Grand Jury or Grand Inquisition?

Given testimony at the last Board of Supervisors meeting by a nurse that said refund or rebate was re-translated by the grand jury inquisitors into kickback, it appears that the underway Amador coup d’état strategy is becoming more apparent as it sinks to new lows. But you would never know this by reading Eric Winslow’s yellow journalism in last Friday’s Ledger.  He fancies himself a muckraker. While he certainly has the rake, the muck is his own invention. Perhaps he has missed his calling. His more appropriate role maybe at the supermarket checkout stand with stories like: “Alien disguised as bigfoot delivered my pizza” or “Hillary Clinton and her alien lover”.

Simultaneously, we have the witch hunt against Elizabeth Chapin-Pinotti. Given a planning commissioner and a school board member refusing to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, this all seems like more than a coincidence. Minus the violence, this feels like living in Germany during the 1930’s. Is something happening behind the backs of Amadorians? Certainly many in our community will implicate the Foothill Conservancy. Their earlier leadership was almost sued, but they are now more subtle. But whatever their behind-the-scenes plotting, I can easily imagine their Soros related funding sources breathing down their necks.

Another local influence is undoubtedly the SEIU. Just put SEIU + thugs into your search engine and the United Farm Workers Dolores Huerta’s denouncement of their tactics and other similar videos appear. They have no compunction about exploiting the very people they claim to help. They are financing Frank Axe’s campaign as he goes door to door, telling potential voters that the present supervisors are a reincarnation of Tammany Hall. They also financed Lynn Morgan, who only won because several hundred complacent Republicans didn’t vote.

We cannot sit idle as the very soul of our county is endangered. When there is a victory against vexatious litigants and no growth nihilists, such as the Amador Water Agency’s development of hydroelectric power at Tanner Reservoir, the story is buried on the last page of the Ledger. Will this become typical of the “new” Ledger? Many people say the new Dollar General store is ugly. Saying that a venue that helps people of modest means save money seems like the real ugliness.

Copyright 2016, Mark L. Bennett

Rhetoric or Reality?

This past Friday’s Ledger Dispatch contained statements from our incumbent Congressional Representative Tom McClintock and challenger Bob Derlet. Derlet’s statements conjured images of Huey Long’s demagoguery. He said that McClintock and others wanted to gut the Social Security system. While this may be effective fear mongering offering unspoken images of old people starving, it has no truth. Tom McClintock has said that Social Security needs to be phased out. He, along with more official, bipartisan reports than one can count, have stated that Social Security is actuarially (and demographically) unsound. It was a depression era quick fix based on a 66 year life span. Many counties, especially in Europe, have similar problems. The situation is best defined as how to create a system to provide retirement income, not as continually tweaking and extending something that will ultimately fail. Conservatives, moderates and liberals in the British Parliament, the California state legislature and throughout the world are discussing and implementing workable solutions. The literature regarding retirement financing ideas is vast.  If he’s not aware of these efforts as he spouts off it doesn’t speak very well of him.

Derlet further fears that McClintock, Trump and others want to turn the system over to Wall Street. If it was in their hands, they would have captured the overall return on invested capital over the past 50 or so years of about 8%. But Social Security has instead returned about 1.6% over the same time period. Derlet believes that this is: “…one of America’s greatest success stories…” Since the entire Social Security Trust Fund is invested in US Treasury debt  (no real money there, just IOU’s), the only success I can see is a scam to keep afloat an over extended deficit ridden government.  He says that “The hedge fund managers can’t wait to get their hands on your money…” While pensions sometimes use hedge funds, they are irrelevant for individual retirement programs or accounts, and not about to be approved under Labor Department rules. Also, hedge funds are doing poorly and falling out of favor as endowments and other investors are pulling their money out. The free market system is self correcting, something he doesn’t seem to grasp. This is not surprising, since he has spent his entire life working for governments or non-profits.

But he not only wants to preserve a doomed retirement income system, he want to increase benefits by closing so-called tax loopholes. This sounds like Obama’s mantra about billionaires and millionaires that don’t pay their fair share. But the IRS data tells a different story. Many people make a million dollars in a certain year; they sell a business, take capital gains on appreciated real estate or stocks, or write a hit song or novel. But they aren’t millionaires, and that million dollar year rarely reoccurs. Derlet doesn’t let reality doesn’t interfere with his rhetoric. We must all be too stupid to see what’s real.

