T.I.P.S. = Turning In People Secretly

Josey1

T.I.P.S. = Turning In People Secretly
by Michael Bragg

Authors Note: This feature was originally slated to be an exit interview with former National Chair Dr. James Lark III. Due to a hard drive crash on my computer, the interview was lost and is in the process of being re-transcribed. We will run the interview in the next update. LFA offers our sincere apologies to Dr. Lark for the delay. Thank You.

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It never ceases to amaze me the lengths to which our government will go to "make us safe", and the creative programs they will fabricate to give us "security" against religious thugs with a martyrdom wish. I always thought that "providing for the common defense" was one of the federal governments FIRST responsibilities, but it seems we suddenly need a new department of "Homeland Security" to get the job done. Oh wait.. I believed THAT back when I also believed we still had a Constitution. I guess the Second Amendment was not adequate enough so they had to devise an alternative solution for our common defense. One such exercise in futility recently bantered about in Congress is the Bush/Ashcroft regime's T.I.P.S. program.

Being a person of sometimes questionable sense of humor (and needing a little inspiration to help me meet a deadline), I thought it would be fun to see what anagrams people could come up with for T.I.P.S. I sent an email out to a group of libertarians to see what brilliance the genius minds out there could come up with. Unfortunately, I did not receive very many replies but the one I liked most was from Steve Gresh, Libertarian candidate for CO state rep., HD 20 www.SteveGresh.com.

He wrote: The Ignominious Police State.

Others responded:

The Intolerable Police State

Terrorist Instigated Police State

Terrorist-Inspired Police State

Others I came up with were:

The Insane Presidents Sabotage

Tomorrow's Indoctrinated Personal Spies

Terrorism's Imaginary Propaganda System

Tyranny In Politicians Stupidity

Or The Individualist [is] Pretty Screwed

I also like the proverbial "The INEVITABLE Police State" because as hard as it is to admit, one more act of terror on our soil and that is exactly what we will have. Here is what they are doing in Buffalo from Freedom News:(Click title for article)

Neighborhood invaded by army of inspectors

Buffalo News
More than 50 police, fire inspectors, animal control officers,
social service workers, cleanup workers, even U.S. marshals
rumbled into a neighborhood in Buffalo, New York, for the
second Clean Sweep, a citywide initiative to crack down on so-
called "quality-of-life" problems. (08/02/02)

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Here in the Peoples Republic of North Carolina these types of programs are nothing new. In fact, one such "turn in your neighbor" fiasco is the "Swat a Litterbug" program. In their one of their public service radio advertisements paid for by you and I, and being played on radio stations all across the state, we hear a wife talking to her husband about what their lovely daughter "Samantha" has "learned in school". In this repulsive example of propaganda and indoctrination, the family is leaving for the beach, something not uncommon for many North Carolinians. And it seems their daughter has set off looking for a garbage bag to take with them on the trip. I'll give you a quick paraphrase of the main parts of this ad: (Emphasis and comments are mine)

Father: "Now where is that Samantha off to now?"

Mother: "She has gone to get an extra trash bag for our trip to the beach!"

Father: "Well what for?"

Mother: She LEARNED IN [GOVERNMENT] SCHOOL how important it is not to litter so we can PROTECT OUR ENVIRONMENT. She also learned about a new program sponsored by the "Office of Beautification" called the "Swat a litterbug" program."

Father: "The Swat a WHAT???"

Mother: "A Litterbug silly!!!" "She has learned that with this program, if you see someone litter you can call the department and get a little card to fill out to turn in their license plate number, and street where you observed the littering. You can help keep our streets and highways clean, and most of all, you help do your part to protect our environment! You can even go to their website at www.dot.state.nc.us/litterbug and get more information. Isn't she smart?

Father: She sure is. I guess she takes after her 'ol dad!


Now, if that isn't bad enough for you, just read a little from their website:

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The Swat-A-Litterbug Program is an effective educational effort administered by the North Carolina Department of Transportation's Office of Beautification Programs.

Motorists and pedestrians may report incidents of litter law violations to our office by mailing or e-mailing Swat-A-Litterbug report cards. Reports can also be made to the department's Customer Service Office by calling 1-877-DOT-4YOU.

Upon receipt of the completed report card, the Office of Beautification Programs will notify the owner that such a violation may involve a penalty of $1,000. This formal note of warning signed by the Colonel of the Department of Motor Vehicles and the Colonel of the State Highway Patrol helps to remind citizens of their civic responsibility to protect the environment.

In 2001, more than 5,000 litterbugs were reported. The Swat-A-Litterbug Program provides every citizen an opportunity to be an active participant in insuring that the highways and roads of North Carolina are kept clean and beautiful.

If you are interested in becoming a Swat-A-Litterbug agent and would like report cards, please call 1-800-331-5864.

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Now isn't that SPECIAL! I was never that good in math but I believe 5000 "citations" multiplied by $1000.00 bucks a pop is a cool 5 million in generated revenue to the state.

