The Battle In The States: Freedom Vs Protection

Mark Lerner and Tom DeWeese put together this piece; which can be found at Tom DeWeese, President of American Policy Center  www.americanpolicy.org <  

 

Mark Lerner, Director, Stop Real ID Coalition   www.stoprealidcoalition.com <   http://www.stoprealidcoalition.com

http://www.stoprealidcoalition.com

Please pass this along to those you know.

Across the nation, state legislatures are struggling to take back their Constitutional rights as they also seek ways to protect us from outside threats. This has led to some near schizophrenic legislative sessions with laws swinging widely from left to right.

Making it more difficult to get a handle on the situation is the fact that there has been an outgrowth of near “rabid”

anti-immigration groups that have sprung up demanding near-Hitler-style tactics to “fix” the problem. While the situation is certainly serious and demands action, these groups openly admit that they are willing to surrender their liberties if that is what it takes to end illegal immigration. They may deeply regret that cavalier dismissal of liberty. Once lost, it is rarely regained.

To address these issues, three very distinct, but widely variant legislative actions have appeared in the states.

First, legislation dealing with protecting the integrity of the Tenth Amendment and state sovereignty has been introduced across the nation, passing in at least 21 states. The states are reacting to the frightening growth of the federal government through anti-terrorist legislation such as the Patriot Act and Real ID, as well as the outrageous spending included in the bailout and stimulus bills.

Second, to address the illegal immigration issue, legislation in many states would provide state law enforcement with the ability to share information through direct electronic access. Many law-enforcement agencies are eagerly supporting such legislation. Yet, this type of legislation clearly contradicts the intent of the states sovereignty effort.

Third, again racing back to the other side to protect personal privacy from federal surveillance, there is legislation introduced to prohibit the collection of biometric samples/data, social security numbers and the use of RFID chips in state driver’s licenses.

One might ask, what do these pieces of legislation have to do with one another? They each go to the heart of a battle being waged across our country to decide how much Constitutional power the federal government has to collect, retain and share the personal information of each citizen, and how much power it has to force states to provide it?

Tenth Amendment legislation is exactly what the name implies –

that states have Constitutionally-guaranteed rights and powers. It puts the federal government on notice that states will not act as its surrogates. The legislation unequivocally tells the federal government that its power comes from the citizens and the states and that federal powers are limited and defined rather than unlimited and arbitrary.*Fusion Centers*

As for those patriots who believe the illegal immigration is so dire that liberty should be thrown on the bonfire, perhaps they need to better understand what they are demanding.

Legislation introduced in several state legislatures, and currently in debate, allows state and local law-enforcement agencies to have direct access to one another’s databases. Some of the anti-immigration patriots might see it is as prudent legislation until one takes a closer look.

Most states now have Fusion Centers. Fusion Centers were originally intended to allow local and state law-enforcement to work alongside federal officers so that activity suspected of being terrorist related could be identified and responded to by all three law enforcement entities in a coordinated manner. Fusion Centers have representatives of all three working side-by-side in one office.

Fusion Centers are funded primarily by the federal government. Some believe them to be an effective tool to fight terrorism with little that one could find objectionable. The problem is, Fusion Centers have overstepped their intended purpose. This is typical when dealing with the issue of technology and invasive databases. Mission creep is just too easy.

In state after state we see Fusion Centers focusing on /all /suspected criminal activity, including misdemeanors. Some would ask you to believe that the mountain of information about citizens being accumulated actually stays within the borders of a state unless a citizen is suspected of terrorist activity. However, the Fusion Center in Oklahoma has been directed to develop procedures for the sharing of information with the FBI and DHS.

This means that direct electronic access is not limited to just state law enforcement agencies and departments. Since local, state and federal authorities are working together, there is no plausible reason to believe federal law enforcement will not gain access to all information a state law enforcement or local law enforcement authority would have.

*The Missouri Outrage*     

READ MORE

BABY DNA ALERT – The Baby DNA Warehouse bill (SF 1478)Minnesota

BABY DNA ALERT – The Baby DNA Warehouse bill (SF 1478) may be announced last minute for Monday (3:00 p.m.) or for Tuesday (3:00 p.m.). The author is having another bill heard by the committee on Monday, and could conceivably do the baby DNA bill at the same time. Need MORE petitions to Governor
Contact your Representatives. Vote could come anytime in the House. (rep.firstname.lastname@house.mn) Find your legislator on the right side of our home page: http://www.cchconline.org

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Citizens Line Up to Speak

CCHC “What Happened” REPORT – click here for more photos

Crowd Challenges Health Department’s Medical Records Grab

Yesterday, in a room filled with people who came to comment on the Health Department’s medical record grab—and their planned use of the data to centralize treatment decisions and restrict access to care—the Department stalled the conversation.

