Colorado’s medical marijuana law can and should be defended by Attorney General Suthers

By Seth Richardson

In a guest opinion in Sunday’s Gazette, Attorney General John Suthers tries to justify his refusal to defend Colorado’s medical marijuana laws by patting himself on the back regarding his opposition to Obamacare while simultaneously kowtowing to a Supreme Court ruling about marijuana that has a different set of facts than those presented by Colorado’s medical marijuana state constitutional amendment.

Suthers refers to the Supreme Court case Gonzales v. Raich, in which the Supreme Court held that marijuana illegally grown within a single state (California) and used solely within that state by a private person pursuant to a legislative statute authorizing the use of marijuana for medical purposes was still “interstate commerce” which allows the Congress to prohibit marijuana possession and use even when it takes place completely within a single state.

But one of the primary justifications for the Court’s ruling is that cultivation of marijuana within a state is one of a number of “purely local activities that are part of an economic “class of activities” that have a substantial effect on interstate commerce.” The argument holds that even home-grown, home-consumed medical marijuana may have a “substantial effect on interstate commerce.” Justice Stevens wrote, “Congress had a rational basis for concluding that leaving home-consumed marijuana outside federal control would similarly affect price and market conditions.”

The basis of this reasoning is a case called Wickard v. Filburn, a Depression-era case in which the Supreme Court upheld one of FDR’s Progressive laws that set quotas for how much wheat a farmer could grow on his own land. In that 1942 case, the Court said, “even if appellee’s activity be local and though it may not be regarded as commerce, it may still, whatever its nature, be reached by Congress if it exerts a substantial economic effect on interstate commerce.” Using this justification, the Court upheld charges against a farmer who grew wheat on his own land for his own consumption, saying that because he would not therefore have to buy wheat for his own consumption at the market price set by the FDR administration, which was set artificially high in a vain attempt to prop up the markets, his growing of his own wheat would, in aggregate (if everybody else did the same thing) substantially affect the price of wheat.

In Gonzales v. Raich the reasoning was the same, that by growing marijuana herself, Raich was “affecting” the illegal market for marijuana, both as a consumer and potentially as an exporter, and that like Wickard, if enough people grew marijuana at home for personal use, it would “substantially affect” the price of illegal marijuana traveling interstate to supply demand, which thereby authorizes Congress to regulate the entire “class of activities” (marijuana cultivation and use) under its Commerce Clause authority.

But Colorado’s medical marijuana industry is different is several respects. First of all, our law is based not in a legislative act, but in an amendment to our state Constitution, which is a much stronger expression of the public will than a legislative act that sets up a head-to-head conflict between Colorado’s Tenth Amendment rights and federal exercises of Commerce Clause authority. Second, the close state control and oversight of the industry ensures that the industry does not substantially affect interstate commerce, legal or illegal, in medical marijuana.

Suthers says “Because of the rule of law, until a change of policy by Congress, medical marijuana remains in violation of federal law. The state attorney general cannot change that.”

What Suthers is evading is his responsibility to stand up and defend the rights of Coloradoans to make constitutional amendments and legalize matters that are purely in-state issues by challenging the incremental expansion of Commerce Clause authority by the Supreme Court in cases like Wickard and Gonzales as being improper decisions leading to improper exercises of federal authority over strictly local matters.

Even if he inevitably loses the case, merely by vigorously defending our state’s rights he is making a potent political statement that may affect change in Congress. He owes this duty of fidelity to the Colorado Constitution to the people of Colorado, irrespective of what the Supreme Court has said in the past. Supreme Court rulings are always subject to challenge, as are the laws of Congress, and this is how a good attorney general goes about it.

Wickard v. Filburn, which is the modern era root of nearly all Commerce Clause overreach by the federal government was decided by a Supreme Court that was very liberal and very sympathetic to FDR’s Progressive pretensions, and although it stands as precedent, precedents can be overturned  by the Court, or by the Congress, but not unless someone stands up and challenges the inequity and overreach of the previous decision and forces change.

Colorado’s medical marijuana laws are substantially different from either Wickard’s wheat field or Raich’s home-grown marijuana. Because there is a substantially different set of facts involved, it is incumbent on the Attorney General to defend the just and reasonable decision of Colorado voters to amend their foundational document to permit a carefully-regulated and entirely domestic medical marijuana industry, even in the face of a seemly, but not irrevocably hostile Supreme Court ruling decided under a different set of facts.

Perhaps if he directly challenges the federal government’s authority to interfere in our medical marijuana laws, and other states join Colorado in demanding that the federal government respect the Tenth Amendment and the rights of the people to control domestic in-state matters, Congress will finally see the turning of the tide of public opinion and will relent by rescheduling marijuana so that it can be lawfully used under federal law for legitimate medical purposes.

But if Suthers does nothing, he is implicitly approving of the erroneous and harmful expansion of federal Commerce Clause power, which puts paid to his self-congratulatory maundering about his attack on the “unbridled power” of the federal government regarding Obamacare in his editorial.

Call Attorney General Suthers and demand that he defend the laws of Colorado and our rights under the Tenth Amendment to decide how to regulate the use of medical marijuana.

Secularist’s at the Freedom From Religion Foundation are reaping what they’ve sown

By Seth Richardson

It seems the FFRF has it’s panties in a twist because a bunch of Rhode Island florists refused to take their money to deliver flowers to Jessica Ahlquist, a teenage Secularist and First Amendment activist who succeeded in having a religious banner removed from her Rhode Island high school.

The Blaze reports on the controversy:

…According to FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor, Twins Florist, one of the businesses that refused to deliver, violated the Civil Rights Act when the business discriminated based on Ahlquist’s atheism. Gaylor released the receipt order from the florist, which reads, “I will not deliver to this person.”…

Gaylor goes on to claim:

“We have basic civil rights standards in our society. A business can‘t shun you because you’re an atheist,” the atheist leader said. “You do not have the right to refuse to do business with someone based on categories and that includes religion. It‘s as if they said ’I will not deliver to a black person.’”

Problem is, Ahlquist is not black, the florists didn’t refuse to deliver to her because she’s black or because she’s an atheist, they refused to trade with the FFRF because it’s an activist Secularist organization and they refused to deliver to Ahlquist because she is a Secularist political activist. It’s not illegal for a business to discriminate based on political categorization. It’s perfectly legal for a business to refuse to serve Democrats, or Progressives or Communists…or Secularists.

The Civil Rights Act says that everyone shall be entitled to “full and equal enjoyment of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, and accommodations of any place of public accommodation, without discrimination or segregation on the ground of race, color, religion, or national origin.” Nothing is said about political discrimination, however. Moreover, according to the definitions found in 42 U.S.C. §2000, a florist’s shop is not a “place of public accommodation” covered by federal law to begin with.

Ahlquist’s objection to the banner in her high school was based on constitutional First Amendment Establishment Clause legal principles, and therefor her claim was a secular political argument (and a fully-justifiable one) about the appropriateness of the clearly religious banner being displayed in a public school. Since secularism is not a religion and Ahlquist’s political Secularist activism does not fall under the protection of the Civil Rights Act, business owners are free to refuse to serve her, or the FFRF, which is equally a Secularist political activist organization, if they wish.

So, Ms. Gaylor is simply wrong and people have every right to discriminate against and shun Secularists, just like they can discriminate against and shun Progressives, Communists or Marxists based on any category they choose other than those specifically listed in the Civil Rights Act.

Such “category” discrimination is called “freedom of (dis)association” and it’s guaranteed by the First Amendment as a right to each and every individual, including Rhode Island florists.

© 2012 Altnews

Federal intrusions into Colorado’s medical marijuana industry must be stopped, and A.G.Suthers has a duty to do so.

By Seth Richardson

Colorado has the most carefully-regulated medical marijuana industry in the nation. Every plant is tracked from seed to consumption to ensure that it is used only in Colorado by authorized medical patients and that every seed, stem, leaf and bud stays in Colorado. Even the destruction of unused parts of the plant is closely regulated and documented. If ever there was commerce that cannot be defined as “commerce among the several states” it’s Colorado’s internal commerce in medical marijuana.

The federal government derives its authority to regulate marijuana based on the U.S. Constitution’s commerce clause authority which permits Congress to regulate commerce “among the several states.” This constitutional authority has been grossly distorted over the decades by politicians and judges and like a rubber sheet has been stretched and expanded so that it now covers quite literally almost all commerce that takes place anywhere in the United States or abroad under the Supreme Court approved rubric that commerce within a state may “affect” commerce outside that state.

This expansion of federal power and control began long ago, in 1824 with the declaration of Chief Justice John Marshall in Gibbons v. Ogden, where he wrote, “This power, like all others vested in Congress, is complete in itself, may be exercised to its utmost extent, and acknowledges no limitations, other than are prescribed in the constitution.” But in that same ruling Marshall admitted that Congress’ power to regulate commerce is not plenary. He wrote, “The enumeration presupposes something not enumerated; and that something, if we regard the language or the subject of the sentence, must be the exclusively internal commerce of a State.” (emphasis added)

For more than a hundred years after Marshall’s ruling, the federal government largely confined itself to actually regulating commerce that passed between states. But during the Roosevelt New Deal administration, the Court radically expanded the scope of the commerce clause in Wickard v. Filburn, where a farmer growing grain on his own property for consumption by his own livestock, which were intended to be consumed by his family was charged with a crime under FDR’s Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938, in which the federal government assumed the power to regulate how much wheat could be produced by farmers nationwide in order to limit wheat supplies and drive up wheat prices through artificial shortages during the Great Depression.

With this ruling, almost no activity was beyond the reach of Congress under the commerce clause, and it wasn’t until 1995 that the Court began restricting Congress’ power to interfere in strictly in-state local matters. In United States v. Lopez (1995), Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, writing for the majority, struck down a federal law that made it a crime to possess a gun within 1000 feet of a school, reasoning that the mere possession of a firearm does not qualify as “commerce” and that the supposed justification that schoolchildren eventually grow up to be workers who may travel interstate was too tenuous and insubstantial a connection to “commerce among the several states” to be upheld, and that therefore the federal regulation of the simple possession of firearms within the boundaries of a state was beyond the authority of the commerce clause and the Congress to regulate.

This particular ruling is important when it comes to analyzing the Obama Administration’s interference in Colorado’s medical marijuana industry. U.S. Attorney John Walsh is quoted by the Associated Press as writing in a letter to 23 marijuana dispensaries located near schools, “When the voters of Colorado passed the limited medical marijuana amendment in 2000, they could not have anticipated that their vote would be used to justify large marijuana stores located within blocks of our schools.”

That, Mr. Walsh, is not only an arrogant presumption and dismissal of the will of the People of Colorado, but it’s also absolutely none of your business. They are not “your” schools, they are Colorado schools, and where Colorado chooses to permit strictly in-state commercial activities is not within your authority to regulate.

In fact, the issue of marijuana dispensaries near schools has been the subject of considerable debate by both the public and by every level of government responsible for permitting dispensaries. The people of Colorado, through their elected representatives have expressed themselves clearly in the laws of Colorado, which are not your concern.

It is not the business of the federal government to interfere in those sovereign state decisions about siting and permitting of dispensaries. This is strictly a matter of state and local concern and we, the People of Colorado, don’t need or want your advice or your arrogant interference in our purely in-state, absolutely non-interstate medical marijuana industry. So butt out.

Of course, being an arrogant federal bureaucrat, Walsh won’t butt out, so this issue is no longer about how Colorado approves dispensary permits, this is about a purely local state constitutional amendment duly voted on and approved by Coloradoans versus an overreaching, arrogant federal agency that has decided to flex its power and in doing so is treading squarely upon our rights as Coloradoans to determine our own laws and future regarding strictly in-state commercial activities.

This is about state’s rights and it’s time for a straight-up fight with the federal government about the rights of Coloradoans under the 10th Amendment. If Colorado’s heavily regulated completely in-state medical marijuana industry is not immune from the interstate commerce clause power of Congress and overreaching federal bureaucrats, absolutely no human activity is, which would make a mockery of the words “among the several states” even more so than it has been, and would erase all constitutional constraints on Congress, and would effectively repeal the 10th Amendment and destroy the very idea of the Republic and the rights of states to determine, within their own boundaries, how the people shall consent to be governed.

Because medical marijuana must be both grown and consumed exclusively within the state, and it cannot be lawfully imported or exported from the state, the federal government has no authority whatsoever to regulate it because it’s not interstate commerce, nor does it affect interstate commerce in marijuana because transporting marijuana interstate is a federal crime.

Now is the time and here is the place for Colorado and indeed all of the states to stand up to defend the 10th Amendment and directly challenge the authority of the federal government to interfere in sovereign state affairs.

There has not been a better, stronger case for reining-in an out-of-control federal government in decades, and it is Colorado Attorney General Suther’s duty and obligation to take this fight to the Supreme Court and win it.

Anything less is dereliction of his duty to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the State of Colorado and our rights as citizens.

Call A.G. Suthers and demand that he put everything he has into this fight, or resign his office if he cannot find it in him to uphold his duty to our Constitution.

