JPMorgan: Let us inflate the carbon credit market—or else!

Employing a scare tactic that’s become mind-numbingly familiar to those who track the machinations of the New World Order, an executive of Federal Reserve member bank JPMorgan has said the earth will heat up if JPMorgan isn’t allowed to speculate freely in the carbon trading markets.

Many believe carbon credits will be the next asset class to be systematically inflated and crashed by the favored members of the New York Federal Reserve, which would act with the complicity of a predictably malleable Congress. This time, though, a few members of Congress are expressing concern.

In an Aug. 13 story at Bloomberg.com, Bill Winters, co-chief executive officer of JPMorgan’s investment bank, explained why he objects to attempts by members of the U.S. Senate to ban or restrict participation by investment banks in the market for trading carbon-emissions credits that’s currently being established.

Citing no scientific evidence, Winters said that if JPMorgan isn’t given a free hand to speculate in energy credit derivatives, the markets “will die, and the temperature on this planet will go up by a couple of degrees, more than it would have otherwise, and we’ll be really sorry about it.”

A few members of the Senate are attempting to place restrictions on participation in the carbon market by New York Federal Reserve members JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs. Both firms speculated heavily last year in oil futures on the long and short sides, profiting first from the commodity’s run-up and then from its collapse.

Now the banks are positioning themselves to do the same with the carbon credits market. According to a disclosure statement, Goldman Sachs is a shareholder in Climate Exchange PLC, which owns the European Climate Exchange, the California Climate Exchange, and the Chicago Climate Exchange. Several familiar names are involved in these enterprises.

As Fox News reported last March, President Obama helped fund the Chicago Climate Exchange while serving on the board of the Chicago-based Joyce foundation in 2000 and 2001. According to Canada Free Press, the Chicago Climate Exchange’s board of directors includes Al Gore and Maurice Strong, two of the most prominent proponents of the global warming hoax.

Al Gore is chairman of the trading firm Generation Investment Management LLP, which stands to profit handsomely from the trading of carbon credits. Canadian Maurice Strong has a lengthy resume as a global environmentalist, having served in several capacities at the United Nations.

Strong was also co-author of “The Earth Charter” with former Soviet Prime Minister Mikhail Gorbachev, who once said that the “threat of environmental crisis will be the ‘international disaster key’ that will unlock the New World Order.”

What Happens to Governors Who Resist the Fed?

Cynical observers of the U.S. political scene weren’t surprised when it was revealed in June 2009 that Mark Sanford, Governor of South Carolina, who is married, had been carrying on a long-term affair. Sanford admitted that the affair had been going on for at least a year and soon resigned as chairman of the Republican Governors Association.

Matters became worse for Sanford when it was revealed the following month that he had visited and entertained his mistress, an Argentine commodities broker named María Belén Chapur, using public funds. As of this writing, Sanford is clinging to the governorship, but his hold appears to be tenuous.

Here’s the more interesting part. Earlier in 2009, Sanford had resisted accepting stimulus funds for South Carolina from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which he correctly saw as part of the process of bringing the states further under Federal control. His resistance led to a lawsuit heard by the South Carolina Supreme Court, and the state was ultimately forced to accept the money.

The public humiliation of Mark Sanford following his fight against the U.S. Treasury Dept. and the Federal Reserve banks that control it is part of a clear and disturbing pattern:

Governors who speak out against member banks of the New York Federal Reserve and other major Wall Street institutions tend to be publicly humiliated and taken down through the discretionary leaking of compromising information.

Consider the case of former Gov. Eliot Spitzer of New York. Prior to serving as governor, he had been New York Attorney General, a role in which he made a name for himself by taking on organized crime and securities fraud. Among those he charged in lawsuits was Richard Grasso, former chairman of the New York Stock Exchange. Spitzer also campaigned against stock price inflation by investment houses, predatory practices by mortgage lenders, and mutual fund fraud. He continued to pursue his campaign against corrupt banking practices as governor.

In March 2008, the New York Times reported that Spitzer was a client of a prostitution ring then under investigation by the Federal government. Spitzer resigned two days later. Who leaked the information? The New York Times wasn’t saying. Could it have been retaliation for Spitzer’s campaign against Wall Street corruption?

