Gun Shows and Private Sales Loopholes

In most states and counties purchasing a gun in America through a licensed gun dealer is relatively easy but does involve a background check and filling out a form 4473 and there may also be a waiting period for the gun transaction to be completed and finalized.  For a semi-automatic firearm purchase you will need a certificate from a firearms safety training course and a more extensive background check in which there will be a mandatory waiting period depending upon the state or possibly the county that you are purchasing the semi-automatic firearm from.

While some states have enacted laws that preclude private gun transactions that don't also go through a licensed dealer in which the transaction is recorded, most states do not.  Consequently, people that are disqualified from owning a gun or that prefer to make their gun purchases anonymous can easily circumvent the law by purchasing their gun from either a Gun Show or through a private sale transaction and this is routinely done in America.

While there is a lot to be said that private transactions should be allowed without interference between individuals for most things, when it comes to firearm sales that are transacted between individuals it would be far wiser that these types of sales be monitored by and recorded by a licensed dealer within the state.  In particular, it is both dangerous and disturbing that individuals that are unable to pass background checks to purchase a firearm have an easy and an accessible way to purchase a gun in which there is no paper trail, no liability, and no recording of the activity that has been accomplished. 

Gun Shows should be re-constituted so that only licensed dealers may sell guns and that all buyers of said guns must pass the same background checks that they normally would have to pass in order to purchase a particular firearm.  That is to say, that all private sales should be prohibited as matter of course in Gun Show events, unless further transacted with an authorized and licensed dealer of firearms at the show.

To many people, however, there will be a hue and cry that we all have the right to bear arms and that anything that interferes in our ability to purchase said gun are as a matter of course a bastardization of our 2nd Amendment.   While I do have some sympathy to this viewpoint, the fact of the matter is that guns are lethal weapons and that it is not unreasonable to establish strict, fair, and exacting standards in regards to the purchase, distribution, and resale of firearms.

Many people do not want the government to know their business, to know what they do or don't have, because they may legitimately fear the government and its military/police powers turning upon them in times of intense crisis or chaos.  While this viewpoint has its place and its validity, we should be far more concerned about guns being in the hands of clear lunatics, unsavory characters, and violent criminals.  That is our clear and present danger.

The Great Pyramid

Mankind likes to believe that progress is linear, that is to say, that each generation improves upon the previous generation, even though there are plenty of times when barbarians, for instance, have conquered more civilized nations, such as when the Visigoths and Vandals, amongst others, took control of essential parts of the Roman Empire.  Progress is not always in a straight line, there are byways, detours, knowledge gained and knowledge loss or forgotten or forbidden, and those that believe that there is something new under the sun, apparently aren't familiar with or believe in Ecclesiastes 1:9: "The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun."   

The great pyramid is one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, and it is the only one of these seven wonders that stands today.  The sands of time and the unfortunate vandalism by Muslims have changed the face and therefore the finished look of the great pyramid in which upon the completion of its construction it once was covered with huge blocks of finely-grained polished white limestone which reflected the sun's light. However, these stones were apparently loosened after a 14th century earthquake and over time were then removed.  The great pyramid is estimated to have over 2 million limestone blocks in its construction in which the weights of these range from two to up to fifty tons per block.  The height of the pyramid as originally created is estimated at 480 feet, and the estimated total weight of the great pyramid is a staggering total of nearly 6 million tons.  The great pyramid is also aligned at true north and it is located at the center of the land mass of earth.

Although most experts put the construction of the great pyramid at around 2560 BC, there are also estimates that date it thousands of years earlier.  The great pyramid was the tallest man-made structure in the world for nearly four thousand years (depending upon the dating of the great pyramid)  until surpassed by the Lincoln Cathedral in England in 1311, and then by other cathedrals for a number of years, until these were all surpassed by our Washington Monument in 1884.  Yet, despite all of our advances in technology, knowledge, wisdom, engineering, and application since the construction of the great pyramid, we would be very hard-pressed to build the pyramid today with the same limestone blocks and construction materials that this pyramid was created with.

Mankind comes up with all sorts of theories of quarries, levers, pulleys, ropes, ramps, and thousands upon thousands of workers that put the great pyramid together through incredible manual labor in conjunction with absolute precision and perfection.  The theories that are put forth by most modern scientists for the creation of the great pyramid are utter bunk and laughable.  The great pyramid was the greatest of the pyramids built in Egypt, but there are estimated to have been built about 118 pyramids.  Additionally, this is not the only civilization to have built pyramids, as pyramids were built in China, Mexico, and Central America.  How did so many civilizations have this great talent that appears to have vanished completely from time?  The most sensible answer is that these civilizations were quite advanced and had the knowledge somehow to suspend gravity and thereby to levitate large objects.  Remember, for every action there is a reaction.  Gravity can be overcome and has been overcome, you can do it yourself, let drop from your hand a small metal object and gravity will take it to the floor, but produce from your pocket a magnet and this small metal object will defy gravity. As Sherlock Holmes says: "How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?" 

Gift Card Reselling

In America, gift cards are the most popular gift for Christmas and other special events throughout the year, probably because of their ubiquity, their flexibility, their availability, their ease-of-use, their ease of delivery, and the fact that with the exception of the gift card store that has been selected, the recipient of said card can use it to pick out whatever merchandise that they desire.  In recent times, though, another choice has been presented to the recipient which is the ability to sell the gift card for cash.   With the amount of gift cards sold in the USA at over 100 billion dollars each year, this has created a marketplace of resellers in which http://www.giftcardgranny.com/ is the leading marketplace consolidator for people that either want to buy or sell their gift cards.  While you can also buy and sell gift cards through sites such as craigslist or eBay, your risk for doing so is increased considerably anytime you are dealing individual-to-individual as opposed to dealing with a company that makes it their business to buy and sell gift cards and has put into place conditions and protections for its consumers and sellers.

Buyers of gift cards will receive discounts that range from as small as 2% to upwards of 30% based on the popularity of a particular gift card.  For instance, a Wal-Mart gift card sells for a small discount, whereas Frederick's of Hollywood sells for a large discount.  The converse is true when it comes to selling a gift card, in which the seller of a Wal-Mart gift card may get about 93% of its value, whereas the seller of Frederick's of Hollywood would be fortunate to get 70% of the value of the card.  When you sell your gift card to a consolidator you will typically receive your payment through either PayPal, Amazon gift card, check, or direct deposit, with the receipt of that payment being accomplished shortly after verification of the balance of the gift card.  Buyers of gift cards typically will pay via credit card, debit card, or through PayPal and unless the card is an electronic card (i.e. non-physical), you will receive your bought gift card within a few days through the mail.

