Will Grigg's Liberty Minutes
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Will Grigg’s Liberty Minute

June 30, 2010

Imagine an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in which the self-appointed leader extols the supposed merits of drunkenness, and you’ll capture some of the weirdness of the recently concluded G20 Summit in Toronto.

With nations across the globe mired in debt and the world sinking into depression, Barack Obama actually chided European nations for their tardy and tentative attempts at austerity. Obama and his handlers remain committed to the notion that prosperity can only be achieved through ever-deepening government debt and ever-expanding government control over the means of production.

According to Paul Krugman of the New York Times, the Nobel-winning Keynesian nitwit regarded in some circles as an economist, the formula for recovery is this: “Spend now, while the economy remains depressed; save later, once it has recovered.” This makes as much sense as saying, “Feast now while the pantry is bare; diet later, once the larder overflows.”

People of that persuasion literally deify the government. All of us pay an awful price for their blasphemy.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

Will Grigg’s Liberty Minute

June 29, 2010

El Reno, Oklahoma resident Lonnie Tinsley was worried that his ailing 86-year-old grandmother, Lona Varner, had overdosed on her medication. He dialed 911 to summon help from an EMT. Instead, Officer Thomas Duran of the El Reno police department arrived.

Tinsley warned Duran, “I don’t think she wants you here.” When the officer ignored Tinsley and entered Varner’s room, the bedridden geriatric – who was blind in one eye and tethered to an oxygen tank – allegedly grabbed a kitchen knife and told Duran to leave. When Tinsley approached his grandmother to relieve her of the knife, the officer – who had taken cover – ordered him away. Duran then called for backup.

Eventually as many as a dozen police officers thronged the home. Varner was shot twice with a Taser. When Tinsley objected he was stuffed into a police car. Eventually Varner got medical attention, but only after being needlessly electrocuted and traumatized by police who turned an emergency into a crisis.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

Will Grigg’s Liberty Minute

June 28, 2010

Denver resident Amy Shroff was awarded a restraining order preventing Greg Kruse, the violent man who fathered her child, from approaching within 100 yards.
The shared custody agreement required that Shroff and Kruse meet at the local police station to transfer their infant daughter. , When Shroff arrived to drop off the child on Feb. 23, 2006 Kruse violated the order by parking his truck behind her car to block her exit. Shroff went into the station to seek help – and ended up being arrested for violating the no-contact order.

Officer Frank Spellman – who apparently is a functional illiterate -- was given a copy of the order, which clearly specified that Shroff was the protected party. Yet he arrested the mother, tearing her away from her 4-month-old nursing daughter and subjecting the victim to a strip search and verbal abuse.

The Denver PD has offered $175,000 to settle . Shroff’s federal lawsuit

It sometimes seems as if incurable stupidity and pathological arrogance are prerequisites for a career in law enforcement.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

Will Grigg’s Liberty Minute

June 25, 2010

They have no idea what they are doing, or what will happen as a result – but the people who presume to rule us are . finishing plans for the comprehensive restructuring of the nation’s financial system

The legislation would “redraw how money flows through the U.S. economy,” . reports the Wall Street Journal

Predictably, the measure will grant expansive new powers to the Federal Reserve, the agency that created the financial crisis. A financial commissar will be appointed to write and enforce rules and to seize financial firms at whim.

Retiring Connecticut Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd, the chief sponsor of the legislation, : confesses “No one will know until this is actually in place how it works.” Despite this admission, Dodd sees nothing improper about inflicting a measure on the country that, in his own words, “deals with every single aspect of our lives.”
The architects of our financial crisis will now have unlimited power – and this is supposed to be a good thing?

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

Will Grigg’s Liberty Minute

June 24, 2010

With the exception of the Federal Reserve – the government’s official counterfeiting arm – no institution did more to inflate the recently collapsed housing bubble than Fannie Mae.

By acting as a government-guaranteed backstop, Fannie Mae and its counterpart, Freddie Mac, encouraged lenders to issue mortgages to unqualified home buyers. In late 2008, the government formally assumed control of Fannie and Freddie, using money extorted from taxpayers to bail them out, thereby preserving the benefits enjoyed by their well-compensated corporate apparatchiks.

A growing number of homeowners are now in a position of negative equity – meaning they owe more than their homes are worth. Many people in that position are considering “strategic default” – walking away from their mortgages.