Or consider the case of Rod Blagojevich, former governor of Illinois. He was nabbed by the Feds in December 2008 on a comprehensive catalog of charges, including wire fraud and solicitation of bribery. Many observers thought Blagojevich was simply carrying out business as usual and had simply had the misfortune of being caught.

The public was treated to the entertaining spectacle of politicians across the ideological spectrum—including  Blagojevich’s former allies and supporters—stumbling over one another to express their indignation and moral rectitude. Of course, none of them would do things like solicit bribes and accept kickbacks.

The day prior to his arrest, Blagojevich had declared that the State of Illinois would stop doing business with Bank of America, a member bank of the Federal Reserve. His action came in response to Bank of America’s cutting off a line of credit to a Chicago factory—an incident that had gained wide press coverage in the Chicago area and become a cause célèbre that Blagojevich would have been foolish to ignore.

Early on the morning of Dec. 8, 2008, the day following his declaration that Illinois would no longer deal with Bank of America, Blagojevich was taken away from his home in handcuffs by Federal agents. Interestingly, on the same morning but before the arrest had hit the news wires, Bloomberg.com quoted John Douglas, attorney for Bank of America and former general counsel for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., as describing Blagojevich’s declaration against Bank of America as “dangerous.”

Dangerous for whom? For the banking industry, or for those who dare to resist it? Perhaps for both?

One former governor who has talked openly about the extortion game played against governors by the Federal government and the banks that own it is Jess Ventura, who served as Governor of Minnesota from 1999 to 2003. He ran for and won the governorship as an independent with Libertarian leanings, which placed him outside the political establishment.

Shortly after becoming governor, Ventura says he was summoned to a meeting with numerous people who turned out to be agents of the Central Intelligence Agency. In a television interview, Ventura said:

“I wouldn’t have known a CIA guy if he would’ve came up and bit me. I went to my old friends, my old teammates to try to get advice to pick up why they were questioning me and he was exactly right. He said, ‘They didn’t see you coming.’ They wanted to know if there were more independent governors on the horizon.”

Ventura correctly pointed out to the agents—if indeed that is what they were—that their domestic operation was illegal. He has since concluded that the agents were there to let him know who’s really in charge at the state level, and that it isn’t the state governors and legislatures.

A holder of public office needn’t be a governor to feel the nip of the wringer after criticizing member banks of the Federal Reserve. Just ask Sen. Richard Durbin of Illinois.

Never one to conceal what he really thinks, Sen. Durbin appeared on a Chicago radio talk show near the end of April 2009 and said, “And the banks—hard to believe in a time when we’re facing a banking crisis that many of the banks created—are still the most powerful lobby on Capitol Hill. And they frankly own the place.”

A month and a half later, Durbin was blindsided by accusations that he had sold more than $115,000 worth of stock after being tipped off to the severity of the financial crisis during a closed meeting with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke in Sept. 2008.

The Chicago Sun-Times, which broke the “story,” reported that Durbin had bought about $43,000 worth of Berkshire Hathaway stock the same day he had liquidated his mutual funds and eventually invested a total of about $98,000 with the Oracle of Omaha’s fund.

A Durbin spokesman correctly pointed out that “Durbin was doing what a lot of other people were doing, taking a look at their savings” and seeing it “start to tank and trying to preserve some level of wealth by getting out of the market.”

This non-scandal has since gone nowhere, and in fact the original story has disappeared from the Sun-Times’ archives. But perhaps Durbin has gotten the message: If you’re a high-profile holder of public office, you don’t question or resist the banks.

As corrupt or immoral as many of them may be, governors and members of Congress probably deserve more pity than scorn. After all, most private citizens are subjected merely to passive surveillance—our telephone conversations and e-mails are filtered through facilities run by the National Security Agency in partnership with AT&T and other telecommunications companies that search out “hot” keywords. Our communications aren’t examined by a human being unless they’re flagged as containing something “suspicious.”

