Ithaca Campaign for Liberty Meetup

The Ithaca Campaign for Liberty Meetup will start regular monthly meetings on July 12th. We will meet on the 2nd Sunday of the month at 3:00 p.m. at Autumn Leaves Used Bookstore in the cafe upstairs. Meetings will be about an hour long and we will discuss various topics related to Liberty. All are welcome, please feel free to bring questions.

Reform New York

Is there anything to argue about with this straight forward plan:

1. Make gerrymandering illegal. There is no need for a bipartisan committee to do so. Just mandate that the districts be geometrically compact and allow any citizen to sue to keep you honest.
2. Abolish all forms of corporate welfare, subsidies grants, loans, enterprise zones. These are just excuses to give politicians power to extract donations from business people. Roll all of the savings into an across the board tax cut.
3. Merge all school districts into the local towns; the town council becomes the board; no more special elections where few vote.
4. Abolish all authorities and special districts. Merge into local governments, privatize them, or, as with IDAs, abolish them.
5. Equalize private and public sector salaries and benefits.
6. Convert state pensions to defined contribution plans and eliminate pensions for all elected officials and all benefits of any kind for part-time elected officials.
7. Eliminate all the well-known pension scams such as the using overtime to inflate the “high-three.”
8. Abolish all Medicaid extras not required by federal law and cap spending until we spend the average of other states.
9. Hire the Ohio and PA budget directors for a million dollars each so they can tell us why they spend 68 cents to the NY dollar on state and local government.
10. Finally, legalize medical marijuana. Marijuana helps cancer patients better tolerate chemotherapy treatment. It helps them fight the severe nausea that destroys their appetites and threatens malnutrition. It is time that NY stop its barbaric practice of arresting sick people for taking medicine!

Only those who are feeding at the government trough will complain.

Political class more important than the People

I had business in Ithaca yesterday that took me to the city hall. It has been a little while since I’d been there and there are changes. The front door is now locked a sign directs ‘All Persons’ to the side entrance. I’ve been casually studying a bit of law and I find this use of the term ‘person’ odd in this context. Why did they not simple have their sign say ‘Please use side entrance’? The term ‘person’ used in law may not mean what most people think it means, as a ‘person’ in law may be a legal entity such as a corporation. It is possible that the term ‘person’ does not refer to a man or woman, they are sometimes termed ‘natural person’. It’s part of a little game legislators play to steal the rights of those not paying attention.

I went around to the side entrance to enter the land of the bureaucrats. Another change is the officer and metal detector. Ladies and gentlemen if you’d like to do your public business, it would appear that you will need to forego your inalienable right to privacy. I didn’t get my chance to question this new system as my business was in an office to the side of the detector and I just walk around.

I seems that this grand security measure came about as the result of a shoe throwing episode this past February. The article does say whether or not the said shoe was a steel toed projectile. I didn’t notice a shoe check station, maybe they hand out fluffy slippers to wear into the city hall. I presume the grand mayor of Ithaca has a security detail with her outside the safety of the castle.

Are these people idiots, or are we?

Ithaca Campaign for Liberty Meetup

I’m posting notes here about our last Meetup on April 19, 2009. Use the comments to fill in the holes in my memory.

We discussed the tax day information campaign which was pretty well attended. Special thanks to Carl and Theon for hanging in for the whole day. There was a ‘Tax Day Tea Party’ group at State street; while it was not advertised on the internet (as far as I could tell) they had a dozen or so folk there. Some from the Tea Party joined our group at the Post Office. Noticeably absent from the event this year were the anti-war groups. I guess the war is nothing to protest when there is a Dem. dictator in charge of the death machine.

We continued on to discuss the 12 Point Plan presented by Jim Ostrowski. He also has posted his speech from the Buffalo Tea Party held on April 18th. I believe that the real grass roots groups will outlast the Astroturf crowd. Electoral politics is a dead end, the game is rigged.

There is a new Tea Party Meetup in Ithaca. They have an event scheduled for April 25th. The Syracuse Meetup has an End The Fed rally on the 25th also. Just remember the Fed needs to be replaced with an honest money system, so end legal tender laws at the same time.

Our next Meetup is scheduled for May 17th at the Ithaca Farmers market. We will meet near the boat dock at 3:00 p.m. for about an hour. Bring a friend and share some Liberty.

Tax Day Tea Parties

The Ithaca Campaign for Liberty Meetup group will be gathering on April 15th to educate the public about the truth of our tax system. As the administrator of the Meetup (I fund it) I get to play dictator until I am overthrown. We had our tax day activities last year and naturally, we are doing it again this year. I’ve been asked if we are having a Tax Day Tea Party(TDTP), as though our event needs to grab onto a that special title.

I’ve looked into the TDTP groups and found a mixed bag. There are a lot of angry Americans out here looking for real solutions and they know that D.C. is not the place to look. There are also a lot of Republicans and conservatives feeling like they have been set adrift by the Republican Party. My concern is with the disingenuous types like Glenn Beck, Newt Gingrich and American Solutions. I have no doubt that they have an agenda that is quite different than the true grassroots movement which pulled hard for Ron Paul. So, I have not labeled our Ithaca event as a TDTP.