State officials used up the first hour with department presentations. Meanwhile KSTP-TV waited for the action to begin. And waited. And waited.

After I asked them to provide their definition of health care “quality” (which they refused to answer), they cut off all audience questions until the end.

After they used up the first hour with three presentations, they asked every person to limit their comments to five minutes.

Engaged Audience:
The audience, most of them wearing CCHC “My Medical Records are Mine” stickers, was very engaged once the presentations were over, occasionally shouting out vocal rebuffs of less-than-transparent answers by the Department. They also applauded various comments made by the public.

MDH may be hoping no one ever hears about the meeting. They chose not to record attendance (no sign-in sheets) or to tape record the public’s comments.

Today we publish the CCHC report of the meeting, with lots of photos, to make sure the public knows what actually happened.

Coming soon…a YouTube video of a very impassioned and noisy exchange between one woman and the Health Department officials on the constitutionality of government taking private data.

Twila Brase
President, CCHC
651-646-8935

Group Brings Vilsack 8-Point Alternative to NAIS

R-CALF United Stockgrowers of America

 

“Fighting for the U.S. Cattle Producer”

 

For Immediate Release                                                                                                                           Contact: Shae Dodson, Communications Coordinator

April 2, 2009                                                                                                                                             Phone:  406-672-8969; e-mail: sdodson@r-calfusa.com

 

 

Washington, D.C. – In formal correspondence sent to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack today, R-CALF USA has recommended an 8-point alternative course to the controversial National Animal Identification System (NAIS), originally forced on the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) by the previous Administration.

 

“R-CALF USA urges Congress and USDA to immediately and completely abandon the flawed National Animal Identification System,” said R-CALF USA President/Region VI Director Max Thornsberry, a Missouri veterinarian who also chairs the group’s animal health committee. “Instead, we recommend that Congress and USDA focus on targeted solutions to the legitimate livestock disease-related challenges faced by U.S. livestock industries, and take steps to meaningfully address legitimate food safety challenges, as are evidenced by recent and massive recalls of meat produced in U.S. slaughtering plants.”

 

Specifically, R-CALF USA has recommended the following eight-point alternative course:

 

1.       Prevent the importation of serious cattle diseases and pests from foreign sources by:

 

a.       Prohibiting the importation of livestock from any country that experiences outbreaks of serious zoonotic diseases, including pests, until scientific evidence demonstrates the diseases and/or pests have been eradicated or fully controlled and there is no known risk of further spread. This recommendation includes a request for an immediate ban on live cattle imports from Canada, which harbor a heightened risk for BSE.

 

b.       Requiring all imported livestock to be permanently and conspicuously branded with a mark of origin so identification can be made if a zoonotic disease or serious pest outbreak occurs in the exporting country subsequent to importation.

 

c.       Requiring all livestock imported into the United States to meet health and safety standards identical to those established for the United States, including adherence to U.S. prohibitions against certain feed ingredients, pesticide use on feedstuffs, and certain livestock pharmaceuticals.

 

d.       Requiring TB testing of all imported Mexican cattle and further requiring that all Mexican cattle remain quarantined in designated feedlots until slaughtered.

 

e.       Reversing USDA’s efforts to carve out regions within disease-affected foreign countries in order to facilitate imports from the affected country before the disease of concern is fully controlled or eradicated.

 

f.        Increasing the testing of all imported meat and bone meal to prohibit contaminated feed from entering the United States.

 

2.       Adopt the surveillance and identification components of the preexisting brucellosis program, including the metal eartag and tattoo that identifies the state-of-origin and the local veterinarian who applied the identification devices, and require breeding stock not otherwise identified through breed registries to be identified at the first point of ownership transfer.   

 

3.       State and Tribal animal health officials should be solely responsible for maintaining a statewide database for all metal tags applied within their respective jurisdictions and should continue to use the mailing address and/or the production unit identifier determined appropriate by the attending veterinarian to achieve traceback to the herd of origin should a disease event occur. Under no circumstances should the Federal government maintain a national registry of U.S. livestock or require the national registration of producers’ real property.

