The Michigan Militia Corps'

Weekly Update
Internet Edition

Volume 4, Issue 35

Week of September 22, 1997


UN Makes Land Grab

By Harmon Cropsey, Retired State Senator

During World War II, to be a tailgunner, we used to say you had to be fat, dumb and happy! That could well be applied to the average American who thinks we are living in the best of times, especially if you listen to Clinton and Gore. Actually, the average American family has lost 5 percent of its purchasing power since 1990, but the press and the economists keep telling us how good times are.

The liberal-controlled mass media dedicated to the New World Order, seldom mentions what is actually going on behind the scenes. We recently received a Telexgram from the American Policy Center in Herndon, Va, with some very disturbing news: "Bill Clinton is charging ahead with a massive new land grab called 'American Heritage Rivers Initiative (AHRI).' This is being done without Congressional approval."

"AHRI will bring:

- An army of bureaucrats from 13 agencies to your town to enforce national federal zoning.

- Set up a new federal bureaucracy called "A River Navigator" who will earn $100,000 a year. One assigned to each river. He will have complete control of each decision about rivers from river traffic to your riverbank property. Every major city that is not on the seacoast or great lakes will be affected by this executive order.

Designation of rivers is permanent. Federal government will control all development, river traffic, fishing, and recreation.

"The good news is that congresswoman Helen Chenoweth has introduced HR 1842. Her bill will keep Clinton from taking action."

I was not aware, but the American Policy Center teamed with radio host Mike Reagan to stop Clinton's first AHRI in June. Reagan, the son of former President Reagan, has an estimated audience of three million.

These executive orders are a frightening abuse of power by Clinton. By a recent count, Clinton has passed 170 of these orders, one of which puts our armed forces under United Nations commanders. You may recall what happened in Somalia when 18 U.S. servicemen were ambushed and killed even though help was nearby, but their commanding United Nations officer could not speak English.

Rep. Chenoweth's bill (HR 1842) is an attempt to stop further erosion of U.S. sovereignty, and Congressman Don Young (R-Alaska), on June 27, 1996, introduced the American Land Sovereignty Protection Act which is designed to restore the Constitutional role of Congress (Art. 5, sec. 3) in the making of rules and regulations governing lands belonging to the United States.

Our system of free enterprise and owning private property have helped make American the strongest and most advanced nation the world has ever seen. The United Nations is seeking to destroy this freedom and is using two designations of "International Status" with no need for Congressional approval. They are the UNESCO Biosphere Reserves and the World Heritage Sites.

A Biosphere Reserve is a federally zoned and coordinated region, consisting of three zones that meet certain minimum requirements established by the United Nations. The U.S. now has 47 Biosphere Reserves which contain a total area larger than the state of Colorado. The U.S. part of the Biosphere Reserve program is run by a committee of two federal agencies with no Congressional direction or authorization.

There are 20 World Heritage Sites, 18 of which are national parks and include the Statue of Liberty and Independence Hall. Over 68 percent of our national parks, preserves, and monuments are designated as United Nations Heritage Sites, Biosphere Reserves, or both.

The specific purpose of Cong. Don Young's bill is to neutralize the United Nations International treaties that give the United Nations control of American land. The American Land Sovereignty Protection Act came to the House floor for a vote. The vote shocked the liberals because the bill would stop the United Nations land grab and received 246 yes votes and 178 no votes. The bill only failed to pass because under Special House Rules that day a two-thirds majority was required. A liberal technicality prevented the American Land Sovereignty Protection Act from passing in the last Congress. But this year, only a simple majority will be required to pass this bill, and the groundwork for a winning legislative battle has already been laid. The American Policy Center coordinated the grassroots effort for Congressman Young when he first introduced the bill. They are gathering petitions and are very hopeful the bill will pass, but they need help.

The address of the American Policy Center is 13873 Park Center Road, No. 316, Herndon, VA, 20171. Order some petitions; get them filled out and send them back to the American Policy Center and they will take them to Congressman Newt Gingrich. They would appreciate financial help as it takes money to mount this type of campaign. This is certainly a wonderful cause -- the freedoms of ourselves and our posterity. Better yet, call or write your Congressman. Tell him/her to support Chenoweth's bill (HR 1842) and Congressman Young's bill (HR 901) when they come up for a vote.