But more that that, you get a chance to be a real life G-man! A gubmint agent! Anything it takes to protect our environment! Of course, with the government hamburger mills churning out functionally illiterate drones the likes of which we have not seen since the Pink Floyd "Another Brick in the Wall: Part II video, it should come as no surprise the abundance of willing participants available for this and many other government sponsored programs.

There was a time that I might have actually believed that this type of thing might be OK. However, that was before my eyes were opened and I successfully overcame my indoctrination. Remember that I got out of the government school system in the early 80's so I was fortunate enough to miss much of the hard-core propaganda. In addition, my parents were very independent and instilled those values into me. Too bad that those values are not taught on any large scale today, but instead, have been replaced by failed promises of security and phantom freedom from fear.

However, let's say your neighbors down the street happen to be middle eastern males from the age of 17 to 45 or so, have a Ryder Truck rented and 30 or 40 large industrial trash cans filled with fertilizer. This might actually be a good time to notify the authorities of suspicious activity. Conversely, let's say your neighbor gets mad at you for some reason. Do you think that someone might have the incentive to turn you in just out of anger? It happens all the time. These types of programs have way too big of a door to allow frivolous accusations to bring scrutiny to innocent people. Just look at how many botched drug raids end up at the wrong house, traumatizing and even killing innocent victims of tips from paid informants and questionable "concerned citizens."

Finally, I have often wondered what the founders would do in our day and time. I believe it can be summed up in but one more anagram from Thomas Jefferson:


Turning Into Probable Seditionist.

Comment on this article on our Message Board.




Michael Bragg is a member of the Libertarian Party of North Carolina where he has a day gig in sales. He is an lifelong songwriter, musician, wanna-be webmaster or studio engineer in his spare time (which is always uncommon). He proudly serves The Libertarian Party of Forsyth County as Outreach Director and is Co-Founder, Columnist and Webmaster
for Liberty For All - Online Magazine.
He can be reached at patrioticus@triad.rr.com
............

http://www.libertyforall.net/2002/archive/august04/tips.html

"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878

Josey1

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Politics: Civil liberties concerns growing as Congress considers homeland security

Copyright c 2002
Scripps McClatchy Western Service

Search the archive for: homeland security
Special Report: America Responds

By DAVID WESTPHAL, McClatchy Newspapers


WASHINGTON (August 5, 2002 2:33 p.m. EDT) - If all goes as expected, President Bush will achieve the centerpiece of his anti-terror blueprint, a massive new domestic security department, sometime after the one-year anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Congressional approval would be another milestone in the president's strategy of marshaling new federal powers to protect Americans from terrorist strikes. Yet increasingly, members of Congress from both sides of the political spectrum are challenging some of the administration's initiatives as too costly to individual freedoms.

Even as they endorsed Bush's Homeland Security Department legislation last month, House members fired a shot across the White House bow, denouncing proposals to launch national tipsters and ID programs.

Reining in numerous other proposals, the House also insisted on a special office to monitor civil rights and privacy issues in the new department.

"I think members of Congress, after the initial crisis atmosphere, are starting to step back and ask whether some of these proposals are really going to work, are really worth the cost," said Tim Edgar, legislative counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union.

The ACLU and other civil rights groups hardly won every battle.

In a major vote, the House exempted large chunks of data gathered by the proposed new agency from traditional freedom-of-information laws - a decision that led some to suggest the agency be called the "Department of Secrecy."

It also declared that some of the 170,000 employees of the department could be stripped of certain civil service and collective bargaining rights, if the president so decided, in order to respond more quickly to domestic threats.

"A time of war is the wrong time to weaken the president's ability to protect the American people," Bush said in defending the provision. "We can't be micro-managed."

Even so, groups opposed to the expansion of government size and power at the expense of individual rights appear to be gaining strength.

An unusual coalition - liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans who share a passion for civil liberties - forced the White House to give on major provisions of its homeland security legislation in the House, and still more concessions loom in the Senate.

In two highly visible rebukes, Democratic and Republicans leaders teamed up to denounce an administration plan to develop a national ID card, and to ridicule Attorney General John Ashcroft's proposal to encourage Americans to report suspicious activities.

"Citizens should not be spying on one another," Republican House Majority Leader Dick Armey said.

Ashcroft is getting an earful on his tipster idea from political friends as well as foes. Phyllis Schlafly, the conservative leader of the Eagle Forum, said the proposal would "institutionalize a federal system of informers."

But this issue, like scores more, is a long way from being settled.

Justice Department officials said last week they still plan to continue the so-called TIPS program in some form. And all of the issues raised in the House debate are likely to get an even more contentious hearing in the Senate next month.

Congressional observers say the clashes are a natural outgrowth of a political process that's trying to adjust to the new threat of domestic terror.

"It was almost inevitable, once we got past the initial wave of horror after September 11th, and the desire to act swiftly, that our larger societal and constitutional concern for civil liberties would kick in," said Norman Ornstein, the veteran political scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

Ornstein said the process of re-balancing national security priorities against individual rights is complicated because no one knows what the future will look like. "I think we're going to have a lot of ups and downs on this until we get a clear picture," he said.