© 2012 Altnews

Most City Council Members know that lawmaking is not an adversarial process

By Seth Richardson

On Monday, Council members Scott Hente, Jan Martin, Lisa Czelatdko, Tim Leigh, and Brandy Williams stood up for the Colorado Open Meetings law and open government by opposing a move by Council members Merv Bennett, Angela Dougan, and Val Snider to take the Council into closed executive session to discuss a proposal for banning free speech downtown placed on the agenda by City Attorney Chris Melcher.

Herpin blasted the notion that free speech restrictions ought to be discussed outside the view of the public. Good for him and good for the Council members who voted with him.

City Attorney Melcher then withdrew his proposal, “lawful limitations on activities in public places” from the agenda, claiming that by revealing to the public his report on the current state of the law and his advice on “the strengths and weaknesses of proposed ordinances” it would be “communicating to potential opponents of an ordinance what our legal strategy is and what the city’s legal interests would be.”

Well, yes, that’s true, but so what? Public lawmaking must be done in open session precisely so that the public can know what is being proposed and what the legal and moral justifications are for the law.

Melcher’s problem is that he’s looking at this ordinance like it’s an adversarial courtroom procedure where battling attorneys attempt to present their case to a jury in the best light, by deciding what to reveal and what not to reveal, in hopes of persuading the jury to rule in their favor.

The problem is, public lawmaking is not an adversarial process and the City Council is not a courtroom with complex rules of evidence and attorney-client privilege. Public lawmaking is an authority granted to the elected City Council by the people themselves, and therefore the people are entitled to know exactly what the legal and moral justifications for any law under review are. Moreover, they are entitled to have input on those justifications in open public meetings and they are equally entitled to know what the legal interests and strategies of the city are.

It’s their city. It doesn’t belong to the City Council. They are just representatives of the people. So when Melcher complains that revealing his report would compromise the city’s legal interests and strategies what he’s really saying is that the people who elected the Council and the people who pay his salary are not the source of all legal power and authority and that their interests are somehow different from those of the Council.

This is nonsense, and worse it shows a misunderstanding of Melcher’s duties to the people he actually works for.

If his proposal has legal faults or weaknesses, then it’s imperative that the public be made fully aware of these faults, so that the minds of the many people who have a direct interest in whether or not their right to speak freely in Colorado Springs will be infringed may be brought to bear on the issue so that they can give the Council their advice and opinion on a law that stands to substantially impact their fundamental civil rights.

Those members of the Council who resisted the attempt to consider this law in secrecy should be lauded, and those who advocated keeping the public in the dark, including Mr. Melcher, should be ashamed of themselves. And voters should keep in mind who defended essential liberties and who did not come election time.

© 2012 Altnews

Mayor Bach’s “Free Speech Zones” are an unconstitutional solution in search of a non-existent problem.

By Seth Richardson

Mayor Bach is wasting taxpayer dollars and staff attorney time trying to figure out how to pander to the complaints of business owners in the downtown area who are fed up with the shenanigans of the Occupy Wall Street protesters. Business owners are complaining that protesters are ruining their businesses with their continued presence, and they want the Mayor do to something about it.

Fortunately, Mayor Bach already has adequate authority under existing public order ordinances and laws to keep the Occupy Wall Street protests, or any other protest or rally under appropriate control to protect the health, safety and welfare of the public. What he does not have is any power or authority to suppress the political speech of the Occupy protesters in order to protect the economic interests of the merchants of downtown Colorado Springs.

Mayor Bach is having his staff attorneys work on some sort of “free speech zone” regulation that would attempt to relegate political speech to out-of-the-way locations so as to prevent them from disrupting commerce. That he’s even entertained the notion demonstrates a serious lack of constitutional knowledge and understanding on the Mayor’s part. The simple fact that any elected official ought to know is that the entire surface area of the United States is by law a “free speech zone,” and one of the only ones left on the planet. We must all vigorously defend against every attempt by government to change the presumption that each of us is free to speak and express ourselves in a peaceable manner wherever we are, particularly on public property, because failing to do so will lead to a complete reversal of a fundamental tenet of our Constitution.

The Constitution does not give Mayor Bach or anyone else the power or authority to flatly prohibit speech on any public property anywhere under any circumstances. If a person has the right to lawfully occupy a public space, that person has the right to lawfully engage in free speech and expression and government cannot simply silence him. To grant Mayor Bach the power to silence citizens on public rights-of-way by establishing “free speech zones” and restricting speech to such areas as the government deems appropriate is neither reasonable nor constitutional, it’s pure idiocy unworthy of our Mayor, and we should all stand with the Occupy protesters to defend the right to freedom of speech so long as such speech is exercised lawfully and peaceably.

First Amendment jurisprudence holds that the government cannot lawfully discriminate against any particular type of otherwise lawful speech based on its content. Content-based review, discrimination and prior restraint on free speech is flatly unconstitutional, and the Supreme Court has said so in no uncertain terms. Therefore, if the Mayor restricts free political speech to some specified area, this means that no one will be free to speak anywhere else, regardless of the content of their speech. This is too ridiculous to even contemplate as it would prevent people from saying “hello” in passing outside the authorized “free speech zone.”

It may seem silly to even suggest that this would be the result of Mayor Bach’s notion, but because prior-restraint content-based regulation of speech is unlawful, that’s exactly the construction that would necessarily be given to such a regulation. This would of course mean the ordinance’s immediate rejection by the courts, making the whole exercise one of futility and embarrassment to the city and to Mayor Bach.

But that does not leave Mayor Bach helpless to control the activities of protesters downtown.

What the Occupy protesters refuse to acknowledge is that their right to engage in free speech and expression is not limitless, and the government has the power and authority to reasonably regulate the time, place and manner in which free speech is exercised. Just as the Occupy protesters cannot chant and wave banners in a courtroom or engage in disruptive behavior at a City Council meeting, their activities on public sidewalks and in public parks can be reasonably regulated as required to maintain public peace, order and dignity.

This means, for example, that erecting camps on public land can be prohibited, as can obstruction of sidewalks or access to private property, such as storefronts. Disruptive behavior such as spitting, harassment, disorderly conduct, assault or other breaches of the peace against passers-by are already unlawful and can be enforced by the police. Parks can be closed at night if health, safety and welfare issues make it reasonable to do so. And the regulations needed to control such activities already exist and have been well-tested and approved by the courts. All the Mayor needs to do is direct the Chief of Police to neutrally, objectively and firmly enforce the existing ordinances.

But Mayor Bach cannot constitutionally prohibit individuals from engaging in free political (or other) speech, or relegate the exercise of free speech to specific places merely to protect the image of downtown or the profits of business owners.

© 2012 Altnews

Soldiers who violate their oath, endanger their fellow soldiers and give aid or comfort to the enemy must be harshly punished as an example to others.

By Seth Richardson

As Private Bradley Manning’s Article 32 hearing gets underway, Manning’s defense attorneys are throwing in every thing but the kitchen sink at the bench in an attempt to persuade the court that a) the information Manning stole and release wasn’t really all that classified; b) that the government really shouldn’t be classifying all those documents; c) Manning was upset because he’s either gay or has a sexual identity disorder or both and therefore can’t be held responsible for his actions; and d) that the Army is responsible for Manning’s actions because it is lax in its security measures for classified information.

However, the one thing they aren’t arguing is that Manning didn’t do the deed. That would be a hard claim to support, given the fact that Manning has admitted on several occasions that he did it. With that in mind, let’s review a few other salient points:

“I, Bradley E. Manning, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.”

That is the oath that the Army Private First Class who is charged with leaking classified documents swore when he became a soldier.

One of those orders from officers appointed over him, and one of the regulations he swore to abide by was to keep classified information secret. The oath he took does not give him the right to make an independent judgment about the intelligence policies of the United States or the right to violate those policies because he feels slighted as a gay soldier ro because he disagrees with how the United States prosecutes a war or engages in diplomacy.

No, Private Manning’s duty was clear, and it’s just as clear that he knowingly and deliberately violated orders, regulations, laws and his oath. In doing so he substantially aided America’s enemies, placed his fellow soldiers at additional risk, and damaged our diplomatic efforts to an extent that is still not fully known.

That’s treason.

Article 3, Section 3 of the Constitution states that, “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.” The penalty for treason is death.

The espionage law, 18 U.S.C. 784 states that, “(a) Whoever, with intent or reason to believe that it is to be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of a foreign nation, communicates, … transmits… to any foreign government, or to any faction or party … either directly or indirectly, any document,  or information relating to the national defense, shall be punished by death or by imprisonment for any term of years or for life.

If Manning is convicted of either espionage or treason, he should be executed, as should any other person involved in the leaking of classified documents to Wikileaks, including the founder of Wikileaks and any other co-conspirators involved with Wikileaks, who should be tracked down by the FBI, taken into custody and transported to the United States for trial, regardless of where they may be found.

The First Amendment protects freedom of speech and the press, but it does not protect traitors or spies.

© 2012 Altnews

Free religious speech is a powerful tool, but it requires dedication and ingenuity to frustrate Atheists

By Seth Richardson

The Blaze reports on a New York artist who has managed to beat the Scrooges of the New York Transit Authority and the Atheist cranks at their own game. Atheists sued New York for allowing Christmas decorations in their bus and ferry terminals, so the city banned all Christmas decorations in a capitulation to atheist oppression of free religious expression.

But Scott LoBaido, a long-time resident objected to the sterilization of public property by the forces of secularism, so he created a Christmas-tree costume and spent some time walking around the Staten Island Ferry terminal to bring back the spirit of Christmas to New Yorkers.

And in mid-December, videographer Benny Johnson organized and filmed a living Nativity scene at the Occupy D.C. protest site, just to see what would happen, as reported here by the Blaze.

What a brilliant plan!

Because it’s a costume, and it’s not a display erected by or paid for by the city, the entire controversy is turned on its head. While the city can’t “advance or inhibit” religion, private citizens can engage in free speech, including symbolic religious speech on public property, and there’s little the police or the Atheists can do to prevent them from doing so.

So, for those who wish to honor the birth of Christ in public, rather than erecting a static display, which is sure to draw Atheists and their pet lawyers, why not create living Nativity Tableau societies of people in Nativity costumes who appear, like a flash-mob dance group, at various public buildings and venues at unpredictable times to exercise their right to free religious expression, free of the interference of Atheists?

More importantly, it would actually enlist the protection of the government in preventing Atheists from interfering with the rights of people of faith to openly and proudly display their religious beliefs.

Not only would this frustrate the Atheists to no end, it would be an example of the sort of personal dedication to celebrating the birth of Christ and the Christmas spirit that would make an excellent example for others to follow.

© 2011 Altnews

Far from being a “clear-thinking oasis,” Dawkins’ website is a seething mass of unreason, hypocrisy, religious intolerance and bigotry

By Seth Richardson

If anyone were to wonder why it is that Atheists are disliked, mistrusted and marginalized, one need look no further than the Richard Dawkins Foundation website for salient examples. According to a study from the University of Minnesota, 47.6 percent of people asked said that they would disapprove of their children marrying an atheist and 39.5 percent said that atheists do not share their vision of American society, a higher percentage than the same question about Muslims, homosexuals, Hispanics, Jews, Asian-Americans and African-Americans.

ABC News puts it this way: “Atheists are seen by many Americans (especially conservative Christians) as alien and are, in the words of sociologist Penny Edgell, the study’s lead researcher, “a glaring exception to the rule of increasing tolerance over the last 30 years.” ”

This should come as no real surprise to anyone in Colorado Springs, where our local Atheist pest, Mikey Weinstein, is constantly in the news over his hyperbolic indignation at any public display of religious faith, particularly at the Air Force Academy.

I need to point out a contextual usage here. I’m distinguishing between “atheists” (small “a”) and “Atheists” (big “A”) for a very specific reason. Small “a” atheism is nothing more than a lack of belief in god or gods. Big “A” Atheism, however, meets the definition of a religion, and those that adhere to the tenets of Atheism are themselves very often religious practitioners (and they absolutely hate it when someone points this fact out).

The details and arguments are a bit complex, so I won’t go into them deeply, but for those who wish to look up “implicit and explicit atheism” at Wikipedia, the distinction is that there is a substantial difference between those who simply have no belief in god because they have never been exposed to theistic concepts and cannot therefore form a belief about them (like small children) who are “implicit atheists,” and those who have been exposed to theistic concepts and has made a deliberate decision to deny or reject that such concepts are true, who are “explicit” atheists.

The distinction is important because “explicit atheists” can, and very often do (though they will universally deny it), meet the necessary criteria for holding religious beliefs and can be part of an atheistic religion built around the foundations of anti-theism, religious skepticism, and science. Big “A” Atheism meets the definition of “religion” because it is “a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe,” and “something one believes in and follows devotedly; a point or matter of ethics or conscience,” and “the body of persons adhering to a particular set of beliefs and practices.”

