Posted on 10/18/2001 5:18:58 AM PDT by sendtoscott
I’ve already been accused by some of my newspaper readers of being a coward and a traitor because I can’t get too excited about the Endless War on Terrorism. So I might as well go for the gusto and say what I really think.
First, despite the truly grievous attacks on innocent people in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania, I still fear my own government far more than I fear Osama bin Laden, his al-Qaida network, and whatever foreign governments may have aided and abetted his terrorist plots. In my mind, the FBI is far more frightening than anthrax, and John Ashcroft isn’t much better than the Ebola virus.
Second, while America’s foreign policy – i.e., starving Iraqi children for 11 years because Washington no longer supports the dictator it helped prop up – doesn’t condone terrorism, it explains why some people are supportive of it.
Third, Americans have more to fear from the ideas expressed in a recent neoconservative tirade in The Weekly Standard than they do from the frothing U.S. flag-burners in Pakistan. Last week’s cover story, written by Max Boot of the Wall Street Journal, was titled, The Case for American Empire, and is something well beyond satire. Read it yourself for final proof that the neocons are insane.
Fourth, if I have to hear one more commentator prattle about America being targeted by bin Laden because of our nation’s freedoms, I am going to run into the streets of Santa Ana (where I work) yelling nasty things about our government. Don’t worry, no one will bother me given that English isn’t widely spoken around these parts.
As part of my quiet protest against the jingoism and war-mongering, most of my columns since the Sept. 11 attacks are dedicated to this proposition: America ain’t nearly as free as everyone seems to think it is.
On Sunday, I wrote about how the local children’s services agency has taken a young girl out of the care of her loving grandmother and placed her with a foster parent who, according to court records, owed $31,000 in back child support to his own kids, had a restraining order placed on him so he couldn’t see them, and was accused in a sworn statement of swimming nude with his foster children.
I was reminded that government bureaucrats can take anyone’s kids at any time for any reason, and they needn’t even tell the parent where the kid has been placed for 72 hours. Proceedings take place in a special kangaroo court where what the bureaucrats say is taken for gospel, and what parents and responsible adults say often is ignored. After my column ran, I’ve been inundated with calls from readers relaying similar tragic dealings with these agencies.
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about eminent domain abuses. In California, most cities have what are called redevelopment agencies, whose officials can declare any residential or retail area as blighted, and then exert broad powers of eminent domain to take properties from owners and hand them over to big developers. The real goal isn’t blight removal, but the creation of new shopping centers and hotel complexes that bring in more tax revenues than the current residents or business owners bring in.
Cities are supposed to pay fair-market value for the properties they take, but they try to outright steal them by making lowball offers, backed by intimidating tactics worthy of the mafia. I wrote about how the city of Garden Grove took a thriving multimillion-dollar car rental business run by Korean immigrants, and offered them the whopping sum of $16,000 for the enterprise. Small entrepreneurs are routinely forced out of business by the government, and deprived of their livelihoods – making it difficult to find the resources needed to fight back in court. These aren’t anomalies, but everyday occurrences in California and other states.
In another column, I wrote about Catholic school boosters who raised funds and started building a privately funded school on one of the few sites zoned specifically for schools in San Juan Capistrano. Although the local public school district can legally build on most any piece of property zoned in most any way, the public school officials didn’t like the idea of competition. So once they saw the private school effort, they decided to try to use eminent domain to take the site for their own school.
These are just a handful of stories from one small, albeit rather loony, corner of America over the last few weeks. After each article was published, I received calls from other people telling about even more egregious incidents of government abuse. These include developers who have the total value of their property stolen from them after officials discover some endangered bug on the land, property owners who are forced to make their homes conform to bogus historical standards, a city that is forcing some privately owned motels to shut down because they cater to poor long-term residents rather than tourists, and lots and lots of unfair takings examples. Sometimes people are protected in the courts, but only after years of fighting.
We live in a land where the government taxes more than half your income, where officials can take your children or your property on a whim and leave you little recourse, where government agencies have complete power over what you can do on your own private property and when you can do it. Yet we’re supposed to be so proud of our free country that we go around the world liberating other people with our Tomahawk missiles. God bless America, my eye. God save it, is more like it.
We are all McCainacs now
No public libraries . . .
No public parks . . .
No public schools . . .
It's libertarian heaven, I tell ya'.
Ungrateful, spoiled, snivelling jackasses.
While I have No DOUBT that poor decisions are sometimes made in property and custody issues. But for you to believe that there is a SYSTEMATIC and PERVASIVE campaign to unfairly take property and children away from the citizens of this country is just plain ignorance.
I'm 50 years old, deeply involved in business AND was a private investigator for 10 YEARS, working on some child custody cases along the way. They're ALL messy. They're ALL difficult. Guess what? It wasn't the government screwing it up! It was one or more family members screwing it up. The courts are trying to straighten out complex family issues every day. Do you think that it's easy to get in the middle of all that? Use your brains, please!
People don't comprehend the magnitude of the Workforce Investment Act until it is explained like this.It is a sinister law. However, based on my own long experience in the education wars, these things have a way of getting watered down over the course of time or having state boards and legislatures slowly corrupt them. It's actually less disturbing for what it has done than that it provides the legal machinery for the system to move in an undesired direction.
Your Child’s future from the Cradle to The Grave is being Decided by Hillary's' Human Resources Development Plan for the United States. Is that ok with you?
It goes like this.
We need more dish washers. Set the curriculum up for more dish washers.
Where is that in the Constitution?
Boonie Rat
MACV SOCOM, PhuBai/Hue '65-66
Exactly. How in the world did the country of Iraq survive all these eons before the U.S.A. came to being? Who fed them then? These countries have been living in caves for thousands of years, and they still are. They hate the fact we are civilized and they have an inferiority complex. Call it "penis envy" if you will. Of course the alternative theory is that their "food stamps" have been "embargoed" and they are P.O'd. You know how these guys hate it when their "entitlements" have been taken away and they actually have to do something to take care of themselves.
It doesn't have to be spelled out in the Constitution to be a law.
Are you just pretending to be this stupid to aggitate people?
In this nation, war begins when Congress declares it; not when the President announces a new initiative or something tragic happens.
Please let us all know what the HR number is that is the Presidents current request for a declaration of war against whoever. The President has not requested Congress for a declaration of war. Why is it OK for a Republican President to avoid and subvert the Constitution, but not a Democrat?.
By the way, the President has filed the apropriate papers formally notifying Congress of military action, as required by law.
So in other words, we have yet another war that's really not a war. Shall we call this one a conflict, police action or rescue mission?. Or are we protecting our interests?. Which one please.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss...
---max
Boonie Rat
MACV SOCOM, PhuBai/Hue '65-'66
Yes, you know me well enough to know that's what I meant.
What I can't fathom is how so many conservatives and libertarians can hold the above sentiment, and yet still feel that the FEDS are somehow in the right for withholding whatever evidence that they have that justifies bombing Afghanistan
I never said they should withhold any evidence.
If so, then you must agree with bin Laden that civilians can be held responsible for the actions of their government. After all, that's his justification for terrorism, isn't it?
In Iraq, you are speaking of withholding food and if all these children are dying in the droves they claim they are, the Iraqi government has the power and the resources to feed them. In Afghanastan, we are not specifically and directly targeting civilians in this campaign which is exactly what bin Laden did here. So yes, there is a difference.
Er, it's not necessary to sign your post manually. The software does it for you.
It goes without saying that 99.9% of our laws extend from the interpretation of the Constitution. That is actually the beauty of the document. It sets forth the basic principles, and we must do the rest for many hundreds of years.
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