In the months following the Sept. 11 attacks, Congress acted quickly to deliver substantial new terror-fighting powers to the president. The USA Patriot Act gave the FBI new authority to conduct wiretaps, seize voice-mail messages, probe bank records, explore electronic databases and obtain nationwide warrants.

The newest initiatives, however, are meeting more resistance.

Senate Democrats are promising to slow down consideration of the Homeland Security legislation in order to fully vet some of the civil rights issues.

Chief among them, and one with intriguing political overtones, is the president's insistence that he be given authority to suspend certain union and civil service rights for Homeland Security workers. Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., chairman of the Senate Government Affairs Committee, has challenged Bush over the issue and vows not to back down.

Lieberman contends it's a "slap in the face" of the police and fire units that responded to the Sept. 11 attacks to suggest that union representation is at odds with national security. But administration officials, in an argument that carried the day in the House, say the new terror threat is so new, so rapidly changing, that the president must have the ability to short-circuit time-consuming rules governing hiring, firing, promotions and transfers.

"When we face unprecedented threats like we're facing, we cannot have business as usual," the president said.

Bush and Lieberman, potential rivals in the 2004 presidential race, are also likely to tangle over a provision that would allow the new department to operate with uncommon secrecy. For example, infrastructure data submitted voluntarily to the government by businesses could be exempted from normal Freedom of Information Act requirements.

Administration officials say businesses, which have valuable information about potential targets, won't disclose vulnerabilities without the guarantee of secrecy. Opponents say it offers a huge loophole allowing firms to keep embarrassing information away from the public.

Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., who led to an unsuccessful effort to remove the provision in the House, criticized business lobbyists, saying they were pursuing self-serving protections when they instead should "do their patriotic duty and disclose vulnerabilities that could endanger the American people."

News organizations also are fighting the measure. First Amendment advocate Paul McMasters said it represents a "standing invitation for companies with something to hide to label incriminating material as 'critical infrastructure information' ... and thus put it beyond the reach of the public, the press, the Congress and the courts."

Timothy Lynch, a scholar at the libertarian Cato Institute, said erosions of individual rights are a self-defeating form of defense against terrorism.

"This cycle of terrorist attack followed by government curtailment of civil liberties must be broken," he said, "or our society will eventually lose the key attribute that has made it great: freedom."

But Ornstein said the context for a national discussion about civil liberties and government powers is likely to be a changing one.

"If we'd had a succession of attacks, if we had undergone the horrors that Israel has undergone," he said, "you'd see a driving demand to solve the problem whatever the short-term damage to civil liberties.

"And we could see that yet."
http://www.nandotimes.com/politics/story/487912p-3893768c.html

"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878

Josey1

Investing in Government Yields Low Returns







Thursday, August 01, 2002
By Radley Balko



There's another financial scandal you may not have heard about. It's been going on for years, and makes Enron, GlobalCrossing and WorldCom look like kiddies pilfering nickels from the lemonade stand.


Over the past five years, this colossal firm spent $142 billion more than it took in - 12 times the cooked figures of Enron, Xerox and WorldCom combined, according to one watchdog group. In 2001 alone, inept accountants completely lost track of $17.1 billion in investor capital.

The Washington Times reports that the firm employs shady accounting gimmicks like "forward funding," in which expenditures for the current year are allocated to the next fiscal year to get around spending limits. Once the calendar turns, the firm then reallocates those expenditures back to the previous year.

The firm routinely borrows from the pension fund it requires all its shareholders and investors to contribute to - a violation of most state laws. It borrows from some departments to pay off the debts of others. It rewards the failures of its subsidiaries with more funding and more staffing. It rarely if ever disbands or dissolves failed endeavors. Instead, it often spins off new offices to address problems current offices are failing to solve, giving rise to jurisdictional and bureaucratic nightmares.

The firm's officers habitually procure money from the firm's treasury for projects benefiting small pockets of investors -- most always at a cost to the body of investors as a whole. Those officers are then rewarded when that small pocket of investors allows them to keep their jobs.

As you've probably guessed, this "firm" isn't Microsoft or Wal-Mart or General Electric. In fact, it isn't a firm at all.

It's the United States government, your government.

And here's the irony of ironies: That same government has regulatory power over the accounting practices of private corporations. Now, politicians, pundits and editorial pages are pining to give this government even more oversight power.

Talk about chutzpah.

When a private company fails its investors, that company usually goes out of business. But when a federal agency fails, it gets a bigger budget and more staff. The federal government continues to fund two businesses that are by all measures unqualified failures (the U.S. Post Office and Amtrak). One of those businesses even has a state-granted monopoly. Even so, both of them bleed money, and are rewarded for their mismanagement with more public funding. This is oversight?

Citizens Against Government Waste reports that the federal government made $12.1 billion in improper payments through its Medicare program alone. That's billion. And the government regularly raids Social Security, which it has long misleadingly told us was a "pension" or "trust" fund. Corporate officers who raid pension funds go to jail.