In a stark contrast to Derlet’s factless fear mongering, incumbent Tom McClintock’s companion statement was a practical, feet on the ground exposition of his efforts to remove dead and dying trees. This includes a bipartisan effort in Congress, and the realistic awareness that overcrowded, unlogged forests bred disease. With or without the drought, the pine bark beetle would have arisen to thin our forests. The same phenomenon occurs in Japan, when rice farmers attempt to push their patties with over-planting. The rice blast disease appears and attacks the crop. This is well-documented in Masanobu Fukuoka’s “The Natural Way of Farming, The Theory and Practice of Green Philosophy”. The book’s introduction states: “My greatest fear today is that of nature being made the plaything of the human intellect.” He discusses real ecology, not the pseudo science of environmentalism prevalent today.  Nature will always seek a balance just as the free market is self correcting. There is an inherent order to life that escapes the experts given their over educated ability to rationalize away common sense.

Copyright 2016, Mark L. Bennett

People Who Care

People who care about others, and involve themselves in the political process to express that concern, always read across the political spectrum. Often the right press will discuss issues that the left press ignores, such as the mayor of Houston subpoenaing the sermons of local clergy. With a different focus, certain issues gain more attention. I read a left article about horrendous slave labor factories in North Korea that export into the USA with fake "Made in China" labels. It rang true. If we didn’t owe the Chinese so much money and had different leadership in Washington, we could reduce this source of revenue to an insane dictator. But while the solutions may differ, the analysis is sometimes the same. This is where insight can begin. People who care - that is care enough to want change for the better - often begin here. Look at the awareness raised about the Trans Pacific Partnership by both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. Politics is the art of the possible.

Of course, there are bad information sources across the political spectrum, just as there are bad people within any grouping of people. That is human nature and a common sense understanding that begins any inquiry. However, there are those who, like our local Don Dowell, immediately reject any news source that doesn’t agree with his preconceptions of reality. He called them “disreputable” in his Facebook response to my posting entitled “Finally, A Choice”. When I called him on that, his slander and his ongoing refusal to even acknowledge further evidence, he went so ballistic to make the threatening statement: “…to deal with you properly…”

A David Nicholson jumped into the conversation, and accused me of the serious crime of incitement. He went on to say: “If you don’t like fair criticism stay off social media.” To his mind, being called a nativist for defending our sovereignty, of having a deranged position and grand delusions, of not having a grasp on reality, of being kooky and of not even living in the same time-space continuum is considered fair criticism. These are, knowingly or unknowingly, Saul Alinsky tactics to smear the perceived enemy. It is not about democratic discussion, it is about victory at whatever the cost. This is the same theme I discussed in my 3/16 posting, “Is This Leninism?”

I wrote this and the prior post as a warming to this county I love. The existing narrow vision folks have growth in strength aided by a new and growing demographic. But perhaps an even greater threat than their myopic view and self indulgent expertise is their tactics. Anyone can read them on Facebook’s Amador/calaveras Uncensored Politics under my "Finally, A Choice" posting. They may even cure low blood pressure.

Copyright 2016, Mark L. Bennett

Finally, A Choice

For decades now we were presented with only the Republican or Democrat versions of globalism. But this year we now have a choice between patriot Trump or globalist Clinton. My introduction to the globalist menace began as an early 1960’s Buffalo teenager. Nelson Rockefeller was elected governor with the promise of change from the “rotten borough” Democrats. He delivered. The new university campus was in a far suburb, increasing racial and ethnic segregation and accelerating the decline of the central city. The port was designated a nuclear port; a nuclear waste dump was installed outside the city, and a nuclear reactor was build in the middle of the old university campus. We were ready for the new age of nuclear technology. The skills, talents and desires of the local population were irrelevant and ignored. These were decisions by experts located elsewhere. As time passed, I became aware that actions such as these were implementing a choate globalist agenda. Part of this is multiculturalism (not be confused with diversity or pluralism) to destroy the sovereign nation states.

Since before the beginning of recorded history, nations have invaded other nations. Sometimes the invaders are repelled, and sometimes the invaders conquer. But the current governments in Europe (including that former devoted East German communist Angela Merkel) and Obama here at home have not only invited the invaders in, but even subsidize them with welfare benefits. The Paris and Brussels Jihadists collected a total of $56K in welfare benefits which, in effect, paid them to plan their attacks. The UK government is offering asylum to Muslim Brotherhood leaders. Ordinary citizens in these host countries are being murdered, raped, mutilated and beaten daily. Since Islam hasn’t changed in 1400 years, the leadership’s decisions can’t be based on ignorance. It appears impossible to understand this official perverse government behavior, except to implement the globalist agenda.

Ordinary people who speak out are often labeled as racists, and sometimes even prosecuted. These government attitudes have forced vigilante actions. As of a few months ago, about 80 German mosques were torched. Innocent Muslims suffer. Terror also keeps people at home, so the countervailing force of social discourse declines. The entire social order evaporates. Who benefits from troops in the streets? Fitting right into this globalist initiative is Obama’s efforts to Federalize local police forces.

