Sixty-six years ago, the president began a systematic takeover of the state governments, which ended the country's tradition of local political independence. Federal agents effectively took most law and rulemaking controls away from state and local governments and centralized all economic and much of the criminal control under the federal government. There was, after all, a state of national emergency decree in effect.

Those not conforming were labeled political enemies and quickly arrested. Later, prison camps were constructed and filled with the country's undesirables.

The president's advisors put together a brilliant public relations campaign explaining the government's actions and why a state of national emergency was necessary. And throughout the country, the people were talked into agreeing that jobs and the nation's economy were more important than those few Constitutional rights the people would have to temporarily sacrifice.

Unexpectedly, some strange presidential decrees were issued. Suddenly, anyone suspected of maliciously criticizing the government could be arrested. Then, "special" courts to try political offenders were formed. Later, the Enabling Act was passed. Officially called the Law for Removing the Distress of the People and the government, the Enabling Act greatly violated the Constitution by allowing the president a host of new dictatorial powers.

"The government will make use of these powers only insofar as they are essential for carrying out vitally necessary measures," the president said. "The number of cases in which an internal necessity exists for having recourse to such a law is in itself a limited one."

Unfortunately, many people believed him.

These powers were needed to fight unemployment and get the country back on it's feet, the government repeated over and over again. These powers will be needed only temporarily, the people were repeatedly assured.

And again, many people believed the lies.

It's interesting how the above scenario tracks right along with the unconstitutional antics of the Franklin D. Roosevelt presidency. Actually, though, the above is a thumbnail sketch of Hitler's government in 1933. That many parallels between governments are amazingly close was not by accident. Both the United States and Germany felt the bite of the depression, and both government leaders used the opportunity to centralize unprecedented powers.

Germany's Chancellor no longer has these powers. After Hitler, they were rightfully stripped. The President of the United States, however, still has many of the above "emergency" powers and more. Our federal government seldom if ever relinquishes a power it acquires. That many of the war and emergency power laws and most of the regulatory agencies are unconstitutional is beside the point. The federal government likes these emergency powers over the American people and plans to keep them permanently. Therefore, still today, an American president may become an American dictator by uttering only two words: National emergency.

A few years ago, Congress added yet another emergency law. This one (42 USC 5195) created the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and more or less gives it dictatorial powers over American citizens during any type of emergency. Section 2-203 defines "emergency":

For the purposes of this Order, civil emergency means any accidental, natural, man-caused, or wartime emergency or threat thereof, which causes or may cause substantial injury or harm to the population or substantial damage to or loss of property.

 

In other words, something is an emergency because they say it is an emergency: ". . . any . . . or threat thereof. . ." are the operative words there. No other criteria are necessary. The rest of the words are just excess characters.

Under this law, a declared emergency gives FEMA powers to do just about anything. They can take over all communications, all medical establishments, all businesses, relocate people as necessary, send citizens to work in any place necessary and at any wage designated, pass any and all rules and regulations, control all military and civilian policing, limit travel, etc., etc. In other words, they control your body, your labor, your property, and under a related banking regulation, can even confiscate your bank account. And by the way, Congress and the civilian courts have no authority after a president declares a national emergency. The only properly descriptive word, therefore, is "dictatorship."

Under the law, only the president may declare a national emergency, and only the president may end it. Remember that when Congress again talks of martial law because of their perceived Y2K problem. Also remember that this same opportunity was allowed by Article 48 of the German Constitution in the 1930's. Therefore, Hitler was able to suspend their constitution by presidential decree alone.

Character does count. Good leadership requires a strong personal moral code. It is important to have a president who will not lie.

The current FEMA law can be found at:

http://www.uhuh.com/laws/femalaw.htm and another interesting national emergency law is posted at: http://www.uhuh.com/laws/fema.htm

Also see issue #110 for a companion article.

On Fox News Sunday last week, Senator Tom Harkin, (D-Iowa), denounced the impeachment action by the House as "reckless" and "partisan." He also called the case "a pile of dung." Apparently, Harkin agrees with perjury and obstruction of justice, groping any available female in the workplace, and a whole series of corrupt activities. On the other hand, like Clinton, we also seem to remember him supporting the Vietnam communists.

Senator Max Baucus (D-Mont.) announced on CNBC that the Founding Fathers did not include perjury as an impeachable offense because they didn't think it important enough. No, they didn't include it, Max. You see, the Founding Fathers had this little thing they used to do when someone didn't keep their word: Dueling. Lying politicians didn't fair all that well back then. Most politicians actually had something called "honor and integrity" in those days. We don't see much of that today.

