“Reality, what a concept,” is the hallmark of Robin Williams reason.  As a concept it exists in the human mind and no where else. Individually it is the synthesis of mans conception and understanding. And so, whatever the majority holds to be true is in fact the truth. By controlling minds, society controls the truth as they perceive it.

Government leaders don’t even try to pretend that their system is intended to be for the benefit of society, because men, being frail and cowardly creatures, seek escape from the burdens of daily responsibility and are inwardly unable to face the truth. Leadership is aware of this fact and have only one aim, and that is to amass power. To them power is not a means, it is an end that is justified by the means. Power means having the ability to inflict unlimited pain and suffering on others to accomplish the desired end. For them it creates reality, and in so doing it creates truth. The position of the power elite can be said to be the extreme form of philosophical idealism, but it is more relevant to recognize that the concept of truth and reality are extreme forms of pragmatism by the people in which the truth becomes subordinate to the ruling elite. Truth is proven by the consensus of millions; so how can a minority of one be right? Read the rest of this entry »

Recently the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) passed a resolution condemning racism in the Tea Party movement. It was at once ironic and idiotic when you considered the history and behavior documented for both groups. Any group that holds a demonstration generally leaves behind a mess and very often property damage and personal injuries. The history and video record of Tea Party demonstrations is that their sites are usually cleaner and left in pristine shape. More to the point, they have never required any attention from law enforcement except to enforce standard crowd control. The only message they have ever made central to their protest is too much taxing, too much spending, too much government, and too much infringement on the freedom of citizens.

There have always been a number of videos on the air and on the web, which feature members of the Tea Party movement juxtaposed by a preponderance of Black politicians, office holders, religious leaders, fringe and main stream racially centric groups. The Tea party message is unrelenting and unless the video is doctored there are members of every racial group participating in their protest. On the other side are fire and brimstone protestations of racism, maltreatment, and other allegations which have very few things in common with reality.  Since the election of the Post Racial President Barack Obama the racial atmosphere in the country has become absolutely toxic and there are many who fear that a race war is just on the horizon. It seems almost idiotic when you consider that the racial problems in fly over country versus those in Washington DC demonstrate more clearly than ever that there are more racists per capita in Washington than in any average city in the US. That does not include New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Detroit, and the like. Read the rest of this entry »

Starting their plan for monthly meetings as the country moves toward the midterm elections, the Winston-Salem Chapter of the NC Tea Party met at Starbuck’s near Stanleyville to determine their strength and levels of enthusiasm.  The venue selected was expected to accommodate the intimate gathering that organizers expected, but attendance quickly forced the meeting to occupy two rooms in order to avoid fire code violations for occupancy. While about 15 were expected to turn out for this first meeting, it quickly grew to exceed 40, surprising organizers and attendees alike.

The meeting was hosted by Nathan Jones, a candidate for the State Senate in District 32, and was addressed by Joyce Krawiec, the NC Grass Roots Coordinator for Freedom Works.  Nathan, who is the founder of this chapter of the NC Tea Party has made his commitment to the people to run for the State Senate and stand up for the people and his conservative values. Nathan has been a tireless advocate for Constitutional rights and for the rights of the people to be protected from government overreach and abuse. Joyce Krawiec is a lecturer and activist associated with the Freedom Works foundation. Founded in 1984, FreedomWorks is headquartered in Washington, DC, and has hundreds of thousands of grassroots volunteers nationwide. The organization is chaired by former U.S. House Majority Leader Dick Armey.

Joyce spoke passionately on the need for citizens to become involved in the processes that supported elections and to stay in touch with their elected representatives after the fact to be sure that they were kept aware of the peoples voice from day to day. Her own visible passion and interest raised the same passions in her audience who were clearly energized and excited about the prospects of working toward initiating substantial change with the mid term election.

It is clear to all who attended this meeting and to many who will come to future meetings and make their voices heard, that the country needs its citizens to step up and save her from the governance under which she literally suffers now. America is indeed in trouble, and only the citizens who are the life blood of our great nation are empowered with the ability to make the changes necessary. The NC Tea Party shares the same values that Tea Parties across the country do. We join hands in the spiritual sense to put our arms around the country we love and bring her prosperity and promise back for generations yet to come.

