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General, Events, Private Property, Commentary, Economics

NAIS and HR2749

This entry is part 18 of 28 in the series Freedom 21 Conference

f21-banner-4Judith McGeary, of the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance, spoke to the conference about the National Animal Identification System (NAIS) and the Food and Drug Administration’s efforts to require registration and data collection on all animal and produce raising operations in the country.

The FDA is creating a three phase plan to “protect our food supply” which includes 1) premises registration (ie registration of private property); 2) animal RFID tagging, and; 3) tracking of animals, failure to do so resulting in penalties for the animal owner.  The USDA has issued a cost/benefit analysis which shows that small producers will incur 2 to 3 times the cost of large producers, and that the document was poorly planned and executed.  To put the magnitude in perspective, Australian studies put the cost per head of compliance with such a system at $37-$40, and a British study showed costs per head of $69.  For a small producer, this economic regulatory burden can be a business destroying proposition.

The FDA tried to make this program mandatory, but ran into significant opposition and retracted their directive mandating the property registration provision.  However, the USDA is using funding of state programs as leverage to ensure “voluntary” state level compliance with the program.  Another approach being used to generate compliance is to use existing disease control programs with various livestock categories to require registration.

In September of 2008, the mandatory requirement was reintroduced by a directive to state health authorities to require premises registration for disease control programs administered under the health department’s auspices, and directed that these state authorities register the properties for the property owner if they do not do so voluntarily.  In January of 2009, a proposed rule would require mandated premises registrations for specific programs, and laid the groundwork for the implementation of Phase 2 of the program, the mandatory animal RFID tagging requirement.

There have been 2 Congressional hearings on this issue this spring, and the House zeroed out the funding for this program, but the Senate supplied $14 million, which was cut in half by an amendment, and the difference will have to be worked out in a conference committee after the August recess.

Another challenge is the “food safety” push, which is a legitimate concern, but should not be part of the NAIS program, since most food pathogen issues such as e-coli and salmonella occur after the animal has been slaughtered, not while on the farm.  A key piece of legislation to be concerned about is HR2749, which grants the FDA a major expansion of power.

HR2749 would create the definition of “processing” to include everything up to home canning and private food processing.  Processors would have to register, pay significant fees, submit a HACCP and food safety plan, failure to do so resulting in significant penalties.  It also would require the traceability of all produce (tomato tracking, anyone), give the FDA the authority to quarantine and conduct warrantless searches of premises within given geographic regions, even if a food issue was only in the type of food not in the actual food produced on that premises.  This subjects farms, including family farms, to direct regulation by the FDA over all aspects of farming.  Failure to comply would result in fines, unintentional violations being subject to individual fines of $20,000 and corporate fines of $250,000 and criminal penalties including the possibility of 10 years in jail.

HR2749 passed the House in a closed rule (no amendments allowed; 1 hour maximum debate) vote on August 6th.  The Senate has indicated it will take up its own version of the issue, S.510, upon return from the recess.  McGeary urged attendees to stand up for food and farm freedom, and contact your Senators to oppose the draconian provisions and mandatory requirements of this legislation.

General, Crime and Punishment, Events, Private Property, Commentary

Real ID and Gun Control

This entry is part 17 of 28 in the series Freedom 21 Conference

f21-banner-4Larry Pratt, Executive Director of the no-compromise 2nd Amendment organization Gun Owners of America, discussed the nexus between the federal effort to collect biometric and other data on Americans with the dangers of creating lists of private gun owners that could be utilized to disarm the populace should a totalitarian administration choose to do so.

Pratt raised concerns over the effort to require gun records (conceal carry permits, hunting licenses, purchase forms, etc.) to be entered onto RFID chips as part of an “enhanced” drivers’ license, which was a serious concern with the Real ID Act.  An earlier attempt to create federal registries of gun owners was defeated when it was proposed in the Patriot Act, but the potential for electronic data collection of this information in both Real ID and the current PASS ID are real and of great concern.  Another issue of concern, beyond this information being on drivers’ licenses, is that individual firearms themselves can be fitted with RFID chips to track their ownership without the person consenting to such data collection.

Pratt gave example after example of the history of gun registration leading to gun confiscation and loss of freedoms for people in many other countries, from Hitler’s Germany to Castro’s Cuba.    He urged attendees to work to preserve the rights we are guaranteed under the 2nd Amendment to the Constitution, before it may be too late.

