Comm Academy, Apr. 10 & 11, 2021 – Online

The 2021 Comm Academy will be held online this year on April 10 & 11, 2021. In the past this has been an excellent venue for learning more about emergency/disaster communications, especially with amateur radio.

Two days of training, talks, and information on emergency communications on this year’s theme:
Disasters Here, There, and Everywhere – Are We Ready?

Headquartered in Seattle, Comm Academy is two days of training and information on various aspects of emergency communications. Organizations attending include:

Amateur Radio Emergency Services (ARES©)

Auxiliary Communications Service (ACS)

EOC Support Teams

Radio Amateur Civil Emergency Service (RACES)

Civil Air Patrol, Coast Guard Auxiliary

REACT

CERT

All those interested in emergency and amateur radio communications are welcome. Learn, network, and share your experiences with others.

As it has in all of its 22+ previous iterations, the conference will feature expert speakers on a wide variety of topics, from radio and messaging technologies to communications techniques to tales from the “trenches.”

More than just a collection of online presentations, Comm Academy 2021 will be an interactive event, with participants able to converse with presenters and other attendees.

Registration link.

Link to schedule

AYWtGS: How to Fill Your 5-Gallon Bucket for 30 Years of Food Storage

A Year Without the Grocery Store has a short and photo-filled article on a proper way to prepare buckets for long term food storage in How to Properly Fill Your 5-Gallon Bucket for 30 Years of Food Storage. This is pretty much the way that I sealed my own food storage buckets, though I just put the oxygen absorber in before starting to seal the mylar. On some bags, I also used the tube of our FoodSaver vacuum sealer and sucked the air out of the mylar bag before sealing it the last little bit. I don’t know if that helps much because the oxygen absorber should take care of it, but I was hedging against not having put enough oxygen absorbers into my bag. But I have been accused of overdoing things sometimes.

Here on the blog, we’ve been doing a lot of talk about five-gallon buckets recently.  We’ve discussed how to get 5-gallon buckets for free or at least cheap.  There was also a recent post on using a five-gallon bucket for a container garden.  Today, we’re going to talk about how you properly fill your five-gallon bucket to ensure that your food storage remains good for up to 30 years!

I remember the first time I sealed oats, wheat, beans, and rice in Mylar bags. I was afraid that I was going to do it all wrong and lose all my food. However, I have some good news! I didn’t lose any of the food that I sealed up, and I’m going to walk you through the very same, simple process I used. 

***There are links in this post.  Some of the links may be affiliate links. My promise to you is that I will only recommend the most economical version of the best quality of items to serve you. All of these are the items that I have bought for my own family.  If you click on a link, your price will remain the same.  If you make a purchase, we may make a small commission that aids in the cost of the running of this website.***

Step 1:

Grab your five to six-gallon bucket with a lid, a five-gallon Mylar bag, a 2000cc oxygen absorber, a 2 foot or longer length of 2×4 (or 1×4), and an iron.  Start by plugging the iron in and letting it heat up.

Step 2:

Stand the Mylar bag up in the bucket and pour whatever it is that you want to preserve into the bag.

How to Properly Fill Your 5-Gallon Bucket for 30 Years of Food Storage

Step 3:

When the bucket looks just about full, you’ll want to bounce it up and down and then twist it back and forth quickly.  This will help the contents to settle.  Do this several times and add more.  Once it’s all settled and it’s filled within two inches to the top, lay the 2×4 across the bucket.

How to Properly Fill Your 5-Gallon Bucket for 30 Years of Food Storage

Step 4:

Pull the Mylar bag up, straighten it as much as is possible and pull it across the 2×4.  You’re going to iron the bag, all but two inches across.  Keep it as flat as possible while doing this. 

How to Properly Fill Your 5-Gallon Bucket for 30 Years of Food Storage
How to Properly Fill Your 5-Gallon Bucket for 30 Years of Food Storage

Step 5:

Pull the bag back up, and then push it down into the bucket to squeeze as much air out as possible.   If you are using single sealed oxygen absorbers, this is when you will open the single oxygen absorber.  Stuff it through the 2 inches that you left open.  

How to Properly Fill Your 5-Gallon Bucket for 30 Years of Food Storage
How to Properly Fill Your 5-Gallon Bucket for 30 Years of Food Storage

Step 6:

Pull the bag back up and straighten it over the 2×4 and iron the rest of the way across.

Step 7:

Fold the bag back down.  Stuff it into the bucket and place the lid on.  

How to Properly Fill Your 5-Gallon Bucket for 30 Years of Food Storage

Step 8:

Write the date and the contents on the lid.  

