tyrant Mao, or the North Koreans before the Kim Jung il family infestation?

Did these people know what was coming, but didn't know what they could do?
 


Most of written history is written on pages of blood.  I think today, right now, is another one of those moments just before something very bad is about to happen. And, this time, we have the written historical records of bad news to learn potentially lifesaving, culture-rescuing information before we slip into another example of blood and carnage insanity. 
 


Although Sigmund Freud introduced the world to the word psychopath in his book Psychopathology of Everyday Life, published in 1901, it wouldn't be until forty years later that a true definition of psychopathology was developed to include the personality type of psychopath:  a scientific understanding that sheds light on past and current events.

One of the first researchers to study and document the nature of personality types called psychopaths was Hervey Cleckley, MD, in his book The Mask of Sanity, published in 1941.  In this classic work, Cleckley spent considerable time with prison inmates in Georgia; prisoners that "little agreement was found as to what was actually the matter with them." And, according to Cleckley, "[the prisoners] continued, however, to constitute a most grave and a constant problem to the hospital and to the community."

In addition to Cleckley, others in the time since 1941 have contributed significantly to our understanding of the psychopathic personality type.  One such heroic researcher was Andrew M. Lobaczewski, born 1921 in Poland.  After suffering Nazi occupation during WWII, and Russian occupation after Germany's defeat, Lobaczewski entered college to be trained as a psychologist, and soon thereafter began research into the nature of the psychopath. Lobaczewski and his colleagues risked severe penalties, including death, for documenting their research and experimentation.

Many decades would pass trying to get the work published (and many attempts were made by groups to destroy it).  But, finally, in 1998, circumventing attempts of Zbigniew Brzezinski to stop the publication, Lobaczewski's book Political Ponerology: A science on the nature of evil for political purposes was published. The book begins with an examination of prisoners, much like Cleckley's work covers, but this time scientists correlated the behavior of psychopaths with the depravity of massively oppressive political regimes; the results of which culminated in a new science he called Ponerology, the study of evil in man. Political Ponerology, then, is the nature of evil in politics.

According to Lobaczewski, organizations can become infested with psychopathic personality types who, if given the proper amount of time and growing conditions, will busily fill all positions of power within it.  In the case of governments, what emerges is defined as a pathocracy: tyranny at the hand of psychopaths.  Lobaczewski defined governance by a pathocracy as a macrosocial disease, something unhealthy and brutally deadly if untreated. 



The book Political Ponerology provides a scary explanation for periodic times of brutal insanity in the history of the world. It is a light to scientifically expose a particular personality type within populations -- a type,  if left alone, will infest positions of power, pushing out normal personalities until they dominate the power structure. From a position of total domination, psychopaths will aggressively and brutally protect the power they have gained.

In the case of government, that means taking steps to eradicate any perceived opposition to their control and authority.

Since true psychopaths are emotionally dead, and work empathy-free (see Dr. Robert Hare's  book Without Conscience; The Disturbing World of Psychopaths), the task of cleaning house to prevent loss of control can quickly evolve into:
  • the 20-million-plus killed in the Russian Holocaust, 
  • the 60-million-plus killed in the Chinese Holocaust, or 
  • the extermination camps of the Jewish Holocaust.  
Although not on the same scale, recent mass murders such as the Waco Texas massacre, the Oklahoma City bombings, or the 9-11 false flag terror-murders should sound the warning alarms. 

Psychopaths are afoot. 
 


This brings me to the deplorable historical events in the United States, especially since 1913.  Are psychopaths running the show?  Lets look at some facts.
 


To set the stage, in 1912 bankers rig the presidential election and Woodrow Wilson, the bankers president, moves into the White House. This is a strategic move to ensure prompt penmanship on banker bills. 
 


Then, two days before Christmas, while Congress was conveniently low on members gone for the break, a private banking cartel shrewdly gave the Federal Reserve control over the issuance of United States currency. The finagling was done using deception and bribery, and the trick of bringing bills to vote when congressional attendance was very low. As of today, 'banker currency' has lost 98 percent of its original purchasing power; purchasing power lost by dollar holders was transferred as wealth to government and owners of the Federal Reserve.



Since 1913, the United States has started or insinuated (through false flag events) itself in non-retaliatory wars on the average of one every 15 years including: WWI, WWII, the Korean Conflict, the Vietnam War, the first Gulf War, and the second Gulf War. All of these wars were funded with borrowed money from the very same banks issuing the currency, thus saddling tax payers with interest and principal in addition to the cost of lives.  Even after the wars, US underwriters have funded the continued exportation of war and empire through occupation, building more than 1000 military bases in over 150 nations around the world. 