There is, however, a fundamental flaw of this gift card exchange program and that is the seller "holds over" the buyer.  That is to say, the seller has all the information on the card in regards to the gift card number and the gift card pin, andcan "double-dip" by selling the card, and then after receiving their money, using the card themselves online.  Of course, this isn't legal, but it's done, and that is why the spread between the buy price and sell price is often around 8-10%, whereas if there wasn't any double-dealing going on, that spread would be considerably tighter.

Another question to ask is where do all these various gift cards come from?  The quick answer is that the cards come from consumers like me and you, that simply want to exchange a gift card that doesn't suit them for cash to pay bills or to buy something else that is more desirable, or even another gift card.  That's the short answer but I believe there is another answer.  Employee theft within retail stores is a serious problem and previously if an employee stole product from your store he would have to sell it at a significant discount on the street, or online, or at a swap meet, in which all of these things bring their own risk and also a delay in receiving monetary compensation.  Today's ability to buy and sell gift cards online has changed this dynamic considerably.  Now, an employee can steal from the company that employs him, typically then find someone else to exchange the merchandise for him at a different store or even the same store, and that person will receive store credit in return for that merchandise with no need of a receipt.  After receiving that store credit in the form of a gift card ormerchandise credit it can then be sold online for a very high value (e.g. 85-90%) as compared to its full worth and the criminal will receive cash for his troubles, all in a very short period of time and with no real questions asked.

Retailers aren't stupid and they probably are aware of this new phenomenon, in which they don't want to alienate their legitimate customer base but they do want to stop and/or better track shrinkage within their companies, but they will have to make some adjustments in order to do so, because the upside for employee thefts has never been better.

Birth Control and the Sexual Revolution

The Birth control pill was approved for contraceptive use in 1960.  However, the original intention for the pill given the mores of the day was for it to be prescribed for only married couples or for those couples that were engaged to become married and therefore not to be available for prescription for single college-age women nor for recreational sex.  But over time and through various court cases, the rights of women to control their own bodies superseded the original intent of the pill and consequently the pill availability became widespread.   This widespread availability of the pill was the significant reason for the sexual revolution in our country but with that came some unintended consequences.

For instance, as late as 1968 in America, according to johnstonsarchive.net there were less than two abortions per one thousand live births.  By 1971, as reported by Wikipedia.org, there were137 abortions per one thousand live births in America, with nearly 500,000 abortions in total.  The year 1984 was the peak of the abortion ratio at 364 abortions per one thousand live births, and the total abortions exceeded 1.3 million.  Since that time the trend and the ratio for abortions has been down but the ratio and the amount of abortions in America today are still at levels which simply didn't exist before the advent of the birth control pill and its universal availability to females.

Another consequence of birth control is that the playing of the "blame game" has changed.  Whereas, for instance in the 1950s and the 1960s, a woman who got pregnant and had the intention or little choice but of bringing her baby to term,  she would frequently be able to convince her partner, one way or another, to marry her in a "shotgun wedding" or similar.  Since the dual advent of birth control pills and abortion on demand, shotgun weddings have faded from sight.  The attitude of the man directly involved in a woman's pregnancy has changed from one of possibly "doing the right thing,", to an attitude that it was the woman's responsibility to assure that she wouldn't get pregnant because after all it's her body and she had all the necessary tools to take control of it!

That is why in an age when all sorts of birth control methods are readily available, such as condoms, pills, IUDs, patches, shots, sponges, and the morning-after-pill, abortions and the ratio of abortions to live births in America are still at an incredibly high and elevated numbers.  Additionally, whereas in 1968 approximately 6.2% of children lived in households with a never-married mother, today that percentage has climbed to 45.8%.  The mores and the traditions of the American nuclear family have changed over the past 40-odd years since the coming of age of the birth control pill and the sexual revolution, but not in the way that was intended nor expected.

The intent of the access to birth control pills was so that families could "plan" their pregnancies and to subsequently control the amount of children created in their household.  While that may be true somewhat, for the most part what has happened instead is a wide-open playing field in which anything goes with anyone at anytime in which no party takes full responsibility, but it is the female and her children that mainly suffers the consequences of these choices. 

The birth control pill in conjunction with legal abortion has empowered females to take control of their bodies, but unfortunately, it has also led to a massive increase in recreational sex and a wholesale decrease in our moral values, our family values, and our sensibilities.  The freedom to say yes is also the freedom to say no.

The Military in a Domestic Emergency Situation

Most of us go about our day blithely unaware that at any point, we as civilians, could be put under military control as given by the Code of Federal Regulations, Defense Support of Civil Authorities (DSCA) [ 32 CFR 185 ] Act which states in part:

"§185.3   Definitions.

Emergency Authority. A Federal military commander's authority, in extraordinary emergency circumstances where prior authorization by the President is impossible and duly constituted local authorities are unable to control the situation, to engage temporarily in activities that are necessary to quell large-scale, unexpected civil disturbances…"

The above essentially creates a military-police state within the United States, ostensibly for our benefit to "quell large-scale, unexpected civil disturbances", in which those "disturbances" could, in fact, be created by agents within or working with the military itself so that the military could declare essentially martial law within our country.  A law that once enacted may effectively end the reign of the United States as that "last best hope for mankind".

For those that think that the above scenario is somewhat far-fetched, recognize that in the following passage in regards to Policy, the use of Federal military forces is authorized when necessary to protect Federal property or functions, in which it's hard to find in America a major city block that doesn't contain some sort of "Federal property or functions."  The Code of Federal Regulations, Defense Support of Civil Authorities (DSCA) [ 32 CFR 185 ] Act further states in part:

"§185.4   Policy.

…(2) When duly constituted Federal, State, or local authorities are unable or decline to provide adequate protection for Federal property or Federal governmental functions. Federal action, including the use of Federal military forces, is authorized when necessary to protect the Federal property or functions."

The United States has over two million military personnel that are well-trained, well-armed, with state-of-the-art communications and abilities that are well regarded as the most fearsome military force known in the history of mankind.  For those that believe that this military would never turn its guns on to its own civilian population, history is rife with example after example of armed forces that have done this exact same terrible thing and this continues until the present day.  Take for instance countries such as: Bosnia-Herzegovina, Rwanda, Cambodia, Nazi Germany, Russia, and Turkey, in which each of these countries have deliberately committed genocide against certain segments of their population in recent times for various reasons.