Liberty Matters News Service


Government by Proclamation

http://www.libertymatters.org, September 21, 1997
Volume 1, Issue 17

On September 11, 1997, President Clinton defied the Constitution, the United States Congress and the American people by issuing an Executive Order creating the American Heritage Rivers Program (AHRI). Twelve federal agencies, including the Dept. of Defense and the U.S. Attorney General's office, are preparing to move into any community foolish enough to "ask" for designation. This program has nothing to do with the preservation of river towns. It is about the federal government imposing their will into local affairs. Last Thursday, Senator Hutchinson (R-AR), offered an amendment to the Appropriations Bill that would have required the federal government to notify any landowner affected by an AHRI designation. The measure failed 57-42. On Wednesday, September 24th, there will be a hearing for Congressman Chenoweth's H.R. 1842. She needs co-sponsors on this bill. Call your Congressman today! Also, for a sample letter you can send your Congressman to request that no river in your Congressman's district be designated, order doc. # 183. This may be the only way you can protect your back yard. Senate vote on Hutchinson Amendment, Faxback Doc. # 180. Executive Order, Faxback Docs. 176, 177.

ESA "Reform" on Fast Track

Last week, Senators Kempthorne (R-ID), Reid (D-NV), Baucus (D-MT) and Chafee (R-RI), filed S.1180, the Endangered Species Reform Act.

Kempthorne describes this bill as a bi-partisan effort to protect property rights and save species, but the bill falls way short of its stated goal. Kempthorne's idea of property rights protection is giving landowners incentives like deferred taxes and other similar options, but not compensation for the loss of the use of their property. Once a landowner enters into one of these incentive contracts they jeopardize their ability to use the one remedy they have to protect their property rights, just compensation under the fifth amendment, because they have now become a willing party to the regulatory action. Secretary of Interior, Bruce Babbitt, who has worked tirelessly to extinguish property rights through environmental regulations, supports Kempthorne's bill. S.1180 is scheduled for a hearing September 23rd, mark-up for September 30th and is expected to hit the Senate floor as early as the week of October 13th. If passed, this bill will simply re-authorize current law with minor changes destroying more property rights, species and liberties. Call your Senators today and tell them if saving species is a worthy goal, then there should be a right way to do that - that is by respecting constitutional principles and our property rights. Make your calls today!

For a copy of S.1180, order Faxback doc. # 178 (27pp) and doc # 179 (CEI press release).

Grazing Again?

Congressman Bob Smith from Oregon has introduced a "light" grazing bill in order to incrementally address environmentalists and ranchers concerns. Smith filed the "Forage Improvement Act" (H.R. 2493) last week with 28 co-sponsors, missing the support of four key western states.

Over the past month, critics of the draft bill pointed out major problems with the language that would extinguish the ranchers property rights interests. Two key cases, PLC v. Babbitt and Hage v. United States have already won major property rights protections, which the bill as filed now jeopardizes. In his press release, Smith stated, "That the bill gets some criticism from the extreme ends of the political spectrum probably indicates that we drafted a very reasonable, mainstream bill." We do not need mainstream reform, we need the protection of our constitutionally guaranteed property rights. Faxback doc. # 181 (7pp) for HR 2493, doc # 182 for analysis.

NPS to Ban Motorboats in Parks

Starting October 1, 1997 the National Park Service (NPS) will banish all motorized watercraft from the nation's 32 National Parks. The Park Service insisted that the ban was only temporary, but conceded that the "consensus" is that motorized craft "are not appropriate" in park areas.

The next move will most likely be to exclude all human use of these waterways, etc. etc.... the Wildlands Project marches on.

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The Boomerang Tax!

The Daily Outrage!
Thursday, September 18, 1997

Rich people are, politically speaking, an easy target. After all, there are much fewer of them than members of the middle class. The rich are, more often than not, envied by the not-so-rich. So laws that attack wealthy individuals are much easier to pass than laws that affect the more numerous middle class.

But it's a funny thing the way laws designed only to affect the upper crust of society end up coming back to haunt us all.

The U.S. federal income tax was first passed as a law that affected only those with extraordinarily high incomes at the time -- and even for those lucky few the rate was very low. Now of course, income tax affects almost everyone, and has a devastating effect on the lifestyles of the middle class.

You may recall several years ago when the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) was passed. This was a response to the vocal and often paranoid cries about the very rich avoiding income taxes through shelters, credits and other tax-avoidance schemes. In order to satisfy the political demand, Congress made AMT part of the tax code. But it would just affect the very rich.