Note: Since the year 1500, there has hardly been any five-year period in which European troops (and now American troops) have not been under arms on Muslim soil. All religions teach that there is a higher law than any government's law, and they all teach two fundamental laws: Do all you have agreed to do, which is the basis of contract law, and do not encroach on other persons or their property, which is the basis of tort law and some criminal law.
In addition to the offshore wars, the United States has prosecuted an ever increasing war on its citizens, including:
  • relentless assaults on freedoms provided by the Constitution and Bill Of Rights, 
  • the effective disempowering of Congress via geometric growth in governance by Executive Order, and 
  • continuing attempts to disarm citizens, using deception and fear to legislate away the right to keep and bear arms.
The war on US citizens is prosecuted around the clock with assaults on many fronts, including:
  • A deliberate effort to dumb down the educational system, 
  • Debasing health through contamination of foods (hormones, pesticides, GMOs, chemically adulterated water, cancerous additives such as aspartame), then protecting food cartels that provide fewer food choices while controlling your right to grow food. 
  • Healthcare choices restricted by legal protection of pharmaceutical cartels, which are marketing drug and medical procedures responsible for hundreds of thousands of needless deaths each year. 
  • The government directly attacking the individual immune system by mandating and promoting criminally contaminated vaccines -- immune system damaging vaccines that may also cause long term brain dysfunction or damage, or result in delayed cancer.
Personal finances are attacked with escalating tax rates levied by exponentially growing mega-state(s); taxes draining the vital economic blood needed for growth, while shackling citizens to increasing hours of work; depreciating dollars and falling wages.

And don't expect any help from the free market; it's been outlawed.
  • The government (federal, state, local) is now the largest employer in the nation.
  • Private manufacturing is deliberately off-shored to foreign countries. 
  • Open borders are inviting the deliberate influx of millions of illegal aliens, overwhelming social service and legal systems and pressuring wages lower as illegals compete with unfair wage advantages. 
  • Financial disaster is manufactured, as private bankers in charge of our monetary system invent and market fraudulent financial products, encouraging fraudulent loans which produce a false bubble in home prices. 
    • Then, as the deflating bubble exposes the fraud, ownership becomes uncertain when we learn property titles were criminally misplaced.  
    • Finally, let's note the 2 million homes in foreclosure or foreclosed upon since the housing bust, and another 2 million in the pipe. Most of these properties are held off market by banks and government agencies (Fannie and Freddie). 
    • That puts the government and the Federal Reserve in charge of the largest real estate holdings in the country. 
    • Disturbing fact: Socialist and Communist regimes provide no right of private property -- the state owns it all.  
 

Americans are deliberately terrified as government, controlled by bankers, creates false terror and criminally incites fear to restrict travel, destroy privacy, control the Internet and news content, manipulate the voting process, and silence free speech.

Americans are assailed by false government promises made during elections and by a growing prison-police-industrial cartel incarcerating growing numbers of citizens, while using prisoners as slaves. More people are incarcerated in the United States than any other nation on earth and the rate of incarceration is growing. Prison manufacturing now constitutes 35% of  total United States manufacturing. 

Autogenous terror is no less scary or health disturbing than real terror -- a deliberate assault on the American psyche.



For the elderly and persons of retirement age, the assault has just begun -- pensions and retirement accounts are being gutted and stolen by bankers and a bankrupt government. Just as the baby boomers are hitting retirement age their pensions and retirement investments are stolen, squandered and deflated.  

Promises made while stealing your income will never be kept, as the economic life blood is sucked dry by bankers and criminally bankrupt governments from the many states to Washington DC.  

Finally, the assault continues as the U.S. government, slowly dying from bankruptcy and rampant corruption, relentlessly (and against popular support) continues to prosecute two illegal, non retaliatory, wars six thousand miles from home.  

These wars support a growing worldwide hatred of the insane, brutal and irrational acts of the United States, while exploiting Americans through promotion of illegal drugs mainlined through government transportation and distribution; drugs sold at monopoly prices because of the deliberate War On Drugs, resulting in the prosecution of drug users to fill prisons at an increasing rate.

Just when you think it couldn't get more in your face comes the outright theft in broad daylight of TRILLIONS of dollars through pretended efforts to 'save the economy.' Most of the money has been created from nothing only to reduce purchasing power of the dollar and simultaneously create a need to raise taxes to cover interest on the newly minted debt. The stolen TRILLIONS are hastily sent to crony banks both at home and off shore.  When Americans asked, "Where did the money go?" the arrogant criminals-in-charge continue to flatly refuse to reveal the recipients. This crime against all Americans is deliberate and aggressive, as it is done in the light of day, taunting anyone to try and stop it. 



The financial crisis has been prosecuted deliberately for so long now that the economy likely is only one major economic shock away from several possible financial catastrophes -- the most likely being a debt-related collapse, say, an insolvent and bankrupt large corporation (GE) or bank (BAC)?  The result would be a financial derivatives chain reaction leaving a slew of companies around the world in financial ruin, while those events cause a run on the dollar or a move to dump treasuries; the last manufactured bubble popping like faulty rivets exploding as the Titanic bobs for the last time, slipping terminally into the sea. After that, the crisis would take on a life of its own with food and oil prices skyrocketing and Homeland Security rounding up early discontents for incarceration in already pre-planned and ready-made prisons strategically located throughout the United States.