Military personnel are trained to kill people by first dehumanizing them and designating them instead as "targets, sub-humans, animals, infidels" or assorted racist terms.  Military personnel are not trained to see their enemies as children of God or as equal to themselves.  When you intentionally and deliberately kill another human being with a bullet, a bomb, or a weapon of some sort, you have essentially crossed the Rubicon and deliberately killing your own country's civilians is a task relatively easily accomplished if guided and commanded to do so by your superior officers.  If you find this difficult to swallow, ask yourself this question,  when Christ was scourged, beaten, and crucified, how many Roman soldiers walked away or refused to participate?

Be very afraid, it is coming.

Pedophile's Delight

When I write of "pedophile's delight" I am not referring to the act itself, which is disgraceful, abusive, harmful, and wrong on every level, nor am I referring to the severity of the punishment for those convicted sex offenders, instead what I am referring to is that in today's society with its ubiquitous online social media it is truly a time in which the fox is guarding the henhouse.  Consumer Reports stated on 5/10/2011 that: "of the 20 million minors who actively used Facebook in the past year, 7.5 million of them were younger than 13, according to projections from Consumer Reports’ latest State of the Net survey.  Facebook’s terms of service require users to be at least 13 years old. Also among this group of minors using Facebook, more than 5 million were 10 and under." The WSJ followed this up with their 2011 survey of 1,007 parents in which 19% of children age 10 had a Facebook account, 32% at age 11, 55% at age 12, 69% at age 13, and 78% at age 14. 

Pedophiles' already have access to children through all of the usual methods, what has changed during the Facebook era of the last decade is their ability to exploit children and teenagers using that same social media.  As easy as it is for a child to pretend to be an age that they are not, it is just as easy for a predator to do the exact same thing in reverse.  Just as a child can post age information and data that are inaccurate, so can a pedophile do the same thing with pictures stolen or taken from other accounts or other media and create a fake profile that allows them to represent themselves as nearly the same age as their intended victim.  Because the adult has the intelligence, the deviousness, the physical strength, and the experience, it is hardly a fair contest for that same adult to successfully assault and/or exploit the child.  Social media sites such as Facebook create both the roadway and the necessary pathway for pedophiles to successfully ply their trade.

Through it all, the parents of the child are oblivious that their child is even in danger of molestation and exploitation for an adult's deviant pleasure through sites such as Facebook.  Instead we have the illusion of safety that Facebook sells to its users, when in fact, you can make a very strong argument that Facebook has an absolute duty to restrict, protect, and to assist their underage users in knowing the dangers that social media can present.  As a parent you warn your child not to talk to strangers outside of your presence, to never get into a car with a stranger, that there is strength in numbers and therefore not to walk alone, and that when in doubt to not take a chance but to return to your safe zones.  The online pedophile can take advantage of these defense mechanisms, because he knows your name, where you live, where you go to school at, what your habits and likes are, and he can pretend to be something that he is not such as a security officer, or teacher, or anything that makes him look respectable and upstanding to you.

Pedophiles have never had it any better, they can search for their potential victims, systematically, diligently and at any hour (for instance, does it make sense for a "thirteen year old" to be online at 3 AM on a school day and shouldn't this be red- flagged).  Pedophiles can afford to look and look again since the cost of their attempts merely comes down to the value of their own time and they won't stop until they find their victim.  It is for them, the best of times.

Being Nickel and Dimed

Being nickel and dimed refers mainly to being squeezed out of extra money through unnecessary costs or hidden fees or deceptive charges by companies.  It is akin to squeezing out just a little extra money from you, with the expectation that you'll just accept it as the cost of doing business.  There are plenty of examples of being nickel and dimed which I will elaborate on.

T-Mobile prepaid advertise their prepaid plans as monthly such as their unlimited phone, text, and data plan for as low as $50/month but that price isn't accurate, nor is it completely true.  You could make a strong argument that it's false advertising, since the program itself is not based on a true monthly fee but on a thirty-day preplan fee, so that given that there are 365.25 days in a year but only 360 days (12 x 30) for 30-day periods, you as a consumer will end up paying for an extra month, around 70 months into your prepaid plan when your yearly shortfall of 5.25 days will equal another payment of $50.  Consequently, whereas the plan states it's $50/monthly if you were to actually convert the 30-day plan into a monthly plan it would be about $.714 more per month; so their monthly plan is really not $50 but is $50.714 on a monthly basis which is an increase of 1.43% which is pretty much pure profit to their bottom line, unless consumers as a whole were to take offense by it, and switch to another carrier.

Credit card companies have all sorts of charges that they can nickel and dime you with, and these charges can quite easily get beyond the mere nickel and dimes.  If you are even one-day late they can hit you with a $35 late fee or possibly more, a variable interest switchover in which instead of paying a fixed interest rate because on your late payment you will thereby pay a variable "penalty" rate as much as 29.99% or possibly more.  All of this for being one-day late in which your balance may be trivial, your past payment history may be excellent, and there may be legitimate extenuating circumstances or possibly a mistake on the credit card issuers side.  However, in fairness to the credit card companies, they are often willing to work with you on these penalties if you contact them, but if you do not, you will default to these penalties.    In addition, the one truly unnecessary nickel and dime charge by credit card companies is the "minimum" credit card interest fee, as for some reason some credit card companies claim or have no desire to charge you the correct interest on low balances but instead round you up to their minimum interest charge of $1.50, or possibly more.  There isn't a single valid reason for this to be done, except to nickel and dime you.

Utility companies have late fees, service restoration fees, deposit requirements, and processing fees, and if you somehow fall behind or fail to make timely payments, they are in principle really piling on the misery for a consumer that clearly is having trouble making just the normal payment.  Since most utility companies are publicly monitored, it is both unnecessary and mean-spirited to charge any additional fees which are above and beyond the real cost of doing business in order to spite and needlessly penalize the consumer.  Water, electricity, and gas are absolutely vital for modern-day consumers to make their home, habitable; therefore the termination of these vital functions should not be done lightly or without due consideration.

There are plenty of nickel and dime fees that consumers deal with on a daily or monthly basis.  These fees can often be overcome by asserting your consumer rights but that takes diligence, effort, and savvy on your part.  Not everyone has those same capabilities or knowledge, and is these people that suffer most from being nickel and dimed.