Taxation, Events, Public Policy Radar, Private Property, Commentary, Public Policy Principles News, Economics

Mark Lerner- International ID- Federal Control of Drivers Licenses

This entry is part 16 of 28 in the series Freedom 21 Conference

f21-banner-4Mark Lerner began by reminding us that the present generation has a responsibility to the next to restore, preserve and protect what generations prior to ours won for us. He also reminded us that we often need to make coalitions with people and groups we normally wouldn’t deal with.

As recently as mid-July 2009 lawsuits in federal courts brought by citizens having to do with electronic surveillance without warrant are being dismissed on the basis of “national security.” It has become widely known, especially this year, that all communications are subject to monitoring by federal security agencies. It is also becoming widely known that faces are being entered into a digitized database (biometrics) and that privacy laws have giant loopholes involving “national security.” Dept. Homeland Sec. officials are beginning to admit that personal data is being shared without warrant with international authorities to create an international “security database.” Both ACLU and ACLJ oppose Real ID and believe that it should be eliminated.

Be prepared to document claims on either side of the biometrics discussion. If the person refuses to document then ignore them. There is a single agency to share driver’s license data in the US, Mexico and Canada. This came into existence under the Clinton administration. The US taxpayer has been forced to pay for this international effort through the NHTSA. Officials deny this but the proof is irrefutable.

Mexico has created a “citizen’s ID card.” US corporations specializing in identity systems want to do the same in the US and put things like political party affiliation on it.

There have already been abuses of electronic surveillance available to agencies, though there have been no consequences for those abuses.

Events, Private Property, Commentary, General, Executive Usurpation

Real ID and PASS ID

This entry is part 15 of 28 in the series Freedom 21 Conference

f21-banner-4Pennsylvania state Representative Sam Rohrer addressed the conference attendees on the Real ID Act, a federal law that is all but dead in the water as many states have rejected the implementation of this federal proposal to coordinate private citizen information databases under the Department of Homeland Security.

Rohrer went on to discuss the successor program to Real ID, Senate Bill 1261,the Providing Aditional Security to the States Act (PASS ID), which is by and large a rehashing of Real ID with some significant expansions of data sharing.  It was given hearings before the Senate Homeland Security Committee on July 15th.

PASS ID carries on the philosophy of the Obama administration to create “preventive detention” systems to assist law enforcement  and terrorism fighting, but extends the idea of who is a potential criminal to virtually all citizens.  This philosophy is supported by “intelligence-led policing”, the view that the more that is known by law enforcement about a person then the greater opportunity to prevent a crime before it occurs.  This idea brings to mind the storyline of the movie “Minority Report” but we can’t suspend our disbelief for this piece of legislation.

PASS ID is supposed to correct the “problems” with Real ID that led states to reject it, but it incorporates much of the previous law’s DNA, such as RFID chip assignment via drivers’ licenses, biometric ID requirements, and other features.  In essence, PASS ID will bring the US into a global biometric ID system with all US citizens required to be enrolled in order to travel or carry on official business.  The National Conference of State Legislatures and the National Governors Association have both come out in support of PASS ID.

Rohrer listed some major problems with PASS ID, including its violation of both the 9th and 10th Amendments to the Constitution, its requirement for mandatory facial image capture, its massive shift of power and control to the Department of Homeland Security, and the requirement that after the 6th year from the passage of the act all non-complying licenses will not be allowed to be recognized by any state.

For those who have the idea “I’ve done nothing wrong, so I have nothing to fear”, the Electronic Privacy Information Center has detailed numerous concerns, including the problems of how this data collection and retention lead to significant privacy concerns, how the use of facial recognition technology can allow tracking of people in real time (even non-criminals), and how the technology built by companies such as 3VR can even build watch lists and send reports on individuals to those with access to the databases, and the technology’s claim that with long range cameras an individual’s face can be identified up to 6 blocks from the location of the camera.

As if this isn’t problematic enough, the NLETS program, to network over 30,000 agencies worldwide to share the data collected from the facial recognition information collected through biometric drivers’ licenses, is lurking in the background.  The connection of NLETS to Interpol creates a portal for international surveillance of individuals, regardless of suspicion of criminal or terroristic activity.