Since 1913 bankers and crony corporations have consolidated and now control all mainstream media. TV, satellite, radio, newspapers and magazines -- all controlled by the same 5 or 6 corporate media companies. Can we expect truthful news and responsible journalism? 



Taken individually it may be possible to argue that mistakes in thinking resulted in poor choices giving license to bad endings, but the history of deliberate lies, endless bloodshed in manufactured wars, aggression against people using food, health, and finances, the non-stop assault on personal liberties using false flag terror, is a plain-as-day indication that Americans will face a deadly crisis in the near future.

For the record: moves to disarm citizens always precede escalating physical control by a maniacal state. Always. 


I submit that the United States government is under the control of psychopaths, and the infestation is nearing completion; the point at which nothing can stop the oncoming violence. But that's not all, because above the federal government is a ruling cartel of off-shore psychopaths that have secretly been planning a one-world tyranny for more than 100 years.

This is not a rant; it is a plea:  take time to read the material. 

According to Lobaczewski:
In a pathocracy, all leadership positions (down to village headman and community cooperative managers, not to mention the directors of police units, and special services police personnel, and activists in the pathocratic party), must be filled by individuals with corresponding psychological deviations, which are inherited as a rule. However, such people constitute a very small percentage of the population and this makes them more valuable to the pathocrats. Their intellectual level or professional skills cannot be taken into account, since people representing superior abilities (who are also psychopaths) are even harder to find. After such a system has lasted several years, one hundred percent of all the cases of essential psychopathy are involved in pathocratic activity; they are considered the most loyal, even though some of them were formerly involved on the other side in some way.


Under such conditions, no area of social life can develop normally, whether in economics, culture, science, technology, administration, etc. Pathocracy progressively paralyzes everything. Normal people must develop a level of patience beyond the ken of anyone living in a normal man's system just in order to explain what to do and how to do it to some obtuse mediocrity of a psychological deviant who has been placed in charge of some project that he cannot even understand, much less manage. This special kind of pedagogy - instructing deviants while avoiding their wrath - requires a great deal of time and effort, but it would otherwise not be possible to maintain tolerable living conditions and necessary achievements in the economic area or intellectual life of a society. Even with such efforts, pathocracy progressively intrudes everywhere and dulls everything. [...]


Therefore, to mitigate the threat to their power, the pathocrats must employ any and all methods of terror and exterminatory policies against individuals known for their patriotic feelings and military training; other, specific "indoctrination" activities such as those we have presented are also utilized. Individuals lacking the natural feeling of being linked to normal society become irreplaceable in either of these activities. Again, the foreground of this type of activity is occupied by cases of essential psychopathy, followed by those with similar anomalies, and finally by people alienated from the society in question as a result of racial or national differences.


The phenomenon of pathocracy matures during this period: an extensive and active indoctrination system is built, with a suitably refurbished ideology constituting the vehicle or Trojan horse for the purpose of pathologizing the thought processes of individuals and society. The goal - forcing human minds to incorporate pathological experiential methods and thought-patterns, and consequently accepting such rule - is never openly admitted. This goal is conditioned by pathological egotism, and the possibility of accomplishing it strikes the pathocrats as not only indispensable, but feasible. 
From the murder of John F. Kennedy to the trail of dead bodies uncovered during the Clinton and Bush regimes, and now Obama -- the sanity of American government has taken a terrible turn toward Pathocracy.  Normal Americans have to stop making excuses for what is plain view. 


It is time that humanity faces what it already knows:  Historic suffering throughout the ages is related to the evil of the psychopath.  We must never consent to being disarmed. Thomas Jefferson said:
"No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."

Next, I call on psychology and psychiatry professionals to make claims regarding the mental health of members of government -- it is incumbent on those qualified to take a stand against a rising, bloody, tyranny.  The facts speak for themselves: mental health must be called into consideration based on the actions of our leaders in recent years. 
 


Finally, there are other powerful, peaceful ways to reign in the power of psychopaths. First and foremost, remember that it is the overwhelming numbers of normal people that enable their power, working and slaving away in a system designed as life support for a class of vampires.

I submit that we can stop paying their bills.
 


Start by cutting off the fuel supply, i.e., their funding. Banks are power lines connected directly to the coven of vampires; currency is the current flowing through the power lines.  Begin today by removing any savings you might have in banks and in various investment markets (stocks, bonds, hedge funds, etc. ), then use those dollars to buy physical gold and silver and long term food supplies. These commodities hold their value in the face of deliberately depreciating currency. Next -- this is the interesting part -- never convert your gold and silver back into dollars. Instead, when the time comes, spend your silver and gold. Go out and find small local stores that will trade gold and silver for supplies.  Remember, if you convert your gold and silver back into money the vampires get power -- the IRS will tax your trade, and the banks end up with money streaming down the power lines to the coven of vampires.