The "New" Bread and Circuses

There are a lot of ways to keep your population and especially your large underclass under control and relatively docile.  Some of these methods are quite effective and some are not.  When the Government bares its teeth and uses force to keep its population down, this is usually the sign of overall weakness in the Government's effort to placate the population and an additional sign that the whole edifice may soon come tumbling down.  Far better it is to sell the illusion that all is well, and to follow that illusion up with the items that mean most to the people which are food and entertainment, also known as "bread and circuses".

The United States has a massive welfare class in which according to townhall.com, "a new report from the Census Bureau showed a total of 108,592,000 people were on some sort of means-tested government benefits program in the fourth quarter of 2011, yet only 101,716,000 people were employed full-time for the entire year."  It is fortunate that the United States is known as the breadbasket of the world so that food here is not only just plentiful, it's relatively cheap, widely available and competently distributed, and access to this cheap food is readily given to all Americans as almost a given right.  Fortunately too, America is known as the preeminent entertainment center of the world, in which its products are easily available, at a price-point that is either quite affordable or basically free, and that these diversions can also be up-scaled for consumers with a little bit of extra cash on them.

The formula for America works so well that even when there are protests against the Wall Street and the money-elite such as "Occupy Wall Street", the protestors are only able to gain traction for a very short period of time, despite the fact that this country is clearly divided between an absolute money-elite, a middle-class that is being squeezed and marginalized, and an underclass that is big and growing.  The reason that the poor and underprivileged are still satisfied within America is because they are very well fed, so well in fact that obesity is nearly an epidemic in America, and they too have ready access to all sorts of entertainment and games through their TVs, their cell-phones, and other electronic items that connect to the internet.

Countries like Egypt and Greece get it so wrong, because when you don't properly feed your population or keep the price of food within reason you will get unease, grumbling, and riots.  Additionally, when you create a welfare state but over-promise your population and under-achieve with them, such as in Greece, you will get blowback of the highest order in return.  Whether the United States will disintegrate into these types of conditions remains to be seen, but should it come to that it will get very, very ugly.

Rome, once the greatest empire ever known, eventually succumbed to its enemies because its' love of bread and circuses, sapped the virtue and desire of its citizens to apply themselves, and instead replaced this with indolence, hoarding, corruption, and trade deficits.  Our future is both uncertain and hardly secure, for when those that have their hands out are greater in number than those that through their efforts and diligence are able to create the handouts, you have a problem of increasing significance, and our edifice of bread and circuses will begin to crack, crumble, and eventually to fall.

Government spying

There has never been an easier or more efficient or more effective time to spy on your own citizens as there is today.  Whereas, in previous years you might need to have someone on the inside of an organization in order to infiltrate it and neutralize it, that isn't even often a step that need be taken.  Listening devices are sophisticated, reliable, portable, cost-efficient, and effective, and while there may be laws that are suppose to protect you from indiscriminate eavesdropping by the government, the fact of the matter is, there are so many additional laws that supersede these "protections" that the government need not worry about them.  Additionally, you don't need the manpower to track vehicles and where they go, where they stop at and where they visit at, the cars own GPS is vulnerable to hacking and if not hacked, the information is stored by the GPS provider and can be accessed.

The main problem that the Government has at this point in monitoring you is not the lack of information, but the overwhelming amount of information that has to be processed, correlated, and analyzed.  Any thought that you can hide from the government, be anonymous to the government, can only occur if you are living a life that has no involvement with modern technology whatsoever, and people like that are virtually never a threat to the government.

There isn't anyone watching the watchers, while there may be oversight committees they are toothless and without effectiveness.  In any event, even if these oversight organizations were to discover something untoward, they are so far behind the eight ball, that any hope of them being able to stop or prevent government spy agencies from doing what they desire to do is misguided and hopeless.  Our present spy system is like a runaway train that cannot be stopped, cannot be diverted, and cannot be slowed down.

We are at the mercy of anonymous government spying agencies that will stop at nothing to obtain all the actionable information that they can obtain from its citizens and visitors within the United States.  We would be wise to remember this prescient quote from C.S. Lewis: "Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victim may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

These are dangerous times.  These are times in which the common man has no defense for spying agencies that have an ax to grind against them for legitimate or illegitimate reasons.  Also, when government spy agencies have all the pertinent information that they can obtain from you, it is then easy for them to manipulate that data, to change and distort some facts, in order to best make a case against you because in theory their data is inviolable, whereas in actuality it isn't. 

Also, ask yourself this question, what does an individual with immense spying power and the authority to use it, do in a situation in which he says to himself, "I don't like my neighbor and I wish to destroy him."  He probably annihilates him, completely, irrevocably, and without mercy.  Far from serving us, the people, government spying agencies serve only themselves in which their purpose it clear: We are all their slaves, their servants, and their subjects, and if we get out-of-line they will eviscerate us. 

In short, God-like powers in the hands of fallen human beings is a formula for absolute tyranny and oppression. You have been warned.

First, Do No Harm

The Hippocratic Oath contains the words "… and never do harm to anyone," and further "I will not give a lethal drug to anyone if I am asked, nor will I advise such a plan; and similarly I will not give a woman a pessary to cause an abortion."   Virtually all American medical doctors swear an oath or oaths before receiving their medical license to practice and although these oaths vary from school-to-school, they are similar in concept and have as their foundation the code that a medical doctor has an obligation to perform their duties to the benefit of their patients, and to their health and to their life, further that they will perform no actions that will bring shame or discredit to the profession, nor will they cause deliberate harm nor provide lethal drugs to their patients.

It is important that medical doctors take this oath, because as a patient, there is an implicit trust between you and your doctor that any prescriptions and any procedures that you engage in are to your benefit and not deliberately to your harm.  Additionally, we need only to look back at history to see that doctors under the aegis of the State, are not hesitant to perform all sorts of dubious medical procedures such as mandated sterilization, serological experiments, pharmaceutical testing on certain human subjects, infanticide, and euthanasia.  That these procedures are conducted upon human beings at all is abhorrent, that these procedures are conducted by medical doctors is unprincipled.

Medical doctors should be held to a higher standard than other human beings since they have the necessary knowledge that can help or harm our natural life.  In regards to euthanasia, clearly this is an action that no well-meaning doctor can possibly conceive as being within the confines of a good and moral action.  A physician that believes that he has the right or the obligation to terminate the life of a patient has willingly taken a step too far and has consequently disavowed his Oath to his chosen profession. 