In a total affront to any and all privacy The North Carolina Department Of Revenue FLEW to Seattle to demand Amazon product all records for purchases by North Carolina residents from 2003-2010. Note I capitalized “FLEW” because instead of licking a stamp or using a courier service some enterprising soul in Raleigh figure out how to get a free vacation on you on me by hand delivering the demand letter to Amazon. So not only does the state want to know what you have been reading but they want you to pay for them to find it out while they take cross country flights, stay in hotels and have a nice dinner!

Amazon seeks a declaration that the DOR’s ongoing demand for information that will disclose the names, addresses and purchasing habits of Amazon’s North Carolina customers violates the rights of Amazon to sell, and its customers to purchase, books, movies, music, and other lawful expressive content free from government intrusion into the customers’ reading, viewing and listening choices.  These rights are secured under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, Article I, sections 4 and 5 of the Washington State Constitution, and federal law.  The DOR’s demand for the identity of customers who purchased video material also violates the Video Privacy Protection Act of 1988, 18 U.S.C. § 2710.  Declaratory relief from this Court is necessary to avoid piecemeal litigation or inconsistent rulings in the event other states make similar demands for customer data.

Of course Amazon has turned around and filed an immediate suit to block this request as it flies in the face of any number of court rulings that such information is private however now guess what, we get to send lawyers and their team to Seattle to argue that North Carolina does have a right to this information. Not only are you being asked to provide the state with Federally protected information but your being forced to pay to argue against your own personal rights in a court clear across the country!

The DOR has no business seeking to uncover the identity of Amazon’s customers who purchased expressive content … let alone associating customers’ names and addresses with the specific books, music, and video content that they have purchased,” Amazon wrote. “The collection and disclosure of the customer data … will link those purchases directly to the customers’ names and addresses, exposing their otherwise private reading, viewing, listening and other personal choices to government scrutiny

Please everyone take the time to read this great post on cnet which highlights exactly why North Carolina has no legal right to this information and contact your Representatives in Raleigh immediately. This is not a Left or Right side of the issue debate this is your personal privacy, protected by multiple Federal laws and court cases which the fools in Raleigh don’t seem to care about. While you have your Representative on the phone ask them who went to Seattle, did they fly coach and at what cost, where did they stay and eat and what was the final tally for hand delivering a letter to Amazon.

ACTION ALERT…NC Gov Bev Perdue Demands To Know What you Bought at Amazon

Amazon: NC bid to track taxes violates free speech

To read the full complaint Amazon has filed click here: Amazon v. Kenneth Lay

In case you missed the news a Federal Appeals Court ruled this week on if the FCC has the authority to dictate to Internet Providers how the manage the data being sent through their networks. In 2007 the FCC judged that Comcast could not throttle or delay certain types of traffic such as Bit Torrent, a type of file transfer, however Comcast argued the FCC did not have the authority to make such a ruling or issue any fines. This week a D.C. Appeals Court agreed with Comcast that the FCC’s statutory authority does not extend into how ISP’s manage their network traffic or content.

Now on to why this has any bearing on your day to day life or business.

The term Net Neutrality in it’s basic form means all traffic on a public network (Internet) must be treat equally. This means your video watching of YouTube and your neighbors online gaming both must travel across the Internet unencumbered by traffic management which places one type of web use above another. Sounds simple and basic enough right? Well ISP’s argue that for one they need to manage their networks to provide quality service to all customers and if one customer or type of use is putting a strain on the system they need to be allowed to adjust that traffic so all users get acceptable access. Well that also sounds reasonable enough doesn’t it? Thus the problem, should all access be equal or should an ISP be able to control the bandwidth so all users get reasonable performance.

Now for the Dark Side. Let’s say ISPs such as Comcast and Time Warner have certain content on the web. As a Road Runner customer I find I can access that Time Warner content extremely fast but when I try to watch something Comcast is providing I find it’s horribly slow, hmm, is it fair for Road Runner to slow down access to competitive services or product? Better yet let’s say a Road Runner calls up Google who owns YouTube and says, “we need you to start paying for the amount of data people are using to view your content or we will start slowing that content delivery down. Don’t forget Google is saying they want to drop fiber in a couple of cities and those cities are bending over backwards to get Google’s money but what if Google did lay fiber in say Winston-Salem then turned around and only allowed high speed access to Google services and slowed down access to everything else? Well I think it would be easy to argue none of us think either of those situations would be a good idea.