Governors and members of Congress, on the other hand, are far more likely to be placed under active surveillance—their communications are routinely eavesdropped upon by security personal working for the advancement of the takeover of the Federal government by Federal Reserve and its member banks, both domestic and foreign.

So before becoming too outraged at the next story about a corrupt governor or member of Congress, remember that we’re all living under the same tyranny. High-profile politicians are simply more likely to be humiliated when successfully nailed for refusing to go along with the program. In any story involving the humiliation of one of them, always look for the banking connection. You’ll usually find one.

Could Aggressive Males be Preventively Detained?

Two items appeared in the news in recent months that individually are somewhat unsettling but together are downright chilling: They raise the possibility of individuals being identified on the basis of a genetic profile and imprisoned indefinitely without ever having been formally accused of a crime, let alone being convicted of one.

Not a single major news organization has drawn a connection between the two.

The first item was a report in May 2009 that President Obama was “mulling the need for a ‘preventive detention’ system that would establish a legal basis for the United States to incarcerate terrorism suspects who are deemed a threat to national security but cannot be tried.”

The second item, reported the following month, was about the identification of a “warrior gene” said to indicate which males are more likely to engage in aggressive behavior like joining gangs and committing crimes.

Obama’s remarks, reported by the New York Times, came during a discussion with human rights advocates at the White House. Two participants in that discussion told the Times they had “left the meeting dismayed.”

“He was almost ruminating over the need for statutory change to the laws so that we can deal with individuals who we can’t charge and detain,” one told the Times. “We’ve known this is on the horizon for many years, but we were able to hold it off with George Bush. The idea that we might find ourselves fighting with the Obama administration over these powers is really stunning.”

The other participant in the discussion said Obama wasn’t referring to terrorism suspects then being held at Guantanamo Bay but rather “for those captured in the future.” The idea would be to lay down a legal structure for arresting and holding potential criminals that would “endure for future presidents,” according to the Times report.

The following month, news emerged that researchers at Florida State University had identified what they called the “warrior gene,” a genetic component they say can indicate whether a young male is likely to join a gang or otherwise engage in aggressive and illegal behavior.

“Boys who have a variant of the gene monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) — otherwise known as the ‘warrior gene’–are not only more likely to be in gangs than boys without the variant, but they tend to be among the most violent members,” according to an article published June 17 by Forbes magazine.

“While gangs typically have been regarded as a sociological phenomenon, our investigation shows that variants of a specific MAOA gene, known as a ‘low-activity 3-repeat allele,’ play a significant role,” said the study’s lead author, Kevin M. Beaver, a biosocial criminologist at Florida State University’s College of Criminology and Criminal Justice.

Well, one might say, Obama’s talking about the preventive detention of terrorists—you know, those brown people who follow Islam and live off in the mountains somewhere in countries most of us can’t find on a map. There’s no reason decent U.S. citizens like us should be concerned.

Really? Under the Patriot Act, the federal government can label anyone—you, me, our neighbors—as an “enemy combatant” and strip us of all Constitutional protections. We can be seized and held without formal charge and tried in secret courts, evidence against us can be declared secret, and testimony can be obtained from us through torture. Sound crazy? Just try finding legal protections that would prevent such things from happening.

Since anyone can be designated a terrorist, that means anyone could be “preventively detained” were such a policy to become legally established. If the federal government were to set out to preventively detain a population, why not start with young males with a demonstrable genetic propensity for violence?

Already, in the State of Texas, DNA samples of newborns are being taken without the consent of the parents and used for “research,” according to a February 2009 report from KTBX Television in Bryon, Tex. A spokesman for the Texas Dept. of State Health Services told the television station there’s “nothing to worry about”—that samples are forwarded to labs without identifying information. Small comfort to those of us who have come to expect false assurances from officials at all levels of government.

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation maintains something called the Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, that stores and manages DNA samples gathered by law enforcement agencies at the federal , state, and local levels. The database currently contains about 4.5 million “offender profiles.” It does not currently include the so-called “warrior gene,” but there’s no reason it couldn’t. Can anyone for a moment imagine that the FBI wouldn’t be interested in tracking a gene believed to be a marker for aggressiveness?