Rather than negotiating with homeowners, Fannie and other subsidized Shylocks are prepared to seize other assets – such as cars and bank accounts -- from people left in an untenable financial position due to machinations over which they have no control.

This is the kind of thing that leads to revolution.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

Will Grigg’s Liberty Minute

June 23, 2010

Until recently, 51-year-old Sholom Rubashkin ran Glatt Kosher Agriprocessors in Potsville, Iowa. Federal investigators staged a military raid against the plant in 2008.

To investigate allegations of bookkeeping irregularities, the Feds deployed a Blackhawk helicopter and machine-gun-toting troops.After poring over the company’s records, federal prosecutors, claiming that Sholom had overstated revenues, prosecuted him for financial fraud.

At a time when taxpayers are bailing out Wall Street’s fraud merchants, the Regime is imposing a 27-year prison term – an effective life sentence – on a Hasidic Jewish kosher butcher who made a bookkeeping error when requesting a loan he intended to pay back.

Sholom’s Hasidic Jewish parents fled the Soviet Union at a time when Stalin and Hitler were at war with each other. Knowing a victory by either would lead to terrible consequences, they came to the United States. Sholom has been imprisoned by a regime that is beginning to emulate the totalitarian monsters his family fled.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

Will Grigg’s Liberty Minute

June 22, 2010

General Stanley McChrystal, military commander in Afghanistan, was summoned to the White House by President Obama after the General publicly disparaged top administration officials. His remarks appear to reflect his frustration over being put in charge of an unwinnable war.

As is so frequently the case, the point of the Afghanistan campaign is not to defeat an aggressive enemy, but to prolong a conflict that is profitable for the politically connected.

Richard Holbrooke, Obama’s special envoy to Afghanistan, laid out the matter bluntly in an interview with the German press in which he frankly said that those who support the occupation will get a cut of . Afghanistan’s considerable mineral wealth

Among them are what the New York Times calls “a network of warlords … who are making millions of dollars escorting NATO convoys” in a Mafia-style protection racket. But the whole undertaking is nothing but a vast criminal enterprise.

Gen. McChrystal will almost certainly be sacked. A better choice would be to end the Afghan war.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

Will Grigg’s Liberty Minute

June 21, 2010

Connecticut Senator Joseph Lieberman bears a striking physical resemblance to the fictional Senator Palpatine from the Star Wars film series. Palpatine’s mild and unassuming manner concealed bottomless guile and corrupt ambition; he would eventually emerge as the dictatorial ruler of the first galactic empire.

We can rely on the Connecticut Senator to exploit every opportunity to expand state power. He recently proposed a measure that would strip Americans of their U.S. citizenship on the mere accusation of collaborating with terrorists – rather than doing so after their guilt was established.

” Liberman recently sponsored a measure entitled the “Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act. That measure would provide the president with a “kill switch” to disconnect elements of the internet for reasons of national security.

“Right now [in] China, the government can disconnect parts of its Internet in case of war and we need to have that here too,” insisted Liberman in defense of his totalitarian measure. That’s an argument only Emperor Palaptine would find persuasive.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

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Will Grigg’s Liberty Minute

June 18, 2010

Before announcing his retirement from the Senate, Connecticut Democrat Chris Dodd proposed a large-scale reform of the banking industry. Predictably, it would ignore the fundamental problem – the incurably corrupt Federal Reserve System and the culture of collusion it has created in the government-wedded financial services industry.

Dodd, a supposed tribune of the people, arranged a parting gift to one of his most treasured constituencies – Connecticut’s Mohegan Indian Tribal Council, which operates one of the highest-grossing casinos in the country. Dodd arranged for the Council to receive $54 million in so-called “stimulus” money to finish construction of a community center.

The money was earmarked for rural development programs in impoverished communities. In 2009, despite the economic slow-down, the Mohegan Sun casino pulled in more than $1.3 billion in revenue.

As the song by Billie Holliday put it, “Them’s that got shall get, them’s that not shall lose.” So it was in the last government-induced Great Depression, and so it will be in the one that has begun.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

Will Grigg’s Liberty Minute

June 17, 2010

Sending an innocent man to be tortured in Syria is an exercise of official discretion – but hurting the feelings of those who did so by questioning their motives is unconscionable cruelty.