So should we be upset that the courts ruled the FCC doesn’t have the right to say no to either of the above thus giving the FCC carte blanche to be the sole authority on how network bandwidth is provided? To steal a movie line from a great movie , “I Think NOT!” and the reason is simple, the so called Fairness Doctrine and it’s new Obama appointed Czar, The Chief Diversity Officer. Now I’m not going to get all political in this however it should be noted that if the court had let the FCC’s argument stand then there is absolutely nothing to stop the FCC from saying there has to be not only equal access to the networks but the content on the web must also be equal in it’s “diversity”. Now this is a very scary thought that a group of unelected officials could in fact determine if you get to listen to Rush Limbaugh online because there would have to be an equal liberal voice so as to keep the Internet “diverse”.  Let’s bring it even further down to the local level let’s say you run a website where you share your political views but to keep things “diverse” you would be forced to have an equal amount of opposing content. Okay you think that’s absurd the FCC could not ever do that however if the ruling had stood they could have in fact done just that. Your church website could have been ordered to put up links to gay websites, local bars, Las Vegas casinos or anything else because everything had to be equal and “diverse”.

Sure, sure the above would have hopefully never happened however by allowing a commission to expand it’s powers beyond what our elected officials have given them we have to assume the worse since who knows what could happen and we would have had no recourse. By the courts stepping in the concept of Net Neutrality is now tossed back to Congress where hopefully we will have public and well as industry input to come up with rules which are fair but more importantly have a system of checks and balances. Should Road Runner be able to slow down Skype because Road Runner sells VOIP or should you be able to watch MSNBC or FOX at equal speeds and who is to be the judge and jury of that is not something we want a few beltway insiders to determine.

I was browsing around and found a recording of FDR’s 1942 State Of The Union Address which then lead me to look up the entire address. The speech as a whole was of course about the current World War with Germany and Japan however certain parts of the address certainly would seem to apply to 2010 as much as they did to 1942.

We are fighting today for security, for progress, and for peace, not only for ourselves but for all men, not only for one generation but for all generations. We are fighting to cleanse the world of ancient evils, ancient ills.

Our enemies are guided by brutal cynicism, by unholy contempt for the human race. We are inspired by a faith that goes back through all the years to the first chapter of the Book of Genesis: "God created man in His own image."

We on our side are striving to be true to that divine heritage. We are fighting, as our fathers have fought, to uphold the doctrine that all men are equal in the sight of God. Those on the other side are striving to destroy this deep belief and to create a world in their own image—a world of tyranny and cruelty and serfdom.

That is the conflict that day and night now pervades our lives.

No compromise can end that conflict. There never has been, there never can be, successful compromise between good and evil. Only total victory can reward the champions of tolerance, and decency, and freedom, and faith.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, January 6, 1942

I’ll let the legal types dig into the exact ruling but in a case brought by Janet Joyner and Constance Lynn Blackmon the courts have ruled the County Board of Commissioners is violating the law in holding invocation or prayer prior to County meetings. Of course it looks like the county gets to pay the legal fees associated with this as well.

 

Relief
Plaintiffs seek relief in the form of a declaratory judgment, an injunction prohibiting Defendant from allowing sectarian prayers at its Board meetings, nominal damages, and the payment of reasonable expenses and attorney’s fees.  (Id. at 15.)  This Court should declare that the effect of Defendant’s policy is to violate the Establishment Clause of the United States Constitution and allow the recovery of nominal damages and attorney’s fees as part
of the costs under 42 U.S.C. § 1988.  The Court should enjoin the continuation of the Policy as it is now implemented.

Conclusion
For the foregoing reasons, IT IS RECOMMENDED that Plaintiffs’ Motion for Summary Judgment (Docket No. 63) be granted.

Former Governor Easley had his day before the North Carolina State Board Of Elections and the results could lead to Easley joining the long list of NC jailbird politicians. From House Speaker Jim Black to former Whip Frank Ballance or former Agriculture Commissioner Meg Scott Phipps the list of political figures in this state that have been sent to the big house is growing daily.

The State Board Of Elections found former Governor Easley  guilty of not reporting campaign use of private jets and submitted there findings and evidence to the Wake County District Attorney for further investigation. The board fined Easley $100,000 and suggested that campaign finance laws were violated. Furthermore there are ongoing state and Federal investigations into Easley for a land deal and attempts to hide campaign uses of private jets.