And you’re done!

If you do NOT purchase single sealed oxygen absorbers, then do steps 1-4 for every bucket that you are going to do.  If you have ten buckets that you’re doing then do all ten buckets up through step five BEFORE you do step six.  Then you’ll need to do step six as quickly as possible so that the oxygen absorbers don’t lose their potency.

Follow the rest of steps 7 and 8, and you’ll be done.

Washington Times: Americans have ‘no right’ to carry guns in public, 9th Circuit Court rules

Contrary to the US Constitution’s (and numerous individual state constitutions’) statement that there is a right to “bear arms,” the 9th Circuit Court has ruled that Americans have no such right to carry guns in public. This was decided in spite of the US Supreme Court’s District of Columbia v Heller decision which said of bearing arms that it is “unambiguously used to refer to the carrying of weapons outside of an organized militia.” However, the 9th Circuit appears to be hoping that because the Heller decision was narrowly decided upon a law that made bearing arms illegal in the home, that their decision against public carry is somehow valid.

A federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that there is no right to carry a gun in public.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected a challenge to Hawaii’s requirement that residents must pass an application to have weapons outside the home.

“There is no right to carry arms openly in public; nor is any such right within the scope of the Second Amendment,” the court ruled in an “en banc” decision that involved all the panel’s judges.

“We can find no general right to carry arms into the public square for self-defense,” the majority wrote, claiming that the Second Amendment applies to the “defense of hearth and home.”

“The power of the government to regulate carrying arms in the public square does not infringe in any way on the right of an individual to defend his home or business,” the judges wrote.

The court noted that “we have previously held that individuals do not have a Second Amendment right to carry concealed weapons in public” which means people in the West Coast states it covers have no right to carry a firearm in any capacity in public.

The National Rifle Association noted the impact of the decision and said it would not stand.

“The US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit just ruled that THERE IS NO RIGHT TO CARRY – either openly or concealed in public. This ruling impacts RTC laws in AK, HI, CA, AZ, OR, WA, & MT. This was not an NRA case but we are exploring all options to rectify this,” the gun-rights group wrote on Twitter.

Forbes: Biden Administration Urges Supreme Court To Let Cops Enter Homes And Seize Guns Without A Warrant

From Forbes, Biden Administration Urges Supreme Court To Let Cops Enter Homes And Seize Guns Without A Warrant

The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday will hear oral argument in Caniglia v. Strom, a case that could have sweeping consequences for policing, due process, and mental health, with the Biden Administration and attorneys general from nine states urging the High Court to uphold warrantless gun confiscation. But what would ultimately become a major Fourth Amendment case began with an elderly couple’s spat over a coffee mug. 

Capitol Breach
People view the Supreme Court building from behind security fencing on Capitol Hill in Washington, … [+] ASSOCIATED PRESS

In August 2015, 68-year-old Edward Caniglia joked to Kim, his wife of 22 years, that he didn’t use a certain coffee mug after his brother-in-law had used it because he “might catch a case of dishonesty.” That quip quickly spiraled into an hour-long argument. Growing exhausted from the bickering, Edward stormed into his bedroom, grabbed an unloaded handgun, and put it on the kitchen table in front of his wife. With a flair for the dramatic, he then asked: “Why don’t you just shoot me and get me out of my misery?”

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the tactic backfired and the two continued to argue. Eventually, Edward took a drive to cool off. But when he returned, their argument flared up once again. This time, Kim decided to leave the house and spend the night at a motel. The next day, Kim phoned home. No answer.

Worried, she called the police in Cranston, Rhode Island and asked them to perform a “well check” on her husband and to escort her home. When they arrived, officers spoke with Edward on the back deck. According to an incident report, he “seemed normal,” “was calm for the most part,” and even said “he would never commit suicide.” 

However, none of the officers had asked Edward any questions about the factors relating to his risk of suicide, risk of violence, or prior misuse of firearms. (Edward had no criminal record and no history of violence or self-harm.) In fact, one of the officers later admitted he “did not consult any specific psychological or psychiatric criteria” or medical professionals for his decisions that day.

Still, police were convinced that Edward could hurt himself and insisted he head to a local hospital for a psychiatric evaluation. After refusing and insisting that his mental health wasn’t their business, Edward agreed only after police (falsely) promised they wouldn’t seize his guns while he was gone. 

Compounding the dishonesty, police then told Kim that Edward had consented to the confiscation. Believing the seizures were approved by her husband, Kim led the officers to the two handguns the couple owned, which were promptly seized. Even though Edward was immediately discharged from the hospital, police only returned the firearms after he filed a civil rights lawsuit against them.