In regards to abortion, you have an area of medical practice that has significant moral challenges that are not easily answered.  Because of Roe v. Wade, abortion is legal in all 50 states of the Union; however, the law within those states in regards to how abortion is treated does vary from state-to-state.  The legality of abortion, nonetheless, does not by definition, mean that this is a medical procedure that conforms or adheres to the Oath that medical doctors attest to.   In fact, according to Dr. Rachel Phelps ”… only 2% of obstetricians perform over 50% of all abortions."  The dilemma in regards to abortion is between the woman's right to choose (her body, her choice) and her unborn child's right to life.  America has decided to restrict abortions based on the length of pregnancy in most states, which places abortion in both a legal and moral gray area, in which the answer appears to be that abortions are okay within a certain prescribed amount of weeks, but typically not okay outside of that timeline, with timelines ranging from when the first fetal heartbeat can be detected, to when a fetus can first feel pain, to when a fetus is considered to be viable outside the womb, to no restrictions at all.

The medical profession and its position towards abortion is a great and terrible moral quandary.  This is a tragedy played out on a daily basis, time and time again, leaving a trail of tears.

Defending Your Country

There are about 190 countries in the world and although there are plenty of people who don't believe in the adage "my country, right or wrong", most people do believe in defending themselves especially from foreigners or outsiders that would attack them, their institutions, their beliefs, their land and to also to protect themselves from those who would take aggressive actions against them, whether foreign or domestic.  Not all of us are born into wonderful countries that are known for freedom, liberty, and the American way; in fact, most people are born into countries that are in various degrees of misery, poverty, and oppression.  Even worse within that country, your education may be limited, your economic choices may be anemic,  and your freedom of both thought and movement may be severely constrained, yet, within that all, this is virtually all that you really know.   

Consequently, when your country is under attack, in the normal course of events, your native sympathies will be to protect the little that is yours.  It is not your fault that you have been born in a particular country, that is just your lot in life, whether for good or for bad, and in all likelihood you will do the best that you can do given your circumstances.  However, when put into the position in which your life, your livelihood, your home, and your family, are in imminent danger you will almost without hesitation do whatever is necessary to protect your turf, whether compelled to do so by your country's law or military or not. 

Therefore in the scheme of things, you are not concerned, in fact it's not even really a thought, whether your country is in the right or the wrong.  What you are concerned about is somehow your country is under attack and this fight is a fight for survival, nothing more, and nothing less.   In most cases, you know the basic law within your country, it may not be ideal, it may not be desired, but it is the conditions that you have accommodated yourself to.  In all probability, especially with propaganda that demonizes those that attack your country, you will be cognizant of the fact that if your country is defeated that things will get worse, perhaps much worse, because after all there will be a new master to answer to and he does not know you, nor will he care to respect you.

It is not wrong to defend your country.  During our civil war, there were two sides to this conflict, in which for the most part, the country was divided into a clear sectional conflict.  Those that were from the southern States that seceded opposed the rest of the nation that remained as a modified United States of America.   Whether your physical presence was in the North or in the seceded Southern states, it was that physical location itself that determined in most instances the side that you fought on.  You may not have had a strong feeling about the war one way or another, but by golly, when a man in a different color uniform is trying to kill you, to take and destroy your property, your family, and your land, you will defend yourself or perish. 

Those that defend their country are only doing the natural thing in the given circumstances, they aren't traitors, not even in our civil war in which the South was vanquished but allowed to come back into the Union upon a loyalty oath and ratification of the 13th Amendment to the Constitution forbidding slavery.  You will defend yourself, you will defend your country, and you will do this because the unknown and the uncertain are far scarier than the known and the certain.  Few people welcome their conquerors, and fewer still are satisfied with them, it is the exception to the rule when conditions improve upon conquest

Christ as the Second Moses

The Torah is the first five books of the Bible which are: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.  These books are known as the Five Books of Moses in which the great Hebrew prophet, Moses wrote down the dictated and revealed words of God during his forty days and forty nights at Mount Sinai and then passed this knowledge onto his Hebrew people.  From this point on, the children of Israel were indeed a divine people with a specific chosen destiny.

In Exodus 3:2, in regards to Moses and Mount Sinai we read: "And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed." In Matthew 17: 1-3 in regards to Christ andthe mountaintop we read: "And after six days Jesus taketh Peter, James, and John his brother, and bringeth them up into an high mountain apart, And was transfigured before them: and his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light.  And, behold, there appeared unto them Moses and Elias talking with him."  Although we are prone to look upon the physical form of mankind and believe that that is all there is, in reality, as beings made in God's image, we are beings of Light, encased in a physical body, but that body is nothing more than our outer garment.  The image of God as a burning bush that is not consumed and speaks law unto Moses, and the transfiguration of Christ in the presence of Moses indicates a brotherhood of he who was the bearer of Light for the Jews, and for he who was born of the tribe of Judah, who would ultimately be the bearer of Light for the Gentiles.

There are many parallels between Moses and Christ, such as: Pharaoh commanded that all male new-born babies were to be killed in Moses' time, whereas King Herod ordered all male new-borne babies to be killed in Christ's time.  Each fasted forty days and forty nights on a mountain, each performed miracles, Moses blessed each tribe of Israel, Christ blessed his twelve disciples, and each fed their brethren supernaturally.  Moses spoke of a prophet to come in Deuteronomy 18:18: "I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put my words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him."  Christ fulfilled this prophecy in Matthew 26:56:”But all this was done, that the scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled…"

Moses was the supreme lawgiver, Exodus 31:18 reads: "And he gave unto Moses, when he had made an end of communing with him upon mount Sinai, two tables of testimony, tables of stone, written with the finger of God."  Because these words of God were inscribed on tablets of stone they were given special significance and created the Decalogue or Ten Commandments that we are so familiar with today.  Later in Christ's time, the Pharisees who were meticulous in their obedience to God's law, asked Christ in Matthew 22: 36-40: "Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.  This is the first and great commandment.  And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets."  Does this then mean that Christ' teachings superseded Mosaic Law?  Christ made it clear in Matthew 5:17 that he came not to destroy the law of the Prophets but to fulfill it.  This paradox then can best be answered by understanding that Christ wished to impart to us the knowledge that our sole purpose in life is to find our way back to God and in so doing one will see that God is in each and every human being.

Black Abortion Genocide

One way to control your population mix and your population growth is to reduce your procreation rate for all peoples or just for certain peoples.  This can be done through a myriad of ways such as: birth control, abortion, propaganda, and government mandates (e.g. one child per family).  In America, if you are of legal age to bear children, you may have as many children as you desire, subject to your ability to have adequate housing and the necessary creature comforts that maintain and sustain life.  A person's desire to have and bear children is based on numerous factors such as: fertility, education, background, religion, and age.   There is, however, no biological reason that I am aware of, that the race that you are identified with would be the controlling factor as to your fecundity.

