http://www.lewrockwell.com/…

Glenn Jacobs – Kane! – writes:

Yesterday afternoon, I visited one of Knoxville’s two shopping malls–the downscale one on the east side of town. It had been months since I’d been in this mall; since then it has lost its Dillard’s department store, one of its anchor stores. Fully a quarter of the storefronts were closed, with more on a limited schedule.

But there was one place where business was booming…the county government has opened a branch office in the mall. The line of people waiting to pay property taxes and have their licenses renewed was out the door.

Above the entry to the office, a sign proudly proclaimed “Bringing Government to the People”. Hmmm, I thought “we are the government,” or at least that’s what we are always told. Just like the real stores in the mall, the government relies on slick marketing to “sell” its product.

It strikes me that this a microcosm of the American economy. While the rest of us suffer from the boom and bust that the government has caused, the government is there to pick through the bones.

Government–the anchor store of the new economy.

Bill Anderson followed up with:

Seeing Lew’s post reminds me of a drive I took the other night on PPG Road near Cumberland, Maryland. I passed a sign that announced it was an “Industrial Park.” However, the “industry” on that road is an office of Homeland Security, a huge lot where FEMA trailers are stored, and a federal prison. Welcome to the American growth industries of the 21st Century!

Turns out:

Donna Hanks initially purchased her home (315 South Ellwood, Baltimore, MD 21224) on 7/06/2001 for $87,000. She re-fi’d in 2005 for $270,000, went into bankruptcy in 2006, and this was the 2nd foreclosure. The $300 a month was actually the $340 a month she agreed to re-pay as she was over $10,000 behind in her payments. The house was sold in July 08 and they couldn’t get her out until September 08 after not paying anything for over a year.

Homesteading involves abandoned or never utilized property. This house is obviously owned by at least the bank and a two minute phone call could have revealed it was now sold to a new owner. That house was never hers. It was the banks. It’s unlikely she was even close to having more than 50% of the principle paid.

Groups like ACORN and those who support them helped create this housing bubble by using government to ban so called discrimination in lending, redlining, pushing for the CRA and low interest rates.

That term predatory lending bugs me big time. Why isn’t it predatory borrowing? The government was incentivizing if not forcing banks to lend. No one forced the lendees to borrow. No one forced them to ignore the contract or keep them from having a lawyer look over the mortgage.

If you can’t afford to own, rent. If you want to homestead there is plenty of unutilized land out west.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/…

The Maryland State Police classified 53 nonviolent activists as terrorists and entered their names and personal information into state and federal databases that track terrorism suspects, the state police chief acknowledged yesterday.

Police Superintendent Terrence B. Sheridan revealed at a legislative hearing that the surveillance operation, which targeted opponents of the death penalty and the Iraq war, was far more extensive than was known when its existence was disclosed in July.

The department started sending letters of notification Saturday to the activists, inviting them to review their files before they are purged from the databases, Sheridan said.

“The names don’t belong in there,” he told the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee. “It’s as simple as that.”

The surveillance took place over 14 months in 2005 and 2006, under the administration of former governor Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R). The former state police superintendent who authorized the operation, Thomas E. Hutchins, defended the program in testimony yesterday. Hutchins said the program was a bulwark against potential violence and called the activists “fringe people.”

Both Hutchins and Sheridan said the activists’ names were entered into the state police database as terrorists partly because the software offered limited options for classifying entries.

“I don’t believe the First Amendment is any guarantee to those who wish to disrupt the government,” he said. Hutchins said he did not notify Ehrlich about the surveillance. Ehrlich spokesman Henry Fawell said the governor had no comment.

I’m pretty sure one of the precise reasons for the First Amendment is to disrupt the government. Besides… how is it that these people are in any way a threat? They are activists AGAINST violence. At what point will a software limitation cause all liberty activists to end up on watch lists? Or am I being too optimistic that we aren’t already?

http://www.dailypaul.com/…

I am outraged! Senator Mikulski actual said, on the floor of the Senate “I’m deeply troubled by where we find ourselves when the House Republicans are defying their own President.” They don’t work for him, they work for us! She seems to have forgotten that she works for the people of Maryland. Here is what she had to say about us – “…in the last 72 hours I’ve gotten close to 8,000 emails and only 30 were for this bill. I’ve gotten over 1,300 phone calls and almost all were against the bailout. “We listen to them loud and clear…” Yet she is still going to vote for this steaming pile. She went on to say that our democratic process in action was “hubbub”. HUBBUB?! Then she call for GW to become the “Commander of the economy”. In other words, DICTATOR.

November is going to be interesting.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/…

The Most Idiotic Governor in America?

Posted by Thomas DiLorenzo at September 23, 2008 06:33 PM

I know I’ll receive many emails from people claiming that the governor of their state deserves the title of “Most Idiotic Governor,” but for now I’d like to nominate Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley. In a desperate attempt to appear relevant to the presidential race (he was a Hillary supporter) he announced over the local airwaves today that the Bush administration, which has spent more domestically than LBJ did, and which initiated an unnecessary, non-defensive war that has lasted longer than World War II, should be condemned as a bunch of “no government, or minimal government, ideologues.”

Case closed.

Politicians say the darnedest things.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/…

Starting next year, there will be four new pennies to collect, celebrating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Abraham Lincoln.

The obverse (or heads) part of the coin will stay the same, showing the 16th president facing to the right.

But the reverse (tails) part of the coin will show different times in the life of Lincoln, who is widely considered to be one of the country’s greatest leaders for freeing the slaves and saving the Union during the Civil War.

The designs for the new pennies were shown for the first time yesterday near the Lincoln Memorial.

The first new penny will be available Feb. 12, Lincoln’s 200th birthday. It will show a log cabin to honor his birth and childhood in Kentucky.

The others will show his life as a young man in Indiana, his professional life in Illinois and his presidential years in Washington (when the U.S. Capitol was being built).

The other side of the penny will continue to show the likeness of Lincoln designed by Victor David Brennan. It was introduced on the Lincoln penny 100 years ago.

A Lincoln commemorative silver dollar also will be issued next year.

Abraham Lincoln did not really free the slaves. The 13th Amendment did. The Emancipation Proclamation said “all persons held as slaves within any States, or designated part of the State, the people whereof shall be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” Only those slaves captured by the North by that point were set free. Maryland and Delaware were both slave states and not on of the supposed rebel states. While not recognized by any other government the Confederate States of America was a separate nation with it’s own government defined by their own (though heavily borrowed from the USA) constitution. Therefore from their perspective the Emancipation Proclamation meant as much as if it had come from England. Lincoln also said this of the Corwin Amendment, “[H]olding such a provision to now be implied Constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.” which read:

No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.

As for saving the Union… a highly questionable action. Even if ruled unconstitutional there is plenty of evidence that such a claim is incorrect from a legal standpoint. For example: When ratifying the new constitution, Virginia (1788), New York (1788), and Rhode Island (1790) included clauses indicating they were free to leave the new federal government confederation should it become oppressive. It seems obvious that they would not have joined if they believed it was a one way trip. From a moral standpoint its reprehensible. The Declaration of Independence clearly says:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Lincoln was in no way a great leader but a statist who put his beliefs in keeping together a union of people who did not wish to be under the same government umbrella above the lives of over 600,000 individuals.

For more information read Thomas DiLorenzo’s books Lincoln Unmasked and The Real Lincoln. Many complain his views are one sided but given the works written in excess of Lincoln’s greatness I think that’s excusable. You can also find a decent interview with DiLorenzo on CSPAN’s Q&A at Google video.