Like many of the Democrats, Baucus is both a hypocrite and a liar. Back in 1989, Baucus and 26 currently sitting Democrat Senators voted to impeach federal judge Walter Nixon for making a false or misleading statement to a grand jury. The only reason they want to save Clinton is because he's like them, a big government loving socialist.

The fact is, there were quite a few members of the party directed by the likes of James Carville and Larry Flynt sniveling around last week. The House Impeachment Managers did a very good job of presenting their case to the Senate and Democrats are worried. The only problem for the House Managers was that there were too many facts and so little time.

So, what shall be the White House's defense? House Managers proved their case beyond a doubt, and used Clinton's own lies while under oath to do it. For the Senate to not convict would be a signal from the Senate to the America people that our laws no longer apply to the ruling elite, that lying while under oath is now acceptable, and that there are now two legal systems in this country. Do they dare send such a signal? Maybe.

Democrats say there was nothing new presented to the Senate. Torricelli and Schumer (they make a nice couple; two of a kind) couldn't wait to hit the microphone after Thursday's presentation to spew the White House line. Democrats better be careful what they ask for. Trent Lott quickly replied that there is plenty of new information that could be brought into the trial.

And so it goes with this runaway jury.

The pompous asses in the Senate don't seem to realize that they are making the American people rather angry. We can read. The Constitution says "trial," and the Senate is to be but the jury. Even those of us out here in fly-over country know what a real trial looks like. Their show ain't it!

By the Senate's actions, they are proving to us that we cannot trust Senators to perform their Constitutional duty. It's not just the Democrats, either. Actually, they're lucky we can't impeach Senators for dereliction of duty and Constitutional disobedience. Already, I have received five queries about an old article concerning the repeal of the Seventeenth Amendment. When this "trial" is over, there may be a lot of people interested in that. It would be good to see Senators accountable to someone or something again, even if it is just to their State legislatures.

Clinton's lawyers get 24 hours of babble time this week. All they can say, effectively, is perjury and obstruction of justice are not impeachable offenses. Then they'll have to throw that Lying, Impeached, Lame Duck President to the mercy of the Senate. He committed the crimes. Repeatedly. There is no doubt. Everyone who watched the evidence presented knows that. There is no longer anything to be defended. Clinton should be fired.

Therefore, Clinton's attorney's song and dance may end up as little more than a disturbing barometer of just how far morality, integrity and law in this country have sunk.

And, right in the middle of it all, they're allowing the impeached Clinton to put on his State of the Union dog and pony show. That's totally stupid! Congress should make him fax over the report, rather than go before the television cameras and spout all that pure propaganda in the middle of a trial. Because, if luck holds, and the Senate does its duty, the Clintons will not be the president in a few weeks.

Many important impeachment files can be viewed at:

http://www.uhuh.com/impeach/list-impeach.htm

One thing we have to say for the readers of this publication is that some of them have one hell of a sense of humor! Back in issues #113 and #115 we wrote about one of the federal bureaucracy's latest assaults on the Constitution and our right to personal privacy, the "Know your Customer" banking regulations.

Within a few days, a message came back saying that a citizen's group plans to start a "Know your Banker" program. That is, they plan to post a full profile of all personal and financial information they can locate concerning all banking officers in their area who cooperate with that stupid-snooper regulation. All they wanted from this end was a bit more information on the regulatory agencies pushing the obnoxious regulations.

It gets even better, but perhaps we should first mention a little about that dinosaur agency demanding this gross violation of our personal privacy.

On its web page, the FDIC Mission Statement states simply: "The FDIC, an independent agency created by Congress, contributes to stability and public confidence in the nation's financial system by insuring deposits, examining and supervising financial institutions, and managing receiverships."

Actually, the FDIC was set up to be an insurance company, to protect the individual deposits of American citizens while they are in member banks within the United States. FDIC was formed to protect our savings, even if the private bank failed. It is a government owned insurance company. That is all.

The problem is that they let bureaucrats run the agency, and bureaucrats always want more power over the people. So, like all bureaucracies, FDIC tended to branch out and assume more powers when no one was looking.

Historically, FDIC only has funds to "insure" from 1.1 to 1.5 percent of the deposits it says it protects. In reality, FDIC has little or no actual assets other than the ones and zeros located in a computer somewhere. In other words, the assets that this government agency holds to make good on its full faith and credit backing for insured deposits are mere federal assurances backed by our property and money.