Unfortunately rather than clear thinking, the hallmarks of militantly-religious Atheism are unreason, irrationality, illogic, prejudice, bigotry, hatred and intolerance. And no one exemplifies that religion better than Richard Dawkins, self-described “fairly militant atheist,” the High Priest of militant Atheism and relentless critic of all things theistic and religious. Dawkins, a former professor at Oxford university, noted biologist and prolific writer, is also a lapsed Anglican who has taken up radical anti-theistic religious Atheism as a post-academic avocation, apparantly funded in part by donations to his foundation.

In 2006, he founded the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science, and opened what came to be one of the most active and vibrant atheist discussion forums on the Internet, with more than 70,000 members at its peak. On February 23, 2010, the world’s busiest atheist form was suddenly and unexpectedly shut down by Dawkins, leaving tens of thousands of atheists puzzled as to why. The controversy raged for months, and continues even today, with lawsuits flying about the Dawkins Foundation over alleged fraud and mismanagement. It’s never been made clear to former members why the forum was shut down.

The latest incarnation of the website is not a discussion forum per se, but does provide a blog-like discussion section where selected discussions that have been carefully vetted by the moderation staff are posted and people can (at least in theory) make and respond to comments.

It’s a kludge of a discussion site, but then again it’s intended to be limited and hard to use, and it’s very closely monitored by the Inquisitors of the Congregation for the Propagation of Militant Religious Atheist Orthodoxy, who censor anything that they find displeasing or disturbing (which means anything that might intellectually challenge an Atheist), so as not to ruffle the feathers of the Illuminati of Atheism or disturb the sheep-like complacency and comfort of the Atheist congregation, and particularly so as not to annoy or bother the Vicar of Atheism, Dawkins himself, who doesn’t like anyone questioning his revealed wisdom.

Today’s incarnation of radical militant Dawkinsian Atheism is as arrogant and intolerant of diversity of opinion and devoid of reason and rationality as it ever was.

How do I know this? Well, as a proud and unapologetic long-time secular critic of the bigotry and prejudice of radical, militant Atheism and it’s relentlessly negative, insulting and often libelous attacks on religion and people of faith, I have been banned from both the original Dawkins forum, the spin-off “lifeboat” forum Rational Skepticism, which was organized by former staff at the Dawkins forum after the Great Purge, and now the new incarnation of the Dawkins website.

Why? Well, for asking nettling questions and critically examining and challenging the often-fallacious and irrational and illogical claims and pronouncements of militant Atheism in ways that leave on-line Atheists fuming and furious that they can’t manage to win an argument I’m involved in by trying to try to dismiss me a as a delusional theist, which is the classic Atheist response to debates involving theism. Because I’m so tenacious, and so expertly deconstruct their fallacies and unreason, their only recourse to salve their wounded egos is to cut me out of the conversation, which is a sign of serious weakness in their dogma and their rhetorical skills.

The fury that militant Atheists feel at my criticism is magnified by my status as a non-theist, to the point that the Inquisition at RichardDawkins.Net has flatly stated, “We don’t believe your claim not to be a theist.”  Solicitation of a more detailed explanations and indeed any attempt to discuss their decision was refused by the moderating staff, which said, “All moderation decisions are entirely at our discretion, and we will not be entering into any further correspondence with you about this. ”

Fair enough, it’s their website and they can run it however they please, but that’s hardly upholding the mission statement of the Foundation “to support scientific education, critical thinking and evidence-based understanding of the natural world in the quest to overcome religious fundamentalism, superstition, intolerance and suffering.”

Evidently they think that “critical thinking” is enhanced by dogmatic militant Atheist religious fundamentalism, intolerance, censorship and the suppression of criticism or analysis of Atheist arguments that violates their religious orthodoxy.

I won’t go into detail about the dispute, but I will refer readers to the website and discussion that resulted in the Inquisition declaring me to be a heretic. It can be found in this discussion, starting at comment 213 on page 8, for those willing to wade through the swill to find the pearls of wisdom.

It looks very much like Richard Dawkins and his Foundation can dish it out, but can’t take it. Not that this is any surprise to anyone familiar with Atheists like Dawkins and Weinstein.

© 2011 Altnews

New revelations of the Federal Reserve’s duplicity and secrecy justify some objections of the OWS movement, but not all

By Seth Richardson

We’ve always been left to wonder why the bailout of the Big Six banks, including JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citigroup,Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley were so painless for the banks and how they were able to weather the financial tsunami that has devastated our economy and indirectly the economy of the world and instead flourish.

Turns out it’s all Ben Bernanke’s and the Federal Reserve’s fault.

A story in Tuesday’s Denver Post by Bloomberg News reporters Bob Ivry, Bradley Keoun and PHil Kuntz illuminates just how it is that these six firms avoided their natural free-market fate of bankruptcy. It was the Federal Reserve that saved them, and it was the Federal Reserve, in collusion with the Big Six, that kept taxpayers in the dark, deliberately, about how much the Big Six were getting from taxpayers. The staggering total is far, far more than the $700 billion in TARP funds. When it’s all said and done, the Big Six took 63 percent of the funds you and I will be paying for, and worse, through secrecy, chicanery and manipulation they managed not just to avoid bankruptcy, they all managed to grow substantially, collectively by some $2.5 trillion dollars, or 39 percent, between 2006 and 2011, while innocent homeowners who had never missed a payment had their homes foreclosed upon merely because local property values made their homes worth less than the balance remaining on their mortgages.

The maths are complex, and I refer you to the article for a good explanation of exactly how it happened, but the upshot is that the Big Six banks that should have been shut down by the Federal Reserve and the FDIC because they were failing and genuinely under-capitalized, were instead not just saved at public expense, but were given preeminent position in our banking economy, at the cost of many thousands of small, independent banks that were, and continue to be shut down by the government because their loan portfolios and cash capitalization are sub-par, in large part due to the machinations and malfeasance of the Big Six and the Federal Reserve itself. No bank bailouts for your local bank who, through no fault of their own now hold precarious or non-performing loans. Just arrogant FDIC auditors walking in and shutting the bank down without notice and selling its assets to a bigger bank.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: It is reasonably clear that this administration is attempting to concentrate all US banking in the Big Six and perhaps a few other interstate and international large banking networks, at the expense of local banking, in order to consolidate the Progressive-in-Chief’s power and control over the economy. The Federal Reserve is complicit in this centralization of banking because it’s the non-governmental, immune-from-scrutiny, un-audited controller of, quite literally, the entire economy of the world. When the Federal Reserve speaks, nations listen. It’s easier for the Fed and the Progressives to control a few large banks, and consequently the economy, than the tens of thousands of local banks we have in our independent banking network.

So I come to common cause with the Occupy Wall Street protesters insofar as they argue that the Big Six should be put out of business as punishment for their fiscal malfeasance, their officers (and Ben Bernanke) prosecuted for fraud and collusion, the Federal Reserve should be either disincorporated or placed under the close scrutiny and direct control of Congress and required to be fully transparent and its officers identified and held personally accountable for their actions, and that people should immediately withdraw all their money and investments from all of the Big Six and place them in their locally-owned banks and credit unions, as a way to protect our nation from the devastating evil of central banking.

Perhaps the OWS movement should change its name to “Kill the Big Six and the Fed.” With that agenda I completely agree.

© 2011 Altnews

State Supreme Court wisely rejects gerrymandering attempts to dilute Republican strongholds, but unwisely embeds “competitiveness” as a valid redistricting criteria in the law.

By Seth Richardson

The purpose of the Republic, and its political division into sovereign states operating under a central government of expressly limited powers was intended to ensure that people are free to choose the social and political atmosphere in which they would like to live. The fundamental constitutional right of freedom of association, and it’s implicit companion, freedom of disassociation, are embodied in the concept that if one does not agree with the policies and politics of a particular state, one is free to travel to another state where the legislative climate is more salubrious to one’s needs and desires.

This was the original intent of the Founders, but it didn’t take long for the federal government to begin interfering in internal state matters to deny voters the right to “vote with their feet.” After more than 30 years of oftentimes-controversial bickering over the morality of Mormon polygamy in the East, Brigham Young and his band of Mormons fled Nauvoo, Illinois for the west, settling in the Salt Lake valley, hoping to found the state of Deseret in what was technically Mexican territory captured by the United States in the Mexican-American War.

Mormons simply wanted to be left alone to practice their religious beliefs in peace, but the government of the United States, for several reasons, including competing religious beliefs that polygamy was “sinful,” refused to abide by the principles the Founders embraced in creating a Constitutional Republic comprised of sovereign states where governance and law would best serve the people of an individual state by remaining close to the source of its power: the People. In 1862 Congress passed the Morrill Act, which outlawed polygamy, and which lead to open rebellion and warfare in Utah as Mormons fought to preserve their First Amendment religious rights in the face of implacable moral opprobrium and physical attack on the part of the federal government, which was intent on suppressing the practice at any cost. Utah and the Mormon church finally capitulated, at least on the surface, in 1890. But polygamy has endured in Utah, and elsewhere, despite the best efforts of state and federal regulators to interfere in religious practice and substitute their own moral and religious beliefs for those of the Mormons.

Since the beginning, the ideals of the Founders regarding political and social freedom through state sovereignty and the right of free association (and disassociation) have been progressively eroded by the ever-expanding usurpation of state sovereignty by the federal government, and the entirely unconstitutional notion that it is within the power of the central government to closely regulate the lives of individuals within the states. Worse, this oppressive notion has trickled down to the state and local level.

This is seen in the present attempts to reapportion the state that has just been rejected by the state Supreme Court. Democrats have been trying to insist that republican strongholds be divided up to create “competitive” districts, which is ProgressiveSpeak for “enhance Progressive inroads on conservative voting blocs.” In other words, court-approved gerrymandering.

Fortunately for us all the Colorado Constitution erects substantial barriers to gerrymandering attempts by either party by specifying that all districts shall be physically “as compact as possible.” Combined with constitutional requirements that “communities of interest, including ethnic, cultural, economic, trade area, geographic, and demographic factors, shall be preserved within a single district wherever possible,” Colorado has long resisted the sort of back-east and down-south gerrymandering that disenfranchises minorities or makes minorities out of geographic majorities in order to dilute their voting power.

The Colorado Supreme Court ruled in 1982 that “[a]lthough reapportionment is not without political considerations, these considerations are not among the constitutional criteria, and the commission may not allow them to outweigh the constitutional criteria.” What this means is that “competitiveness” (which is to say the deliberate gerrymandering of districts to prevent or break up voting blocs) is actually an unconstitutional criteria for redistricting.

Or at least it was, until this week, when the liberal Supreme Court ignored the state Constitution and its own prior rulings in holding that “other nonconstitutional considerations, such as the competitiveness of a district are not per se illegal or improper.”

While the Court rejected the redistricting commission’s maps, it did so by holding that the redistricting did not pay proper attention to county boundaries, and it then inserted a knife straight into the heart of representative democracy by opening the door to “competitive” gerrymandering, if it can fit within the other constitutional constraints, which is nothing more than an unconstitutional elevation of minority political power intended to dilute the voting power of members of the public who have “voted with their feet” by moving to, and voting in districts and communities that best represent their political and social interests.

In the time of the Founders, if one did not like the political atmosphere of Virgina, one could move to New York or South Carolina to find communities and people of like mind and interest, and in doing so improve the chances that the majority opinion (within appropriate constitutional boundaries) would prevail and be preserved.

In contemporary Colorado we clearly see this effect at work by examining El Paso and Boulder counties. Boulder County is intensely liberal/progressive, to the point of being socialist or worse, and is so notorious in it’s bloc voting power that it’s a standing joke to refer to it as “The People’s Republic of Boulder.” Liberals and Progressives, granola-heads, Marxists, Communists and idealistic college students move to Boulder to enjoy both the great beauty and satisfying, if micromanaging and intrusive, political climate. As they have every right to do. We should never dream of trying to break up Boulder County to make it more “competitive” because to do so is to disparage the right of free association that brought people of like mind together in political harmony. If you don’t like Boulder’s politics, then move somewhere else. That’s what Thomas Jefferson would say.

On the other hand, people, including this writer, find that sort of liberal/progressive intrusiveness and bureaucratic arrogance and disdain for, in particular, private property rights, to be intolerable and a violation of our right to be free of obsessive and intrusive government bureaucracy, so we vote with our feet and move to places like El Paso County, where our political interests and needs are better respected and served. That is our right, and we should demand that it be respected as well.

This physical migration to find a salubrious political climate is the very essence of the fundamental structure of our nation from the very beginning. If you like liberty and Libertarian values and government, move to Wyoming or Idaho. If you like strict government control and central planning, move to California. It’s your constitutional right to do so.

But what the Democrats have attempted, and will certainly attempt again and again until they succeed, is to divide up El Paso County and other conservative strongholds in ways that marginalize the voting power of the people who moved and live here precisely because they like the conservative values and respect for liberty of their neighbors and wish to consolidate their political power here so that their values and beliefs will prevail, just as liberal/progressive values prevail in Boulder County. We must not allow them to do so, because that defies everything that the Founders, the U.S. Constitution, and our State Constitution stand for.

Given the recent Court ruling, there is now a dire need for a state constitutional amendment expressly prohibiting the use of “competitiveness” as a criteria in redistricting.

© 2011 Altnews

Violence emanating from Occupy Wall Street protests is inevitable and planned.

