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Midwest ranchers, lawmakers protest EPA flyovers
Big brother people! And if truth be told? This is only the very start! One day coming soon? Scads of drones, planes, satellites all doing nothing but watching everything and everyone, recording it all for later use by unknown agencies and companies under government contract. Now connect this story with the next story about the government having the full ability to now tax us for what we do not do that government wants us to do.
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Midwest ranchers have never been enamored with environmental regulators, but they really began to complain after learning that federal inspectors were flying over their land to look for problems.
The Environmental Protection Agency flies over power plants and other facilities nationwide to identify potential air, water and land pollution. It began using aerial surveillance in the Midwest in 2010 to check farms for violations of federal clean water regulations.
Ranchers who object to the program said they’re not trying to hide anything. It’s the quiet approach the EPA took with the program designed to spot illegal disposal of animal waste that they find upsetting. Most were not even aware of the flyovers until regional EPA officials mentioned it at a meeting three months ago.
“For me, it just creeps into the ‘Big Brother is watching you’ area, to where the government just feels like it’s getting more and more intrusive,” said Buck Wehrbein, who manages a cattle feeding operation in Mead, Neb., about 30 miles west of Omaha.
EPA officials explained during a meeting with ranchers in West Point, Neb., that they lease small planes that fly EPA staffers over cattle operations. The staffers take photographs as they seek evidence of illegal animal waste running off into rivers and streams.
Ranchers complained to their members of Congress, who responded angrily and then grew even more annoyed by what they considered the EPA’s sluggish response to their inquiries for information about the flights. Nebraska Sen. Mike Johanns, a Republican, introduced an amendment to a multifaceted farm bill to stop the flights, but it fell four votes short of the 60 needed. Although most backers of the amendment were Republicans, 10 Democrats supported the proposal.
“EPA has been deliberately ambiguous when it comes to the size and scope of this program,” Johanns said in a statement. “EPA must be honest about this program or cease it entirely, and I will continue pressing for this information on behalf of all concerned farmers and ranchers.”
U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican, met June 25 with top EPA administrators to find out why the agency was flying over farms when there was no indication that regulations had been violated. He also sought more information about why the EPA flew over farms that weren’t required to have discharge permits.
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Now connect the above with the ability of our government, according to the supreme court ruling in the obamacare fiasco. Say the government wants to help a company out that makes barbeque pits. Let’s say they are called “Big Silver Pits”. The government can help that company, in exchange say for big huge donations to various parties, by now ruling anyone who does not buy one of these new pits has to pay a tax! And to make sure, those drones, etc. in the sky above? They record your backyard and see that you do not have such a new pit. Bam! The IRS sends you a tax bill! Just keep all this in mind!
Jindal: Obamacare ruling paves way for Michelle Obama Tofu Tax mandate….
Mitt Romney’s campaign attacked President Obama and the Supreme Court ruling in Obamacare this morning, arguing that the ruling expands congressional power by allowing the federal government to levy taxes in order to compel behavior.
“Under this taxing authority now, you can tax inactivity to compel behavior, you can tax inactivity, what’s to stop this administration — we know the First Lady is very keen on us eating healthy — why not tax people for not eating tofu?”Gov. Bobby Jindal,, R-La., asked reporters on a conference call this morning. “This administration, they’ve put taxpayers as partial owners of GM, why not tax people for not going out and buying Chevy Volts? The reality is, this is a huge expansion of the federal government’s power.”
President Obama’s spokesmen in the White House and the campaign deny that the mandate is a tax, despite the Supreme Court ruling upholding the law under Congress’s taxing power.
“It is simply a fallacy to say this is a broad-based tax,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said today.
Former Gov. Tim Pawlenty, R-Minn., argued that the White House is effectively declaring Obamacare unconstitutional. “If it’s not a tax, then it’s not constitutional under the rest of the court’s opinion,” Pawlenty observed on the call.
More Examiner here.
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OWS and the One Millionth: Right Feelings, Wrong Target…
From Tom Trinko at American Thinker:
I sympathize with the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement. I feel their pain.
They are rightfully angry that a small group of people can control their lives and manipulate their freedom. They are right to object to a system that treats them as subjects. They are fully justified in their rage against those who would force them to do what they don’t believe in.
The sad thing is is that the people the OWS people rage against aren’t the people who in fact control our lives or deny our freedoms.
The 1% can’t raise the taxes of anyone. The 1% can’t force you to buy things you don’t want. The 1% can’t make you violate your religious beliefs. The 1% can tell you how to live your life.
But the 0.000001%, the one millionth, can. The president plus the members of Congress and the Supreme Court who side with him are the one millionth, and they can do and have done all the things that OWS ascribes to the wealthy.
The wealthy can’t just take money from us, but the the one millionth can; they can raise taxes anytime they like.
The wealthy can’t force us to buy health insurance, or broccoli, but the the one millionth can.
The wealthy can’t force us to violate our religious beliefs, but the the one millionth can.
In reality, the oppressors in America today are the the one millionth, not the 1%. It’s the one millionth who make the rules that the rest of us have to follow. And if we don’t follow those rules, we will be fined or imprisoned.