 

4.       The federal government should enter into agreements with State and Tribal animal health officials to pay for the States’ and Tribal governments’ costs of identifying breeding stock and maintaining the State and Tribal databases, as well as bolstering disease surveillance at livestock collection points such as livestock auction yards and slaughtering plants, including increased surveillance for BSE.

 

5.       The federal government should coordinate with the States and Tribes to establish electronic interface standards and to establish improved communication protocols so it can more effectively coordinate with the States and Tribes in the event of a disease outbreak.

 

6.       The federal government should coordinate with the States and Tribes to establish improved protocols for the retention and searchability of State and Tribal health certificates, brand inspection documents and other documents used to facilitate interstate movement of livestock. 

 

7.       Establish specific disease programs and focus increased resources toward the eradication of diseased wildlife in States where wildlife populations are known to harbor communicable diseases.

 

8.       To address the challenge of increased incidences of tainted meat products, Congress and USDA must substantially reform the current hands-off inspection system known as Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP). HACCP has fundamentally failed to ensure adequate sanitary practices at major slaughterhouse establishments.  As part of the HACCP reform, Congress should implement a requirement that meat sold at retail and at food service establishments be traceable back to the slaughterhouse that produced the meat from live animals, not just back to the processor that may have further processed tainted meat. This simple improvement would enable investigators to determine and address the actual source of meat contamination – primarily the unsanitary conditions that allow enteric-origin pathogens, such as E. coli O157:H7, to contaminate otherwise healthful meat.

 

“R-CALF USA appreciates the Secretary’s consideration of these recommendations and we look forward to working with the Secretary to enhance our nation’s animal disease preparedness in a manner that builds upon our past successes and does not infringe on the rights and privileges of U.S. livestock producers,” Thornsberry concluded.

 

Note: To view/download a copy of the letter to Vilsack, please visit the “Animal ID” link at www.r-calfusa.com.

 

                                                                                                             # # #

 

R-CALF USA (Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, United Stockgrowers of America) is a national, non-profit organization dedicated to ensuring the continued profitability and viability of the U.S. cattle industry. R-CALF USA represents thousands of U.S. cattle producers on trade and marketing issues. Members are located across 47 states and are primarily cow/calf operators, cattle backgrounders, and/or feedlot owners. R-CALF USA directors and committee chairs are extremely active unpaid volunteers. R-CALF USA has dozens of affiliate organizations and various main-street businesses are associate members. For more information, visit www.r-calfusa.com  or, call 406-252-2516.   

 

The NRA is NOT on Our Side

I have written here, before, that the National Rifle Association (NRA) has been, for the last seventy-five years, backing legislation that perpetuates the infringement of the Second Amendment, all while posturing as the “protectors” of it. I have shown, through various evidence, that this is so and I have become aware of yet another indicator.

I’m referring to a brief article from Associated Press (AP), which was put out this morning about an event scheduled for today in Oxford, Mississippi. This is a speaking engagement at the Ole Miss Federalist Society (based at the University of Mississippi) and the speaker is to be Sandra Froman, former president of the NRA. The title of her speech is to be  “Gun fight at the Supreme Court.”

There are a few things about this seemingly innocuous event that got my attention. The first was that the Ole Miss Federalist Society is a chapter of the Federalist Society, an organization that was founded in 1982 for “law and public policy studies” and supposedly consists of “conservatives and libertarians,” though we know there are many – and many in high positions of power within our government – who use the same labels and are anything but conservative or libertarian. The Federalist Society is also composed entirely of lawyers and law students (in the student chapters, of which Ole Miss is one of many). So, basically, the Federalist Society is a think tank.

If you read their own website, the Federalist Society seems innocuous enough, until one considers the very name of the organization implies that it continues the same thinking as the original Federalists who wrote and sponsored our constitution – which, as I have also written of before, replaced our original (and far superior) constitution, The Articles of Confederation in 1787.

As I have also pointed out before, the Federalists (led by Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and others) were agents of the Rothschilds of London. Their assigned task was to subvert the young republic of the United States of America and to bring it under the control of the Rothschilds’ growing web of debt-based central banking that later captured England and has since enslaved the world. The Anti-Federalists were well aware of the international banking cartel and did everything they could to stop the Federalists from scrapping the Articles of Confederation and replacing it with a constitution that would suit the interests of the cartel. Failing in that attempt, they at least managed to get the Bill of Rights and the first ten amendments inserted into the new Federalist Constitution.