Rohrer closed by requesting citizens to become educated about this issue and then continually contact your elected officials at the federal, state and local levels to oppose the radical erosion of privacy and freedom rights of law-abiding American citizens.

Economics, Taxation, Education, Public Policy Radar, Private Property, Commentary, Public Policy Principles News

Patrick Wood- Dark Moon Rising: The Technetronic Era

This entry is part 14 of 28 in the series Freedom 21 Conference

f21-banner-4Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote a book called Between Two Ages. It is important because it described as the gradual appearance of a more controlled society dominated by an elite undeterred by traditional values. Wood explains that international banking and multi-national corporations have supplanted nation-states as the creative forces in the world.

Wood began by showing the inter-locking relationships between members of the Tri-Lateral Commission, big business and the executive and legislative branches of government. He also demonstrated that Tri-Lateralists have rejected constitutional controls on government and reject the notion of national sovereignty.

He said that “you cannot win a war against an enemy you do not know and cannot name.” Failure to meet the enemy on the battlefield  of public opinion means eventually they will have to be met on an actual battlefield. He says there’s only one road to recovery from the damage the Tri-Laterists have wrought- Run the perpetrators out, replace Congress with people who refuse to let them return, strip the executive branch of unconstitutional powers, Force Congress to do all of its constitutional duties, return rightful sovereignty to the states.

General

Southern Poverty Law Center and MIAC

This entry is part 13 of 28 in the series Freedom 21 Conference

f21-banner-4Former Constitution Party presidential candidate and pastor Chuck Baldwin address the conference attendees regarding the recent attempts to “identify” those individuals and groups that are “extremists”, focusing on the situation that occurred in the state of Missouri earlier this year.

A report was issued by the Missouri Information Analysis Center (MIAC) regarding identifying those individuals and groups who could be considered potential domestic terrorism suspects, and Baldwin was specifically named in the report, along with a handful of other third party political types.  Baldwin has spelled out a detailed analysis of the issue here.

Baldwin points out that the MIAC did not get the template for creating this report from the state of Missouri, or from the federal government, but from the Southern Poverty Law Center, a non-profit that Baldwin stated is dedicated to undermining organizations that support Christian principles, mainly by targeting them as “hate groups”.

Baldwin urged pastors and activists to continue to fight for liberty, as a number of states are being influenced by groups such as SPLC, and other states have versions of the MIAC report that created the furor in Missouri.  More will be said on this issue in the upcoming post.

Taxation, Education, Public Policy Radar, Private Property, Commentary, Public Policy Principles News, Economics

Marc Morano- Unraveling The Climate Change Hoax

This entry is part 12 of 28 in the series Freedom 21 Conference

f21-banner-4This was the most humorous but informative presentations so far in the conference. Mr. Morano juxtaposed official global warming claims to actual newspaper and other news outlet sources to humorously demonstrate the hoax of global warming “science.” While light-hearted in its approach, Morano’s presentation cut to the heart of the climate change  controversy: global warming MUST be happening or there is no reason to impose draconian legislation to limit access to energy without massive taxation.

Morano demonstrated that the so-called “consensus” among climate scientists simply is a non-existent specter created by government agencies, both national and international and touted by news outlets who know that disaster sells. The impact of the constant reporting of impending doom, with every town-crier giving a different date for the end is beginning to show both in the private and scientific sectors. Documents purporting to contain the work of scientists are generally accepted by votes of a few dozen non-scientists who add the names of anyone who worked even in the most peripheral way to the document as supporters. Often majorities of those scientists disagree with the conclusion of these political reports.

Politicians then point to these bureaucratically produced “scientific” reports as the excuse they need to come out in favor of regulatory and tax-based “solutions” to a completely fabricated crisis. The problem is not restricted to the industrialized world. The trade part of “Cap and Trade” requires western industrialized nations to “buy” so-called “carbon credits” from pre-industrial third-world nations. These poor countries, usually under the thumbs of tin-horn dictators, military juntas and other totalitarian crooks who gladly pocket the money and their subjects, many of whom die daily from diseases caused by a lack of technology necessary for safely cooking and storing food, a lack of medicine, clinics and doctors and wallow in poverty from a lack of any jobs beyond hunting an gathering or subsistence farming, have no chance to advance themselves. Western politicians kid themselves (or try to kid their constituents) that the monies they have given the third-world crooks in trade for their “carbon credits” is redistributed to their subjects instead of winding up in Swiss bank accounts as insurance against the day when they are deposed by the next tin-horn.