Lo and behold here we are in 1997 and Congress has just passed another tax "reform" bill, the cruelly-named Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997. What you may actually be about to get relieved of is your money and deductions, as AMT starts to hit the middle class.

How can a law like AMT that's crafted for the rich come to affect so many? Simple -- it was never indexed for inflation. Although only 414,000 taxpayers paid the AMT in 1995 that number is quickly rising and by the year 2005 a family of four with an income of $58,300 in 1996 dollars could be subject to AMT. However, even that calculation assumes an inflation rate of only 3%. If the inflation rate rises many more taxpayers would be pushed into AMT much sooner.

If you are subject to AMT, you lose your property tax deductions as well as the just-enacted child and tuition tax credits. More importantly, you lose your deductions for state and local income taxes. Lacking those deductions, the same dollar of income could be taxed three different times -- at the state, local, and federal levels. Let us know if there's anything left.

Even if you don't end up owing the AMT, you may very well be required to submit the very complex calculations, adding quite a few more dollars to your tax preparation bill.

Analysts say that lawmakers and their staffs were well aware of the creeping effects of AMT but purposely ignored it because the media and taxpayer groups did not focus on it.

Time to focus....Read more about today's Outrage in the Money Magazine Story.

If you have difficulty accessing this story, please follow it from .


Good Cop, Bad Cop

THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
From Mountain Media
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED SEPT. 12, 1997
THIS IS 2ND WRITE-THRU, ADDING ATTRIBUTION IN FIRST GRAPH TO GENE WOLTZ

As Internet encryption advocate Gene Woltz (woltz@goodnet.com) recently asked his e-mail correspondents, "Would you store a key to your house at the local police station, just in case any government agency ... wanted to search your home, without a court ordered search warrant, whether you were home or not?

"Would you feel better if the key to your house was kept at a local bank, but available to the government within two hours, seven days a week, 24 hours per day, and the bank was forbidden by law from telling you that the government had your house key?

"What would you do if such a bill was in congress right now? ..."

It is. The personal "effects" targeted this time are our computer files, telephone calls, and e-mail communications, thanks to the latest revisions to Senate Bill 909, "The Secure Public Networks Act of 1997."

Initially the bill in question -- sponsored by Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona -- stipulated the congressional intent was to outlaw the use of sophisticated devices to scramble Internet communications only for the purpose of concealing crimes, that Congress in no way intended to outlaw the transmission of coded messages between otherwise law-abiding Americans.

But a new version of the bill's Section 105, appearing Aug. 28 and supported by FBI Director Louis J. Freeh, would in effect require Internet Service Providers to decode users' messages upon court demand -- a function they would be able to perform because, under the new version of the law, those using encryption to make their messages unintelligible to third parties would now be required to store "escrow keys" capable of decoding their messages with a "trusted third party" such as the local bank.

The sale, distribution, or importation of encryption programs without such a government-accessible "keyhole" would, of course, be made illegal, as of January 1999.

Chief federal internal security officer Freeh contends his revision only reflects "the legitimate needs of law enforcement," of course.

Robert Costner of Electronic Frontiers Georgia (http://www.efga.org/) responds: "Indeed, one can offer many arguments as to why a government would be better off without encryption being held by its citizens. Just think what a different world we would live in if early American crypto had not been possible. Remember Paul Revere's secret key implementation of 'One if by land, two if by sea?'"

But in a pleasant surprise, Vice President Al Gore on Sept. 9 reaffirmed the Clinton administration's policy against restricting the domestic sale of high-tech computer privacy devices.

"The administration's position has not changed on encryption," Gore told the Software Publishers Association.

Until Mr. Freeh's initiative a week ago, official U.S. policy had opposed restrictions on the sale of data-scrambling software within the United States, though the administration does regulate exports of encryption devices, actually labeling such export products "munitions" based on their presumed usefulness to foreign armies and terrorist groups.

Vice President Gore didn't specifically mention Freeh's proposal on Sept. 9. But White House aides, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Associated Press the vice president's brief comment was intended to respond to Director Freeh and "show that for now the administration is not changing its position on the sale of encryption devices in the United States."

Last December a new administration plan took effect, giving U.S. companies more freedom to export high-tech encryption devices, but insisting manufacturers first guarantee that G-men -- upon court order -- would be able to crack the codes and intercept the communications.