Initially then, one would premise that the abortion rates for all races within America should be approximately the same, even taking into account the differences and disparities between  races, in regards to income, family background, religion, and education.  However, this clearly is not the case, in which according to abort73.com, in America for every 1,000 births for white women there are 138 abortions, and for every 1,000 births for black women there are 501 abortions.  The ratio between 501/138 is a staggering 363% higher abortion rate for black woman as compared to white.  That type of abortion discrepancy cannot easily be explained by any mitigating or series of mitigating circumstances and on the surface appears both suspect and disturbing.

Since mankind is finite, that is to say, he is born and he must inevitably die, one way to control your population mix is to control the life and death of your citizens; but that type of government coercion brings an innumerable amount of problems.  Far better, perhaps prescient, is to somehow convince certain population segments to voluntarily abort their own offspring, thereby reducing the population of a particular demographic to suit those that support a specific goal.  Since abortion is legal for all races, it could be questioned that there isn't such a policy goal in mind, but the facts of the abortion rate for blacks disproves this point, in addition according to prospect.org, an astounding "42 percent of women having abortions live under the poverty line", whereas only 15 percent of Americans as a whole live under the poverty line, so clearly abortion unfairly targets both the impoverished and blacks.

The government, its' lackey press and media, protest again and again that of course there isn't any hidden agenda for killing black unborn babies, that Margaret Sanger who was chairman of the Birth Control Council of America, which later changed its name to Planned Parenthood Federation of America, was a strong advocate for eugenics (improve population by controlled breeding), but of course, that was before we all knew better.  Seems to me as Queen Gertrude said in Hamlet:  "the lady doth protest too much methinks".  Clearly, if you want to keep a segment of the population under your control, you do not allow them to procreate themselves at a normal rate.  Instead, you convince them, that their pregnancy is an inconvenience, a burden, an undesirability, and with a smile on your face and smooth words from your mouth, you persuade them that killing their unborn child is the right thing to do. 

It isn't.

Birth and Death

Here in the America, we celebrate birth with plenty of pictures, family, video, and the like recording for posterity this beautiful and heartfelt event.  Tears that are shed at childbirth come from the mothers' noble effort and grace, along with the tears of joy for the newborn baby, and of course, the baby itself cries upon entering this brave new world.  Childbirth is one of those seminal moments which are rightly celebrated in this country as a day of love, joy, and appreciation.  Death, on the other hand, is often treated with regret, fear, and reluctance.

You might believe that birth and death are polar opposites, but they are more akin to ying and yang and the cycle of life.  For instance, when you are within your mother's womb, this is the only world that you have ever known, your mother's womb provides everything that you could ever wish for and you are perfectly safe, yet when you are compelled down the birth canal, life as you have always known it inside your mother's womb is now over, it is therefore dead to you, and you are now born into a bright new world, naked and exposed. 

Death, on the other hand, is the cessation of life as you know it in this material world, your physical body has met its end, but your soul, the real you is now freed from the confines and limitations of its physical casing.  Your soul yet lives but your body is no more! Death should not be seen as an unmitigated horror but instead should be viewed as a time of transition from the material plane back to the spiritual plane from which we were created.  In Jeremiah 1:5 we read that: "Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee…"   This passage confirms that our existence predates this material world and that therefore our true self is our soul which is our essence and consequently that our soul is beyond time and space.

Therefore death should not be looked upon as something to fear, or as the great unknown, or as a deep and dark void, or the ending of all life, but rather as a new beginning in our spiritual quest to find our way back to the First Source, which is God.   The regrets of material death are often of a life not examined, of goals not achieved, of mistakes made and not rectified, and for some, a death that is unexpected and comes far too soon.  Too many of us live as if the bell will never toll for us, but in fact, it tolls for all of us.  Our physical body cannot last for eternity, that is not its nature, therefore it behooves us to recognize this earlier as compared to later for we read in Matthew 6:21 that: ”For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."  You cannot take your physical body or your earthly treasures into Heaven, but you will take your soul and its growth and knowledge into the spiritual realm for its re-birth.  Ultimately, what you leave here on earth is your legacy that you have pass onto others.

Birth and death, ever together, never to part, you cannot have one without the other.

Taxation is the Power to Destroy

Chief Supreme Court Justice John Marshall stated in 1819 that: “an unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy; because there is a limit beyond which no institution and no property can bear taxation.”  Taxation is a power which is so strong, that in theory, if unchecked, will effectively supersede all other rights that you have.  For instance, if in regards to the labor that you create and are compensated for, suddenly a law is passed, allowing the Federal Government to legally confiscate all of your labor produced, what then do you have?   Materially you have nothing and therefore you are in effect "enslaved" to the Government, in which it is their discretion which will determine what you receive in compensation, if anything.  If you own nothing, if everything you labor for is confiscated from you, but in return the Government provides you with free housing, free food, free transportation, and free healthcare, you are no longer a free man, you are in fact now subservient and dependent upon that Government whether justified or not.

Taxation of the general population as a whole is something that should be respected and feared, as George Washington said, "Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."  Without some form of taxation, or import duties, or estate tax, or tariffs, or the selling of public lands, the Federal Government has no money to operate on.  However, with these taxes, the Federal Government has the power to take away or confiscate from those that labor and redistribute that said money to parties or organizations that are in-favor, and to punish or to destroy people and parties which are out-of-favor.

The more money and assets that are taken from those that honestly produce them, the more power that is relinquished by those individuals to the Government, than the less freedom, the less mobility, and the less incentive to produce are received in return.  If everything that you produce or that you own is subject to confiscation, why continue to produce or to work at all?  The Government in and of itself, produces nothing, it may compel others to work for it, it may confiscate from others to help sustain itself, but Government is ultimately powerless without the labor or the material assets of others.

 The bigger that Government gets, the more that it has to take in order to sustain itself.  Even worse is a Government that is allowed the luxury of running deficits, in which case, the full taxation or confiscation is put off from today's generation only to be put on tomorrow's generation which has reaped no benefit from it, but will pay the penalty for it. 

America's entire battle for independence was based on the theory that it was not fair for the colonies to be taxed and to not also be represented in Parliament and therefore to have a voice in their own country.  However, in order to effect the collection of taxes, Great Britain increased the presence of their troops and the quartering of its troops in the colonies.  It was therefore the collective pressure of the new unjustified taxes along with the force to collect the taxes that led to the American Revolution.