By Seth Richardson

“This thing has to escalate so people see the violence and who is protecting the interests of corporations, said Dwayne Hudson, an Occupy Wall Street protester in Denver, according to the Associated Press story in Friday’s Denver Post.

“It has to be nonviolent, or else it will just end. We won’t get support. That doesn’t mean you can agitate people. But you can’t also be breaking windows and burning,” said OWS protester Bob Norkus in Boston in the same story.

One is a Marxist agitator and one is a useful idiot. I leave it to you to decide which is which, but here’s a little background from Marx himself:

“The abolition of bourgeois [known today as "corporate"] individuality, bourgeois independence, and bourgeois freedom is undoubtedly aimed at… you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend… The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, … all capital from the bourgeoisie …. Of course… this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois [today, "corporate"] production.” Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto

Protest is an old and honorable right under our system of government. Those who protest “corporate greed” have a right to peaceably assemble and petition their government for redress of grievances. And there are many legitimate grievances that need to be redressed, but they are by and large grievances against the government itself, and specific bad actors in the private sector, not against capitalism generally.

Hudson says that people need to see “who is protecting the interests of corporations,” which is a valid enough demand, but one that doesn’t require violence. It’s society that is protecting the interests of corporations because society, as a whole, and I mean globally, recognizes that corporations are the business form that’s predominately used to create wealth and jobs in a capitalist, free market system. And “corporations” are not, as OWS protesters suggest, some sort of alien being that has infested the planet, they are, in fact, groups of ordinary people banding together in what socialists should laud as a highly democratic form of communal participation.

Corporations are legal entities comprised of shareholders who have voluntarily given “according to their ability” to a collective that is, by law, democratically operated by the shareholders. Corporate law requires that all corporations hold annual meetings at which shareholders may speak and express themselves, and at which they may vote, in person or by proxy, for the Board of Directors who guide the policies of the organization and hire and fire those responsible for the day-to-day operations of creating wealth for the collective.

It’s about as close to Marx’s ideal of the workers “owning the means of production” as you can get, since the shareholders own the corporation and all its assets, collectively.

That some corporations are wildly successful, generating massive wealth and profits for those who own it is a function of capitalism and good business. That successful corporate CEOs make huge salaries is an exercise in highly-socialistic democracy. That shareholders allow such salaries is nothing more than a collective decision to recognize that the purpose of a corporation is not “social justice” it’s to provide to each shareholder in direct proportion to his investment in the company. A successful corporation is not taking anything from anyone that they are not willing to give in return for value exchanged. This includes investors, customers and workers. This is unlike government, particularly socialist government, which inevitably takes from the productive class and gives to the dependent class against the will of those who are being stripped of the fruits of their individual labor.

Both Norkus and Hudson fail to understand that the Marxist dialectical claim that for the wealthy bourgeoisie (corporations and presumably CEOs) to be wealthy, that wealth must be extracted first from the working-class proletarian, and that this is inherently unfair, is utterly false and deceptive. This is what’s known as a “zero-sum fallacy” that claims that there is a limited pool of wealth available, and that the enhancement of one person’s wealth must diminish the wealth of another.

The truth is that wealth, in a capitalist system, is essentially unlimited, and however much wealth one person (like Warren Buffet or George Soros) may have does not negatively affect the ability of anyone else to create wealth of their own, they are in fact limited in their ability to improve their economic and social status only by their own personal limitations and incapacities. And the presence of large corporations, who are enormous consumers of adjunct, support and manufacturing services, actually substantially enhances the opportunity for any individual with a good idea who is willing to work hard to find venture capital investment and create even more wealth.

This is proven by the fact that in the United States, while the rich are indeed getting richer, so are the poor. According to the Macinac Center for Public Policy, citing the Wall Street Journal, “IRS tax return data shows that individuals in the bottom one-fifth back in 1996 experienced income growth of 91 percent by 2005. In contrast, individuals in the highest one-fifth saw their incomes increase just 10 percent over the same period. Incomes of households in the top 5 percent and 1 percent actually declined, by 7 percent and 24 percent, respectively.”

So it’s not that the poor are actually getting poorer, they aren’t. It’s just that the rich are getting richer faster than the poor, and Marxists don’t like this because they think it’s unfair that the rich aren’t being taxed “according to their ability” to absorb the demands for dependent-class support and equality of outcomes that Marxists insist is “fair.” This Marxist canard ignores the fact that it is the rich who provide the companies and the jobs that the poor use to improve their economic status, and that without those corporations, the poor would have no opportunity to share the American dream or prosper.

So when Norkus and Hudson rail against “corporate greed” they are in fact railing against their own inadequacies, incompetence and fears, not any inherent flaw in capitalism. Pogo’s famous declaration “we have met the enemy, and he is us” has never been truer than when applied to the ignorance of OWS protesters, who largely have the leisure to sit in a park somewhere and complain because Mommy and Daddy went about the business of creating wealth for their scion so that they could attend Marxist propaganda-dominated universities and take time off from their studies to protest that which they only dimly understand in an unfocused and ill-defined manner that insults even Karl Marx and the Communists, who at least were open about their intentions and clear in their message.

And they are all useful idiots that the true hard-line Marxists are using as dupes and shills to advance the plan of violent revolutionary overthrow of the United States and capitalism worldwide that has been the agenda of Marxists all along, as Marx himself said.

Fortunately, most hard-working Americans know that capitalism is not to blame for our economic crisis, government overreach and corruption are, and that Marxism and socialism are not viable alternative sociopolitical systems that can, or should replace free-market capitalism. This is why mainstream America is increasingly marginalizing and ignoring the OWS protests and is beginning to insist that if we are going to tolerate the OWS protests, which we certainly should, we should only do so as long as the useful idiots of OWS behave themselves, obey the law, and don’t constitute a public nuisance.

© 2011 Altnews

Finally, a federal agency rises up from the grave of stultified bureaucracy and creates a successful public relations and education campaign

By Seth Richardson

The federal Centers for Disease Control, a bureaucracy not known for having a sense of humor about disease pandemics managed to lighten up and recognize that humor is a powerful tool for public education. As Halloween approaches, people might think that the CDC’s “Preparedness 101: Zombie Pandemic” is a Halloween spoof, but it’s not. It’s a deadly-serious, and highly innovative attempt by the CDC to convince people that they need to think about things like the Bird Flu or an Anthrax attack now, and learn what to do in the event of a disease pandemic.

Back in May, David Daigle, of the CDC’s preparedness office and communication specialists Cathrine Jamal and Margaret Silver wrote a CDC blog entry about preparing for a disaster and referenced zombies in an attempt to boost the blogs readership, which hovers around one to three thousand hits per day. The effects were astounding. In less than a week the response to the blog crashed the CDC’s blog server and the page got more than 3 million views and more than 500 comments. “Most of our blogs get maybe five,” says Silver.

So, Silver, Daigle and Jamal went to work on creating a CDC-authorized graphic novel, “Preparedness 101: Zombie Pandemic” in which the protagonists, everypersons Todd and Julie, hear about a viral disease that turns people into violent zombies and they then go to the CDC for advice on what to do to survive. To read the novel, go to www.cdc.gov/phpr/zombies_novella.htm#.

What’s so great about this effort is that it cost the CDC all of $87 for a stock photo, and some staff time, rather than the millions spent on public information programs that nobody pays attention to. And it’s proven to be far more effective.

Why is this important? Because when the public is uneducated and unprepared for disasters, people die for real.

For decades, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has been recommending that people have preparedness supplies on hand that will allow them to survive on their own for up to three days in the event of a natural or man-made disaster, but few people listen. During hurricane Katrina, many people didn’t know what to do or where to go, and even the incompetents who were elected to deal with such disasters,(former)  New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin and (former) Louisana Governor Kathleen Blanco didn’t have a clue what to do, and more than 1800 people died as a result of ignorance and disbelief that they were in danger. Many hundreds of thousands more suffered because they were ill-equipped to survive on their own until help could arrive.

Public education in proper disaster response is critical, but because most people don’t think a disaster will ever happen to them, most people ignore the risks, much less the educational materials the government spends millions creating.

Anything the government can do that effectively educates and stimulates people into thinking about disasters and how to respond to them is a worthy effort. Self-reliance and preparedness are what will get you through a disaster, be it a tornado, an earthquake, a hurricane, or a zombie apocalypse. Ignorance and sticking your head in the sand will get you killed.

So, kudos to the CDC and to Daigle, Silver and Jamal, three federal government employees who have demonstrated all the good things about our government public servants in a time when government is (largely rightfully) under attack for overspending and wasting money. I only wish all our public employees could manage to get as much bang for a buck as these three sterling examples of our federal workforce.

© 2011 Altnews

Almost completely under the radar, unaccountable snoops and government bureaucrats are soon going to be  running their grubby fingers  through your personal, private medical records

By Seth Richardson

Do you care if some private company has state-authorized access to your medical files without your permission? Do you care if people you don’t know and didn’t authorize can find out about your embarrassing genital warts, or your HIV/AIDS status, or the fact that your child has a drug abuse problem? Do you care if some unaccountable employee at a non-governmental organization gets to talk around the water cooler about your erectile dysfunction or your mastectomy? Do you care that people you have no control over and who can conceal everything they do from you might be taking salacious pleasure in reading the details of your private conversations with your psychiatrist? Do you care if this private organization, after raiding your files, sells the information in them to other people in order to fund it’s intrusions on your rights?

I certainly do.

Last week, after attending the Gazette’s and the Independence Institute’s sold-out forum “A Constitutional Guide to Fighting Federal Overreach; A program for the Grassroots” I was invited to schmooze with Independence Institute sponsor Mike Krause and others at the hotel pub. I thought it would be a nice social occasion, but what I heard from Mike literally turned my stomach and made my blood boil. Now I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.

I learned that during the 2010 legislative session, the Colorado General Assembly and former Governor Bill Ritter treacherously betrayed every citizen of Colorado by passing a law authorizing the seizure of our personal medical records by a private, non-governmental organization, the Center for Improving Value in Health Care (CIVHC), and almost nobody noticed except the watchdogs of liberty at the Independence Institute.

The “All-Payer Claims Database” is the brainchild of liberal policy wonks like Jenny Nate, a blogoflack for the CIVHC, who are all delighted at the way Obamacare has allowed them to “leverage” state and federal law in order to get the legal authority to pry into your private medical affairs without your permission and with no way to oversee what they do with that information.

In her blog at the CIVHC website, Nate writes, “Just like everybody else, policy wonks have dreams.  Two years ago, it was a big dream of mine that someday Colorado would become one of the leading states in America to increase transparency around what we’re paying for and what we’re getting for our health care dollar through the creation of an all-payer claims database…On May 26, 2010, my wonky dream came true when Governor Ritter signed House Bill 10-1330 authorizing the creation of a statewide all payer claims database (APCD). This legislation extended the Executive Director of the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing (HCPF) authority to compel insurers to provide claims data for use in an APCD.”

Transparency my fundament. She want’s transparency of your private medical records, but her organization is set up to utterly deny any transparency regarding what they do with that information.

She goes on to crow about the depth of detail the database will contain: “An all-payer claims database (APCD) is a database that typically includes data derived from medical, eligibility, provider, pharmacy, and/or dental files from private and public payers, including insurance companies, third party administrators, Medicaid and Medicare.  These databases include covered services for the population, a unique member identification number, patient demographics, plan and member payments, and some clinical information.” Translation: She is literally drooling at the notion of having access to every detail about your medical visits to your doctor, your pharmacist, your dentist and anybody else who serves your medical needs.

Nate’s wonky dreams aside, just who the hell do these people think they are? Don’t answer that, it was a rhetorical question, we know who they are, they are liberal Progressives who think that their “need” to analyze health care in Colorado trumps your Fourth Amendment right to privacy and freedom from unreasonable search and seizure. People like Nate, and former Governor Bill Ritter, who signed this travesty of government invasion of privacy care nothing about you or your privacy, they care only about advancing the power of the state over your life.

But it gets far, far worse. If the system was part of the state government, run by state employees and subject to oversight by the General Assembly and transparent in its operations and budget as required by the Colorado Open Records Act (CORA), at least we would have the right, and the opportunity to keep track of what’s going on and who is using these records, how, and why. But the CIVHC is not a governmental agency. In fact, it just received it’s approval as a private 501 c3 non-profit from the IRS. This means it’s completely immune from scrutiny by the public under the CORA.

In a letter to the Independence Institute, CIVHC director Phil Kalin wrote: “As you are no doubt aware, CIVHC is no longer an entity of state government, having been spun off as an independent 501(c )(3) in May… [W]e do not intend to distribute a detailed budget publicly…”

Where in the Constitution, state or federal, does the state of Colorado find authority to give a private organization legal access, under threat of state-sanctioned fines, to private medical information and then make that organization exempt from all public scrutiny? Nowhere, that’s where!