There are genuine grass root organizations moving with the Tea Party theme and I hope there are enough of them to overwhelm the Astroturf versions. The disgruntled Republicans will be easy to spot, they will be the ones focused on Obama bashing. True Americans looking to restore the values that founded this nation know that both sides of the Duopoly are responsible for the rise and fall of the Imperial nation. We’ll have a good idea of the mix in the coming weeks.

Groups that I trust have their hearts in the right place:

• Free New York
• We the People
• TruthAttack
• The Free State Project
• Downsize D.C.

I’ll look forward to an objective report from MCCS1977.

Western New York Tea Party April 18th

From James Ostrowski:

This event is co-sponsored by Free New York, Inc., BuffaloLiberty.com and PoliticalClassDismissed.com. The coordinator for the event is Jill Sinclair.

The tentative schedule is online here:

http://buffaloliberty.com/#tea1

This is a part of a national tea party movement against big government that is gaining momentum each week. We had nine people at our first event, thrown together on short notice. Then, on March 18th, over 500 people attended a tea party organized by Rus Thompson, Ellie Corcoran and Allen Coniglio.

We must keep building the crowds and the enthusiasm on April 18th and build up to a huge rally on July 4th weekend. We will discuss that event on the 18th.

more

New York State Kills 13 In Binghamton

My letter to my members of the New York legislature:

I am writing in regard to the tragic event in Binghamton where 13 people were killed by a troubled man. It is a very sad event and I empathize with the families of those taken prematurely from their lives. I also have feelings of anger with the State of New York which has stripped from the people the ability to defend themselves to the best of their ability. Restricting the right to bear arms has not made people safer, to the contrary it has made them less safe.

The State leaves to the people of New York the options of fleeing for safety or dialing 911 and waiting. In this case both options proved useless to the victims. The murderer blocked off the option to flee, trapping his victims in the building. Calling for police in the best case will take a couple of minutes to get a responding officer. A couple of minutes doesn’t sound like much unless you stop to calculate how much mayhem can occur in that time span. I’ll leave that calculation to your imagination, but it does not necessarily have to include the use of guns.

In another State where there is little impediment to law-abiding citizens carrying defensive weapons, the people have another option for protecting themselves and their fellow citizens. There are many examples of situations that begin like that horrifying day in Binghamton. These events end very differently when one of the potential victims is prepared and able to defend him/herself and others by directly stopping the perpetrator. These events produce fewer victims and therefore fewer headlines.

Gun violence is produced by criminals, by nature criminals are not inclined to obey gun restrictions. That leaves law abiding citizens obeying firearm restrictions, at their own peril. The legislature of New York is responsible for this outrageous event which could have been stopped at the outset by one responsible armed citizen. It is time to allow the people of New York to take responsibility for themselves, their families and their neighbors. It is clear that the State cannot be everywhere all the time, nor should it be.

                 THE CONSTITUTION OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK
                                ARTICLE XII

                                    Defense

    Section 1. The defense and protection of the state and of the United
  States is an obligation of all persons within the state. The legislature
  shall provide for the discharge of this obligation and for the maintenance
  and regulation of an organized militia.

The people of New York are the militia. The legislature has not regulated but has disarmed the militia. The legislature abdicated its obligation to maintain the militia. The people of New York are suffering the consequences of misguided legislation. Firearms are tools, in the hands of a criminal they represent danger, in the hands of law-abiding citizens they represent safety, in either case it is the hand that guides the tool.

$100 Bills?

I don’t recall where I saw it and it seems meaningless, someone had reported banks running short on one hundred dollar bills. I had a large check that needed cashing and went off to a Bank of America branch to cash it. The report was not at the top of my mind so I was just a little surprised when the clerk asked if I’d prefer 20’s or 50’s. I asked if the Fed was having a hard time keep up with their printing. He said they were getting a shipment.

I did a bit of searching to see if there were any stories to be found but haven’t even been able to find where I originally heard this rumor. With my government paranoia raging I have to wonder what they are plotting. Is this part of a plot to end cash? Will they leave us with only $1 dollar bills so we can buy gum and candy without resorting to plastic?

It seems to me they should be going the other way and rolling out the $1000 dollar bills so we can get lunch at the street vendors.

Economic Meltdown

Federal Reserve Notes, the stuff we call money, are backed by the full faith and credit of our dear leaders. That is why I call it ‘faith based’ money. The trouble comes naturally when people holding the paper lose faith. Back when money was gold and silver and banks handed out certificates as claims to the metals in the vault, a good old fashioned ‘run on the bank’ would take out the dishonest bankers and limit the damage to the crooks and their isolated victims.

Then came the ultimate (so far) banking fraud: the Federal Reserve System. This great system would be the cure to banking problems, no more economic distresses associated with ‘runs on the banks’. I’m not impressed.

Declan McCullagh has a review of Thomas Woods’ new book Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse. It looks like good reading, I’ll have to buy a copy while I can afford it.

Who is Eric Sundwall

Government of the people does not mean career politicians. Let’s get rid of the political class and restore the republic.