At present, 47 states collect DNA samples from all convicted felons. In California, DNA is gathered from everyone arrested for a felony even if they aren’t convicted.

In time, identifying all males in a given geographic area thought to pose a risk of acting out against the state could be easily done with a few computer keystrokes. Cell phone tracking and GPS data gathered by the U.S. Census Bureau would make them easy to find. Then, if President Obama’s daydream were to become a reality, they could be safely locked away without a trial or even formal charges.

Senator Obama on Illegal Domestic Surveillance

I recently wrote to Senator Barak Obama, the junior senator from the state in which I live, Illinois, with a direct question:

 

Why is Congress doing nothing about the crimes committed by the current administration? In particular, why are you and your colleagues doing nothing in response to the abduction and outsourced torture of foreign nationals and the broad surveillance of U.S. citizens in flagrant violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act?

 

Sen. Obama had nothing to say on the subject of abducting foreign nationals, but here is what he–or anyway his office–had to say about the administration’s criminal violation of FISA:

 

Thank you for contacting me concerning the President’s domestic surveillance program. I appreciate hearing from you.

 

Providing any President with the flexibility necessary to fight terrorism without compromising our constitutional rights can be a delicate balance. I agree that technological advances and changes in the nature of the threat our nation faces may require that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), enacted in 1978, be updated to reflect the reality of the post 9/11 world. But that does not absolve the President of the responsibility to fully brief Congress on the new security challenge and to work cooperatively with Congress to address it.

 

As you know, Congress has been considering the issue of domestic surveillance since last year. The debate continues, but the shift in party control on Capitol Hill has clearly had an impact on this critical discussion over the balance of power in our system of government. On January 17, 2007, after conducting its wiretapping program without court approval for over 5 years, the Justice Department announced that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court had approved its program to listen to communications between people in the U.S. and other countries if there is probable cause to believe one or the other is involved in terrorism. Then, in early February, the Justice Department announced that it would give the Intelligence and Judiciary Committees of both chambers of Congress access to previously withheld documents on the NSA program. The congressional committees with jurisdiction over this issue hailed the agreement as a step in the right direction.

 

However, there is still significant work to be done. Just before the August recess in 2007, Congress passed hastily crafted legislation to expand the authority of the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence to conduct surveillance of suspected foreign terrorists without a warrant or real oversight, even if the targets are communicating with someone in the United States. This legislation was signed into law by the President on August 5, 2007, and expires after six months.

 

As you are aware, Congress is working on reforms to the FISA bill to be enacted before the expiration of the current legislation. On November 15, 2007, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 3773, the Responsible Electronic Surveillance That is Overseen, Reviewed, and Effective Act of 2007 (RESTORE Act) by a vote of 227-189. The House bill does not provide retroactive immunity for private companies that may have participated in the illegal collection of personal information, nor does it provide immunity for Administration officials who may have acted illegally.

 

On February 12, 2008, the Senate passed S. 2248, making its own reforms to FISA. I am disappointed that S. 2248, if signed into law, will grant an unprecedented level of immunity for telecommunications companies that cooperated with the President’s warrantless wiretapping program. I was proud to cosponsor several amendments, including the Dodd-Feingold amendment to strike the immunity provision, which would have enhanced privacy protections while maintaining the tools to fight terrorism. However, with the defeat of this amendment, telecom companies will not be held accountable even if it could be proven that they clearly and knowingly broke the law and nullified the privacy rights of Americans. I am frustrated by the President’s decision to play politics by threatening to veto any legislation not containing immunity. Why the President continues to try to hold this important legislation captive to that special interest provision defies explanation. The House and Senate must reconcile differences between the two versions of the bill before being signed into law.

 

The American people understand that new threats require flexible responses to keep them safe, and that our intelligence gathering capability needs to be improved. What they do not want is for the President or the Congress to use these imperatives as a pretext for promoting policies that not only go further than necessary to meet a real threat, but also violate some of the most basic tenets of our democracy. Like most members of Congress, I continue to believe that the essential objective of conducting effective domestic surveillance in the War on Terror can be achieved without discarding our constitutionally protected civil liberties.