It’s time to put a stop to this gross invasion of medical privacy and our constitutional rights. Call your state representatives and demand that they repeal the law. Call your doctor or insurer and tell them that if they release your private information to the CIVHC, you will sue them for invasion of privacy. Call CIVHC and tell them that you will not tolerate them invading your privacy and will sue them as well. Remember, they aren’t a state agency, so they don’t have sovereign immunity like the state does. Don’t be deterred by the state law, file a lawsuit anyway. Bury them in hundreds of thousands of individual lawsuits and sap their funding merely by having to pay lawyers to file answers to the claims. Give them a SLAPP…a “Strategic Lawsuit Against Private Participation” in violating your rights.

And write letters to your local newspapers objecting to this travesty of Progressive arrogance. Get the word out. Make it a news story any way you can.

If we don’t put a stop to it now, your private information will begin flowing into this enormous civil rights violation of a database in December. Thankfully, it was delayed somewhat or it would already be in operation, so there is still time to put a stop to it. Make the calls, make them today, or forfeit your medical privacy forever.

© 2011 Altnews

Muslim students who disrupted a lawful assembly convicted of infringing on Israeli Ambassador’s speech

By Seth Richardson

The United States has a long history of tolerating protest and exercises of free speech, especially by students, but of late, an honorable tradition has been debased by leftists, Progressives, union goons and various flavors of religious zealots who abuse their right of protest by exercising what amounts to a “heckler’s veto” over the equally protected free speech of people they don’t like.

We’ve all seen the videos of conservative speakers on college campuses being shouted down and pied in the face and otherwise heckled and prevented from exercising their right to speak freely at events to which they had been invited by other students and the violent protests of SEIU union goons who physically attack people who don’t agree with their radical leftist agenda.

But the tide may be turning for those who would deliberately disrupt such events. At Ambassador Michael Oren’s speech at the University of California, Irvine in February, 2010, 10 Muslim students were arrested and last week they were convicted by a jury of conspiring to disrupt the speech. They were sentenced to community service and three years of probation by Orange County Superior Court Judge Peter J. Wilson.

Good for the jury, and good for Judge Wilson.

The First Amendment protects free speech and protest, but it doesn’t protect it everywhere and at any time. Like all rights, the government may impose reasonable time, place and manner restrictions on free speech so long as the regulations are intended to keep the peace and are not used to discriminate based on the content of the protest.

If the Muslim students had marched outside the lecture hall with signs and even bullhorns, they would likely have not gotten arrested. But disrupting a lawful assembly of persons who came, and often have paid to hear a speaker, is an abuse of the right of free speech, and an infringement of the rights of the speakers and those who have come to hear them.

The hecklers in this case tried to argue that they had a right to stand and shout out prepared statements like “propagating murder is not an expression of free speech” and cheer so loudly for such statements that the Ambassador could not continue for long periods. They tried to defend their actions by producing pie charts showing how much time they spent disrupting the event versus how long the Ambassador spoke.

But however passionate people are about having their side of the debate heard, while the First Amendment protects their right to express themselves, it does not necessarily guarantee them “equal time” in a venue that someone else has paid for and reserved for the purpose of expressing their message.

The Muslim students would have been welcome to reserve the same hall, at another time, to present their views, and it would have been just as unlawful for Israeli protesters to disrupt their presentation.

Free speech for all requires a degree of civility and respect for the opinions of others, and tolerance for diversity of opinion, not, as the Neo-Marxists, religious radicals and Progressives would prefer, a platform reserved only for radical left-wing or religious propaganda and indoctrination that silences all other opinions.

Those who value our traditions of free speech and protest, in appropriate venues and at appropriate times, should thank this judge and jury for defending everyone’s right to express themselves in a peaceable and lawful manner.

© 2011 Altnews

Make the credit-issuers like PayPal liable for identity-theft fraud

By Seth Richardson

In what’s becoming an annual ritual for me, I have to once again point out that identity theft is a problem for the victims only because of the lax security policies of credit issuers, the uncaring arrogance of credit reporting agencies, and dilatory state and federal legislatures who refuse to place the burden of identity fraud where it belongs: on the merchants who extend credit without carefully checking the actual identity of the person they are giving it to.

In the news today is the story of how five members of the Aurora City Council had their identities stolen, evidently from records improperly kept by the city itself. More than $2000 in fraudulent on-line purchases have been made in the past few weeks by thieves using a PayPal billing service called “Bill me Later.”

This “service” allows anyone, with a minimum amount of information, including only the last 4 digits of one’s Social Security number, to buy products and bill them to the victim. Experts in information securty have said that one does not even need the social security number because most Social Security numbers were, until very recently, issued consecutively by state and region, according to the date and time of birth. This means that with information about where a person was born, along with their birth date, it’s possible to infer the Social Security number and hit on it fairly easily. This makes quite literally everyone born before last year vulnerable.

This sort of cavalier treatment of innocent victims by merchants like PayPal is unconscionable and outrageous and we need laws to put a stop to it.

Is it the fault of the victims that the merchant sold goods to a fraudster? No, it’s the fault of those who issue credit to individuals or companies without properly ensuring that the person or firm they are issuing credit to is who they are supposed to be. In other words, most financially-motivated identity theft is perpetrated by thieves, but it’s aided and abetted by companies that issue credit that are either incompetent or simply do not care if they wrongfully issue credit to a credit thief because current law prevents consumers from suing them for failing to exercise responsibility.

And this disregard for proper business practice and security is abetted and exacerbated by the credit reporting agencies, who enter derogatory information onto a person or firm’s credit rating without first confirming that the debt claimed by the merchant is valid and is not the product of identity theft caused by lax security on the part of the merchant.

This is no small issue, and the effects of identity theft and lax security can be devastating both financially and emotionally. So much so that victims of lax security on the part of credit-issuers ought to have a cause of action to sue the credit-issuer for damages. But today, the law favors the merchants, credit card companies and banks, to the detriment of the consumer.

This disregard for the rights of individuals to not be impugned or maligned regarding their credit rating, which is a valuable and important part of one’s reputation is unacceptable and must be eliminated.

So who should bear the economic burden for issuing credit to an identity thief? The creditor of course. If they extend credit, they should be certain to whom they’re extending it, or they should suffer any losses resulting from their negligence.

The solution is pretty simple. We must pass laws that shift the burden of identity theft from the innocent victim to the abettors, who are the merchants, credit-issuers and the credit reporting agencies.

This is done by first prohibiting anyone from using a Social Security number for the purposes of identification for any reason other than for receiving Social Security benefits. That’s what the federal law authorizing the assignment of the number says anyway, and it’s time to enforce it upon creditors and credit reporting agencies.

Second, the law must require that creditors must provide, on demand by the alleged debtor, documentary proof that the person or firm to which the credit was issued is in fact the actual person or firm that requested the extension of the credit, and that the extension of credit was properly and legally authorized, in the case of a company.

Likewise, a credit reporting company must provide the same proof on demand that the debt claimed by the creditor was actually and validly incurred by the person the debt is claimed against before entering any derogatory information on that persons credit file.

This would require that creditors make absolutely certain that they have verified identification of the person requesting the credit, just as banks and the post office are required to verify a customer’s identification.

Further, the law should require that some representative of the business actually meet the customer face-to-face and personally verify that person’s identity using certified government-issued photo identification. The law would require both parties to sign a form attesting to the personal meeting and verification of identity and detailing the request for credit, and it would require that the verified photo identification of both parties, creditor and customer, be scanned and made a permanent part of the record. This makes the creditor liable and the agent who extended the credit identifiable and responsible.

The credit issuer would be required to retain this form permanently, and no claim by a creditor would be valid or could be reported to any credit reporting agency unless a certified copy of that form is produced on demand. It would become a mandatory part of any credit contract, without which no debt can be claimed or collection attempted.

This would help ensure that no credit is issued to persons using fictitious or false identity information, and that no false debts or reports to credit agencies can easily occur, as is the case today.

In the event of a dispute, the victim of an identity theft would only have to demand a copy of the form and demonstrate that he or she is not the person identified on the form, at which point all claims against the victim would be legally null and void, and the creditor would be left holding the bag.

Such a law would eliminate the vast majority of identity theft overnight, and it would place the risk for failing to properly verifying the identity of a borrower in the proper place; with the company that issues the credit.

Would this slow down and make more complex the process of issuing enforceable lines of credit? Yes, but that’s a good thing. Credit fraud is directly related to the ease with which someone can obtain it.

Merchants would still be allowed to assume the risk of not properly identifying a customer in the interests of expediency, but if the customer denies the debt, and the merchant cannot produce the legally-required form with a photograph of the purported debtor, the merchant would be legally prohibited from trying to collect the debt.

In short, it’s the responsibility of those who issue credit to be absolutely certain of the true identity of anyone they issue credit to, and they should bear the entire risk of lax identification policies.

It’s time to but the burden for preventing identity theft where it belongs, and take it off the shoulders of the innocent victims.

© 2011 Altnews

State troopers kneeling on man’s back when he was handcuffed asphyxiated him to death, and Wyoming must pay half a million dollars in compensation.

By Seth Richardson

In 2002, Wyoming Highway Patrol troopers arrested a Denver man at the scene of an accident, and then killed him by kneeling on his back as he lay handcuffed and hobbled on the ground. Bruce James Weigel was negligently killed by police using an increasingly common tactic they use to deal with obstreperous and unruly arrestees: police wrestle them down, handcuff them, tie their feet together, and then administer a little “street justice” to struggling citizens by kneeling on their backs or necks, ostensibly to keep them under control. The more the face-down suspect struggles, the more pressure and weight the police put on him.

But too often such brutal tactics on persons already adequately restrained result in permanent injuries and with alarming and increasing frequency, death, as in Weigel’s case. Such asphyxiation deaths are not at all uncommon, either in hospitals, care facilities for the mentally disabled, and when people are in police custody.

A 2008 article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal discussing the notorious case of a Polish immigrant, Robert Dziekanski, who was tasered and then asphyxiated to death in 2007 at Vancouver’s airport, cited a 1998 study of 21 deaths associated with “excited delirium” and positional asphyxia, claims that the study found that 18 of 21 cases “were people in police custody” who all “suddenly lapsed into tranquility shortly after being restrained. In all 21 cases, the victims had been restrained either face-down or through pressure applied to their necks… In 8 cases, the victims suffered chest compression from the weight of 1–5 people.”

The article cites the conclusion of the study as saying that ‘”the possibility that positional asphyxia contributes to unexpected death in people in states of excited delirium cannot be ignored.” Those suffering from excited delirium were in need of more than the usual amount of oxygen, yet the techniques used to restrain them could restrict their ability to breathe.”

In Weigel’s case, the autopsy found that the cause of death was explicitly “mechanical asphyxiation” and after a lawsuit by his family that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court found that troopers John K. Broad and Devan Henderson unlawfully killed Weigel by using excessive force in restraining him after they had arrested, handcuffed and hobbled him and had him lying face-down on the ground.

The U.S. District Court originally ruled that governmental immunity covered the troopers because the state alleged trooper’s conduct was not unreasonable under existing law. But the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned that ruling in 2008, saying “…[T]he law was clearly established that applying pressure to Mr. Weigel’s upper back once he was handcuffed and his legs restrained, was constitutionally unreasonable due to the significant risk of positional asphyxiation associated with such actions.” The Supreme Court refused to hear Wyoming’s appeal, so the Circuit Court’s decision stands.

And that’s a good thing, because it puts all police departments and officers nationwide on notice that the courts will not excuse police who kill restrained citizens through carelessness, negligence or out of a misguided perception that they are in significant enough danger from handcuffed, hobbled suspects to justify using deadly force against them by crushing them to death.

The $500,000 settlement with Weigel’s family also included a requirement that Wyoming send a copy of the court ruling to every law-enforcement agency in Wyoming. That is perhaps the best thing to come from the sad death of Mr. Weigel at the hands of overzealous and uncaring Wyoming Highway Patrol troopers.

It would have been more just if troopers Henderson and Broad had been required to personally mail a copy of the decision to every law enforcement officer in the nation, personally, at their own expense, as just punishment for their negligence and disrespect for the civil rights of a Colorado citizen.

It is the unquestioned duty of our police to pay attention and use reasonable care to protect the lives and health of citizens whom they have arrested and taken into custody. We authorize our police to use reasonable and necessary force to take persons suspected of crimes into custody only upon the explicit understanding that when citizens are in their custody, they will be treated properly, with respect, and with due regard for their health and safety at all times. They are, after all, innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law, and police officers are expected to understand and respect this fact.

Allowing police to use untested, unapproved tactics like forcefully kneeling on people’s necks, heads or backs once they have been handcuffed presents a grave danger of permanent injury or death that cannot be justified by any specious claim that officers might receive minor injuries from a handcuffed suspect who continues to struggle. In many cases, it appears as if they are continuing to struggle because they are being asphyxiated to death by the police, and their struggles are perfectly reasonable, rational and necessary.

Our police must expect that wrestling with uncooperative suspects is just part of the job, and that resistance to police does not justify any sort of force that officers decide is appropriate. People should submit peacefully to arrest and take their case before the court, as the law requires. But failing to do so does not and should not justify the use of deadly physical force, even if it’s merely negligently or carelessly applied by poorly-trained and incompetent police officer that asphyxiates or injures the citizen.