Encouraging dependency and harassing self reliance are another part of this diabolical future. I have a bad ankle. My orthopedist looks at my x-rays while he watches me walk, and says: “It’s a miracle.” But it’s not; I simply take affordable, over the counter herbal medicines that any literate person could research.  All medical science can offer are expensive surgeries with long and painful recuperations, including replacement surgeries in the future at an even more advanced age. But these are subsidized by government health programs, fulfilling the medical industry’s lobbying efforts while squandering our tax dollars. My individual solution is based upon taking responsibility for myself. Once considered an American virtue, it’s now a threat to government programs of dependency. And they remind me of this daily, since all the herbal medicines I take contain a Prop 65 warning label (which must also add to the product’s price) threatening me with cancer as the result of taking responsibility for myself and defying the government/medical complex. They are the real cancer.

There is no crisis with herbal medicines or dietary supplements anywhere in the world, but reasons, real or contrived, aren’t always necessary for the destruction of freedom. My very ability to walk, and similar situations for untold others, have been under assault for decades by the globalists. Presently we are under a reprieve, thanks to Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act in 1994. Senator Diane Feinstein led the opposition. The torch has since been picked up Democrat and Republican globalists: Democrat Congressional Representative Henry Waxman, Republican President George W. Bush, Democrat President Barack Obama and Republican Senator John McCain. These domestic initiatives, while intended to blend into a global law, are still tame compared to a system called Codex being developed worldwide and centered in the European Union.

The Codex scheme will limit dosages to the bare minimums that prevent deficiency diseases such as scurvy and while disregarding real health. Differences in age, gender and ethnicity are ignored. One size fits all for the globalist; diversity is not a reality, but only a tool used to divide us. Micronutrients are ignored. Over the counter herbal medicines will be banned or available only by prescription, profiting the pharmaceutical/government cabal behind this as health problems spread to more and more people. Countries, even those not signing on, will have their import and export possibilities diminished creating more poverty in third world countries under this new form of scientific colonialism. Indigenous traditions must fade into worldwide homogenization. Codex is being formulated by over 40 committees, task forces and expert groups. Decisions are by consensus. If this sounds like the process that turned our healthy forests into dangerous tinderboxes, you are probably not alone in your conclusion. Implementation for Codex uses the same subterfuges and devious processes, as did Common Core to dumb us down and Agenda 21 to physically confine us.

Fortunately, people around the world are rebelling. The British have voted to leave the EU helping secessionist movements around the world. We have the Trump candidacy here, and closer to home, the State of Jefferson thrust. But sadly, Amador County is going the other way. We have a globalist, new world order General Plan that consigns us to a specific role in our regional economy as recreation providers for the more affluent elsewhere. After the mill workers, tree fellers and others left, the void was filled with a new demographic that subscribes to this limiting vision. Mere mention of anything related to globalism or Agenda 21 on Facebook leads to an intellectual gang rape by a self-appointed slander cadre. Usuallym there is more than one since thugs, even verbal thugs, prefer both the safety and intimidation qualities of groups.

One regular participant is a Don Dowell. His method is consistent; he rejects your news source, and then resorts to insults when challenged. When backup information is provided, he withdraws. Recently, a Steven Frisch joined the slander cadre. He is so ignorant that he accused me, without even knowing what globalism is, of negating all the normal and traditional relationships between nations and peoples when I attacked globalism. But the ringleader, a George Soros devotee, is known as Eric Winslow at the Ledger Dispatch and Aham Svarupa on Facebook until this past week, when he assumed both identities at the Ledger. Probably readers are to assume that more than one person believes in the same propaganda. But despite the aliases, he does not appear to have a split personality. He is equally vicious in either persona. In fact, his personality is so integrated that he can’t differentiate between an article and an editorial. Certainly, this unitary quality aids his ability to immediately reject any thoughtful ideas that question his dogma and prompts his defensive response of slander and insult. But there is a Jekyll and Hyde split between these behaviors and his comment in a recent Ledger article: “… of the overarching rancor that obscures communication in the virtual and actual public spaces of our beleaguered society.”

I was called a nativist for defending our sovereignty, of having a deranged position and grand delusions, of not having a grasp on reality, of being kooky and of not even living in the same time-space continuum. In addition, I was accused of believing that science, education and independent thought are bad because they are elitist. These examples show the irrational extremes this growing local demographic will go to in attempting to marginalize and discredit anyone opposing their agenda for our future within the globalist nightmare. This election is about tyranny versus freedom. Donald Trump maybe imperfect, but he’s our only hope and I thank God he is here.