 

Thank you again for writing. Please stay in touch as this debate continues.

 

Sincerely,

 

Barack Obama

United States Senator

Microsoft Collaborates with Russian Password Hackers

If you use Windows or any of several Microsoft applications, you might assume that Microsoft wouldn’t work behind the scenes to compromise the security of your passwords, right?

Think again. Microsoft has a “special agreement” with Elcomsoft, a Russian firm that produces software that deciphers passwords in Microsoft software.

Elcomsoft’s hackware is ostensibly for law enforcement personnel and network administrators, but the company doesn’t appear to be choosey about who buys their products.

A recent press release from Elcomsoft reads, in part: 

Moscow, Russia – October 8, 2007 – ElcomSoft Co. Ltd., a leader in password recovery for business and law enforcement, has released Elcomsoft Password Recovery Bundle – Forensics Edition.

This software suite includes the high-end versions of all of ElcomSoft’s password recovery software. Using innovative technology, ElcomSoft’s package of password recovery products lets authorities unlock more than one hundred file formats and programs. Elcomsoft Password Recovery Bundle includes programs and technologies that are not available from other software publishers. Examples include:

Elcomsoft System Recovery, a boot-disk application that makes it easy to access your computer’s Windows password settings. If you’re locked out of your computer, Elcomsoft System Recovery will give you access and let you troubleshoot problems that are preventing you from running Windows. Under a special agreement with Microsoft, Elcomsoft System Recovery is based upon Microsoft Windows Preinstallation Environment (Windows PE), a hardware-independent minimal Windows system that replaces the antique DOS boot disk that was used to set up new computer systems.

You can read more about Elcomsoft here.

Doesn’t it make you feel good to know that Microsoft is partnering with a Russian firm that makes it possible for anyone to break into your Windows operating system and applications?

War Profiteer’s Stock Doubles in Value in Six Months

How could any reasonable person argue for getting the U.S. out of the war in Iraq? The ongoing bloodbath has been just too damned profitable for politically connected U.S. contractors.

The war has been especially good for shareholders of Kellogg, Brown & Root, the infrastructure and military facilities construction firm spun off last year from Halliburton.

How good? Kellogg Brown & Root’s stock has risen from about $20 per share to about $40 per share since April of this year. That’s even better than Halliburton’s stock, which has risen “only” about 50% in the same time span. Just look at KBR’s daily stock chart:

KBR employs roughly 14,000 people in Iraq—more than any other private contractor there. Recent projects in Iraq have included building housing for 100,000 soldiers, repairing oil facilities, and erecting POW camps.

The firm has also been busy in Afghanistan, building base camps for the U.S. military and a new U.S. embassy in Kabul at a total cost of more than $300 million. Between 1995 and 2002, KBR was paid about $2.5 billion to build military bases for the U.S., some of them in secret locations.

In 2001, while still a subsidiary of Halliburton, KBR was the subject of controversy for a no-bid contract won from the Defense Dept. Hearings are still underway to determine if there have been any irregularities in billing, management, or procurement.

KBR’s war profiteering dates back to World War II, when as the M.W. Kellogg Co. it built power plants and refineries under government contract. So the company is obviously no novice at the game of profiting from war.

The company with which M.W. Kellogg eventually merged, Brown and Root, was founded in Texas in 1919. Brown and Root was a principal contributor to the first congressional campaign of Lyndon Johnson, so the firm is well-established as an early player in the Military Industrial Complex President Eisenhower warned us about.

Citizens Arrested in Washington, D.C., for Committing Speech

Citizens who had peacefully assembled in Washington to exercise what we used to take for granted as our Constitutional rights are rounded up and taken away by police sworn to protect those rights. More videos of police behaving like fascist thugs may be seen here.

President Reasserts His ‘Right’ to Violate U.S. and International Law

The President this week, with little fanfare, issued a proclamation claming the right to reassert certain “powers and authorities” claimed in 2001 in order to fight his nebulous “war on terror.”