Moving out of the banking matrix toward barter and transactions based in real money will protect your privacy and purchasing power, while decreasing energy available for evil.  A grade 'A' investment for the average American (aside from food) is silver; silver is the currency of the little man -- it is the silver bullet against the vampire of psychopathic government. 
 


This is a critical time in the history of humanity; a time when you have to educate yourself and have courage to take non-violent action against a very violent infestation of the worst possible personality types.  Think about the Russians, Germans, Chinese and so many others that might have been able to prevent a blood bath of agony with just some responsible action prior to the onslaught. I would also say it is important to understand that psychopaths have no emotions and no empathy. Think about what kind of person would order the deliberate down-the-pants aggression of "security" agents. These people are not protecting you -- they are groping you like animals; animals that have no future other than food for the psychopaths.

Ted Gunderson: Obama, FBI, CIA - Stop the Death Dumps of Chemtrails



Former FBI Chief Says Chemtrails Must Be Stopped



February 24, 2014

----- Original Message -----

From: "David M. Adam,Jr."

To: undisclosed-recipients

Sent: Monday, February 24, 2014 11:56 AM

Subject: FBI CHIEF SAYS CHEMTRAILS MUST BE STOPPED!

Former FBI Chief Ted Gunderson Says Chemtrail Death Dumps Must Be Stopped!

WHAT IS WRONG WITH CONGRESS? This has an affect on their population, and their people, and their friends, and their relatives, and themselves. What’s wrong with them? What’s wrong with the pilots who are flying these airplanes and dumping poison on their own families and children? We have to do something about it. Congress must step forward and stop it now!

Video: Former FBI Chief Ted Gunderson Says Chemtrail Death Dumps ...



aircrap.org › All Chemtrail Videos

Feb 21, 2013 – Former FBI Chief Ted Gunderson Says Chemtrail Death Dumps Must Be

Former FBI Chief, Ted L. Gunderson, makes a statement regarding the chemtrail “death dumps”, otherwise know as air crap, on January 12, 2011. Ted says the following: “The death dumps, otherwise known as chemical trails, are being dropped and sprayed throughout the United States and England, Scotland, Ireland, and Northern Europe. I have personally seen them not only in the United States, but in Mexico and in Canada. Birds are dying around the world. Fish are dying by the hundreds of thousands around the world. This is genocide. This is poison. This is murder by the United Nations. This element within our society that is doing this must be stopped. I happen to know of two of the locations where the airplanes are that dump this crap on us. Four of the planes are out of the Air National Guard in Lincoln, Nebraska. And, the other planes are out of Fort Sill, Oklahoma. I personally have observed the planes that were standing still in Nebraska – Lincoln, Nebraska – at the Air National Guard. They have no markings on them. They are huge, bomber-like airplanes with no markings. This is a crime: a crime against humanity, a crime against America, a crime against the citizens of this great country. The must be stopped.


August 22, 2014

U.S. Government Garnishing Social Security Income of Seniors, Claiming Unpaid Student Loan Debt from Decades Ago

Ending one of the fiercest lobbying fights in Washington, Congress voted in March 2010 to force commercial banks out of the federal student loan market, cutting off billions of dollars in profits in a sweeping restructuring of financial-aid programs and redirecting most of the money to new education initiatives. The revamping of student-loan programs was included in — if overshadowed by — the final health care package. The vote was 56 to 43 in the Senate and 220 to 207 in the House, with Republicans unanimously opposed in both chambers. Since the bank-based loan program began in 1965, commercial banks like Sallie Mae and Nelnet have received guaranteed federal subsidies to lend money to students, with the government assuming nearly all the risk.

Student Debt Threatens the Safety Net for Elderly Americans


Until his Social Security check arrived nearly $300 lighter last June, Eric Merklein, 67, had no idea that he was carrying outstanding student debt. Merklein eventually learned that the government was taking money from his Social Security payments to repay loans he took out roughly four decades ago; he had thought they were paid. Merklein was unemployed, and the garnishment amounted to one-sixth of his total monthly income.
“‘You gotta be making this up,’” Merklein says he thought, at first. “The fact that they didn’t even call me or send me a postcard saying they were going to be doing this, I mean, it’s just nuts.”
Merklein is one of a growing number of Americans aged 50 and older who haven’t finished paying their student loans. Student debt is growing faster for seniors than for any other age group, according to the latest data gathered by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Lingering student loan debt is part of a broader and, many elder-care lawyers say, devastating accumulation of debt among older Americans.

While people aged 50 and older hold only 17 percent of all U.S. student debt, this group has nearly three times as much debt as it did in 2005, according to the New York Fed data. By comparison, student debt for people under 40 is about one and a half times as high it was then.