As it turned out, the Federalists, unfortunately, got their way and we were saddled with a new constitution in 1787 that provided, for the first time, for a central authority (the President) and which, more importantly, also provided for the possibility of a central bank to be established. The Articles of Confederation had ensured that neither of these could ever happen by providing that the executive powers of the government should reside with Congress, which was directly answerable to the people, and by providing that the original thirteen states could coin their own money, thus deliberately avoiding the possibility of a central bank.

If anyone questions that the Federalist Society supports the same international banking cartel today, then I suggest you have a look into the World Federalist Association (WFA), as well.

The World Federalist Association is an international globalist think tank that is closely allied with the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderberg Group. It seeks, as do the CFR, Trilateralists and Bilderbergers, the establishment of a world government and is the main body heading the World Federalist Movement. Former CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite, noted globalist himself, spoke before the World Federalist Association during the Clinton years.

So, what does all this have to do with the NRA? Well, you might ask why it is that a past president of the NRA – an organization that claims to defend your right to be armed – is speaking to impressionable young law students at a meeting of the Federalist Society, an organization that is (contrary to its own propaganda) most probably engaged in political subterfuge aimed at establishing a world government. Frankly, I’m not surprised, given that the NRA has had seventy-five years in which to find a way to repeal the mountain of laws that have violated the Second Amendment (something you would think they’d be attempting to do), yet has not even called for their repeal in all that time.

One might also wonder why it is that the Federalist Society was founded at Yale – home of Skull & Bones.  Are you beginning to connect the dots and see the big picture? Consider that the Federalist Society had been a “gateway” into the judiciary and the Justice Department of the Bush administration. Given that Barrack Obama now appears to be continuing all of the same programs established by the Bush administration – inlcuding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as toture and extraordinary renditions, as well as the agenda of his CFR/Trilateralist handlers – it seems quite likely this gateway still exists, as well.

But, getting back to the NRA, I remind you that Mississippi is among several states alleging to “declare sovereignty” from the federal government, while at the same time, passing legislation that will pave the way for gun confiscations during martial (though the bill – now law – that enables this was presented to the public as a “protection” against confiscation). The NRA supported this bill.

Family Farmers Shouldn’t be Prosecuted for Protecting Their Livelihoods

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                                                                                                                                     April 1, 2009
FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:
STATE REPRESENTATIVE SCOTT SUDER                                                                                                                            TOLL-FREE AT 1-888-534-0069

                                      Rep. Suder Fighting to Protect Local Farmers

Lawmaker Introduces Bill to Make Livestock Premise Registrations Voluntary – Says Family Farmers Shouldn’t be Prosecuted for Protecting Their Livelihoods

 

Abbotsford… Rep. Scott Suder (R-Abbotsford) introduced legislation today in Madison that he says will protect the property rights of small family farmers who have recently been taken to court to force them to register their farms with the state.  The northern lawmaker’s bill will make livestock premise registrations voluntary, rather than mandatory in Wisconsin.    

 

“At a time when many family farms are struggling to keep the barn doors open, now is not the time for the state to be threatening farmers who refuse to register their farms with a lawsuit,” Suder said.  “In an economic crisis where every job counts and every business matters, we should be doing everything we can to protect our farmers, not threatening them with lawsuits that could very well put them out of business.”

 

The Department of Agriculture Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP) currently requires any person who keeps livestock to register their property and provide a description of the operation and types of animals raised at the location to the state.  DATCP has the authority under current law to create exemptions to the premise registration requirements through the rules process.  Suder says the department has chosen not to allow any exemptions to the premise registrations in Wisconsin.  The lawmaker said this strict mandate broke a promise DATCP made to the Legislature when the Premise Registration Act was signed into law in 2004.    

 

“DATCP told many of us who had concerns about mandating premise registrations that exemptions would be written to protect the rights of family farmers,” Suder said.  “That didn’t happen and now we are seeing lawsuits popping up around the state threatening to sue farmers for thousands of dollars for not registering.  Even the USDA strongly believes that the best approach to premise registrations is a voluntary system led by the states.  I believe we should follow the federal government’s recommendations and make premise registrations voluntary in Wisconsin.”

 

Wisconsin is one of only two states that require mandatory premise registrations.  In fact, five states (Utah, Arizona, Kentucky, Missouri, and Nebraska) have adopted laws banning mandatory premise and animal identifications as part of the National Animal Identification System (NAIS).  Illinois, Arkansas, Montana, and Texas are considering similar proposals.  According to recent estimates, only a third of producers nationwide have chosen to register their farms in the past five years. 

 

Rep. Suder said he anticipates bipartisan support for the bill as it moves through the legislative process this spring.