Here’s the text of his notice, which was entered into the Federal Register Sept. 13, 2007:

Notice of September 12, 2007 Continuation of the National Emergency With Respect to Certain Terrorist Attacks

Consistent with section 202(d) of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622(d)), I am continuing for 1 year the national emergency I declared on September 14, 2001, in Proclamation 7463, with respect to the terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center, New York, New York, the Pentagon, and aboard United Airlines flight 93, and the continuing and immediate threat of further attacks on the United States.

Because the terrorist threat continues, the national emergency declared on September 14, 2001, last extended on September 5, 2006, and the powers and authorities adopted to deal with that emergency, must continue in effect beyond September 14, 2007.

Therefore, I am continuing in effect for an additional year the national emergency I declared on September 14, 2001, with respect to the terrorist threat. This notice shall be published in the Federal Register and transmitted to the Congress.

(Presidential Sig.)

THE WHITE HOUSE,

September 12, 2007.

The key phrase here is powers and authorities adopted to deal with that emergency. Just what are those powers and authorities? Let’s list them, just for fun:

The U.S. Patriot Act. An open assault on the U.S. Constitution, the antithesis of patriotic. Its provisions do much to curtail the liberty of U.S. citizens and little to protect their “security.” Ostensibly enacted to fight “terror” attacks by foreign agents, in practice it is used more frequently against U.S. citizens who haven’t been formally charged with any crime.

Total Information Awareness. New York Times columnist William Safire summarized it this way: “Every purchase you make with a credit card, every magazine subscription you buy and medical prescription you fill, every Web site you visit and e-mail you send or receive, every academic grade you receive, every bank deposit you make, every trip you book and every event you attend–all these transactions and communications will go into what the Defense Department describes as ‘a virtual, centralized, grand database.’”

USA Patriot Act II. Whereas the First Patriot Act only gutted the First, Third, Fourth, and Fifth Amendment–and seriously damaged the Seventh and the Tenth–the Second Patriot Act reorganized the entire Federal government, as well as many areas of state government, under the dictatorial control of the Justice Department, the Office of Homeland Security, and the FEMA NORTHCOM military command.

The Military Commissions Act. There is nothing in the “detainee” legislation that protects U.S. citizens from being kidnapped by their own government and tortured. The New York Times pointed out that “A dangerously broad definition of ‘illegal enemy combatant’ in the bill could subject legal residents of the United States, as well as foreign citizens living in their own countries, to summary arrest and indefinite detention with no hope of appeal. The president could give the power to apply this label to anyone he wanted.”

The John Warner Defense Authorization Act. The Administration quietly “tooled up” to utilize the U.S. military in engaging American dissidents after the next big crisis, with a frightening and overlooked piece of legislation that was passed alongside the Military Commissions Act, which greased the skids for armed confrontation and abolishes posse comitatus.

Illegal domestic wiretapping. “Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials,” reported the New York Times when this criminal activity came to light. The secret warrantless spying program was a criminal violation of both the 4th Amendment and FISA.

Expansion of domestic wiretapping. The Bush administration is now pushing for even more authority to spy on American citizens. A compliant–some might say treasonous–Congress has already handed the Administration a six-month window within which to impose any surveillance policy it likes-and for that program to remain legal in perpetuity.

Martial Law Presidential Decision Directive 51. Legislation signed on May 9, 2007, declares that in the event of a “catastrophic event,” the President can take total control over the government and the country, bypassing all other levels of government at the state, federal, local, territorial and tribal levels. Guess who gets to determine what qualifies as a “catastrophic event”? Yep, the President.

The National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive. This piece of work, which places the Secretary of Homeland Security in charge of domestic “security,” was signed without the approval or oversight of Congress. It apparently supersedes the National Emergency Act, which allows the president to declare a national emergency, but also requires that Congress have the authority to “modify, rescind, or render dormant” such emergency authority if it believes the president has acted inappropriately. The question is, would Congress have the guts to do so? 

Say Hello to the Ipod Generation

Don’t look now, but members of the Ipod Generation are grown and making their way among us. How do you recognize them? Easy. They . . .

Don’t own a landline.

Have never used a typewriter.

Volunteered at soup kitchens while in high school.

Applied to no fewer than 20 colleges.

Were intensely coached by private SAT tutors.

Have names like Jason and Jessica.