The hypocrisy here is dumbfounding.

For example, while Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle berates cold-hearted corporate America before the television cameras, his wife lobbies the halls of Congress on behalf of those very same cold-hearted corporations.

House Minority Leader Richard Gephardt also beats the corporate responsibility drum. But Gephardt once took a low-interest loan from DNC Chairman Terry McCauliffe under terms that his rural Missouri constituents could never get from the bank.

McCauliffe himself turned a $100,000 investment in failed GlobalCrossing into a cool $18 million. To my knowledge, McCauliffe has yet to offer any of that 18,000 percent return to struggling GlobalCrossing pensioners. No, instead he's sending out press releases declaring Republicans to be in bed with big business.

President Bush recently scolded corporate America in an overtly political speech. In it, he called for the abolition of "sweetheart" executive loans - the very kinds of loans he himself benefited from while a director at Harken Energy.

We've seen senators and congressmen line up corporate executives for committee hearings, where they unleash invective and vitriol in plain view of television cameras. But once the cameras are off, those senators hop aboard chartered planes from Washington to hideaway retreats, paid for by ... private corporations.

And let's not forget that most of the abuses we're reading about today go back to the 1990s, when the president - the country's CEO - arrogantly and shamelessly lied to the American people. Should we be surprised, then, that CEOs at the time were also lying to their stockholders?

We tend to take our inept federal government with a grain of bemusement. But why? Why do we give government a pass, but then feel outrage when WorldCom makes the New York Times? Everything about corporations, after all, is voluntary. Nothing about government is.

Investors can put their money elsewhere. Employees can take their talents and skills to another firm. The market offers customers dozens of competitive options. Bad companies will eventually fail, and good companies will thrive.

But we're stuck with one federal government. We're obligated by law to pay taxes. There's no alternate government we can "invest" in. And because we're entrenched in a two-party system, "voting the bums out" isn't much of an option either.

We shouldn't be amused by the ineptitude of government; we should be outraged. The idea that an institution as fundamentally unaccountable as the federal government might be given even more power to hold the private sector accountable is, to say the least, laughable.

But hold your chuckles. Because it's about to happen.

Respond to the Writer
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,59266,00.html


"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878

Josey1

editorial
Big Brother's semi-bungle

Monday, August 05, 2002 - Denver's plan to give citizens access to police-intelligence files gathered on them may not be all we would desire, but it's better than not possible targets of police surveillance not knowing.
Mayor Wellington Webb's administration announced Thursday that individuals and groups will have 60 days, beginning Sept. 3, to request access to intelligence files that may have been gathered on them.

The revelation that the Denver cops had gathered data on 3,400 groups and individuals caused a justifiable outcry from civil-liberties advocates and community activists, who were incensed that information had been collected on those who most people would regard as totally benign, such as minority-rights or peace advocates.

Only those files that have a legitimate law-enforcement connection will be withheld under the plan that the city developed to implement the recommendations of a three-judge panel.

The part of the plan that we're not happy about requires a person to go to the front desk of police headquarters to ascertain if a file exists and to request it. It would have been better if the city undertook to notify each of those groups or people that it snooped on. Hours to make the request will be from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., Mondays through Fridays, and 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturdays, Sept. 3-15; and 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Mondays through Fridays, from Sept. 16 to Nov. 1. Valid picture identification is required.

Mark Silverstein of the American Civil Liberties Union rightly notes that it's unfair to put the burden on the individual to guess if they're in the files or not.

All the records will be preserved for posterity in CD-ROM form to be retained by the city attorney's office, but we think it would be better to place such information out of harm's way, under seal with the Denver District Court. That would preclude the possibility of the files ever being used for a less-than-savory political purpose.

We hope the Denver Police Department has learned a valuable lesson from this episode: Many Denver taxpayers, us included, don't want the city's scarce resources squandered spying on pacifist nuns. The focus should be on keeping track of known crooks and troublemakers.
http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36%7E73%7E771204,00.html



"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878

Josey1

The `Posse' protects us


In his outline of homeland security strategies to combat terrorism on U.S. soil, President Bush asked for a "thorough review" of relaxing the federal law that prohibits use of the military in civilian law enforcement. While he did not cite any potential circumstances, Mr. Bush did raise the "threat of catastrophic terrorism" and the need "to determine whether domestic preparedness and response efforts would benefit" from military involvement.

As we have said before - once prior to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and once following those awful events - there is no national security need to alter the law, known as the Posse Comitatus Act.

Coupled with the constitutional mandate for civilian leadership of the armed forces, the 124-year-old law provides the citizenry with protection against the specter of martial law or government by dictatorship, something we've never had to truly be concerned about in the 213 years since the Constitution was ratified in 1789.

True, a rogue president, acting in concert with a renegade military, could theoretically consummate a takeover, but at least there would be no question that such action would be patently illegal.

The act, passed in 1878 to lift the harsh hand of the Reconstruction-era federal government from the Deep South following the Civil War, already has gained sufficient exceptions to accommodate virtually any crisis.