Debtors prisons were outlawed long ago but the the one millionth still use the threat of imprisonment to ensure that they get what they consider to be their fair share of what we earn. Americans condemn the thought of political prisoners but those who refuse to bend their knee to the Government rather than to God face the very real risk of imprisonment in the one millionth’s America.
The Founders were very afraid of what the the one millionth could do — based on their experience with the British government — so they created two documents that defined the rights and liberties of Americans.
The Founders made sure that those documents could be changed only with the consent of a very significant majority of all Americans. They did that so that the one millionth couldn’t collude among themselves to steal property and rights from the people they governed.
The problem in America today is not only that a tiny number of people represent us — each member of the House represents more than half a million people — but that many of those people no longer believe in or follow the Constitution.
Many Democrats have been asked what the federal government can’t do in light of the Constitution, and the answers have not been of the sort that makes one believe that those Democrats actually think there are any constraints on what the federal government can do.
When you combine a lawless president who yearns to run America as Hu Jintao runs China with congressional Democrats who believe they are rulers rather than representatives and add a dash of Supreme Court justices who don’t believe that their job is to interpret the Constitution as it was intended by the Founders, you end up with a soft tyranny that steals Americans freedoms.
OWS is right in that Americans should be outraged at the tiny minority who controls our lives. That minority is not the wealthy, however; it is that part of the professional political class who consider themselves rulers and not public servants.
The Founders intended for politicians to be average citizens who came forth and served their countrymen. Instead of average citizens who go to Congress as one temporary aspect of their lives, the one millionth is primarily made up of those whose lives, whose only experience, comprises politics and controlling the lives of others. They yearn to rule, not to serve. They believe they have the answers, so they need not listen to the hoi polloi.
The power of the one millionth began growing with the Warren Court, when the Supreme Court arrogated to itself the power to define laws rather than merely interpret them. Sadly, a sufficient number of congressmen supported the Court’s edicts — edicts that would never have found a majority in a Congress that was concerned about re-election, so that the loss of freedom by Americans wasn’t stanched.
As time went on, the Supreme Court became bolder, discovering a right to privacy and consulting the laws of other countries, and more expansive in its claim to ultimate power.
Unfortunately, the very mechanisms the Founders had put in place to defend the people’s rights were used to take away the people’s liberty.
To overturn the decision of five wealthy lawyers, all in the 1% that OWS despises, who declare that the Constitution says something it clearly doesn’t say, requires either a majority in both the House and Senate being willing to impeach one or more Supreme Court judge, or that two thirds of the members of Congress and three fourths of all states pass a constitutional amendment that says the Supreme Court’s ruling is wrong. Additionally, while it takes the Supreme Court a few months to misconstrue the Constitution, the process to correct the Court’s error takes years.
What this means is that the Supreme Court can effectively do anything it wants, so long as it has the support of roughly 25% of Americans.
This turns on its head the Founders’ intent that to change the Constitution should take the consent of roughly 75% of Americans. In the one millionths’ America, it takes only five Americans to change the Constitution.
So long as we allow the Supreme Court to run roughshod over our rights, we will have no assurance that our children will receive the patrimony of freedom so many Americans have fought and died to protect.
We need to elect people in November who are, above all, honest.
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One day, people MUST take back our government!
When it comes to the concept of limited government, which is really at the heart of the recent imbroglio over Obamacare, the Constitution has been described as the law that controls the government.
The Constitution starts off with a preamble that states:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
This section of the document is not, in and of itself, a part of the Constitution. It simply describes the reason why We the People are defining what we are allowing the government to do and why we are bothering to do anything at all.
But think, for just a moment, exactly what the Constitution is. It is a “to-do” list from the American people clearly telling the government what things the government must do. It also clearly specifies what actions it is allowed to take to accomplish those things. If it’s not listed as a power that We the People are allowing the government to exercise, then the government is not allowed to do it. For example, to pay for the work of the government, We the People have told the government that some taxation is allowed. On the other hand, bank robbery is not listed as an allowed government power, even if it would make life for senators and congressmen so much easier, at least for a short time.
Why was the document written in this form? First, after living under George III and his absolutist monarchy, the idea of putting some limits on what the government would be allowed to do was very appealing. But there is another way of phrasing that very same idea that does not sound as scholarly — nor does it seem as polite — but it is probably more accurate and truthful.
The Constitution, as written, is a loud and strong declaration that We the People do not trust the government that we, ourselves, created.
James Madison, in Federalist #51, formulated the classic rationale underlying the limitations inherent in the Constitution when he wrote:
But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself. A dependence on the people is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary precautions.
Madison’s view of government echoes the words of George Washington, who said:
Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
Federalist #51 is also quite clear as to the desire of the founders to create a government that clearly inhibits the concentration of power in any single office. The president cannot create law; the legislature must get the two houses to agree on any proposed law; the judiciary’s sole function (at the level of the Supreme Court) is to insure that any laws proposed by Congress and not vetoed by the president, are in fact, within the constraining limits defined by We the People in the Constitution itself.