The power of taxation is the power to destroy, it always has been and it always will be.  If what you labor for is involuntarily taken from you, then you are no longer master of your own self, no longer master of your fate, no longer master of your own liberty, but a tool in the machine of the Government.

Property Taxes are Dangerous

When you are born, you pretty much own yourself, although recent nanny state activities, have wreak havoc on this most fundamental of our rights.  Do you remember the Beatles song, the Taxman, it goes like this:

                If you drive a car, I’ll tax the street,
                If you try to sit, I’ll tax your seat,
                If you get too cold , I’ll tax the heat,
                If you take a walk , I’ll tax your feet.

Yes, the taxman is something to fear.  You work hard for the money and according to statasticbrain.com, as of 2013, 64.5% of Americans own their own home, but only 29% own their own home free and clear and without any encumbrances (e.g. mortgage).   Still, let's take that higher number of 64.5% that own their own homes and recognize that when you own your home, you are, in theory, the master of your own castle.

However, ownership of your own home does not mean that there aren't still expenses involved and here I'm not referring to the upkeep of your own property but the property taxes that you are compelled by law to pay.  For instance, despite your ownership of your residence, if you fail to pay your property taxes you will be subject eventually to forfeiture of the actual property itself, so paying property taxes is a mandatory expense that must be paid.

The next question is how are property taxes assessed?  This does vary from state-to-state, in which some states have property taxes that are well under 1% of the value of the residence, such as Louisiana (mainly because of the $75,000 homestead exemption) and then there are states such as New Jersey with property tax rates of nearly 2%.  Before you look at these numbers and simply conclude that this is just the cost of doing business you would be wise to recognize that property taxes are not static.  On the good side, property taxes can be re-assessed and go down as they did for most property owners after the housing crash of 2008.  On the other hand, in most states, property taxes have historically gone up for re-assessments based on perceived market value of your home on a year by year basis.

Now all of the above assumes that the formula that creates the property tax bill year after year will remain the same.  That is to say, the property value, which often consists of the land value, the structure value, exemptions, millage rate, and perhaps other miscellaneous items depending on your county, will be consistent.  But in fact, there is no guarantee that that will be the case for future events.  Because property taxes are utilized for schools, roads, fire departments, police, public employees, pensions, and the like, they are the essential source of county revenue and the county commissioners have the power to change the millage rate and formula for assessing property taxes.  Consequently, a rapid and unexpected increase in property taxes in your community would have the dual negative effect of lowering your property value and increasing your property expenses. 

Property taxes are dangerous because it is not you that have control of that expense, but bureaucrats who may find it expedient to tax you beyond your limit.  Additionally, think of it in another way, when you buy a television, it is yours, there aren't any more additional taxes, but this is not the case with your home.  You own it, but do you really own it?

Only God Can Judge Me

From time-to-time you see bumper stickers on cars and tattoos on people with the saying "Only God Can Judge Me".  The popularity of this saying is inspired by the Bible, people's own lives, but also from the fact that prominent rappers such as Master P and Tupac have used it as their album title and as an album song, respectively.  Famous personalities such as Tupac and Zlatan Ibrahimovic also have that particular saying tattooed onto their body.  It's a fairly popular tattoo, but it does make me wonder, why?

First off, the tattoo itself comes across initially as being fairly defensive.  It is like the tattoo is put there to compensate for your own inadequacies and possibly questionable decisions you have already made in your life.  I mean, it isn't the type of tattoo that you're going to get when you are first born as some sort of warning sign to the world, but rather a tattoo that you will probably get after a particular difficult period in your life or a tragic event.  It's your way of creating distance between you and your erstwhile critics and requesting that those that are prone to judge you, should leave you alone.

The Bible is full of verses that reflect or speak or admonish us about judging and God's Judgment, such as Matthew 7:1-3: "Judge not, that ye be not judged.  For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?"

Also there is Luke 6:37: "Judge not, and ye shall not be judged…"   Additionally we have John 7:24: "Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment."  Within the Bible, there are numerous verses about judging and judgment but never is there the actual statement that "Only God Can Judge Me". 

Further, while the tattoo seems to say what it says:  "Only God Can Judge Me"; it also appears to invoke God as your personal protector and defender, but it doesn't go about it quite in the right way.  First off, the statement is setup wrong, although it states: "Only God Can Judge Me", the fact of the matter is just about anyone can judge you, rightly or wrongly, because the word "can", means "to be able", and that ability pretty much rests with everyone.  For instance, I "can" judge you, silently or not, wrongly or not, and you can't stop me from judging you.  However, if the statement said "Only God May Judge Me", you are stating that only God has your expressed permission to judge you, and anyone else that judges you is out of order and irrelevant.  That is a more powerful statement and hence more meaningful.  It is somewhat akin to saying "all hands off, my life is between me and my God".

But in the end, when it really does come to your actual judgment day, it won't even be God judging you.  While some may greet this news with a great smile on their face or some with confusion, the actual judgment of you will be done by yourself.  However, this judgment will be done without equivocation, without excuse, without error, but just with Truth.  You will face yourself, the real you, the whole you, and nothing but you, and within that facedown correct judgment will be rendered. 

IP Address

You are either an unusual person, very poor, or very old, if you aren't utilizing the internet.  The internet, however, is a road that is well monitored.  For instance, your Internet Protocol (IP) Address is assigned by your Internet Service Provider (ISP) and not by yourself.  The fact that your ISP (such as Comcast, Verizon, AT&T) provides you with your IP address means with a certainty that they know your name and your address.  So if you are under the mistaken impression that surfing the net is something that you do with no outside agencies being cognizant of what sites you go to and what things you download, you are sadly mistaken.   Even if most of your internet surfing is done in the confines of your own home and your own network, the actual surfing is more akin to you traveling down a public road with your stops, your conversations,  and your activities duly noted, probably in vivid detail.  For some people this isn't a problem, isn't even an issue, but for many people this is more than a little creepy, it just seems wrong.

When surfing the internet, you are far better off recognizing that all the websites that you visit, your emails, your Facebook account, your tweets, are subject to the Government or its monitoring agencies being able to decode them, to intercept them, to monitor them, and to record them, and all of this to be tracked back to yourself or to your family or your network.  Any expectation of privacy and confidentiality that you believe that you have is probably mistaken.   Also, if you are under the misimpression that perhaps you are protected from all of this because your internet activity is being accomplished through a private, non-government company, you will find that most all privately or publicly-held corporations will willingly give up your information to proper Government agenciesnot because they so much want to "rat you out" but because they are under heavy bureaucratic regulations and have a vested interest in maintaining their business model, and consequently their excuse to you is simply one of them being compelled to obey a court or a superior order.