 

Representative Suder welcomes your comments on this and other issues.  For more information, please feel free to contact Rep. Suder at (888) 534-0069 or e-mail him at Rep.Suder@legis.state.wi.us.

Oppose NAIS~~~Lone cattleman develops Web site

WilsonCountyNews.com 
March 31, 2009

As the controversy of the National Animal Identification System (NAIS) continues to divide the livestock industry, one man is leading a campaign against the program by not only writing letters to congressmen, but also by starting up a Web site and contributing articles he has written.

Darol Dickinson, manager of the family-owned Dickinson Cattle Co. Inc., runs one of the 50 largest registered cattle ranches in the United States, numbering up to 1,600 registered cattle. The ranch is also involved in livestock marketing, retail meat sales, cattle feeding, and exporting to more than 20 countries.

As proposed, when and if implemented, the NAIS will allow state health agencies, in the event of a disease outbreak, to trace the movement of an animal back to the place of origin within 48 hours.

The issue of the accuracy and costs of recording each movement of an animal has been questioned and is a concern of many cattlemen, including Dickinson.

Dickinson brought up a January 2007 experience as one of the reasons why he is opposed to the NAIS program while being interviewed for this article.

He said in 2007, he was visited by a detective of the APHIS Investigative and Enforcement Services, not for a disease outbreak, but because of a clerical error. The error involved an interstate movement of one cow sold in January 2006, in which the veterinarian did not list one number on the certificate of veterinary inspection for interstate movement of animals.

Dickinson wrote about this incident in the article, “Chasing a Cow Over Five States,” detailing the happenings of what he experienced to warn others of the federal penalties the NAIS may lead to if the program should become mandatory.

At the present time, the NAIS is voluntary, except in four states where legislation has implemented a mandatory program to assist in the control of certain diseases.

“The fines and penalties for USDA are very nebulous. They have the ability to ‘stack’ their charges like no other enforcement agency. For instance, you transport a critter over state lines and the USDA licensed veterinarian fills out the health certificate incorrectly … you may be charged and fined for not knowing he did it wrong,” Dickinson said. “When they can’t make their case, they hold it in a file and threaten in a future date to bring it up again and attach it to another minor violation making a ‘stacked’ charge on one of their house rules.”

After Dickinson refused to plead no contest and pay $1,000 in fines, the case was dropped a year and a half later. Dickinson said the U.S. Department of Agriculture will keep the case on file and add it to the next violation “to create a really bad violation.” He said the vet was called before a hearing court in Oklahoma and was hammered verbally. He had failed to include one optional number on the certificate.

Dickinson also questions if the movement of animals can accurately be recorded by the databases, since the average steer in the United States now has eight owners during it’s lifetime, with the consumer being No. 8. With the animal identification program, six computer entries will be required, giving many opportunities for errors, and fines, he said.

Dickinson released an article in 2008 titled, “NAIS — the Fourth Component,” which he said is enforcement. Dickinson reviewed the fines that may be imposed if and when the animal identification program becomes mandatory, ranging from $1,000 to $50,000 and more, citing U.S. Code, Title 7, found on the Web site of the Cornell University Law School, Legal Information Institute.

“One could be fined in county court $1,000 for a 70-mile-per-hour speed violation through a school zone, yet $50,000 for crossing a state line with one number incorrect on a USDA- issued livestock health certificate — for a perfectly healthy child’s pony!” Dickinson wrote.

Dickinson wrote the enforcement article since he believes that the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) is a “law-making branch of the federal government that could take a $10 parking violation and make it into a hanging offense. One fine from Investigative and Enforcement Services (IES division of APHIS) can devastate a family farm completely and it doesn’t have to involve any animal disease.”

“The APHIS/NAIS site changes like a baby diaper. It is a moving target and referred to as a ‘living’ document. They can add or remove at any time. It is not designed to easily understand. Undefined created words allow APHIS to interpret as they wish at a future date,” Dickinson said.

Dickinson’s article and others can be found on his Web site http://www.naisSTINKS.com, which contains articles, political cartoons, posters, and quotes in opposition to the NAIS. It is an “attempt to set the record straight from the twisted press releases USDA sends to media daily,” Dickinson said. He considers the site as “a self-defense site to preserve family livestock businesses.”

“I want to save the ranch I have worked to build for 42 years for my grandchildren and I don’t want it destroyed by the federales with unnecessary enforcements for a problem we don’t have,” he said.