If police officers fear injury so much that they feel justified in killing people who are handcuffed, then they have no business being police officers at all.

We must demand more of our police, and this ruling is the first step in establishing new, reasonable and appropriate police policies prohibiting the use of restraint tactics that pose an unreasonable risk of injuring or killing people by positional asphyxia or impact-related head and neck injuries.

© 2011 Altnews

Denver judge recognizes the danger of “overcharging” medical pot defendant with felony child abuse — Arapahoe DA uses common sense

By Seth Richardson

In a stunning departure from the lock-step march towards oppressive government nanny-state tactics, Denver County Court judge Andre Rudolph gave a wrist-slap to Joseph Lightfoot, who had been charged with felony child abuse for growing medical marijuana in his home. Denver police arrested Lightfoot after a nosy neighbor turned him in for arguing with his wife, which triggered an invasion of their home by police concerned about domestic violence.

During a search predicated on a “strong odor of marijuana,” police found a medical marijuana growing operation in the basement and arrested Lightfoot and his wife, Amber Wildstein because police had “numerous concerns” with the safety of their three children. Police and prosecutors alleged that there was no lock on the basement door and found small amounts of processed pot in the house. They also alleged that the growing operation endangered the children because of unspecified “chemicals,” “ventilation problems” and the potential that robbers might invade the home to steal the pot.

Legal scholar and former prosecutor Kris Miccio, of the University of Denver law school is quoted in the Denver Post front-page article as saying of the police allegations, “If a police officer brought that into my office, I would have thrown him out and called his supervisor. It’s crazy. It opens the door to anything.”

Miccio is right. If the police can arrest you on felony child-abuse charges based on potential safety hazards in your home, there is not only no end to the intrusions the police can make into your private home, but no one with children is safe from being arrested on the whims and caprices of a police officer who thinks that your home is “unsafe” for your children.

This is a standardless misinterpretation of a statute that was passed explicitly to protect children from the known and unavoidable hazards of meth-cooking operations to children living in a home-based meth lab.

But the rationale doesn’t apply to less obvious and documented risks. If it does, here are some of the felony crimes parents must avoid:

Handrail on the stairs missing or in poor repair? Felony child abuse.

Wet spot on the kitchen floor that might cause a slip-and-fall? Felony child abuse.

Bleach left out on the washer? Felony child abuse.

Kid riding his bike without a safety helmet? Already a nanny-state crime, but under this interpretation it’s felony child abuse.

Liquor left in an unlocked cabinet? Felony child abuse.

Have nice, expensive silver collection in your house? Might attract robbers, so felony child abuse.

And of course the quintessential nanny-state justification for police abuse: Guns in the home. Felony child abuse.

The list goes on and on of the felony crimes we all face regarding children if police and prosecutors are given such wide discretion by the courts. Thank God that Judge Rudolph did what he could to slap down the prosecution in this case. Unfortunately, he didn’t simply declare Lightfoot not guilty notwithstanding his plea.

Lightfoot pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor child-abuse charges in order to avoid a felony rap-sheet entry, which is a typical plea bargain that innocent people accept when the prosecutor is determined to nail them for something.

Poor people are very often subjected to this Hobson’s choice quite deliberately by the prosecutor, who commonly stack and overcharge, precisely because prosecutors know that poor defendants can’t afford attorneys to vindicate them, and the Public Defender’s office is overworked and understaffed and has little interest in actually pursuing justice for innocent victims of police abuse and nanny-state oppression since they get paid by the very system they are supposed to be fighting for their clients.

And defendants like Lightfoot are the very real victims of such prosecutorial abuse of discretion.

Child abuse laws are necessary, but they are supposed to be applied rationally, when children are actually abused or harmed, or if there is a clear and present danger of injury that is being ignored by an adult. They are not intended to empower nanny-statism or police oppression through standardless, ad hoc discretionary decision-making by police and prosecutors.

It’s a violation of our civil rights when the police and prosecutors execute laws without regard to reason or objective standards of behavior that competent adults of sound mind can be expected to know and understand. When the police have unfettered discretion to declare anything a hazard to children and arrest parents and guardians because it suits the police to do so, we are all in danger of police-state tyranny.

If police and prosecutors cannot be trusted to faithfully execute their duties using reason, prudence and respect for our civil rights, then they need to be turned out of office because they are not fit to serve us.

On the other hand, some prosecutors are rational, reasonable people who understand the limits of their authority.

Such is the case with Arapahoe District Attorney Carol Chambers, who reviewed the case of Denver County Court Judge Mary Celeste, who was under investigation for child abuse for leaving her six-year-old granddaughter in her car while she went shopping at Sam’s Club.

Chambers told the Denver Police that “the conduct involved does not rise to the level of a state criminal law violation” according to the Denver Post story on page 2B.

Good call, Ms. Chambers. Thanks for not pandering to the nanny-state nitwits.

The notion that a six year old girl is at risk while sitting in a car in a parking lot, even on a hot day, is ludicrous and laughable, unless she’s somehow disabled and incapable of opening the doors or windows of the car, which was not alleged.

Leaving a helpless infant unattended in a car on a hot day is a recipe for disaster, although not a guarantee of one by any stretch of the imagination, despite what nanny-state enthusiasts might say.

But a six-year-old? Please, use some common sense and reason, like DA Chambers did.

© 2011 Altnews

National Forests belong to us, so why not let us take advantage of them?

By Seth Richardson

The Forest Service has another in a long list of bureaucratic conundrums, and it’s quite typically constrained its thinking to the narrow box of federal top-down management.

It seems that in Colorado, the government has some 170,000 piles of trees and slashed branches that nobody is willing to buy from them. As a part of their stewardship of the forests, the Forest Service lets government-paid contracts to loggers to cut and stack hundreds of thousands of beetle-killed pine trees. Some $40 million in emergency funds has been allocated to the project by Congress.

The Forest Service didn’t do its homework and assumed wrongly that loggers would be able to sell the trees to lumber mills and a Kremmling pellet factory, but burdensome environmental regulations have decimated the timber industry nationwide and have driven most of the lumber mills in Colorado out of business and competition from Canada has kept lumber prices low, so there are few takers for the wood.

Meanwhile, logging is proceeding apace on the government’s (meaning your) dime and the logs are piling up. So many in fact that they are just burning hundreds of the piles in place because they can’t find buyers.

Problem is that state health regulations require a permit for such large-scale slash burns in order to preserve air quality. Of course this is a bit silly since the alternative is to leave the trees standing and dead, in which case eventually they will all light off at once in one enormous wildfire that will dump exactly as much carbon into the atmosphere as burning the slash piles, but in a much less controlled fashion and with much more devastation of the environment.

Since the desire is for “controlled burns,” and the carbon is going to be released one way or another, either through burning or as ozone-harming methane, a product of decomposition that’s sixteen times more harmful to the ozone layer than carbon monoxide that is produced by burning, let’s think out of the box. Let’s control and disperse the inevitable carbon release even more by requiring the contractors to whack the logs into 15-inch sections and pile them up. Then, put up a website that shows the location of these piles of wood and encourage people to go to any of them and fill their pickup trucks and trailers with…wait for it…free firewood.

Yes, you heard it here. Free federal firewood for the People! Massive amounts of it. As much as you care to load up and take home, absolutely free of charge and without any cost to the government for disposal.

Commercial firewood sellers, you can increase your profits and reduce your costs by getting your stock in one place, ready to be split and sold, at absolutely no (further) charge by the government! Now there’s a small-business stimulus plan that actually works!

Come one, come all and enjoy the bounty of your forest lands without all the red tape and cost of getting a firewood cutting permit from the Forest Service. No driving around or hiking up the hill to find a tree to cut. Less wait for the wood to cure so it can be burned.

Congress has already taxed you to cut and stack the wood, so no need for further government intervention! Come and get it!

While there’s probably far more wood than everyone in Colorado needs for their fireplaces, any amount that is taken for home or commercial firewood use reduced the overload. Everybody wins, nobody loses except the bureaucrats who can’t stand the idea of the People actually using and enjoying the bounty of their national forest lands without their supervision, for free.

Do you suppose anyone at the Department of Agriculture has enough common sense to make it happen?

Call or write to the USDA Forest Service Rocky Mountain Region office at 740 Simms Street, Golden, CO, 80401, 303-275-5350. Ask for Cal Wettstein, Commander of the Forest Service’s Bark Beetle Incident Management Organization and demand that the Forest Service put this plan into action immediately.

© 2011 Altnews

Low percentage of those eligible for food stamps who use them demonstrates the pride and self-sufficiency of Coloradoans.

By Seth Richardson

Those who are eligible for public food assistance programs but refuse to participate are to be lauded and respected for refusing to succumb to the entitlement mentality that is bankrupting our nation. Gazette reporter Emily Wilkins writes in her Saturday, July 9th story that less than 43 percent of people who are eligible for food assistance choose to suck at the public teat.

One might more productively say that fifty-eight percent of those who might be eligible for food assistance have the pride and dignity, and the respect for their fellow citizens, not to go on the public dole.

One of the most egregious bits of Progressive propaganda in the article comes from Kathy Underhill, executive director of Hunger Free Colorado, who suggests that public food assistance programs are economically beneficial. “You think about the people hired and it’s job creation,” Wilkins quotes her as saying, “You’re feeding people and creating economic development.”

This of course is utter nonsense because every dollar that flows into government food programs, and from there to private retailers to supply food, is first extracted by force from the taxpayers. Such entitlement programs never produce wealth and are not the product of wealth production. They produce only the illusion of economic development by shifting and concealing the source of the money, which is moved from place to place by the state and federal government in a giant shell game.

What is given to the needy in Colorado comes directly from the pockets of other Americans. It’s not economic development, it’s pure, unadulterated redistribution of wealth by Progressive taxation. Six hundred and eighty-eight million worth of redistribution from taxpayers to the poor in Colorado alone.

This is not to say that food assistance programs are not a good thing, they are. Certainly those among us who are in need and are hungry must be fed. We are not like India or other third-world nations that we allow our citizens to starve to death in the streets. We are a compassionate and caring people whose altruistic instincts and charitable giving worldwide exceed that of any other nation. Americans are the most generous people on earth, not just to our own, but to the needy worldwide.

But do we really need, or want the government fulfilling that need, or is it better to free our charitable nature as Americans and let neighbors help neighbors? Taxation for redistribution of wealth, which includes food assistance programs, is a Progressive and Socialist notion that actually decreases the desire of people to help their fellow citizens.

When the government extracts money through taxation to serve the economic needs of others, we are naturally more reluctant to contribute to those needs on our own, since we’ve already been taxed for that purpose.

And government is never, ever more economically efficient than the free market for charity. When the government collects a “poor tax” for redistribution, it takes a large share of that tax right off the top to fund the enormous federal and state bureaucracy that administers the programs, thereby redistributing wealth not to the poor, but to the affluent bureaucrats whose primary interest is in securing their own economic future by ensuring that their programs remain in high demand.

Thus the pandering to the press by Progressive mouthpieces who insist that redistributive taxation is “economic development” and who call for for bigger, more expensive government entitlement programs.

The poor must be protected and fed, that much we all agree on. But government feeding programs are inherently wasteful and demeaning to the poor, who should look to, and be served by the members of their community, as a matter of charity and love.

Nor should the poor be encouraged to rely upon government assistance. Benjamin Franklin once said, “I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.”

Perhaps the only good thing about such assistance programs is the bureaucratic nightmare of paperwork that is required before such assistance is granted. It’s so burdensome, intrusive and humiliating to fill out the 26 pages of intensely personal and embarrassing inquisitorial government paperwork that many people simply refuse, preferring to find other ways to support themselves rather than be subject to such scrutiny of their private lives.

Good for them. That’s how it should be. Charity begins at home, and private charitable food assistance programs don’t require reams of paperwork and bureaucratic intrusiveness, they just require some humility and thanks from those who are in need, and the natural altruism and caring of the community.

In the end, if you are so needy, and your community cannot provide you with food using private charitable programs, the public assistance programs are there as an ultimate safety net, but they come with a serious cost by way of humiliation and shame, and that’s as it should be. Government “entitlement” programs should always be programs of last resort that are not pleasant or easy to use.

Contrary to the protestations of Kathy Underhill and Hunger Free Colorado, we need fewer people making use of government-funded public food assistance programs, not more. Ideally, no one should need to resort to government handouts, and private charitable assistance would care adequately for all our truly needy community members.

To make that happen, Underhill and her organization would make better use of their time and money by helping the many private charities in the community to get their message of need across to members of the community who might be willing to help, rather than proselytizing for ever-more Progressive government spending and power.

© 2011 Altnews

Terrorist conversation shows us why an armed citizenry is important

By Seth Richardson

For more than twenty-five years now, both as a police officer and civilian, I’ve carried a concealed handgun against the remote chance that I’ll be called upon to use it to defend the innocent. Doing so on a daily basis is a nuisance and a pain in the butt, literally, but it’s a habit I’ve formed and a grave responsibility I’m proud to accept. Carrying a firearm in public requires careful attention and constant training to remain proficient and safe, but it’s a necessary component of securing our liberty as a nation and our individual freedom and safety.