This is , the official position of the squalid regime ruling us as laid out by both the Bush and Obama juntas.

Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian citizen with no criminal history or inclinations whatsoever, was detained while changing planes at JFK airport. He was sent, by way of “extraordinary rendition,” to Jordan, where intelligence officials delivered him to Syria. There he underwent nearly a year of torture and other abuse until, broken, he signed a bogus terrorism confession.

Rather than being prosecuted, Arar was released to Canada. There he received an official apology from the government, which is continuing an official inquiry.

The Supreme Court recently refused to hear a lawsuit filed by Arar, tacitly endorsing the Bush/Obama view that it’s a crime to hurt the feelings of government officials who conspire to torture the innocent.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

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Will Grigg’s Liberty Minute

June 16, 2010

Ryan Snodgrass, a Colorado rafting guide, was arrested and charged with “obstructing government operations.” His supposed crime was to jump into Clear Creek and save a young rafting student while government-employed rescue workers dithered nearby.

Sheriff Don Kruger complained that Snodgrass "jeopardized the rescue operation." In fact, Snodgrass had ample training and was fully prepared to conduct the rescue. His composure and professionalism contrasted sharply with the potentially lethal timidity of the government-employed search and rescue team.

Jamie Hinton, volunteer fire chief for tiny Magnolia Springs, Alabama, was threatened with imprisonment for “violating the federal and state chain of command” by organizing a town effort to protect the local bay from the BP oil spill. Terrified that the town might seize the initiative, BP and the Obama administration promise to preserve the harbor – but Hinton and his friends stand ready to act.

Tax-feeders can be expected to punish productive citizens whose competence underscores government’s corruption and inefficiency.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

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Will Grigg’s Liberty Minute

June 15, 2010

Puerto Rico is now being patrolled by troops who recently returned from Iraq. National Guard personnel are manning checkpoints and conducting other police duties in response to a recent uptick in violent crime.

What is happening in Puerto Rico is increasingly common, in spite of the fact that the federal Posse Comitatus law explicitly forbids the use of the military in domestic law enforcement. Specialized National Guard task forces were used to provide security during the 2008 Democratic and Republican national conventions. During the Republican event in Minnesota, troops aided militarized riot police in the mass detention of nearly 300 people, who were arrested without probable cause of any kind while sitting peacefully in a public park.

The National Guard was also deployed on the streets of Pittsburgh during last fall’s G-20 economic summit. Troops in armored vehicles employed a so-called “sonic cannon” developed for use in Iraq.

Remember: We cannot be an empire abroad and a free republic at home.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

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Will Grigg’s Liberty Minute

June 14, 2010

In a gesture fraught with symbolic significance, Detroit Mayor Dave Bing has announced that the city will relocate the headquarters of the police and fire departments to the long-vacant MGM Grand Detroit casino.

Detroit, once the showcase of America’s manufacturing might, is a virtual ghost town. Unemployment rates are reaching the stratosphere. Abandoned homes once valued at hundreds of thousands of dollars remain unsold at prices as low as one dollar apiece. The city is demolishing 10,000 houses – including, recently, the childhood home of Mitt Romney. By some estimates, there are more than 90,000 abandoned homes in Detroit.

Similarly, soaring unemployment and a rapidly spreading foreclosure blight are killing Las Vegas. Nationally, about a quarter of all households are “underwater” on their mortgages – meaning they owe more than their houses are currently worth. In Nevada, that figure is a horrifying 65 percent, and Vegas is the epicenter of that unprecedented disaster.

These are snapshots of a country rapidly headed for Third World status.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

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Will Grigg’s Liberty Minute

June 11, 2010

Of the 431,000 jobs supposedly created by the U.S. economy in May, 411,000 were temporary positions with the Census Bureau, which is engaging in deliberate fraud to inflate employment statistics.

Census employee Naomi Cohn has disclosed that “the Census Bureau is hiring more people than needed – while at the same time doling out only a few half days of work to many employees….” Cohn’s training class consisted of 80 employees, despite the fact that “only 17 were needed for the project….” A mob of 20 enumerators was sent to count visitors at a local soup kitchen, a task easily performed by a single employee.

A Census position “cannot reasonably be characterized as a job,” Cohn contends. Like many other employees, Cohn has been fired and re-hired by the Bureau several times – and on each occasion the Bureau reported the supposed creation of another job.