The numbers don’t distinguish between older Americans who took out loans to finance their education and those who did so to put their children through college. A Gallup report released this month showed that people who took out loans decades ago are more likely to report low levels of health and financial well-being than their debt-free peers are.
For older Americans, owing for government-backed student loans can be particularly tough. Unlike other kinds of debt, including private student loans, collectors of federal student loan debt have the power to garnish income, block benefits, and withhold tax rebates. As a result, some older borrowers are seeing part of their Social Security payments seized and their wages cut off just when they are especially vulnerable.
Before Merklein went on Social Security in 2013, he was sure he didn’t have to worry about the money he borrowed from the government in 1970 to fund his undergraduate education. In the early 1970s, he says, his grandmother handed him an envelope with a note and a receipt that said the loan was paid in full. But Merklein lost the envelope—“I probably lost it within 48 hours, being a twentysomething at that time,” he says.

Now, nearly four decades after he went to college, the debt is haunting him. Merklein says that an agency collecting debt on the part of the government informed him that it has no record of the payment and that his loan accumulated interest for decades and went into default. He owed over $20,000, including collection costs, the agency said.
He spent hours speaking on the phone with debt collectors and says the government has stopped taking money out of his Social Security payments. He’s now paying $50 per month so that his loan can be transferred to a government repayment plan. He still worries about the Department of Education seizing his income without warning.
“They could come after me today,” he says. “And I would have no recourse.”
Garnishing social security checks is just one tactic the government can use to recoup money it is owed. Lawmakers gave federal officials far-reaching powers of debt collection two decades ago, after the largest federal loan guarantor collapsed and a congressional investigation revealed that schools were fraudulently receiving millions in federal grants.
Default rates have dropped by half since then, thanks in part to the government policies. But critics worry that the policies may also have crippled some who have no way to shake their debt, says Ben Miller, a senior policy analyst at the New America Foundation.

Some seniors are saddled with loan payments for an education that never led to stable employment. Debbie Crotinger, 55, borrowed around $10,000 to attend Garden City Community College in Garden City, Kans., in the early 1990s. She was going to college for the first time, fresh out of a marriage to a man she says was routinely abusive.

Crotinger never finished her degree because she couldn’t keep up with a full time job and the demands of childcare. She says she held minimum wage jobs for years while she looked after three kids. Now the government is garnishing about $235 per month from her $1200 monthly paycheck to pay off a loan that hovers around $40,000 with interest.
“They’re killing me,” Crotinger says, “I don’t know what to do about it. I figure I will be paying it off the rest of my life.”
Crotinger lives with her mother in Watonga, Okla., who is in her eighties, and says that after paying for her mother’s necessities, she has around $150 a month to pay for gas and other personal expenses. Crotinger’s only lifeline is the $40,000 in her late husband’s retirement account, but she hasn’t touched it.
“I am afraid to claim it because I’m afraid they’ll take it,” she says, referring to the government. She says she wouldn’t be able to forgive herself if the money didn’t make it to her four children. “It’s not much, but it would help the kids out,” she says.

Student Loan Crisis Solved -- Next Problem?

Economists fear we’re racing towards another trillion dollar bubble of student loan debt. But there is a simple way to stop the madness now, before we blow any more taxpayer dollars — or our kids pay an even bigger price.
December 14, 2012
Forbes - If financial history has taught us anything, it’s that high levels of debt and, more specifically, bad loans lead to financial crises. We have seen this numerous times including the Asian Debt Crisis in the late 90s, the more recent Greek Debt Crisis and, of course, the U.S. subprime mortgage debacle.

Financial crises have often been linked to government monetary policy. Arguably, the U.S. government was at least complicit with “easy money” credit policies that led to the housing boom and bust, which in large part triggered our most recent financial crisis.

Unfortunately, we are heading for another government-induced financial crisis — this time it is the $1 trillion in student loan debt. As of 2010, about one in five households in the U.S. have student loan–related debt of over $26,000. What is saddest about this pending crisis is that it will likely impact millions of student borrowers throughout their lives, because unlike credit card debt or mortgage debt, student loans can’t be discharged by bankruptcy.

How did we get here?

Ironically, as this crisis races toward a financial cliff, there has been no action by the government to curtail student loans, as would be the case in any other debt-related financial crisis. In 2011-12, the federal government issued 93 percent of all student loans.

Student loans are unique for a number of reasons, none perhaps more glaring than the fact that virtually nothing can disqualify an applicant from a federally-backed loan, excluding a prior student loan default or a drug conviction. A student loan is quite possibly the only loan that is not tied to credit worthiness or the ability to repay. Even more frustrating is that these easy loans are correlated to the rising cost of college — colleges have every incentive to raise costs knowing that there is an endless money supply.

Stop the madness

This crisis will likely end badly for the millions of student borrowers steeped in debt and with no ability to repay. For some reason, the government believes that everyone should go to college and is willing to give students any amount of money to put them on that righteous path. Inexplicably, this is all happening with no regard to whether students will be employable upon graduation or how they will pay back these monstrous loans. This madness must stop.