Reveal embarrassing details about themselves on Myspace and Facebook.

Have never worn a tie to work (guys).

Think flip-flops are appropriate for the office (gals).

Don’t realize that contractor and consultant are euphemisms for “employee without benefits.”

Had a credit card before they had a job.

Have student loans they may not pay off before retirement—if they ever retire.

Can’t imagine not providing a urine sample to an employer.

Are baffled by MS-DOS.

Consider 9/11 the defining moment of their youth.

Think that running an elementary school like a prison is the norm.

Have never ridden a bicycle without a helmet.

Can’t imagine a kid going to a friend’s house without first making a “playdate.”

Believe that oral sex is as innocuous as a goodnight kiss.

Are fooled by the contrived neighborliness of Starbucks.

Have never done a homework assignment with a library’s encyclopedia.

See little difference between news from a wire service and “news” from a blog.

Can’t imagine buying a CD when they’re so easy to pirate.

Can’t understand why anyone wouldn’t opt for automatic bill payment.

Assume that corporations and governments put the people’s best interests first.

Think that a preoccupation with privacy and personal liberty is so last-century.

Think that getting off the couch to change the channel is a grave inconvenience.

How Churches Lick the Boot Soles of Government

What would you say if someone told you your church has agreed to keep its mouth shut on political matters in exchange for money?

What if you were told your pastor could be coerced into supporting martial law, including the forced detention of U.S. citizens charged with no crimes?

You might say bullcrap, right?

Consider the deal most churches have made with the Internal Revenue Service, under which they agree to keep a lid on political opinions in exchange for tax-exempt status. The pertinent section of the tax code says:

“To be tax-exempt under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, an organization must be organized and operated exclusively for purposes set forth in section 501(c)(3), and none of its earnings may inure to any private shareholder or individual. In addition, it may not attempt to influence legislation as a substantial part of its activities and it may not participate in any campaign activity for or against political candidates.”

In other words, if a preacher stands up in the pulpit and says vote for so-and-so because the candidate opposes abortion, the IRS could snatch away the right of congregants to itemize their tithes on their tax returns.

Are we talking chump change here? Most definitely not. One acquaintance of mine who spent his career raising funds for nonprofits says the deductibility of contributions accounts for a sizable proportion of a church’s overall take.

It’s not just a matter of whether or not the parsonage will have a Jacuzzi. It’s a matter of whether or not the church will have a parsonage at all. So we’re talking some serious leverage wielded by the federal government.

Ask your pastor if your church has 501(c)(3) exemption. Go ahead, ask him. It probably does.

A thorough article about the way in which pastors and their catch-farts have sold out their congregations to the IRS for 30 pieces of silver may be found here.

And just one instance of a church being harassed by federal authorities over an alleged violation of exemption rules may be found here.

Well, one might say, who needs to hear some preacher stumping for a political candidate from the pulpit anyway? I can research the candidates on my own and make up my own mind. Pastors should keep their pie-holes shut on such matters.

Well, yes. But what if a pastor is proclaiming the injustice of a government action?

Just for fun, imagine that people were being forced, under threat of detention, to take an inoculation manufactured by a company that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld once made millions off of. Would the pastor speak his conscience freely with a threat from the IRS hanging over his head?

Which brings us to the matter of martial law—and the likely complicity of the clergy should martial law ever be declared.

Television station KSLA of Shreveport, La., reported this month that the Dept. of Homeland Security has in place a plan to enlist the aid of clergy in “quelling public unrest” should martial law ever be declared.

“For the clergy team, one of the biggest tools that they will have in helping calm the public down or to obey the law is the bible itself, specifically Romans 13,” the television station reported. Dr. Durell Tuberville, chaplain for the Shreveport Fire Department and the Caddo Sheriff’s Office, elaborated, ‘because the government’s established by the Lord, you know. And, that’s what we believe in the Christian faith. That’s what’s stated in the scripture.’”

Yeah, because government’s, like, established by the Lord, and that kind of stuff. Never mind that there’s a long and shameful history of “scripture” being quoted out of context, to defend everything from slavery to Hitler’s rise to power.