As Nietzsche observed, everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has is stolen.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

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Will Grigg’s Liberty Minute

June 10, 2010

No later than 2012, the federal government’s aggregate debt will exceed the gross domestic product. That same government is siphoning away what remains of the private wealth of our country, lavishing it on politically connected criminals on Wall Street.
Common people with petty debts are treated much differently.

The Minneapolis Star-Tribune describes how “people are routinely being thrown in jail for failing to pay debts.” Incarcerated debtors are forced to sign documents permitting the garnishment of wages and bank accounts. The beneficiaries are huge, centralized collection firms that have purchased old debts for pennies on the dollar. In one instance a man was given “indefinite incarceration” over a $350 debt.

Petty thieves find themselves behind bars, or dangling from a noose. The big-time criminals are those who run the jails and operate the gallows. In similar fashion, the world’s largest debtors are using government power to enrich themselves while people unable to pay much smaller debts increasingly find themselves in modern debtor’s prison.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

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Will Grigg’s Liberty Minute

June 9, 2010

It sometimes seems as if incurable economic illiteracy is a prerequisite of a political career. North Carolina Congressman Brad Miller offers a splendid example of this disability in his proposed “Residential Construction Lending Act.”

By providing cheap credit and encouraging lenders to offer mortgages to unqualified buyers, the recent Federal Reserve-engineered housing boom produced an unprecedented housing glut.
Recovery in the residential real estate sector requires the liquidation of that over-supply. Warren Buffet suggested, semi-facetiously, that the first step to recovery would be to “blow up a lot of houses.” The city government of Detroit intends to act on that principle by demolishing at least 10,000 vacant houses over the next three years.

A much better approach to liquidation would be to permit prices to fall in order for the present housing inventory to be sold. But Rep. Miller, in classic Keynesian fashion, seeks government intervention to keep prices inflated. This approach, which is typical of government “stimulus” programs, will simply prolong and deepen the depression.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

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Will Grigg’s Liberty Minute

June 8, 2010

During an August 1997 counter-terrorism conference at the University of Illinois-Chicago, your correspondent saw a presentation by ATF official Kathleen Kiernan in which she explained how the agency was helping to train Palestinian ruler Yasser Arafat’s secret police agencies. But Washington was aiding Arafat’s rivals as well.

In the late 1980s, Hamas, the so-called Islamic Resistance Organization, was created as a rival to Arafat’s Fatah faction. Several accounts describe how Hamas – the Palestinian branch of the CIA-supported Muslim Brotherhood – was given material support by Israeli intelligence as part of a divide-and-conquer strategy.

In a January 2006 election promoted by the Bush administration, Hamas won a legislative majority. Its position was strengthened as a result of a Palestinian civil war instigated by the Bush administration for the supposed purpose of removing Hamas from power.

The terrorism plaguing Israel, and the suffering of the Palestinians, reflect Washington’s perverse efforts to micromanage affairs that are none of its business and beyond its competence.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

Will Grigg’s Liberty Minute

June 7, 2010

As St. Augustine observed, a government is a criminal gang that has given itself permission to murder, torture, and steal.

This fact was made vivid in a recent speech by former President George W. Bush in which he not only defended his unconstitutional decision to wage aggressive war on Iraq, but also publicly admitted that he had ordered his subordinates to commit the crime of torture, a felony that can be prosecuted as a capital offense.

“Yeah, we waterboarded Khalid Sheik Mohammed,” Bush told the Economic Club of Grand Rapids.

The use of controlled drowning against that high-ranking al-Qaeda operative was just one of the crimes authorized by Bush. The advocacy group Physicians for Human Rights reports that the Bush-era CIA violated numerous laws and conventions – including the post-WWII Nuremberg Convention and the so-called b Common Rule on medical research – by using detainees as experimental subjects to refine torture techniques.

How can any rational person believe that foreign terrorists pose a greater threat than the government ruling us?

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

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Will Grigg’s Liberty Minute

June 4, 2010

The bullets used to kill 19-year-old American citizen Furkan Dogan were fired by soldiers in a foreign army, but they were paid for by U.S. tax dollars.

Dogan was shot five times at close range – four times in the head and once in the chest – by the Israeli commandos who illegally attacked the humanitarian flotilla attempting to pierce the Israeli government’s blockade of Gaza.