Will U.S. firms find it a crippling restriction when they try to enter international markets with "privacy" programs to which everyone knows the FBI and CIA already hold the secret keys? Probably. But the larger risk here is the spread of such an attractive tool for government snooping back into the domestic arena.

If it were up to Judge Freeh, private letters dropped in the mailbox on the corner would have to be sealed in transparent envelopes, "to make it easier for us to check."

Assurances that the administration is not going along with Director Freeh "for now" are welcome, though I can't help but wonder why Director Freeh was permitted to float such a balloon in the first place, except to see whether it might fly unopposed.

This is a dangerous dalliance with the mindset of the police state. The federal government shouldn't be opening our mail -- electronic or otherwise.

If that means a few "dangerous conspirators" are allowed to move their earnings around without telling the IRS, so be it. Because the only alternative is the "safety" of a nation with a cop listening on every phone.

No thanks.

Vin Suprynowicz is the assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Readers may contact him via e-mail at vin@lvrj.com. The web site for the Suprynowicz column is at http://www.nguworld.com/vindex/. The column is syndicated in the United States and Canada via Mountain Media Syndications, P.O. Box 4422, Las Vegas Nev. 89127.


Out-of-touch Congress needs to abolish IRS, not increase it

Freedom Watch Update
Tues., Sept. 23, 1997

Headlines around the nation last week served to further indicate the extent to which the Congress is truly out-of- touch with the people.

In addition to passing the Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Act, the Congress voted to pass the Treasury and Postal Operations Appropriations Act. This bill appropriated $1.3 billion more than the respective appropriation for the most recent fiscal year. In addition to funding the IRS at $7.6 billion, (that's an 8% increase over last year's funding), the bill also included 97 million dollars for the Treasury Department's "Violent Crime Reduction Programs" despite the fact that criminal law enforcement is a matter reserved to state and local governments by the ninth and 10th amendments to the U.S. Constitution. Needless to say, this is a bill I opposed for constitutional reasons. Additionally, I want the IRS eliminated, not given more taxpayer money with which to further harass taxpayers.

It wasn't, however, the IRS budget increase which caught the fancy of newspaper editors and American citizens. Rather, it was the failure by Congress to follow its recent trend of invalidating its automatic cost-of-living pay-raise increase of 2.3 percent.

Under reforms passed by Congress in 1989, Congress was automatically given a cost-of-living adjustment, at a rate 1/2 of one percent below all other federal employees. Every year since 1989, Congress has voted to disallow its COLA pay increase. This year, the leadership of both parties evidently decided Congress should get this pay raise so the appropriation came to the House floor for a vote under a rule forbidding an amendment to stop the "automatic" increase could be offered. This situation further strengthened my justifications for voting against the entire measure in the first place.

Congressmen currently are paid $133,600 annually with a massive, lucrative taxpayer funded pension program, in which I do not participate.

Unfortunately for the taxpayer, many members of Congress evidently believed the IRS was deserving of even more of your money and the House passed this appropriations bill. The bill will also be considered by the Senate where there is some opposition to the de facto pay raise.

Sadly, though, there seems to be no real opposition in the Senate to increasing the IRS budget. There is a lot of talk about IRS reform, yet Congress increases its budget while the media diverts our attention.

Unfortunately we are not on the verge of true IRS reform.

This week Congress will be considering several pieces of legislation, including HR 901, a measure I have co-sponsored. Entitled "The American Land Sovereignty Protection Act," HR 901 takes a laudable step toward reaffirmation of the constitutional tenet that only Congress has the authority to make rules and regulations regarding federally-owned land, and not the powerful independent agencies. And now we even have to be concerned about the international government bodies like the UN.

The federal government has no authority to erode United States sovereignty. According to the Constitution, all sovereignty, all authority, other than those delegated in the carefully delineated enumerated powers, remains vested with the people, not the federal government, and certainly not with the United Nations.

A lot of politicians in Washington worry about the public's perception of their performance. The politicians need to realize that only by cutting agencies like the IRS, not giving themselves sneaky pay raises, and actually passing constitutional legislation, will the public ever do more than shake their heads in disgust at the day-to-day operations of Congress.

See Ron Paul's web site, Project FREEDOM: http://www.house.gov/paul/

PLEASE SEND _ALL_ CORRESPONDENCE TO rep.paul@mail.house.gov .The FWU is a free service of US Representative Ron Paul, 203 Cannon HOB, Washington, DC 20515 (202) 225-2831


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