Critically, when police seized the guns, they didn’t claim it was an emergency or to prevent imminent danger. Instead, the officers argued their actions were a form of “community caretaking,” a narrow exception to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement.

Supreme Court
UNITED STATES – JANUARY 7: The U.S. Supreme Court is seen on Thursday, January 7, 2021. (Photo By … [+] CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

First created by the Supreme Court nearly 50 years ago, the community caretaking exception was designed for cases involving impounded cars and highway safety, on the grounds that police are often called to car accidents to remove nuisances like inoperable vehicles on public roads. 

Both a district and appellate court upheld the seizures as “reasonable” under the community caretaking exception. In deciding Caniglia’s case, the First Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals acknowledged that “the doctrine’s reach outside the motor vehicle context is ill-defined.” Nevertheless, the court decided to extend that doctrine to cover private homes, ruling that the officers “did not exceed the proper province of their community caretaking responsibilities.”

Siding with law enforcement, the First Circuit noted that a police officer “must act as a master of all emergencies, who is ‘expected to…provide an infinite variety of services to preserve and protect community safety.’” By letting police operate without a warrant, the community caretaking exception is “designed to give police elbow room to take appropriate action,” the court added.

In their opening brief for the Supreme Court, attorneys for Caniglia warned that “extending the community caretaking exception to homes would be anathema to the Fourth Amendment” because it “would grant police a blank check to intrude upon the home.”

That fear is not unwarranted. In jurisdictions that have extended the community caretaking exception to homes, “everything from loud music to leaky pipes have been used to justify warrantless invasion of the home,” a joint amicus brief by the ACLU, the Cato Institute, and the American Conservative Union revealed.

This expansion could also have perverse effects and disincentivize people from calling for help. As that brief noted, “When every interaction with police or request for help can become an invitation for police to invade the home, the willingness of individuals to seek assistance when it is most needed will suffer.”

But in its first amicus brief before the High Court, the Biden Administration glossed over these concerns and called on the justices to uphold the First Circuit’s ruling. Noting that “the ultimate touchstone of the Fourth Amendment is ‘reasonableness,’” the Justice Department argued that warrants should not be “presumptively required when a government official’s action is objectively grounded in a non-investigatory public interest, such as health or safety.”

“The ultimate question in this case is therefore not whether the respondent officers’ actions fit within some narrow warrant exception,” their brief stated, “but instead whether those actions were reasonable,” actions the Justice Department felt were “justified” in Caniglia’s case.

As a fail-safe, the Justice Department also urged the Supreme Court to uphold the lower court ruling on qualified immunity grounds, arguing that the officers’ “actions did not violate any clearly established law so as to render the officers individually liable in a damages action.”

But the Biden Administration, along with the courts that have extended the community caretaking exception, overlook a key component of the Fourth Amendment: the Security Clause. After all, the Fourth Amendment opens with the phrase, “the right of the people to be secure.”

In an amicus brief, the Institute for Justice noted that “to the Founding generation, ‘secure’ did not simply mean the right to be ‘spared’ an unreasonable search or seizure” but also involved “harms attributable to the potential for unreasonable searches and seizures.” Expanding the community caretaking exception to “allow warrantless entries into peoples’ homes on a whim,” argued the IJ brief, “invokes the arbitrary, looming threat of general writs that so incited the Framers” and would undermine “the right of the people to be secure” in their homes.

The IJ brief further argued that extending the “community caretaking” exception to the home would “flatly contradict” the Supreme Court’s prior rulings, which “has only discussed community caretaking in the context of vehicle searches and seizures.” In those cases, “the animating purpose for the exception [was] to allow officers to remove damaged or abandoned vehicles that pose a risk to public safety.” By contrast, the IJ amicus asserted,  “that justification is entirely absent” when it comes to homes.

“The Fourth Amendment protects our right to be secure in our property, which means the right to be free from fear that the police will enter your house without warning or authorization,” said Institute for Justice Attorney Joshua Windham. “A rule that allows police to burst into your home without a warrant whenever they feel they are acting as ‘community caretakers’ is a threat to everyone’s security.”

Publius Huldah: When the feds violate the Constitution, should we blame the Constitution?

Attorney Publius Huldah has some important to understand criticisms for the Convention of States movement in When the feds violate the Constitution, should we blame the Constitution?

In Rob Natelson’s paper [link], “The Solution is a Convention of the States”, he makes claims about what our Framers said is the purpose of amendments to our Constitution which are not true. He also gives false assurances about the safety of a convention called by Congress under Article V of the Constitution.