That may sound a little preposterous on face value, but it is not. What is the limit of the full faith and credit of the federal government? Ultimately, it boils down to one simple equation: Whatever the American people own. So, it's no secret that the billions of dollars needed to bail out all those Savings and Loans when they went belly up caused inflation. That is because government had to "create" a lot of new money for the pay-off.

Our money is no longer based on gold and silver. Instead, it is based on the full faith and credit of the federal government. And, in this instance, We the People are the federal government. Therefore, the only thing the full faith and credit of the federal government can be based on is what We the People own. That means it must be the American people who are actually insuring our money in the banks. FDIC, then, is but our agent-albeit, an agent with a bad attitude.

The July 1991 FDIC Annual Report stated that the liabilities of the insurance fund exceeded its assets by $7 billion. Even so, what the FDIC claimed as "assets" were no more than ones and zeros, or credits, in a computer. So, like the S&L debacle, if there are bank failures, FDIC will have to look to us for the pay-off money. We'll either get higher taxes or a rush of new inflation.

It gets even worse, though. Today, insured banks are growing, branching out and taking on excessive risks. Many banks in the country now have much more in small "insured" deposits than the total "assets" claimed by FDIC. In other words, today, FDIC could not even bail out one of the major banks, let alone two or three of them. That is, FDIC couldn't without attaching our property somehow.

The fact is, the whole of the FDIC program could and should be replaced with one law stating that banks must purchase private insurance on the open market to guarantee customer accounts. Then, we can fire a lot of unnecessary regulators.

Now, back to the sense of humor part:

Another group contacted us saying that they are interested in starting a "Know your Regulator" program. And yes, they too had the idea of posting full personal and financial profiles of federal bureaucrats on the Internet.

Interestingly enough, neither of the groups knew about the other. But, each became very interested in the other and "somehow" made contact. At this writing, both groups have gathered a great deal of interesting information and are looking into the legal ramifications of posting it on the Internet.

To date, we do not have permission to pass on contact information for these groups. However, the information provided us looks very interesting. For instance, there seems to be a huge revolving door between the regulators and the regulated.

It also appears that some of these regulators are quite wealthy. Like the Clintons going into the Presidency with a total wealth of a few thousand dollars and coming out millionaires, so too have some previously middle class banking regulators amassed quite a bit of that which they regulate.

More on this later, as the groups' legal-eagles allow.

It's an interesting fact out here in the foothills of Appalachia that many crooks, the repeat offenders especially, get caught before they can do too much harm. It's not always the police who catch the bad guys, either.

For instance, one illegal drug user & abuser stole some personal checks while working on someone's home. He also managed to swipe a few more from an area company. So, this bright light filled one out and went over to a Covington, Kentucky liquor store to cash it. The liquor store owner, a 59 year old widow and grandmother of four cashed the guy's check. So, in a few days, he went back and successfully cashed another one.

The third time around, the woman gave the perpetrator a warm reception. He was a repeat customer, right? Anyway, he thought so. However, in this case, three times ain't necessarily a charm.

"I was teasing him and kidding with him," the woman told the Kentucky Post. "And, I just walked over real quiet and locked the door."

Then, she walked back and got her shotgun-a large black pump shotgun with a long strap attached-and she invited the thief to sit down while she called 911.

As it turns out, this was really bad timing for the perpetrator. The bank had called her about 90 minutes earlier to let her know that the guys first two checks were no good.

So, there they waited. Perpetrator siting, staring at grandma-and into the business end of that big black shotgun.

"You have to show people you mean business," she told the Post. "I keep Mace and a billy-club behind the counter, too. I only had to lock one other guy in. He stole cigarettes from me."

As the Kentucky Post reported, the perpetrator turned out to be responsible for another four bad check cases.

When he was arrested, the guy had six other stolen checks in his pocket, all filled out and ready to cash. According to the arresting officer, "they kept falling out of his pocket."

The perpetrator will end up getting 1 to 5 years free room and board, compliments of the Commonwealth of Kentucky.

The good citizen/grandmother/business owner retorted, "I've never had anything I couldn't take care of. When the door is locked they don't have any place to go, so they might as well behave."

Yeah. As if that big black pump shotgun has nothing to do with it. Those things always did tend to make people very polite-quiet, too, when they are looking right down the barrel of one.

Keeping a weapon for self defense, and the occasional criminal apprehension, was always legal in Kentucky. Lately, the people of Kentucky have an opportunity to acquire a concealed carry license, too. And, although that CCW law is only a couple years old, even the public officials who were most vocally against it now admit that it is a real success. If anything, violence with guns has decreased.