Copyright 2016, Mark L. Bennett

The Natural Environment and the Foothill Conservancy

At the Amador Water Agency public discussion of the Amador Canal’s small diameter pipe, Cecily Smith read the Foothill Conservancy’s position on the project. Given its convoluted bureaucratic rhetoric, I was confused at times, but they seemed nominally in favor of the project. Upon reading the material on their website, it became clarified. The opposing points of view discussed there had uncovered a primary flaw in the dominant environmental dogma. The now 150+ years of the canal had spawned a new, desirable and natural environment. What, then, is the natural environment?

Many large forest preserves dot the northern suburbs of Chicago. For one reason or another, I have observed them for almost 40 years now. On my last visit, I witnessed rotting logs, dead limbs and half fallen trees. It seemed like an unsafe place to hike. A local told me of a change in policy to keep these woods in their natural state. That seemed like a strange assumption to me, since Native Americans would have been cleaning the forest for firewood, construction, tool making, etc. As I noted in one of my prior posts, the absurdity of New England environmentalists, proclaiming "Save This Natural River" when ground penetrating radar and similar techniques, reveal that the course of the river was determined by stone fishing weirs built thousands of years ago.

In the BLM land south of Chaw’se lies a blackberry patch. One year when I went to pick, the berries were sparse because a tree had fallen and blocked the creek’s flow. If a tribal group had been dependent upon that patch the tree would have been removed immediately. As I realized that likelihood, it also seemed likely that the bend in the creek which created that berry bog was also a human endeavor. Practices like this are called intentional agriculture. Hunter/gatherers didn’t wake up one morning and say: "This is getting boring, let’s become farmers." They observed how and where certain plants or animals flourished and customized the land and rivers for their convenience and survival. This has occurred for probably 500,000 years and possibly a million years. The aborigines in Australia had absolutely no concept of a park or preserve. But here in Amador County we have a so-called wild and scenic river created by dam release water flows on a river that has been artificially controlled for over a 150 years. Its natural summer condition is bone dry.

The Amazon basin is filled with “natural” groves of fruit and nut trees. To justify the current mythology of the Amazon, some scientists have published articles of twisted and convoluted logic to prove these groves natural, despite the first (and probably disease carrying) Spanish explorers describing a vast and thriving culture. Their arguments read as disgusting racism trying to prove that these “primitive” people were not capable of transforming their landscape to their advantage. It was a sophisticated and acceptable liberal academic version of KKK literature. Not only are these groves probably a vestige of a once elaborate human society, but some have hypothesized that much of the Amazon Basin was once a savannah forested by humans. While I have no idea if that is true, I feel certain that research money to investigate is unlikely to be available. But there is lobbying, deemed important enough for two and half pages in our local Ledger-Dispatch, to save the now naturally wild horses and burros descended from escaped or abandoned animals.

The Native Americans burned the forests to eliminate underbrush, etc and create a grassy environment to promulgate the desirable deer population. This practice amazed the first British settlers and gave birth to our current controlled burns. Many of our current forest preserves were farmed for over a 100 years before being turned into forests during the New Deal. And locally we have a 150 year old mining district being called pristine by the anti-Newman Ridge enthusiasts. The so-called natural environment developed in symbiosis with human habitation. The Bible giving us dominion over the land and other life forms was simply a codification of ancestral belief. Much of the official academic literature seems present centric and ethno-centric. The Ancients had technologies for remaking the earth often hard to grasp today, given our prejudicial blinders. They were as intelligent as we are, despite not walking around staring at iPhones. When I hear this prideful present attitude, I ask: How long did it take us to go from electricity to electronics?

The difference between then and now is simply a oneness with the land; people did not see themselves as separate from the wholeness of creation. Today’s common environmental belief is one of separation, that people are an unnatural, alien intrusion. This is an invented ideology that serves other purposes. I find it a bone chilling religion of self rejection, not unlike white guilt and other propagandized distortions prevalent today. It isn’t very holistic is it?

When you start with the wrong assumptions, you end up with the wrong conclusions. In 1962, Decca Records decided that guitar-based groups were passé (remember those great tenor sax choruses with The Coasters and other groups), and therefore refused to sign the Beatles. In 1948, the Pentagon added up planes, tanks, guns and bullets and told President Truman nascent Israel couldn’t defend itself. What army would you bet on: probable conscripts of feudal monarchies, or concentration camp survivors fighting for their own soil? When you conceive the situation incorrectly, the answers don’t work. We can’t get there that way, despite all of us caring about the earth.

PS: A similar situation seems to also exist with historic preservation. In the 1970’s the 20 th Century-Fox Ranch became Malibu Creek State Park. Great lengths were taken, which I wholeheartedly endorse, to preserve the remnants of Native American settlement. But the ruins of a Chinese village and other old movie sets were destroyed. Aren’t they both our history?

Copyright 2016, Mark L. Bennett