Like any loan, there needs to be some element of credit worthiness as William Bennett suggested last week in his article, “The looming crisis of student loan debt.” But one might ask, how can an unemployed student be creditworthy?

A simple solution

Admittedly student loans are riskier than most since there is no tangible asset to collateralize (although there certainly is a non-tangible asset — the student’s education). However, all educations are not created equal and should be “appraised” by lenders as part of a student loan determination.

College fees and student loan debt have a perverse symbiotic relationship. Rising costs in education beget rising student loan debt. It is puzzling why an art degree costs as much as a computer science degree when the job prospects of each are so vastly unequal.

Lenders, in this case the government, should make a fact-based determination of a student’s likelihood to graduate, to get a job and their expected income. Prospective students applying for loans can be evaluated for “credit worthiness” based on a score much like a FICO score. A student loan score would be based on a formula comprising their grade point average, major, and academic institution. Each of these variables is directly related to a student’s ability to get a job upon graduation and repay their loans. For example, a STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) major at MIT would yield a higher score and loan compared to a religious studies major at a lesser ranked school.

While the solution I have outlined doesn’t offer relief to those deeply in debt today, it will stop more hot air going into the student loan balloon. And although I agree that everyone should have the right to go to college and study whatever they’d like, our government and colleges shouldn’t be reckless with our youth’s financial future — or taxpayer dollars.

McConnell: ObamaCare to blame for higher student loan rates

June 4, 2013

The Hill - Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said Tuesday ObamaCare is a driving reason for higher student loan rates.
“Rates are going up, and the tuition is going up so [students] have to pay back more at a higher rate … all because of something young people had nothing to do with — and that’s the passage of ObamaCare,” McConnell said on the Senate floor.
McConnell said that part of the Affordable Care Act, also known as ObamaCare “abolished the student loan program.” 
As part of the healthcare law, Congress stopped allowing private banks to provide student loans. All student loans are now federal loans, which McConnell argues has led to higher rates.

He said the administration pushed a policy that allowed the federal government to take over the student loan program and raised the interest rates.

He added that Medicaid cost increases associated with the healthcare law have forced states to raise tuition rates, also negatively affecting college students.

Rates on federally backed student loans are set to jump from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent in July. Congress passed a bill keeping the rates at 3.4 percent last year, but it expires next month.

Before McConnell spoke, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Tuesday that the Senate “must move by the end of June to keep student loan rates low.”
“If we do nothing, it will double the rates,” Reid said on the Senate floor Tuesday. “If we do what the House wants, it will triple the rates, so we can’t do that.”
The House has approved legislation that would peg federal student loan rates to the rate on the 10-year Treasury note plus 2.5 percent. The rate would be variable and would reset each year, although students could package all their loans into a fixed-rate loan after graduation. The GOP bill also caps the rate at 8.5 percent for most students.

Reid argued the House bill would add $6,500 to the average student loan bill.

He called on the Senate to approve legislation sponsored by Sens. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) and Tom Harkin (D-Iowa). Their Student Loan Affordability Act, S. 953, would freeze need-based student loan interest rates for two years while Congress works on a long-term solution. Reed said lawmakers need the extra time because Congress is not set to consider the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act.

Reed and Harkin would pay for their bill by ending three tax breaks. Specifically, it would limit the use of tax-deferred retirement accounts, restrict “earnings stripping” by expatriated entities and close an oil and gas industry tax break by treating oil from tar sands the same as other petroleum products.
“I will do everything I can to have a vote on our bill this week,” Reid said.
McConnell said the House Republican bill isn’t too different from a plan proposed in President Obama’s 2014 budget. He suggested that Obama stop “campaigning” and start working with Republicans to “bridge the relatively small differences” between the two plans.
“We’re not too far apart on this student loan issue,” McConnell said. “There is no reason for the president to hold campaign-style events. … The plan we put forward is pretty similar to his own.
McConnell criticized Democrats and specifically Obama for trying to politicize the issue. In a speech last week, Obama called on Congress to act to stop the student loan hike.
“If the president were really serious about getting this done, he would’ve spent that time on Friday ringing up senators to see how he could bridge our relatively small differences — not bashing Congress,” McConnell said. “So the president has a choice to make. Does he want to push some campaign issue for 2014, or does he want to address the problem here and prevent this rate increase?”

August 21, 2014

Cops Fire Six Shots into Knife-Wielding Man Near Ferguson; Missouri Orders Troops Out



Gov. Nixon taking National Guard out of Ferguson

August 21, 2014

AP - Gov. Jay Nixon on Thursday ordered the Missouri National Guard to begin withdrawing from Ferguson, where nightly scenes of unrest have erupted since a white police officer fatally shot an unarmed black 18-year-old nearly two weeks ago.