Under various amendments, the President has the authority to use federal troops and nationalized National Guard personnel to quell domestic violence. National Guard troops operating under state authority are exempt from the act, as is the Coast Guard during peacetime. In addition, a court has found that even aerial search and surveillance by military personnel does not violate the law.

Only a real control freak - and that's not to say there aren't some lurking in the Bush Administration - would suggest that civilian law enforcement could be overwhelmed to a degree sufficient to warrant more extreme measures. To relax the law is almost an invitation to some panicky official to declare martial law, and put soldiers on every street corner.

The principle of civilian control of both civilian and military affairs is well rooted in U.S. history and a trustworthy component of American tradition. Even the threat of terrorism is no reason to give it up.
http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?Date=20020805&Category=OPINION02&ArtNo=108040074&Ref=AR



"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878

Josey1

Home > Opinion

Editorial: TIPing point / Turning America into a nation of informers

Monday, August 05, 2002








The Bush administration's proposed Terrorism Information and Prevention System (TIPS) has been shelved by the House of Representatives but remains alive awaiting Senate action in the fall. The proposal, previously scheduled to go into effect Aug. 1, poses in yet another form the post-Sept. 11 question of how much privacy Americans will give up in an effort to be safe.

Heightened vigilance and reporting suspicious activities to the appropriate authorities make sense; ostentatiously turning ordinary Americans into informers against each other is more problematic.

It is certainly the case that some Americans were too relaxed before Sept. 11 about signs of the murderous acts the attackers were planning. Some of the Americans who were complacent, overworked or asleep at the switch were, unfortunately, at the heart of U.S. government security agencies -- the CIA, the FBI, the Immigration and Naturalization Service and American embassies overseas -- as the ongoing congressional hearings are discovering.

On the other hand, turning meter readers, bus drivers, letter carriers and -- let's face it -- neighbors loose on each other as informers is a recipe for poisoning American society. As a practical matter, it could flood law enforcement agencies with irrelevant and inaccurate information.

Anyone who has ever lived in a police state -- Eastern European countries under communism, South Africa under apartheid, China to this day -- can testify to the alienation and distrust that comes to prevail in a society full of informers.

The other part of it is the collector's end. Raw FBI, CIA or police files display a level of viciousness and banality that prevails in folders created from information provided by nebnoses and snitches. It is also important to remember that those files never get retired.

The results of an institutionalized policy of citizens informing on each other are as long-lasting in their effects as a barrel of paint thinner poured into a watershed. The Germans are still going round and round over the contents of the files of the East German secret police, the Stasi, who in their time had thousands of Germans on the payroll, busily reporting on each other.

Americans are already sufficiently vigilant in the wake of the horror of the Sept. 11 attacks. They are already ready to help prevent terrorism by providing relevant information to appropriate security authorities, including local police. Americans do not need nor want their government to turn them against the friendly people in their daily lives -- mail carriers, meter readers, paper carriers and the like -- by turning them and the neighbors into informants against us.

Attorney General John Ashcroft says he considers the proposal to be still alive, in spite of the House rejection. The Senate has not yet expressed itself on the proposal. In our view this is a bad idea and should be dropped now.
http://www.post-gazette.com/forum/20020805edtips05p2.asp

"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878

Josey1

How Conservative Is President Bush?
by Veronique de Rugy

Veronique de Rugy is a fiscal policy analyst at the Cato Institute.

President Bush may be repeating the sins of his father. Although elected on a Reaganesque, tax-cutting platform, the White House has veered to the left. President Bush has signed a bill to regulate political speech, issued protectionist taxes on imported steel and lumber, backed big-spending education and farm bills, and endorsed massive new entitlements for mental health care and prescription drugs. When the numbers are added up, in fact, it looks like President Bush is less conservative than President Clinton.

It makes little sense to discourage one's core supporters prior to a mid-term election. Yet that is the result when a Republican president expands government, which Bush is doing. Also, academic research on voting patterns shows that a president is most likely to get re-elected if voters are enjoying an increase in disposable income. Yet making government bigger is not a recipe for economic growth. After all, there is a reason why Hong Kong grows so fast and France is an economic basket case. But you can't tell that to the Bush administration.

Administration officials privately admit that much of the legislation moving through Congress represents bad public policy. Yet they argue either that everything must take a back seat to the war on terror (much as the first Bush administration treated the war against Iraq) or that compromises are necessary to neutralize issues such as education. But motives and rationalizations do not repeal the laws of economics.

In less than two years, President Bush has presided over more government expansion than took place during eight years of Bill Clinton. For instance:


The education bill expands federal involvement in education. The administration originally argued that the new spending was a necessary price to get vouchers and other reforms. Yet the final bill boosted spending and was stripped of almost all reform initiatives. And there is every reason to believe that this new spending will be counter-productive, like most other federal money spent on education in the past 40 years. Children and taxpayers are the big losers.