The bottom line is that politicians are using fraudulent science as an excuse to impose total control over energy production and use. They view climate change as an excuse to create tremendous “revenue opportunities” for huge  new taxes.

General

Codex Alimentarius

This entry is part 11 of 28 in the series Freedom 21 Conference

f21-banner-4The title sounds foreboding, doesn’t it? It should. Codex Alimentarius is Latin for “food codes”, and it is a massive global effort to “harmonize and standardize food regulations, both domestic and international.” Attorney Scott Tips, of the National Health Federation, presented on the issues surrounding this initiative, and how it can have severe negative impacts on the health and longevity of the populace. One of the key areas targeted for severe restrictions under this program is natural health care products.

Under the Codex standards being developed, alternative therapies for significant diseases would be banned, even though many “mainstream” treatment modalities are signficantly more health-threatening than natural health care preparations.  As a matter of fact, looking at the data, the “conventional” approach to health care has resulted in over 800,000 deaths at the hands of medical professionals, 100,000 deaths by pharmaceuticals, and 5,000 deaths by food issues.  By comparison, natural products have been implicated in only 10 deaths, over the last 23 years!

Codex Alimentarius is a template for coordinating action between governments, utilizing treaties and executive agreements to tie countries into the centralized control mechanism.  The Codex Alimentarius Commission has been in existance since being created by the United Nations in 1962, and has grown into a massive bureaucratic structure with 27 committees and numerous working groups creating these standards, meeting in either Rome or Geneva each year to ascertain progress on the coordination goals, which ultimately will centralize control over all food production and distribution (or redistribution) on the planet.

Tips ceded that the Codex is a noble concept, as it is supposed to be developed to eliminate trade barriers and protect the health of consumers, but it has been “captured” and the actual process has been twisted to become an anti-natural product, anti-free market, pro-drug, slow to change leviathan whose decisions are based on junk science, and will ultimately lead to negative consequences for the health and welfare of the populace.


Economics, Taxation, Education, Events, Public Policy Radar, Commentary, Public Policy Principles News

Dr. Jane Orient- Caps Quotas and Czars: The Plan To Wreck American Medicine

This entry is part 10 of 28 in the series Freedom 21 Conference

f21-banner-4The current move to assume control of the health care industry by government has nothing to do with altruistic impulses but is about complete control of all aspects of life, including the health of the governments subjects.

Senator Jim DeMint has made the statement that health care might be Obama’s Waterloo. During Napoleon’s 100 days he had declared the beginning of a New World Order and the entirety of his agenda rested on the Battle of Waterloo, where he lost.

Dr. Orient tied G. Edward Griffin’s talk on the FED to the action of health cartels like United Health and other large corporations, which is squarely behind government efforts to nationalize and centralize health care. The American Hospital Association and other professional associations are in support of Obamacare for the same reasons as these corporations. What do they get from the deal? Like banks, they get to craft their own regulation and essentially have shadow control of health care through controlling boards and committees. They become the enforcement agents for the new system and have a direct line to taxpayer-funded subsidies.

The plans include “National Health Boards,” an idea that first appeared under the Clinton health plan. Under the Clinton’s, an attempt was made to keep meetings of the seed group secret, but the effort was thwarted by alert activists who sued and made the meetings public. The same thing needs to be done now.

The Obamacare bill has “end of life treatment- denial of” clauses, as Sarah Palin has been called a liar and otherwise pilloried in the press for mentioning, but the press has conveniently ignored or denied them. The fact is that patients are already being starved and dehydrated by contract that patients and families are being talked into signing by existing health care corporations. Obamacare would take them from the status of fraudulently made contract to legal requirement to die when the patient becomes expensive.

Under Obamacare definitions are being subtly shifted from benign to destructive. The meaning of well-being, for instance, is being shifted from the patient to society. It becomes the patient’s duty to die if the well-being of society in general is threatened by the patient’s continued survival.