While there are plenty of things that you as a consumer can do to encrypt your data, I believe this is missing the main point, which is why are we allowing Government agencies to monitor and snoop on private citizens without probable cause to begin with.  That is to say, allowing some Government agency to monitor anybody 24/7 and there certainly is a good chance that that person is in violation of some law, whether obscure or not.  Additionally, we have been taught that it isn't nice to eavesdrop or to try to listen to private conversations that we are not privy too. 

The internet is a wonderful source of information, of ease of communication, of entertainment, and the like, but it leaves a visible trail of our activity, our words, and our actions for those that are meant to be in service to us, but for all practical purposes behave as our masters.

Intoxication

Defining intoxication is somewhat akin to the definition of pornography, "I know it when I see it".  Although, through an analysis of the blood alcohol concentration (BAC) one can obtain a reliable reading of the BAC of a selected individual, and from there induce their degree of intoxication, that number in and of itself is in most cases not proof-positive of actual intoxication.  I am not here discussing arbitrary legal definitions of intoxication by percentage of BAC, which can change from year-to-year, state-to-state, and country-to-country, but actual intoxication.

We can say with a certainty that someone with a BAC of .00% is not intoxicated, that they are in fact, sober; whereas someone with a BAC of .40% is in real danger of actual death or could in fact, be dead.  Somewhere between these two numbers, there lies an individual that is intoxicated.  But even then, it's not that easy.  For instance, two people of the same sex and of the same weight, drinking the same type of drinks and having the same percentage of BAC will not behave exactly the same way.  Alcohol affects people in different ways, because people are different, process alcoholic drinks differently, their bodies are also different, and invariably therefore have different outcomes.  That is not to say, that alcohol doesn't impair you, it can and it does, but that particular impairment will differ from individual to individual even with the same BAC, even, in fact, the same individual with the same BAC but on a different day.

Additionally, those that are alcoholic and that have been alcoholics for a long period of time have built up tolerance levels to the alcohol that they consume.  Consequently, even with a BAC at .10%, a true alcoholic may not be impaired at all despite the so-called objective evidence that seems plain as day.  This therefore points out an obvious fallacy in strictly relying on BAC levels to determine intoxication; they can and will be in error. 

A meaningful definition of intoxication is "the person’s speech, balance, coordination or behavior is noticeably affected".  This affection is because alcohol is ultimately a depressant and consequently alcohol slows down your central nervous system, decreases activity in your prefrontal cortex, which then impairs and impacts your coordination and your ability to make good judgments.

Another problem with alcohol and intoxication is the fact that alcohol is not immediately felt in your body and your brain.  That is it to say, the recognition that you have drunk too much alcohol, far too quickly, may be something that you are not cognizant of, until significantly after the fact.  In other words, that it's not just the quantity of drinks consumed, nor just the amount of time spent having those drinks, but critically, the amount of time spent and quantity consumed, when you first start drinking on a particular day that can intoxicate you.  That is why binge drinking in all of its myriad forms, is the most dangerous type of drinking and the most toxic.

BAC levels that exceed the legal standard of alcohol intoxication are in most cases, a presumption of intoxication, but not proof-positive of intoxication.   Real intoxication is far more nuanced than this, not nearly so cut and dry, except in those cases in which a person clearly cannot balance themselves or can't construct a coherent sentence. 

Frozen assets

Picture yourself as a very successful human being; you have the nice house, the nice car, and a slew of assets.  You don't have the need for physical gold or silver and the amount of cash that you carry on a given day is minimal.  The bulk of your assets are held in a couple of brokerage accounts and you don't have any foreign bank accounts and have never considered having one.  Life is good. 

However, one day you try to access your brokerage account to make a transfer and to access funds and instead you find that your account appears to be compromised.  Right then, you begin to feel a tightening in your chest, but you soldier on, assuming that your account has perhaps been hacked but instead upon logging into your account further you read a strange message saying that: "By order of the United States Department of Justice the assets of this account have been seized and a restraining order on this account has been issued".  Quickly, you verify the calendar date and you notice that it is indeed not April fool's day and with sweaty palms you dial up your frozen brokerage account and talk to your contact there.  It's difficult for you to even speak because your throat is so dry but upon getting your brokerage representative on the phone you are able to stammer out what appears to be the impossible that is happening to you.  After being placed on an endless hold and then transferred to one department after another, some man with a halting voice indicates that your account has indeed been seized, that you no longer have the rights to the account and therefore your log-in and password information have been secured.  Within a minute, you are forcefully locked out of your brokerage account, repeated attempts to even log-into your account are denied and you give up.  You then try all of your other brokerage and bank accounts and are unsuccessful in all of them in getting into your account.

You are grateful that you still have an internet connection and you waste no time in finding the best attorney that handles these types of asset forfeitures.  You are no longer nervous, or halting; you are instead hyper-focused because you realize that your life as you know it is on the line.  Good attorneys are always busy but you press the urgency of the matter and within an hour you get a phone call back from your attorney.   He states that the Government has the right to freeze your assets upon probable cause from a grand jury and further that in the case of United States v. Monsanto, your assets may be frozen when the Government presents probable cause to a Judge that in all likelihood, that if convicted, the assets or property that you currently own would be subject to forfeiture.   

Your attorney patiently explains to you that therefore the very monies that you need in order to build a proper defense are not currently available to you, but he promises to investigate further.  Additionally, he indicates that no doubt an indictment is in the process of being issued against you but because of the inefficiencies and bloat of government agencies, the coordination of these activities can be thrown off.

You slump into your easy-chair, befuddled and confused.  You haven't committed any crime, and even if you had, isn't this America, in which you are innocent until proven guilty!?  Isn't there a thing called due process?  If the government takes everything away from you, how is it possible for you to mount a successful defense?  Is this going to be a modern-day version of Kafka's "The Trial"?

Civil and criminal forfeiture are becoming more and more common in the United States, most people aren’t concerned about it, perhaps even support it, but this type of immense power can easily be abused.  When everything that you have is taken away from you, you are at the mercy of the Government and its' objectives.  Even with assets, facts, and the wherewithal to fight the Government it's never a fair fight; take away one of those supporting legs and the fight is all but over.