The farm bill is best characterized as a bipartisan orgy of special interest politics. Making a mockery of the Freedom to Farm Act, the new legislation boosts farm spending to record levels. Old subsidies have been increased and new subsidies created. Perhaps worst of all, the administration no longer has the moral credibility to pressure the European Union to reform its socialized agricultural policies. Taxpayers and consumers are the big losers.


The protectionist decisions on steel and lumber imports make free traders wish Bill Clinton were still president. These restrictions on world commerce have undermined the productivity of U.S. manufacturers by boosting input prices and creating massive ill will in the international community. American products already have been targeted for reciprocal treatment. Consumers and manufacturers are the big losers.


The campaign finance law is an effort to protect the interests of incumbent politicians by limiting free speech rights during elections. The administration openly acknowledged that the legislation is unconstitutional, yet was unwilling to make a principled argument for the Bill of Rights and fair elections. Voters and the Constitution are the big losers.


New health care entitlements are akin to throwing gasoline on a fire. Medicare and Medicaid already are consuming enormous resources, and the burden of these programs will become even larger when the baby boom generation retires. Adding a new prescription drug benefit will probably boost spending by $1 trillion over 10 years. A mandate for mental health coverage will drive up medical costs, making insurance too expensive for many more families.

Those policy decisions make government bigger and more expensive. They also slow the economy and hurt financial markets -- read the headlines lately? For all his flaws, President Clinton's major policy mistake was the 1993 tax increase. Other changes, such as the welfare reform bill, NAFTA, GATT, farm deregulation, telecommunications deregulation, and financial services deregulation, moved policy in a market-oriented direction.

Perhaps most importantly, there was a substantial reduction in federal spending as a share of gross domestic product during the Clinton years. Using the growth of domestic spending as a benchmark, Clinton was the second most conservative president of the post-World War II era, trailing only Ronald Reagan.

To be sure, much of the credit for Clinton's good policy probably belongs to the Republican Congress, but that is not an excuse for bad policy today. And on one positive note, President Bush has "promised" to fight for partial privatization of Social Security. Yet, so far, President Bush has not vetoed a single piece of legislation. Needless to say, this means it will be rather difficult to blame "big-spending" Democrats if the economy continues to sputter.

http://www.cato.org/dailys/08-03-02.html




"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878

Josey1

- Carolinus -


"More government ALWAYS translates into Less freedom."



Why Do 'They' Hate 'Us'?

by R. Lee Wrights

Almost one year ago Americans were left dumbfounded as they watched two of the tallest structures on the face of the planet crumble into a smoking mountain of rubble, the result of the most devastating terrorist attack ever concocted by man. It was almost impossible to believe that such a heinous act of mass murder and devastating destruction could happen in the greatest nation on the globe. As the shock of the tragedy began to wear off people immediately began asking the inevitable question, "What could possibly motivate supposed religious men to take so many innocent lives?" It is a question I have heard all my life; and even today, we are still wrestling with the quandary of, "Why do 'they' hate 'us'?" Why indeed?

As always, the talking heads and political pundits "gave" us "the" answer hand-crafted and handed down from the slickest spin doctors on Capitol Hill. Third-world countries hate us because we are free. That's right, pure and simple we are hated by people that never even laid eyes on us because of our precious birthright - Freedom. So, in actuality they do not really hate us, but rather, they hate our way of life.

We are told they hate us because our women do not wear veils and our children stop by McDonald's on their way home from school. We are reviled because we drive SUV's filled with petroleum from their oil fields purchased with American dollars that feed their countries' economies. They say we are held in contempt because our citizens are free to choose the religion they wish to practice; and, we are despised because Americans are free to ignore God altogether if they so choose. We are told they want us all dead because we are at liberty to speak our minds.

What's worse? Americans believe this government propaganda.

Now I am not going to try and say that there are not people in this world that hate our freedom. In fact, I know there are folks that hate our freedom and I don't have to leave my hometown to see them. After all, I have attended my share of board of aldermen, county commissioner, and school board meetings and I have yet to find a deficiency of people seeking to usurp freedom in any of them. But I digress.

Obviously there are some people in the world that hate us because of our freedom, but I believe the number is relatively small. Most people in the world today want to be free. They do not hate Lady Liberty. They long to embrace her and know the passionate joy she bestows in the form of pure, unabridged freedom. Indeed, most people envy our freedom as is reflected in the number of illegal aliens estimated to inhabit the United States of America. No, most of the people in the world do not hate "us" because we are free, if they even hate us at all.

What people do hate, and this is a common trait among all nationalities, is government intrusion. They hate the red tape that feeds a bloated bureaucracy no matter what language in which the paperwork is rendered. People all over the world hate being told what to do by overbearing, nursemaid politicians promising to improve their lives. The bigger the government, the more there is to despise. And the only thing people hate worse than perceived intrusions by their own government, are actual intrusions from a foreign government. I mean, is there anything more aggravating than a nosy neighbor that acts like your Mother?