Back in issue #78 and again in issue #110, we described a little about governments' techniques for spying upon and controlling their civilian populations. A controversial report for the European Parliament Directorate General for Research, "An appraisal of technologies for political control" of the people, raised more than just a few eyebrows after we pointed it out.

That report makes mention of ECHELON, the National Security Agency's secret global surveillance network that monitors not only our personal communications, but the communications of most people in the world. (for a primer on ECHELON, see: http://www.freecongress.org/ctp/echelon.html)

Originally, the European Parliament acted very indignant that the American government was spying on European communications. But, by last summer, their attitude changed dramatically and they quieted down. Suddenly, the very same European Parliament that acted so worried about protecting the rights of the people of the European Union wanted in on the civilian spy business.

Now comes Iridium World Communications, Ltd. the public investment vehicle of Iridium LLC, with a global wireless communications network that will combine the worldwide reach of 66 low-earth-orbit satellites with land-based wireless systems to enable subscribers to communicate using handheld telephones and pagers virtually anywhere in the world. (http://www.iridium.com/)

Iridium's engineers invented a very slick communication system-small pocket telephones that will work virtually anywhere, and ditto for pagers, e-mail and maybe even surfing the net. It's a great system that we will all want to use. Everyone will have a direct line to almost anywhere in the world that will be relatively inexpensive to use.

In other words, there is money to be made here. Big money. So, many countries of the world are lining up for a piece of the action. The U.S. and the whole of the European Community is signed on. So is Japan, communist China and most Pacific Rim countries, among others.

All of these countries also know about ECHELON, of course, and how the National Security Agency spies on most communications around the world. China already does a lot of that with their new system. Now the European Parliament wants in on that spy action, too.

Originally, when the European Parliament complained about the U.S. government spying on European communications, agents from our government went over there and gave them a little talking to. Currently, eavesdropping procedures over there require specific authority to be granted within each individual country. That was not quite acceptable to the agents of the U.S. government. And, apparently the American agents won out. The result was inadvertently made public by a European Parliament debate last September. The debate revealed that there were active plans between the EU and the FBI to cooperate on building a global surveillance system to spy on all telecommunications everywhere.

And folks, that includes us. The sorry fact is that a number of agents of the federal government formed a conspiracy with foreigners to violate the Constitutionally protected rights of the American people. For starters: they conspired to willfully and intentionally violate the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, their oath of office and a whole slew of federal laws.

The revised version of "Appraisal of the Technologies of Political Control," refers to an "EU-FBI Global Telecommunications Surveillance System" which is to be established under the Maastricht Treaty for the cooperation in the areas of justice and police work. Except, it turns out that that part of the Maastricht Treaty is little more than a handshake agreement for politicians to use to coerce the people back home.

But, never mind. That doesn't matter much here because we already have NSA and the new FBI wiretap laws regularly violating our privacy. Thank the big government loving Clinton Administration for part of that. There no longer is anyone in government with the honor necessary to protect the individual rights of the people. Rather, they all want a larger and more powerful central government.

Anyway, the European Secret Service Union, a bureaucracy tagged ENFOPOL was invented. When ENFOPOL becomes a legal reality, it will allow police to monitor all communications everywhere. The new system will give governments any surveillance power they wish, without notice to the citizens. And, it would also legitimize existing illegal spy systems like ECHELON.

So, under the new system, Europe (and the FBI, CIA & NSA) will create a one-stop snoop shop for spying on communications. The new Iridium satellite systems will be forced to create "wiretap-friendly" technology, and all ISPs will be forced to provide an instant connect so Big Brother can intercept everything we do on the Internet, too. That's the plan, anyway. ENFOPOL will monitor almost every communications mode everywhere in the world, with hardly any gaps.

Encryption, you say? Nope. Their plan is that all code must be capable of quickly being broken by this World Big Brother conspiracy. The ENFOPOL system will be aided by a "subject tagging" system capable of tracking people wherever they travel. They call it the "International User Requirements for Interception" (IUR) -- if the telephone is on, they will know where the user is within a few feet, anywhere in the world.

Worse, IUR will create a data processing and transmission network that requires that the names, addresses and phone numbers of targets and associates be known, along with email addresses, credit card details, PINs and passwords. Users will gladly provide all this information when they sign up for the system.

So, while you are talking with a friend or business associate on one of those cute little new telephones, be advised that not only is our federal government listening in, so are spies from England, Germany, France, Italy, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, communist China, and at least a dozen other countries. Perhaps you'll want to take a second to say hello to the nice spooks before you hang up.

And welcome to one of the newest technologies for political control.