Since the guard's arrival Monday, flare-ups in the small section of town that had been the center of nightly unrest have begun to subside. The quietest night was overnight Wednesday and Thursday, when police arrested only a handful of people in the protest zone.
"The last two nights have been really good. I feel we're making progress," Nixon told KMOX-AM, noting that a state of emergency remained in effect in Ferguson.
Demonstrations began after the Aug. 9 shooting of Michael Brown, and authorities have arrested at least 163 people in the protest area. Data provided Thursday by St. Louis County showed that while the majority of those arrested are Missourians, just seven live in Ferguson, a St. Louis suburb. The vast majority, 128 people, were cited for failure to disperse. Twenty-one face burglary-related charges.

Meanwhile Thursday, St. Louis County prosecutor Bob McCulloch reiterated he has no intentions of removing himself from the case, and he urged Nixon to once and for all decide if he will act on calls for McCulloch's ouster.

Some question McCulloch's ability to be unbiased since his father, mother and other relatives worked for St. Louis police. His father was killed while responding to a call involving a black suspect.

Nixon said this week he is not asking McCulloch to recuse himself. But a McCulloch aide, Ed Magee, said the governor 'didn't take an actual position one way or the other."

McCulloch called for a more definitive decision and said in a statement that Nixon must "end this distraction" or risk delay in resolution of the investigation.

On Thursday, Nixon told KMOX he had no plans to take the case from McCulloch, noting that "we're all trying to do our jobs."

Federal authorities have launched an independent investigation into Brown's death, and U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill told The Associated Press that all of the physical evidence from the case was being flown Thursday from St. Louis to the FBI forensics lab in Quantico, Virginia. The evidence includes shell casings and trajectories, blood patterns and clothing, the Missouri Democrat said.
"The only thing you have to test the credibility of eye witnesses to a shooting like this is in fact the physical evidence," McCaskill said. "I'm hopeful the forensic evidence will be clear and will shed a lot more light on what the facts were."
McCaskill also announced that next month she will lead a Senate hearing to look into the militarization of local police departments after criticism of the law enforcement response to the protests in Ferguson following Brown's death.

Missouri State Highway Patrol Capt. Ron Johnson, in charge of securing Ferguson, said just six people were arrested at protests Wednesday night, compared to 47 the previous night, providing hope among law enforcement leaders that tensions may be beginning to ease.

A grand jury on Wednesday began considering evidence to determine whether the officer who shot Brown, Darren Wilson, should be charged. Magee said there was no timeline for the process, but it could take weeks.

Another fatal police-involved shooting happened this week in St. Louis, about 5 miles from the site where Brown was killed. St. Louis police released video showing officers killing a knife-wielding man. The video shows the man saying, "Kill me now" as he moved toward two officers. The officers fired six shots each, killing 25-year-old Kajieme Powell.

The St. Louis shooting briefly spurred a gathering of about 150 people who chanted, "Hands up, don't shoot," a chant that has become common among protesters in Ferguson.

St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson said he wanted to move quickly to make public as much information as possible. By Wednesday he had provided media with cellphone video of the shooting, the 911 call, dispatch tapes and surveillance video from a nearby store.
"I think the lessons learned from Ferguson were so crystal clear," Dotson said.

August 17, 2014

Battle Between Government Collectivists and Parents: Parents Face Threat of Fines and Jail Time Over School Attendance, with Children Being Made Wards of the State

Compulsory Education’s Unforeseen Consequences: Nebraska Case Studies

WhatIsCommonCore.WordPress.com - Lately, there’s been quite a buzz about ending compulsory education. Utah Senator Aaron Osmond propelled the idea when he wrote a piece on this subject at the Utah Senate blog. Osmond pointed out that it is a “parental right to decide if and when a child will go to public school,” adding that “in a country founded on the principles of personal freedom and unalienable rights, no parent should be forced by the government to send their child to school under threat of fines and jail time.”

Public education started out as an opportunity, but over the years, turned into a governmentally enforced mandate. The mandate flies in the face of other laws, such at Utah’s FERPA, which asserts that it is the parent, and not the government, who is the primary authority over a child.

That’s just common sense to most of us; in fact, most parents are utterly unaware that there is a battle going on between government “collectivists” and parents. The idea that parents hold authority over a child is not acceptable to an alarmingly pushy segment of society, who say government should take ownership of children.

This is, of course, communism.

But it’s becoming acceptable to many. Watch the video put out by MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry, of the Lean Forward campaign. She asserts that “we have to break out of the notion that children belong to parents.”

It is time to wake up and protect parental authority.

COMPULSORY EDUCATION: THE GREAT CONTROL GRAB
By Autumn Cook

12-year-old Lucas Maynard and his parents found themselves in truancy court last week. Lucas’ offense? He got sick too much this year. The punishment? They’re still waiting to find out, but the judge has informed him that removal from his parents’ custody is a possibility.