Remember, when the chatting noggins are saying they hate us, the 'they' is usually a relatively small group of individuals and the 'us' is really 'US' which means their hatred is well defined within the Beltway. Most people in foreign countries do not hate you, they hate your government because the President and Congress, whichever flavor is in season this year, cannot keep their collective nose out of everybody else's business. American politicians for decades have deluded themselves into believing that not only do they know what is best for you and I; but moreover, they are convinced they know what is best for the rest of the world as well.

If government intrusion pisses you off then you know why they hate us, and it is not because of our freedom. It is because our government refuses to let others be free. By trying to impose our values upon unknown people, we deprive those same people of the freedom of choice. You cannot have freedom without choice. Values are subjective and cannot be imposed upon any man, for each must acquire his values from the experience of exercising his own free will. One man's sin may be another's salvation. But the one thing that all men will rebel against is anyone telling him/her that they can or cannot do something. We ALL want to be free to make our own decisions and our own choices absent meddling by anyone or any agency regardless of the number of letters on their black baseball caps.

Why do they hate us? Maybe it would be more appropriate to ask, "Why shouldn't they hate us?" We have bombed their homes and deposed their rulers only to replace those rulers with banana republics that leave the people in worse conditions than they had known before. Our President declares that you are either with him or against him and if you stand against him you will die. Too bad that you want no part of the fight that is brewing, you are the ones that will be forever remembered as "collateral damage."

Why do they hate us? Why indeed?

"It is good that war is so terrible, or men would grow to like it too much." - Robert E. Lee

http://www.libertyforall.net/2002/archive/august04/hate.html




"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878

Josey1

Medical 'Privacy' Rules Advance a National ID
Charlotte Twight
Tuesday, Aug. 6, 2002
Editor's note: This is part two of an article on how federal regulations that purportedly protect medical privacy have in fact done the opposite. Part one: Medical 'Privacy' Regulations Destroy Privacy.
Why should ordinary people bother to read the medical privacy rules anyway? Media and government sources continue to assert the benign nature of the new regulations, which are said to promise cost savings through database standardization along with protection of people's medical privacy. Why be concerned?

One reason for concern is that recent HHS regulations have created an architecture for the standardization of our medical records that facilitates their integration into comprehensive medical portraits of individuals. Carrying out its HIPAA mandate, HHS in August 2000 published a final rule titled "Standards for Electronic Transactions" (hereafter, the "transactions rule"), a regulatory package that specifies uniform nationwide formats and codes for electronic medical records (U.S. Dept. of HHS HCFA 2000).

Although data formats and codes may sound boring and technical, they lie at the heart of the federal government's current quest to acquire centralized medical data about us. Intended to standardize most electronic medical records nationwide, the transactions rule makes it much easier to transmit and combine medical information about an individual from diverse sources. Calling it the "most dangerous aspect of the new regulations," Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, a physician, stated:


All health care providers, including private physicians, insurance companies, and HMOs, will be forced to use a standard data format for patient records. Once standardized information is entered into a networked government database, it will be virtually impossible to prevent widespread dissemination of that information. . . . The truth is that a centralized database will make it far easier for both government agencies and private companies to access your health records. (Paul 2001)
Even Shalala Noted the Danger

Even Clinton HHS Secretary Donna Shalala acknowledged the threat to privacy created by the transactions rule, stressing the importance of adopting privacy rules to offset it.

HHS stated, "If the privacy standards are substantially delayed, or if Congress fails to adopt comprehensive and effective privacy standards that supercede [sic] the standards we are developing, we would seriously consider suspending the application of the transaction standards or taking action to withdraw this rule" (U.S. Dept. of HHS HCFA 2000, 50365; my emphasis).

How often does one encounter a federal agency that, having just created a regulation, immediately expresses a willingness to suspend it?

A close reading of the transactions rule clarifies the reasons for these extraordinary expressions of concern. The transactions rule mandates nationwide use of specific, standardized code sets for recording medical information (data elements) applicable to "standard transactions." The eight identified standard transactions are:


Health care claims or equivalent encounter information.

Eligibility for a health plan.

Referral certification and authorization.

Health care claim status.

Enrollment and disenrollment in a health plan.

Health care payment and remittance advice.

Health plan premium payments.

Coordination of benefits (U.S. Dept. of HHS HCFA 2000, 50370-72).
These categories are broadly defined. "Health care claims or equivalent encounter information," for example, include not only actual reimbursement claims but also, in the absence of any direct claim, "the transmission of encounter information for the purpose of reporting health care" (U.S. Dept. of HHS HCFA 2000, 50370, ?162.1101b).

Be Careful What You Tell Your Doctor

In other words, even without a claim for reimbursement, reports of personal conversations with our physicians - deemed by the federal government to be "encounter information" - are to be treated as valid input to the ever-growing medical databases. With such a broad interpretation of the key terms, what medical transaction would not fit into at least one of the listed categories?

Records of these standard transactions must conform to the uniform data elements and code sets mandated by the new regulations. Data elements denote categories of information to be reported, and code sets establish the specific codes to be used to "fill in" a data element.