At the present time, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service Web site states, “There are no Federal penalties or other ‘enforcement’ mechanisms associated with the NAIS.” Not unlike other government slight-of-speech promises, they want to change that to mandatory and the enforcements will be on the way. 

 

“I’m hopeful that we can bring people in and lay out on the table what are your concerns about a mandatory system,” said USDA Sec. Vilsack, a former Iowa governor. “Let’s work through them and see if we can get to a point where we can then fashion a mandatory system that would do the job and would work.”

 

According to Dickinson, “There’s only one problem with the Vilsack plan, that one pernicious word—MANDATORY.”

 

Reporting, editing; Doering, Gregorio, Headtel, Dickinson, Pat Kopecki and Wilson County News.

 

President Barack ‘Mussolini’ Obama

Mr. G. Richard Wagoner, the chairman and chief executive officer of General Motors, was recently forced to resign his position because of pressure from the Obama administration. He was told that if he didn’t leave, the Obama administration would not give General Motors any more federal bailout money. President Obama also told General Motors and the Chrysler  Corporation that if they wanted more federal bailout money, they would have to shrink and refocus their businesses according to his (the federal government’s) wishes.   In our country’s history, there have been some limited instances of the federal government exercising some sort of control over private industry, but that was during wartime. The current assault on American capitalism by the Obama administration is unprecedented in both its scope and speed and should raise the red flag of alarm for all freedom-loving Americans.   World history has shown us that the implementation of strict government controls over private industries has been one of the first steps in the introduction of various forms of Fascism to formerly free countries.  The practice of a government taking control of private industries was refined by Benito Mussolini in Italy in the 1920’s and it is called ‘corporatism.’     According to Wikipedia, political scientists use the term ‘corporatism’ to describe “a practice whereby a state, through the process of licensing and regulating officially-incorporated social, religious, economic, or popular organizations, effectively co-opts their leadership or circumscribes their ability to challenge state authority by establishing the state as the source of their legitimacy, as well as sometimes running them, either directly or indirectly.”  Mussolini described it more simply when he said, “Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.”   Some corporatist-style regimes of the 20th century included those of Benito Mussolini of Italy (1922-1945), Adolph Hitler of Germany (1933 to 1945); Francisco Franco of Spain (1936 to 1973); Juan Peron of Argentina (1943 to 1955) and even our own President Franklin Roosevelt (1933 to 1945) during the ‘New Deal.’ The Mussolini, Hitler, Franco and Peron regimes were brutal, totalitarian, Fascist dictatorships, but not all the regimes that had a corporatist foundation were fascist. The Roosevelt administration, despite its many faults, could not be described as fascist, but the ‘New Deal’ program was definitely corporatist.   Corporatism boils down to this: The government tells industry (and eventually labor unions) what to do and that they must do it for the supposed good of the country, or else their individual leaders will pay a price. Does this sound similar to what is happening to the auto industry today?   Where in the U.S. Constitution does it authorize the President of the United States to fire the head of a major private corporation just because he disagrees with his management policies?  Where in the U.S. Constitution does it authorize the President of the United States to decide what kind of cars a private company will build? or what kind of car I will drive?  President Barack ‘Mussolini’ Obama is taking this country down a very dangerous road and a road that America has never taken before.   Confucius said “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” Are the ‘corporatist’ policies of President Obama and his administration just the first steps of many in a move towards a government takeover of our major industries? Are these policies much different than those that Mussolini and Hitler initiated in the early stages of their rise to power?     With the Politburo in our expanding federal government now having the power to hire and fire the leaders of major private corporations and to tell the auto makers what cars they can produce, will they soon be telling Americans what kind of cars they can drive; how much money they can earn;  where they can go to school, what sodas they can drink, what foods they can’t eat, where they can travel, what national ID card they must carry at all times and it will impose any number of other restrictions on them. Look at California, where the state legislature is currently considering banning black cars by 2012, for some bogus global warming reason.     Thomas Jefferson said: “A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have.” Americans must remember that we cannot fully enjoy our freedoms and liberties in America unless we keep our government limited. As our government grows and becomes more intrusive, as it is today, it is our freedoms and liberties that are becoming limited.   Welcome to the United Socialist States of America!    If we continue on President Obama’s road to socialism, the American people will no longer be free. The question is: Will we learn to accept our captivity at the hands of our new masters, or will we be willing to do something about it?    _______________________________________ John Wallace “For Freedom, Liberty and Sovereignty” New York Campaign for Liberty Chatham, New York http://www.NYCampaignForLiberty.com