Aside from the obvious reasons related to self-defense against criminals, two terrorist suspects in Seattle illuminated yet another reason why we as a nation need to take our duty to be armed more seriously, as the citizens of Israel do.

In Israel, it’s perfectly commonplace to see citizens carrying fully-automatic weapons like the famous Uzi submachine gun and other military arms openly in public. As a result of this public policy of an armed and prepared citizenry, Israel has not suffered a major terrorist attack on a school in many years. Parents and volunteers armed with military weapons routinely guard Israeli schools.

And contrary to the hysterical maunderings of hoplophobes and anti-gun zealots, Israelis aren’t gunning one another down randomly in the streets, and the gutters remain tidy and free of blood…except when some terrorist sets off a concealed bomb, which is the weapon of choice for cowards.

If Israel’s example is not sufficient, last week, federal agents arrested Abu Khalid Abdul-Latif, AKA Joseph Anthony Davis and another unidentified man in Seattle as they took possession of illegal machine guns provided for them by federal agents in a sting operation. Abdul-Latif, a former sailor in the U.S. Navy, and his cohorts were planning to attack a Seattle military recruiting station to kill as many people as possible. Agents also recorded conversations between Abdul-Latif and an informant where Abdul-Latif lauded the massacre in 2009 at Fort Hood, Texas, where 13 soldiers died and many more were wounded by a traitorous Muslim terrorist mole in our military. The U.S. Attorney’s office in Seattle also released court documents that quoted Abdul-Latif as saying, “It’s a confined space, not a lot of people carrying weapons, and we’d have an advantage.”

Those chilling words vindicate every inconvenience and personal sacrifice I’ve ever made in choosing to be armed in public.

The lesson here is that that no one can defend your life against such sudden attacks but you. The police won’t be there in time and you won’t have six minutes to wait for them to show up. You won’t have sixty seconds. If you’re lucky, you might have six seconds or less to take action to put a stop to the attack and save many lives.

But like the victims at Fort Hood and Virginia Tech and every other mass shooting in U.S. history, the potential victims in this foiled plot, who were disarmed and denied their right to keep and bear arms by their own government, would have been at the mercy of the only people in the room with a gun; the terrorists.

And that’s exactly why terrorists and deranged killers deliberately and carefully seek out “gun-free zones” like colleges and schools and, paradoxically, domestic military bases, where soldiers are denied their right to keep and bear arms except when they are going into combat.

It should be obvious that the fewer “gun-free zones” we allow, and the more law abiding citizens who step up and accept the burden of being armed in defense of themselves, their families and their nation, the fewer targets armed terrorists will have to choose from to ply their trade with impunity, and the greater the chances that when terrorists do attack, and they will, they will not murder innocents unopposed.

© 2011 Altnews

Mayor-elect Bach should open a criminal investigation into the PR scandal.

By Seth Richardson

The degree of cowardice and corruption at City Hall has reached a new zenith with the payoff of Sue Skiffington-Blumberg, former city PR flack who deliberately trashed Colorado Springs in the press rather than doing the job she was hired to do. This week, acting City Manager Steve Cox authorized a $38,800 severance payout to Skiffington-Blumberg, saying “I think 10 years of service warrants that kind of loyalty from the employer” and claimed that she is “a good person.”

She may be a good person, but she’s also a corrupt city employee who deliberately and knowingly betrayed the city and the taxpayers by callously planting negative stories in the national media as the operative of a widespread conspiracy within city government to punish taxpayers for refusing to approve a new tax. And as a desperate last act, Cox is trying to cover up and minimize the potential fallout from this scandal by allowing Skiffington-Blumberg to resign and giving her severance pay, before the new administration of Mayor-elect Bach can take the reins and forbid the payola.

What Skiffington-Blumberg (not to mention Culbreth-Graft) did ought to qualify as criminal fraud, since she was specifically hired to improve, not denigrate the image of Colorado Springs. Not only should she not be getting a severance bonus, she should be being sued by the city for the incalculable economic damage she personally did to the city’s image.

Skiffington-Blumberg insists that she was just following orders, specifically the orders of ex-City Manager Penny Culbreth-Graft, but that’s a lame excuse for such a deliberate betrayal of trust.

Skiffington-Blumbers owed her allegiance and loyalty to the taxpayers, who were her employers, and she should have blown the whistle on the scandal immediately. As Edmund Burke once wrote, “all that is required for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” Skiffington-Blumberg was paid more than one hundred thousand dollars a year to look after the best economic interests of the city, and she should punished for betraying that trust, not be rewarded for it.

So why did Cox pay her off?

Probably to shut her up about who knew what, and when. That’s the only explanation of why she wasn’t instantly fired for cause and frog-marched by security from the building after Wayne Laugesen’s bombshell editorial hit the street. The conspiracy to trash Colorado Springs in the national press cannot have been a secret, and it’s simply inconceivable that others besides Skiffington-Blumberg and Culbreth-Graft were not deeply involved.

And that leads to two places: The City Council and the Mayor’s office.

Just a little conspiracy theorizing leads to the inevitable conclusion that the corruption goes much higher than the City Manager, and there’s simply not much room left at the top of the political food chain for plausible deniability.

It’s time to get to the bottom of this conspiracy Mayor-elect Bach. Find out who knew what, and when. Convene an investigation and hire a special prosecutor to investigate and prosecute this fraud upon the people of Colorado Springs. Name names publicly. Fire anyone and everyone who had any shred of knowledge of this conspiracy and didn’t come forward immediately, no matter what their lame excuse. Reveal which elected officials were in on the crime so that they can be recalled and turned out of office.

Mayor-elect Bach, if your new administration is to have any credibility at all, you have to clean house and root out any and all corruption without a shred of mercy.

That’s what the people of Colorado Springs deserve. Show them that you will be a strong Mayor in no uncertain terms. Use this prime opportunity to set the new standard for fidelity, honesty, honor, integrity and openness in government by refusing to tolerate corruption of any kind.

This is your chance to achieve greatness, seize it.

© 2011 Altnews

Analysis of the City Charter shows that Skorman’s home-made campaign contribution forms violate municipal election law

By Seth Richardson

The brouhaha over whether candidates for Mayor of Colorado Springs are required to provide the employer and occupation of donors on their campaign finance reports appears to be a cynical dirty-politics attempt to gain political advantage by exploiting an ambiguity in the law by mayoral candidate Richard Skorman that may come back to bite him in the behind.

The fault for the ambigity Skorman and Colorado Ethics Watch are trying to exploit must be laid at the feet of City Clerk Catherine Young, who once again has proven that she’s incompetent to hold her office.

But as for any legal or criminal culpability on the part of candidates for Mayor in Colorado Springs who used the mandated official form provided by Young, which do not provide space for the information Colorado Ethics Watch and the Skorman campaign insist is mandatory, it’s a dead issue.

The reasons are pretty simple, beginning with Colorado’s state constitutional Home Rule provisions, which clearly state that where there is a conflict between state law and home rule city ordinances, the home rule ordinances trump the state law, unless the General Assembly has specifically “occupied the field” by regulating the specific issue.

Despite what Colorado Ethics Watch maintains, the Colorado Fair Campaign Practices Act’s provisions regarding the listing of the occupation and employer of donors do not automatically apply to local political races in home rule cities like Colorado Springs, or so says Deputy City Attorney Wynetta Massey. She wrote in a May 13, 2011 e-mail, “…where inconsistencies occur between the FCPA and the City Code, the City Code will prevail… Since the campaign finance reports do not specifically state that employer and occupation must be reported, it is optional for reporting purposes.”

She’s absolutely correct in her legal analysis, and while CEW executive director Luis Toro is quoted in the Gazette as saying, “Wow, I disagree with that,” and said that “other cities in Colorado regularly require disclosure of donors’ employers and occupations,” that is not a requirement for all home rule cities, who can make their own rules as they see fit. Section 5.2.201 of the City Charter says, “In the case of any inconsistency, this chapter, “Elections”, of the City Code provisions shall prevail.”

Toro goes on to falsely claim, “If you accept that argument, then the clerk could change the election requirements at whim.” This is legal nonsense. The rules for local elections in home rule jurisdictions are set by the Colorado Springs City Council which delegated supervision of elections to the City Clerk. Section 1.2.506 of the City Charter says, “The Clerk shall conduct all City elections and do or cause to be done all things required by the City Charter and related ordinances… The Clerk is the designated election official for purposes of Colorado statutes.”

This doesn’t make the City Clerk an independent ruling body, but it does vest substantial administrative authority in the City Clerk to determine what information is required by the city in the election process. If CEW or Skorman have a dispute, it’s with the City Clerk, not the other candidates, who merely followed her directions to the letter.

And there’s another law that absolves everyone except Skorman from legal liability for following the directives of the City Clerk in this instance. Colorado Revised Statutes 18-1-504 says that a person cannot be held criminally liable for obeying “an official written interpretation of the statute or law relating to the offense, made or issued by a public servant, agency, or body legally charged or empowered with the responsibility of administering, enforcing, or interpreting a statute, ordinance, regulation, order, or law.”

Catherine Young is exactly the sort of public servant anticipated by this law, and candidates in the mayoral race were told explicitly by her that they were to use the city-provided form and no other form. Section 5.2.202 (A) of the City Charter states, “All reports required by the Fair Campaign Practices Act shall be filed with the City Clerk upon forms supplied by the City Clerk.”

And guess who knowingly and deliberately did not file the required reports on the mandatory form supplied by the city? Candidate Richard Skorman.

Skorman cannot claim that he was obeying the dictates of a city official tasked with conducting the election as the other candidates can. Instead he knowingly refused to abide by her instructions, and what’s more, he never openly questioned her interpretation of the campaign laws or asked for a clarification of the conflict between the city election code and the CFCPA prior to filing illegal self-created forms that explicitly violate the city’s election code.

Clearly he knew of the ambiguity between the state law and the city code, and tried to exploit the ambiguity to his political advantage, seemingly with the full cooperation of both Colorado Ethics Watch. But there’s some potential bad news on the horizon for Skorman, if someone wishes to press the issue.

Section 5.2.204 (A) of the City Charter goes on to say, “Any person who knowingly violates any provision of section 5.2.202 of this part… shall be guilty of a violation of the ordinances of the City, punishable as a misdemeanor, and shall upon conviction be punished by a fine not exceeding five hundred dollars ($500.00) for each offense. Any candidate shall, in addition, forfeit the right to assume the nomination or to take the oath for the office to which the candidate may have been elected…” (emphasis added)

By knowingly filing illegal home-made campaign finance reporting forms, Skorman has violated municipal law and may be prosecuted for a misdemeanor and, most importantly, has forfeited the right to take the office of Mayor, even if he wins the election.

Oops. Looks like his attempt to get everyone else in hot water backfired on him, perhaps fatally for his candidacy for Mayor. That’s what you get when you play dirty politics and do it poorly.

© 2011 Altnews

The killing of Osama bin Laden won’t end terrorism, but it sure brought out the bleeding-heart nitwit knee-jerk liberals.

By Seth Richardson

Wayne Laugesen in his editorial on the killing of Osama bin Laden, stole my Wizard of Oz metaphor before I got this article written, but I’m going to use it anyway.

Unfortunately for everyone, Osama didn’t melt into a cloud of green smoke after being shot by SEAL Team Six (first rule of SEAL Team Six…you never talk about Seal Team Six…). One shot, one kill. Good work gentlemen.

U.S. forces took custody of Osama’s body to collect forensic evidence for positive identification, then buried the body at sea, after, according to reports, giving the body some minimal degree of respect towards Islam by washing it, wrapping it in a white sheet, and speaking some words (we don’t know now just what words) in Arabic before the body was dumped into the Arabian Sea.

This was a brilliant move on the part of the military because it denies jihadists both a body and a shrine to terrorism.

Wayne’s editorial ignited a firestorm of criticism from panty-waist liberal apologists, quislings and Chamberlainesque appeasers to radical Islamic terrorists when he suggested that Osama’s body was undeserving of Islamic ritual and ought to be cremated and flushed down the White House john.

Liberal nitwits of every stripe flooded out of the woodwork and, as Wayne put it, gave him a “shellacking,” going so far as to call for him to be fired for his insensitivity to Islam and his “barbaric” attitude. They thought we should be “above” suggesting desecration of Osama’s body, and that his “insensitive” editorial would foment a backlash from radical jihadists for his disrespect.

Who cares what radical jihadists think? Not me, and not Wayne, and not any right-thinking American, or right-thinking Muslim.We must never, ever cater to the ire or desires of terrorists, because that is the whole purpose of their terrorism. We must stand strong and speak as it pleases us to speak, and if they attack us for it, so be it, we will kill them in due course too, just as we did Osama, no matter how long it takes.

Once that bullet penetrated his skull, Osama ceased to exist and what was left was merely offal to be disposed of in a sanitary manner in the interests of public health.

So, put me down as a supporter of Wayne Laugesen and what he actually wrote, because far from being insensitive to Islam, he was strongly supporting true Islam and true Muslims.