At the outset, we should note that the title of Natelson’s paper incorporates a stratagem which creates the false belief that the States control the convention. The belief is false because the convention provided for by Art. V of the Constitution is a federal convention called by the federal government to perform the federal function of addressing our federal Constitution. It is not a state function; accordingly, the term, “convention of States”, does not appear in Article V. So the “Convention of States movement” (COS), of which Natelson is “senior advisor”, renamed the convention provided for in Article V as a “convention of the States”; 1 and re-defined it as “a convention controlled by State Legislatures”.

Now let’s examine various other claims on which COS builds its case.

1. The fabricated George Mason quote

COS claims that our Framers gave us the convention method of getting amendments so that when the federal government “violate[s] its constitutional limitations”, we can get a convention to “make adjustments to the constitutional text in order to rein in the abuse of power by the federal government.” Or, in plain English, when the feds violate the Constitution, the solution is a convention to amend the Constitution.

But our Framers didn’t say that. The falsity and absurdity of COS’s claim is exposed here. What our Framers actually said is that the purpose of amendments is to correct defects in the Constitution. And they recognized that the purpose of a convention is to get another Constitution. James Madison warned that those who secretly want to get rid of our Constitution would push for a convention under the pretext of getting amendments.

2. Natelson’s claims re using amendments to “overrule bad Supreme Court decisions” & “restrain federal power”

Natelson admits that the Framers said we can use amendments to correct defects in the Constitution; but then muddles up what the Framers actually said with what they never said, thereby seemingly legitimizing his misleading claim that the Framers envisioned that we could use amendments to “overrule bad Supreme Court decisions” and “restrain federal power”.

As an example of a “bad” Supreme Court decision, Natelson claims that “[i]n early 1795, the States ratified the 11th Amendment to reverse an overreaching Supreme Court decision”.

The decision he is referring to is Chisholm v. Georgia (1793) [link]; and what he says about it isn’t true. What Chisholm actually stands for is this: Our Constitution originally delegated to federal courts the power to hear cases “between a State and Citizens of another State” (Art. III, §2, cl.1). But when a Citizen of South Carolina sued the State of Georgia, States were outraged! Georgia sued. In Chisholm, the Supreme Court decided the case in accordance with the Constitution and held that Chisholm could maintain his suit.

But the States didn’t want Citizens of other States suing them. So the States ratified the 11th Amendment which took away from the federal courts the constitutional authority to hear cases filed by a Citizen against another State. So the 11th Amendment illustrates what our Framers actually said is the purpose of amendments: to fix defects in the Constitution.

Natelson also claims that our Framers said we could use amendments to “restrain federal power” when the federal government “exceeded and abused its powers”.

Again, Natelson muddles up the true and the false when he fails to distinguish between usurpations of undelegated powers and abuses of delegated powers.

No Framer said that amendments could be used to restrain usurpations of powers not delegated. And in Federalist No. 49 (last para) James Madison says the opposite. He warns against another convention and says, “occasional appeals to the people [a convention] would be neither a proper nor an effectual provision” for restraining the federal government within its legal powers.

But when the federal government abuses a delegated power, an amendment could be appropriate. Here’s an example: the Tariff Act of 1828 was constitutional since tariffs are authorized by Art. I, §8, cl. 1. But it was abusive because it benefited infant industries in the Northeast at the expense of the Southern States. So what’s the remedy for such abuse of delegated power? Article I, §8, cl. 1 could be amended to say that Congress may impose tariffs only to raise revenue to carry out the enumerated powers; and may not impose tariffs in order to benefit one section of the Country at the expense of other sections.

3. Natelson’s proposed “corrective reforms” to the Constitution

Natelson says he wants a convention to get a balanced budget amendment (BBA); to curb “undemocratic and unfair” regulations; to reverse “liberal-activist Supreme Court decisions”; to impose term limits; and get other amendments “to restrain federal power”.

But as anyone who has read it knows, our Constitution already limits the federal government to a handful of enumerated powers. The powers are listed here. The categories of cases federal courts are authorized to hear are listed at Art. III, §2, clause 1. All the problems of which COS and Natelson complain are the result of violations by the federal government of the existing constitutional limitations on their powers – and the States’ acquiesce in such violations!

Balanced Budget Amendment: Our Constitution already limits federal spending to the enumerated powers. But for 100 years, everyone has ignored the existing limits on federal spending. A BBA would replace the existing enumerated powers limitation on federal spending and create a new constitutional authority to spend on whatever the President or Congress put into the budget! A BBA thus legalizes spending which is now unconstitutional as outside the scope of the enumerated powers, and transforms the federal government into one which has constitutional authority over whatever Congress decides to spend money on.