Madison hoped that having a strong federal form of government — or, as he phrased it, a “compound republic” — would also create another restraint on the central government by limiting the power of the central government and increasing the power and responsibilities vested in the governments of the several states. The states that ratified the Constitution agreed, notably through the introduction and approval of the 9th and 10th Amendments.
The recent Supreme Court ruling, while disappointing to the majority of not merely conservative Americans, but a majority of all Americans, was at least a demonstration that the Constitution and the Federalist Papers are still alive. Not well, not robust, but still alive. The states — at least twenty-six of them, acting in concert — moved to limit the overreach of the federal government, exactly as Madison had envisioned.
From HERE.
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Why obama and his regime has to go this november! That means everyone in government he put in charge of any agency, any in government who approved of obama, or who are liberal (whoa, there goes the state department for sure!).
From Mark Alexander at the Patriot Post:
“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.” –Declaration of Independence (1776)
This being the week designated to celebrate American Liberty, I paused to read theDeclaration of Independence, as I do every anniversary of its signing. In that venerable old parchment, our Founders reduced to words the eternal source of Liberty as “endowed by our Creator,” and then outlined their grievances against an imperial executive who willfully violated that endowment “which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitled them.”
The Unanimous Declaration was, in the words of Thomas Jefferson, its principal author, “the declaratory charter of our rights, and the rights of man.”
It opens by defining those rights, framing the relationship between the Creator and His people, the people and the government, and then listing how the executive had violated their God-given rights, “all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.”
Among those “injuries and usurpations” committed by the executive, they noted:
“He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. … He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. … He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers. … He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance. … He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation.”
The comparison between the imperial powers which gave rise to the American Revolution and the imperial presidency which now threatens the Essential Liberty our Founders fought for, and generations of American Patriots have since defended, is unavoidable.
Barack Hussein Obama recently lamented, “It turns out our Founders designed a system that makes it more difficult to bring about change than I would like sometimes.” However, he added, “One of the things about being President is you get better as time goes on.” Indeed, he has become quite better at forging ahead with his agenda to supplant Rule of Law with rule of men, in flagrant disregard of his Oath of Office.
The evidence of Obama’s self-anointed imperial status is mounting.
He created swarms of “czars” unaccountable to Congress. He circumvented Congress by using the Environmental Protection Agency to implement his cap-and-trade scheme. He used the National Labor Relations Board to circumvent the Employee Free Choice Act. He used the Federal Communications Commission to circumvent the judiciary’s proscription on regulating the Internet. He used the Department of Education to force national education standards.
In other cases, Obama has simply ignored the law completely.
He ordered the Department of Justice to cease enforcement of the Defense of Marriage Act. He ordered the Department of Health and Human Services to force private religious institutions to fund abortions and other measures contrary to their Biblical moral code. He ordered the Department of Homeland Security’s immigration service to use “prosecutorial discretion” in order to stop the mandated deportation of illegal immigrants.
Regarding the latter, even former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales responded, “To halt through the deportation of some undocumented immigrants looks like a political calculation to win Hispanic votes, and subjects him to criticism that he is violating his oath of office by selectively failing to enforce the law.”
Most recently, Obama claimed “executive privilege” to avoid further investigation into “Fast and Furious,” a scheme designed to promote the administration’s efforts to undermine “the palladium of all rights,” our Second Amendment.
Of course, Obama’s imperial ascension is fully in keeping with his narcissistic pathology, and he’s made plain that he doesn’t intend to be constrained by the law.
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These are not Christians! They should not call their houses of worship churches anymore!
(The Blaze/AP) — Once again, the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) finds itself at the center of controversy over a potential anti-Israeli move the church may plan to make. The denomination, the largest Presbyterian group in the United States, is considering divesting from three companies over the Israeli military use of their products in the Palestinian territories.
The proposal before the PC(USA) has outraged many Jewish groups who sent representatives to the church’s national assembly in Pittsburgh this week to lobby against the measure. Divestment supporters say the targeted companies — Caterpillar Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co. and Motorola — are profiting from Palestinian suffering. The American Jewish Committee, a public policy group, has said the proposal demonizes Israel and threatens Christian-Jewish relations.
Last week, the U.S. investment firm MSCI Inc. announced it had removed Caterpillar from three of its popular indexes that track socially responsible investments, citing concerns about the Israeli military’s use of company bulldozers in the Palestinian territories. The MSCI decision led mutual fund giant TIAA-CREF to divest $72 million in Caterpillar stock.
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Sorry, America, you’re rich enough. Stop working.
Romney And Obama Supporters Clash at July 4th Parade
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Okay, we went to the gym this morning (skipped yesterday as it was a holiday…yeah I know that was a lame excuse!). After stopped and filled the van up. $3.19 per gallon. I am guessing that the whole thing about gas prices dropping to below $3.00 was just talk. Dammit! But now, I see that the wholesale price of gasoline has increased just a tiny bit. Even though oil dropped just a tad. Told wife, bet the price jumps up by Friday evening a dime minimum, but probably closer to 20 cents a gallon. Will have to check tomorrow when we go to the gym. Then saturday morning.
Anyways, my advice is for you to go and fill up your vehicle(s) now.
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