Here’s why: Osama bin Laden was not a Muslim. He was a disaffected megalomaniacal, narcissistic, murderous, serial mass-murderer whose entire organization was built around his personal antipathy towards the United States.

He misused Islam as a stalking-horse for his personal vendetta because that was the only way he could attract followers willing to die for him, a coward who would not do his own dirty work, but rather recruited mental defectives, women and children to be his suicide bombers. He talked the talk, but was too cowardly to walk the walk.

Why was he so angry at the United States? Because we stationed troops in Saudi Arabia, at the invitation of the Saudi government. That’s it. There is no other complaint he had other than his ire at Saudi Arabia’s Kings for allowing the United States to garrison his “holy land.”

He first tried to attack the Saudi royals and government, but they cut off his money and revoked his passport, and he became a fugitive, so he organized Al Quaida as a way to strike at America to vent his spleen. It had absolutely nothing whatever to do with Islam.

If you ask American Muslims, they decry jihad and terrorism as being illegitimate and a perversion of true Islam. The same is true of most peaceable Muslims. Radicals have a different opinion of course, but we should not care what they think.

Therefore, Osama is at best an apostate Muslim, and properly he’s no Muslim at all, but merely a pretender, an Infidel, and an abuser of true Islam who, by Islamic standards, richly deserved to die.

And Wayne was perfectly correct, if somewhat provocative, in stating that we should not grant his body Islamic rites because to do so is to grant him membership in the religion that he twisted to his own ends and abused.

To do so is an insult to true Muslims, and although we did provide some perfunctory Muslim rites, no one should care how outraged radical jihadists become. If they initiate revenge attacks, we will track them down and kill them too. That’s how we deal with such animals.

As for Osama’s final resting place, it’s perfectly appropriate that he’s fish-food, and that jihadists are denied their martyr’s bones and a shrine to terrorism. Besides, flushing his ashes down the john next to the Oval Office would just make the White House into a jihadist shrine, so it’s just as well that didn’t happen.

And thank SEAL Team Six for their proficiency with firearms, which saved the United States probably a billion dollars in expenses that would have been required to incarcerate, try and execute Osama. Such should be the on-the-field-of-battle fate of all members of Al Quaida. No prisoners. After all, they don’t recognize the Geneva Convention, so neither should we.

Let us all now pause to thank SEAL Team Six and all the support units that made this public sanitation measure possible through their outstanding skill and courage. Thanks guys, you’re the very best we have, and I’m forever grateful that you’re out there in the bush looking after us. If I can ever do anything to help you, anything at all, just let me know.

© 2011 Altnews™

Hyperbole and mendacity are the tactics used by Defenders of Wildlife over wolf delisting

By Seth Richardson

One of the better parts of the budget bill signed into law by President Obama last week is a provision that places wolves in Montana, Idaho and parts of Washington under the management of the states, but still subject to some federal supervision, rather than under the full protection of the Endangered Species Act.

It’s not a complete victory for the states, however. The rider by Sen. Jon Tester, Democrat Senator from Montana and  Idaho Republican Rep. Mike Simpson reinstates a 2009 U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service decision to turn over management of wolves to the states that was thrown out by U.S. District Court Judge Donald Molloy in 2009 and affirmed in April of this year.

In 2008, the F&WS published a Decision and Final Rule in the Federal Register that wolves in the northern Rockies, including Idaho, Montana and parts of Washington, had recovered sufficiently in numbers to justify removing them from the full protection of the ESA, and it turned over most of the management of wolves, including limited hunting seasons to control wolf populations, to the states. This Decision and Final Rule was immediately appealed in federal court by Defenders of Wildlife and a dozen other conservation groups.

In throwing out the Decision and Rule, Judge Molloy said that the F&WS could not delist wolves in Washington, Montana and Idaho while leaving wolves in Wyoming still under protection because the ESA does not expressly authorize delisting by state, but only by “discrete population segment,” which means a biological/geographical grouping not a legal state boundary.

The Congressional rider, now signed into law, directs the F&WS to reinstate the 2008 Decision and Final Rule, and it also prohibits anyone from challenging the Final Rule in court.

According to Defenders of Wildlife, “This provision sets a dangerous precedent for legislating on Endangered Species Act protections that could leave countless other species vulnerable to attack. And, by blocking any further judicial review of wolf delisting, this provision sends the message that complying with the law doesn’t matter.”

But this is mendacious nonsense, and it is Defenders of Wildlife, along with other so-called conservation groups who are falsely complaining about complying with the rule of law.

You see, the ESA is not intended to be a vehicle for perpetual federal management of state-owned wildlife or an expedient for radical environmentalists to be able to forever interfere with private property rights and frustrate development. It’s intended to protect truly endangered species until they have recovered sufficiently to survive on their own, at which point the law mandates that such species be delisted and management be turned over to the states.

Wolf proponents have been misusing the ESA for years now as a vehicle to, in part, eliminate public-lands ranching, which they and other environmental extremists believe is harmful to the environment. Ranchers in Idaho and Montana have been suffering massive losses of livestock due to wolf predation, and neither the F&WS nor the wolf advocacy organizations have been particularly sympathetic or helpful in dealing with wolf predation.

While Defenders of Wildlife has operated a wolf predation compensation program since 1987, and likes to tout its alleged success, saying, “Defenders’ livestock compensation program has been a resounding success in helping ranchers who live and work in wolf country,” the reality on the ground is much different.

Ranchers in wolf country complain about bureaucratic interference, delays, and outright refusals to compensate for stock losses. Generally, in order to qualify, the livestock kill has to be verified by the F&WS as being caused by wolves. If there is any question, and the F&WS is well-known for questioning every claim in detail, and if there is any excuse at all they can use, the claim is denied.

Because open-range livestock ranching means that a kill might not be discovered for days, or weeks, stockgrowers are denied compensation more often than not because the F&WS requires that the owner prove a wolf actually killed the animal, even if the carcass is surrounded by wolf tracks and covered with wolf hair. Since livestock die and can be killed by other predators, like coyotes and bears, a wolf-kill claim will be denied, practically speaking, unless the owner saw the wolves kill the animal.

Nor, under the ESA, can livestock owners shoot and kill a wolf that is actually attacking a cow or sheep. They must instead call the F&WS, who is supposed to, but often does not, send out someone to hunt down and kill the offending wolf.

So, for all the hoopla about livestock growers being compensated for wolf-caused losses, it’s just propaganda unrelated to the truth on the ground. Just go ask the ranchers themselves.

In 22 years, Defenders of Wildlife has only paid $1.3 million in compensation in 895 instances, which comes to about $1452 per incident. But they list 3,832 instances of predation on their own website. And this number is highly suspect, as they have motive to deny the source of predation.

In some cases the ESA and the F&WS have literally driven stockmen out of business by denying grazing permits and imposing draconian land-use rules that make it impossible for them to survive economically, in order to favor wolf recovery, often as the result of lawsuits filed by groups like Defenders of Wildlife.

What’s particularly galling to ranchers is that when the F&WS did the science as the law requires, and determined scientifically that wolves in Idaho and Montana had recovered sufficiently in numbers to justify removing full ESA protections, Defenders of Wildlife and numerous other organizations immediately filed suit to prevent the delisting. And they succeeded, but only through technical shenanigans involving the letter of the ESA law and the definition of “discreet population segment.”

And the ESA itself ignores the fact that wolves are not an endangered species at all. There are many thousands of wolves in self-sustaining populations roaming freely in Canada and Alaska, not to mention Siberia, so there is factually no danger that wolves will cease to exist as a species, even if they are eliminated from the lower 48 states.

But, live by Congressional law, die by Congressional law. That’s the way it works in the United States.

What the Congress did was to lawfully amend the ESA as regards wolves in the northern population segment of the Rocky Mountains. Contrary to what Defenders of Wildlife and other say, this amendment poses no danger to other species greater than they already face. Congress wrote and passed the ESA, and Congress has always had the plenary power to amend or even repeal the ESA, in part or in whole, at its discretion.

While Defenders of Wildlife and others would like for the ESA to be enshrined as a constitutional Amendment that cannot be changed by Congress alone, that’s not the case, nor will it ever be the case, we should all hope.

Congress did nothing more than examine the scientific evidence, which the F&WS itself says is compelling enough to justify delisting only parts of the population of wolves based on state boundaries, and it amended the law to provide that because that single species has recovered sufficiently to justify delisting within a particular state, it’s appropriate in this case to permit the state, under continuing federal supervision, to take over management of the wolf population.

In other words, Congress simply affirmed the scientific judgment of the F&WS and acted to preserve the intent of the ESA while resolving a legal conundrum created by radical environmental advocacy groups that was interfering with just and reasonable public policy decisions. It’s not, contrary to the assertions of Defenders of Wildlife, any threat to any other species.

Congress did what it is authorized to do, and as Judge Molloy wrote in his final decision in April of this year, “No matter how useful a course of conduct might be to achieve a certain end, no matter how beneficial or noble the end, the limit of power granted to the District Court must abide by the responsibilities that flow from …political decisions made by the Congress.”

Judge Molloy also quoted the United States Supreme Court, which said, “Our individual appraisal of the wisdom or unwisdom of a particular course consciously selected by the Congress is to be put aside in the process of interpreting a statute. Once the meaning of an enactment is discerned and its constitutionality determined, the judicial process comes to an end. We do not sit as a committee of review, nor are we vested with the power of veto.”

Congress has the power to amend the ESA, and that’s exactly what Congress did, and both the courts and everyone else, including Defenders of Wildlife, will just have to live with that decision, just as private landowners and stockgrowers have been forced to live with the consequences, intended and unintended, of the imposition of the Endangered Species Act on them.

What’s sauce for the goose, is sauce for the gander.

© 2011 Altnews

The Colorado Hospital Transfer Act directly conflicts with Colorado Springs’ constitutional home rule authority

By Seth Richardson

The wisdom or necessity of the sale of city-owned Memorial Hospital to a private for-profit entity is a local issue subject to local democratic debate and decision making, as is the question of how Colorado Springs can spend the proceeds it might collect from such a sale. Neither are legitimate subjects for regulation or oversight by the state Legislature, according to the Colorado Constitution.

Much of the rhetoric being heard recently about the potential sale is focused on the requirements of the Colorado Hospital Transfer Act (CHTA), a state law enacted in 1998. This law says that the state Attorney General is empowered, among other things, to “ensure that any proceeds of the transaction are dedicated to… charitable purposes,” and he can require that the “proceeds… be set aside in an amount equal to the fair market value of the hospital assets being transferred.” Thus, the CHTA regulates how such money can be spent.

But the CHTA was never intended to interfere with home rule powers of municipalities, says former state Representative and Colorado Springs resident Andy McElhany, who was serving in the Legislature at the time. McElhany says of the CHTA, “Our intent was not to hinder the sale of municipally owned hospitals; the last thing we wanted was to prevent cash-strapped local governments from putting publicly owned assets like Memorial to their best and highest use for their citizen-owners. Rather, the thinking behind the 1998 legislation was to ensure that the sale of any private, nonprofit hospital ­which, in a sense, belongs to no one­ did not betray its charitable mission.”

Because the law fails to distinguish between publicly-owned and privately-owned hospitals in imposing this mandate, the law conflicts with the city’s constitutional home rule powers. Colorado Springs is a home rule city, and the decisions of the City Council on purely local matters are not subject to interference by the Legislature. Article XX, Section 6 of the state Constitution says:

“Such charter and the ordinances made pursuant thereto in such matters shall supersede within the territorial limits and other jurisdiction of said city or town any law of the state in conflict therewith… It is the intention of this article to grant and confirm to the people of all municipalities … the full right of self-government in both local and municipal matters.”

One of the most fundamental powers of a municipality under home rule, one that is inherent and inseparable from the  power to collect revenue, is the power to determine how those revenues are spent, subject only to the rules of the municipality itself. The power to dispose of city assets is solely vested in the City Council or in the residents of the city, and if the voters of the city decide that it is no longer necessary or desirable to have a city-0wned hospital, that decision is final. Likewise, if the City Council chooses to spend the revenues collected from a sale of the hospital on fixing bridges or potholes, that decision too is not subject to interference by the Attorney General or the Legislature.

While the state Legislature certainly has the power to regulate private hospitals and at least arguably the Attorney General, pursuant to the CHTA, can make regulations and set conditions on how private state-licensed hospitals operate that will protect the public interest in affordable health care, both the decision to sell and the allocation of the proceeds of the sale of hospitals owned by home rule cities is beyond its authority to regulate, and squarely conflicts with the city’s constitutional home rule powers.

The state Supreme Court has said that, “the legislature cannot prohibit the exercise of constitutional home rule powers, regardless of the state interests which may be implicated by the exercise of those powers.”

The violation of the sovereign home rule powers of the City of Colorado Springs found in the Colorado Hospital Transfer Act is something entirely aside from the local question of whether Memorial Hospital should be sold to a private for-profit entity. The City Council must challenge the state’s authority to tell Colorado Springs how to spend it’s own money, if for no other reason than in order preserve the city’s sovereign constitutional powers.

© 2011 Altnews