All around the country, there is a quiet assault on families taking place. In the name of “helping children,” state laws and school district attendance policies are being altered to draw thousands of innocent children into the juvenile justice system and wave the heavy threat of state force and social services intervention over the heads of ordinary good parents.

Innocent children whose crimes amount to being frequently ill, or struggling with mental health issues such as autism, or being the victim of bullying, are being hauled into court, coerced into lengthy “diversion programs,” threatened with removal from the custody of their parents, actually removed from the custody of their parents, and in other ways terrified and treated like criminals. Their families are being put through the wringer with unpaid time from work for court dates, costs for attorney fees, and fear of state intervention in their families.

Untold numbers of other families are being frightened into doing everything possible to avoid entanglement in this system, including sending their kids to school sick and cancelling family travel. It is happening in states all over the country – I personally know of cases in Indiana, Texas, and Wyoming, with particular knowledge of what is happening in Nebraska because of personal involvement.

Here’s how it’s been playing out in Nebraska.

In 2010, motivated by an attempt to get points on its Race to the Top application, the Nebraska legislature passed a law at the request of the Governor which effectively took away the right of a parent to excuse her child from school. The new law required schools to report kids to law enforcement if they had more than 20 days of absence – for any reason at all.

Nebraska could get more points on its application by having a plan in place to increase attendance. All states were able to earn more points for implementing more oppressive attendance laws.

At the same time, school districts started tightening up their attendance policies, disallowing excuses for family travel or time home with seriously ill family or military parents on leave from deployment. Before the change, Nebraska applied the reasonable and widely-used standard of reporting kids with unexcused absences – those whose parents hadn’t accounted for their whereabouts.

Where once state law, school district policies, and public officials worked to reduce truancy – kids missing school without their parents’ permission (a.k.a. “skipping”) – the focus is shifting to reducing absences of any kind. The shift is leaving untold collateral damage in its wake, including the relationships between school administrators and the parents they serve. And it’s shifting our culture to embrace the “state knows best” mindset, minimizing the authority of parents and giving far too much power to state officials to decide what’s “best” for individual children. It’s also generating a lot of business for the social service industry.

Last week, the story of the Maynards – referred to above – became the latest in a long list of such abuses out of Nebraska. Their story highlights much of what’s wrong with the “brave new approach” to school attendance that’s sweeping the nation. 

Lucas experienced a lot of illness – plus two days of impassable winter roads in rural Nebraska – during the past school year. This innocent offense landed him in court, forced to sit away from his parents between the prosecutor and the guardian ad litem assigned to him, listening in terror as the judge informed him that one of the consequences of his absences from school could be removal from his parents’ custody. (Children are assigned a guardian ad litem in cases of alleged abuse or neglect. So the state of Nebraska has implied that the Maynards committed abuse or neglect by keeping their son home when he was ill and when the roads were too dangerous to travel!)

The Maynards’ entire story can be read at the Nebraska Family Forum blog. Unfortunately, it’s only one of hundreds if not thousands of such cases, and that’s just in Nebraska. The toll around the country is much higher, with many cases even more egregious, such as this one involving a 9-year-old in Wyoming.

If you see attendance policies and laws like this, don’t wait a day to contact your local school boards and state legislators. They need to hear the message that laws and policies must protect the fundamental right that parents have to make decisions for their children. For those who are lucky enough to live in states and districts where this approach hasn’t been implemented yet, watch your legislature and local board meetings like a hawk! Proponents of this approach to school attendance are pushing the “state knows what’s best for each child” approach all over the country, including here in Utah this last session.

It’s another piece – an especially frightening piece – of the education reform puzzle that is shaping up all over the country.

More stories from Nebraska

The Chambers Family
A quiet middle-schooler with severe allergies is sent to the county attorney, forced to submit to a drug test without her parents’ knowledge, made to feel like a criminal, and ends up attending school when sick, staying in a quiet room where she naps and eats lunch – just so they can count her present.

The Herrera Family
A mother decides to homeschool her 3rd-grade daughter for the last few weeks of the school year after school officials fail to deal with her bullies and she gets beaten with a stick on the way home from school. Because she doesn’t waited to receive official notice of approval from the state – her daughter was in imminent physical danger – when she comes back the next year she is reported to law enforcement, made a ward of the state, and her mother is placed on the child abuse and neglect list.

The Garrity Family
The story of a 15-year-old boy with autism shows how families who already struggle with unique challenges are abused and put through further suffering by the state of Nebraska and its school districts.

The Hall Family
A well-liked honor roll student with seasonal asthma is forced into a “diversion program.” Diversion from what? Asthma? The solution the following year is that when she is too sick to go to school, her parents must bring her to school so the school nurse can verify the parents’ judgment.

Related:

Private Prisons That Fight to Lock Up America’s Children
Profiting Off of Incarcerated Youth
Human Trafficking in America's Private Prisons