U.S. citizen Paul Larudee, who also took part in the flotilla, was beaten and tortured during his two-day detention in Israel.

Supposedly intended to deprive the terrorist group Hamas of war materiel, the Israeli blockade of Gaza extends to food, medicine, building materials, and even children’s toys. This failed policy is calculated to engender terrorism, not abate it.

Leon Wieseltier of The New Republic, an outspoken defender of Israel, suggests that Israel should have named the ill-conceived and criminal commando raid “Operation Make the World Hate Us.” U.S. taxpayers certainly shouldn’t be subsidizing Israel’s self-destructive policies.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

Will Grigg’s Liberty Minute

June 3, 2010

In July 2008, Mark Jenney was stopped by Officer Christopher Santimarino in a speed trap outside Copely, Ohio. Santimarino issued Jenney a ticket for driving 79 miles per hour in a 60 MPH zone. When Jenney contested the ticket in court, the officer insisted that his radar had clocked Jenney driving 82 MPH. Under cross-examination, he claimed the speed was 83 MPH.

Santimarino was unable to document the alleged radar results. He had also failed to fill out the traffic ticket correctly. The trial court quite helpfully permitted Santimarino to “amend” the citation long after the fact. On the basis of the officer’s experience and assumed competence, the trial court ruled against Jenney, somehow determining that he was traveling 70 MPH at the time of the stop.

The Ohio State Supreme Court endorsed this outcome, ruling that an unsupported, uncorroborated guess offered by a state-certified but manifestly incompetent police officer was sufficient evidence to win a conviction.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

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Will Grigg’s Liberty Minute

June 2, 2010

When Ethiopia was ruled by the Communist butcher Mengistu, the families of those slaughtered in state-run firing squads were billed for the bullets used to murder their loved ones.

The Pentagon’s treatment of Iraq war veteran Gary Pfleider isn’t quite that grotesque, but it does display a similar disdain for the worth of an individual human being.

In September 2007, Pfleider, a member of the Oregon National Guard, was shot by a sniper while patrolling Balad, Iraq. Following eight surgeries, Pfleider’s leg is ruined. Even if jobs were available, Pfleider’s war injury makes it impossible to work.

During his emergency medical evacuation, Pfleider left some of his gear behind. In June 2009, the Pentagon sent him a bill for $3,175.88 for the missing equipment. A few weeks later the federal government began to garnish his Social Security disability payments, and froze his tax returns.

A government that treats wounded veterans this way isn’t worth fighting for.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

Will Grigg’s Liberty Minute

June 1, 2010

Samuel Adams defined his political strategy quite simply: Put your enemies in the wrong, and keep them in the wrong.

Adams’ approach has been employed by modern independence movements -- among them the founders of modern Israel.

The assault by Israeli commandos on a convoy of civilian aid ships has precipitated international condemnation. The convoy was attempting to run an Israeli-imposed starvation blockade of Gaza. The ships, which were in international waters flying the flag of a country friendly to Israel, were boarded by armed commandos who killed more than a dozen people, and wounded dozens more.

The Israeli government insists that the raid, which meets the legal definition of piracy, was a form of self-defense, and that the flotilla was a deliberate provocation. The second claim may be true. The first claim is absurd on its face, plausible only to those willing to believe that the “Good Guys” are exempt from the law. This is both morally wrong and, as Samuel Adams would likely point out, strategically foolish.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.

Will Grigg’s Liberty Minute

May 31, 2010

There is no better illustration of the corrupt futility of the so-called economic stimulus program than the $92 million being spent to renovate the IRS compound in Andover, Massachusetts.
According to the ,Boston Herald the expanded IRS facility “will include a reflecting pool, an art gallery, indoor gardens, a 7,000-square-foot cafeteria and an ampitheater.”

Jonathan Levi, the architect given the federal contract to renovate the complex, insists that the upgraded 400,000-square-foot regional headquarters will be “a comfortable, collaborative environment. It will be welcoming for the people who use it.” Doubtless those on the receiving end of the IRS’s malign attentions won’t be consoled by the appointments and ornamental touches.

Levi insists that this shrine to the tax-devouring state – call it the Tax Mahal – “will be relevant 50 years from now.” This is true in exactly the same sense that Soviet-era monuments to that evil, omnivorous state remain relevant today.

Let us take back the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free.