Thus, the code sets establish uniform codes for items such as specific diseases, injuries, impairments, diagnoses, treatment, drugs, physician services, radiologic procedures, clinical laboratory tests, and so on (U.S. Dept. of HHS HCFA 2000, 50370, ?162.1002). For example, a health care claim transaction document might contain, as one of its data elements, the attending physician's "diag-nosis." The diagnosis data element would then be filled in using one of the uniform codes covering the full range of potential diagnoses.

All covered entities - health plans, health care clearinghouses, and every health care provider "who transmits any health information in electronic form" - must use the standardized codes and data elements (U.S. Dept. of HHS HCFA 2000, 50365, ?160.103).

Even Birth Control and Menstruation Are Coded

The number and detail of these codes and elements are astonishing. Not counting the actual codes, the basic data elements to which the codes pertain fill 11 pages, three columns per page (U.S. Dept. of HHS HCFA 1998a, 25310). These data elements include such things as patient Social Security number, claim submission and reason code, condition codes, diagnosis code, date of last menstrual period, mammography-certification number, family-planning indicator, patient primary identifier, subscriber current weight, subscriber previous weight, reason for last visit, occupation code, prognosis code, service-type code, surgical-procedure code, and hundreds of additional items of intensely personal information.

Unique identifiers for employers, providers, and patients are also required for the standard transactions. HHS has proposed as the "national standard employer identifier" the employer identification number (EIN )- that is, the employer's "taxpayer identifying number" - stating that "each health care provider must use the national employer identifier whenever required on all transactions the health care provider transmits electronically" and that health plans and health care clearinghouses must use the EIN whenever required as a data element on standard transactions (U.S. Dept. of HHS HCFA 1998b, 32798).

Another proposed HHS rule would require health plans, health care clearinghouses, and health care providers to use as their unique identifiers the "national provider identifier" supported by the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA), consisting of "an 8-position alphanumeric identifier, which includes as the eighth position a check digit" (U.S. Dept. of HHS HCFA 1998c, 25356). This proposed rule would require each health care provider to "obtain, by application if necessary, a national provider identifier," ordering all covered entities to supply and use national provider identifiers for all standard transactions.

National ID

More contentious are the HIPAA-mandated unique health identifiers for every American. Many people recoiled in 1998 when HHS issued a "White Paper" describing the alternate forms that the unique identifier might take, including biometric identifiers such as retinal-pattern analysis, iris scans, and voice-pattern analysis, among other candidate identifiers (U.S. Dept. of HHS 1998, sec. IIIC; Twight 1999, 182-84).

When Congress later postponed implementation of the identifiers on a year-by-year basis,2 privacy advocates expressed hope that eventual congressional repeal of the mandate for unique health identifiers might yet protect our medical privacy.

It is a vain hope. Even if Congress, bowing to political pressure by privacy groups, "permanently" prohibited creation of new identifiers, our medical records would still carry a unique health identifier: namely, the Social Security number (SSN) that health care providers for years have demanded and used to identify our records.

HHS itself listed the SSN as a candidate identifier, citing its status as "the current de facto identifier" as an advantage of its use. With or without new identifiers, medical privacy thus remains in jeopardy.

Either way, the HIPAA-envisioned system of standardized, widely shared personal medical information will proceed unimpeded. Ironically, repeal of the new identifier requirement, though not negating the threat to medical privacy, might even encourage public acquiescence to the emerging federal health information system.

Whatever the chosen patient identifier, with our detailed medical histories transcribed into standard transactions and formatted with standard data elements and uniform codes as the new regulations require, a treasure trove of personal information about each of us will exist in an easily manipulable and transferable form.

The proffered shield against devastating abuse of this information is the HHS final rule, "Standards for Privacy of Individually Identifiable Health Information," which took effect April 14, 2001 (U.S. Dept. of HHS OPE 2000). Do these privacy standards create an effective shield, or are they instead a sieve through which individually identifiable health information can readily pass?


Next: Media whitewash the anti-privacy regulations.

Footnote
2. For the December 2000 postponement, see Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2001, Public Law 106-554, 106th Cong., 2d sess., December 21, 2000, 114 Stat. 2763 (H.R. 4577), Appendix A, ?514 at 114 Stat. 2763A-71. Section 514 states in its entirety: "None of the funds made available in this Act may be used to promulgate or adopt any final standard under section 1173(b) of the Social Security Act (42 U.S.C. 1320d-2b) providing for, or providing for the assignment of, a unique health identifier for any individual (except in an individual's capacity as an employer or a health care provider), until legislation is enacted specifically approving the standard." Congress first passed measures delaying promulgation of such identifiers in the fall of 1998.




* * *
This article is adapted with permission of the publisher from the article "Health and Human Services 'Privacy' Standards: The Coming Destruction of Medical Privacy," by Charlotte Twight, in The Independent Review: A Journal of Political Economy (Spring 2002, vol. VI, no. 4, p. 485-511). c Copyright 2002, The Independent Institute, 100 Swan Way, Oakland, Calif. 94621-1428; http://www.independent.org.

Charlotte Twight is a professor of economics at Boise State University.

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2002/8/5/154456.shtml

"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878