Dr. Orient destroys the myth of the “cruel” American system which, by law, requires treatment for all patients going to a hospital, to the so-called “compassionate” Canadian system which requires enrollment in a provincial health service for treatment and allows hospitals to refuse treatment even to patients who will die (and many have) without it if they can’t show the proper proof of enrollment. Examples were provided.

Dr. Orient exposes the attempted fraud of Democrats running phoney, stacked-deck “town hall” health care meetings. She chronicles the fact that Republican meetings in opposition to the health care plan are simply not having the same problems as the meetings that were designed to be “puff and fluff” to show overwhelming support for nationalized health care that are turning out to be showing exactly the opposite, especially among otherwise loyal Democrats.

Again, a compact and fast moving presentation that I simply can’t give full justice to. Get the Video On Demand for the conference to get the full presentation.

General, Events, Commentary

The Feds are stealing your health care choices–and have been for over 70 years!

This entry is part 9 of 28 in the series Freedom 21 Conference

f21-banner-4Dr. Jeff Marrongelle, a Doctor of Chiropractic and an certified clinicial nutritionist and a researcher on the effects of electromagnetic fields on human physiology, opened the day with a discussion of the history of the creation and radical expansion of the powers of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and how that regulatory entity has been impacting our health care choices for over 70 years.

The FDA was created as an entity to prevent interstate commerce of adulterated foods and drugs in 1930.  The advent of the Roosevelt administration and their radical expansion of federal power with numerous acts such as the National Industrial Recovery Act and the Judicial Reorganization Act of 1937 broke down the wall of separation of powers and gave sweeping legislative and judicial authority to executive branch regulatory agencies, including the FDA.

A crisis is usually used to consolidate power, and the FDA’s expansion of control over the American populace was generated the same way.  The 1938 Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, which created safety standard testing, was passed as a result of a problem with a sulfa drug creation problem that resulted in 107 deaths among children.  This act also set the standard that if a drug is proven safe at standard doses, then it was approved.  This approval usually took about 60 days.  The act also swept in those preparations that were already considered “safe”, including homeopathy, grandfathering them, but also including them under the statutory definition of a “drug”.

Over time, the control over “drugs’ was expanded with the Kefauver-Harris Act of 1962, which expanded the required testing beyond showing “safety” to including “efficacy” as the standard for approval.  This increased the time to get a new drug approved from 60 days to 6 months or more, and drove the cost up to over $138 million for the industry (which today is in the range of $1.6 billion dollars).   It also limited competition in the industry significantly, which also drove up the final costs of these drugs.

Today, the FDA is by and large a self-contained regulatory giant.  It creates its own rules, regulations and edits with little to no legislative oversight or control.  One study recognized that 25 cents of every dollar spent in the United States is on products over which the FDA has regulatory control over, and the FDA continues to try to expand its power by attempting to regulate vitamins and minerals as “drugs”.  They have complete control over all medical and food advertising (remember the recent edict that Cheerios had to be regulated because of making “health claims”), even to the point of being able to disallow claims that are already proven and truthful.

The most concerning issue with the unfettered power of this regulatory agency is that their governing philosophy is not “should we approve this” but “how can we get this approved”, which has led the FDA bureaucracy and directorate to approve drugs for consumer use even over the objections of their own scientists and safety officers, leading to numerous adverse health effects and deaths among the populace at large (remember the Vioxx debacle?)

The FDA’s hubris is exampled by the 1990 Nutrition Labeling and Education Act, which Congress passed that allowed food and supplement claims to be made as to their effects on disease without having the approval of FDA as a “drug”.  Between 1990-1999, the FDA routinely ignored this statute and pursued regulatory action against many making such claims.  The worst instance of this was the 1991-1993 debacle over the FDA’s refusal to allow information to be published on the beneficial effects of folic acid consumption by pregnant women on preventing Neural Tube birth defects.  Over 2500 cases of this defect could have been prevented in babies if not for the FDA’s insistence on keeping this information from the general public “for their own good”.

Marrongelle summed up his presentation by noting that there are created “artificial crises” to expand the powers of these regulatory agencies, and gave some data.  The total number of deaths from both avian and swine flus from 2003-present is 431 people, according to the World Health Organization.  Conversely, the number of deaths in the same period from iatrogenic causes is 786,936, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association.  This data is indicative of the idea that the cure may actually be worse than the disease, and the FDA may be causing more harm to the public than preventing such harms.