Federal Regulations: Article I, §1 vests all lawmaking powers in Congress. So all regulations issued by federal executive agencies which purport to apply to the Country at Large are unconstitutional as in violation of Art. I, §1; and as outside the scope of the enumerated powers. An amendment such as Natelson proposes is a grant of constitutional power to federal executive agencies to make Laws.

Supreme Court Opinions: This shows why Roe v. Wade is unconstitutional. This shows why the opinions banning Christian speech in the public square are unconstitutional. The remedy our Framers advised for such usurpations is impeachment and removal from the Bench (Federalist No. 81, 8th para), and nullification by the States of unconstitutional opinions [link].

Natelson cannot produce any writing from a Framer which says that when the Supreme Court violates the Constitution, the remedy is to amend the Constitution. Our Framers were not silly men. And what would such an amendment as Natelson proposes say? That federal judges must obey the Constitution? Article VI already requires that. Does Natelson propose amendments which list the subjects on which federal courts may not act? But Art. III, §2, cl. 1 already lists the kinds of cases they may hear. But we ignore those existing limitations.

Term limits amendment: If we learned anything from the last election, it should be that we will not in the foreseeable future have an honest federal election. With H.R.1, Congress is likely to attempt to “legalize” the unconstitutional shenanigans which enabled the theft of the last election. So your vote won’t matter!

But even if we had honest federal elections, consider this: As you decrease the powers of elected members of Congress by making them transient beings – you increase the powers of the “deep state”. With term limits, elected members of Congress would become like train cars passing in the night – the power would be solidified in the nameless, faceless, un-elected bureaucrats who infest the Executive Branch.

Anyone who analyzes the amendments proposed by COS and their allies can see that their amendments increase the powers of the federal government by delegating powers already usurped, granting new powers, or stripping States of their existing powers. See: ‘Mark Levin’s “Liberty” Amendments: Legalizing Tyranny’ [link]; ‘COS Project’s “simulated convention” dog and pony show and what they did there’ [link], & ‘The “Regulation Freedom” Amendment and Daniel Webster’ [link].

4. Amendments to “prevent federal abuse” can backfire!

When amendments correct defects in the Constitution, they are clearly a good thing. The 12th & 13th Amendments, like the 11th Amendment, corrected defects in the Constitution. Section 1 of the 14th Amendment extended Citizenship to the freed slaves and provided constitutional authority for the much needed federal Civil Rights Act of 1866.

But amendments added to prevent federal abuses backfired. In Federalist No. 84 (10th para), Alexander Hamilton warned against adding a Bill of Rights to our Constitution. Under a Constitution of enumerated powers, the government may lawfully do only what the Constitution permits it to do. So

“…why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do? Why, for instance, should it be said that the liberty of the press shall not be restrained, when no power is given by which restrictions may be imposed? … it is evident that it would furnish, to men disposed to usurp, a plausible pretense for claiming that power...” [emphasis mine]

But Hamilton’s warnings were brushed aside.

Beginning in the 1920s, Justices on the Supreme Court – who were “disposed to usurp” – fabricated a doctrine under which they claimed that §1 of the 14th Amendment “incorporated” various parts of the first 8 Amendments so that those Amendments restricted the States! This how the Supreme Court usurped power to dictate how the States must apply the Bill of Rights. As shown here (at 12. & endnote 4), this is the theory the Supreme Court used to ban Christian speech from the public schools and County courthouse lawns.

Throughout the years, the Supreme Court has extended its “incorporation doctrine” to dictate to the States how they must apply the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, 6th, and 8th Amendments [link].

Furthermore: Amendments usher in implementing federal statutes and executive agency regulations – and judicial power over the subject of the Amendment becomes vested in the federal courts. Article III, §2, cl.1, says, “The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases … arising under this Constitution …”

Beware of what you ask for.

5. Natelson’s assurances that a convention would consist of “state delegations” sent “to propose pre-specified amendments” are false and reckless in the extreme 2

Natelson presents nothing to support his assurances. He can’t because his assurances are contradicted by the Constitution; and by the federal “amendments” convention of 1787, which is our sole historical precedent for a federal convention called by a Congress to address our federal Constitution.

Article V, US Constit., says:

“The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing amendments…” [italics added]

Article I, §8, last clause, US Constit., says Congress shall have the Power…

“To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.” [italics added].

So Congress calls the convention and makes the laws necessary and proper to organize the convention.

The April 11, 2014 Report of the Congressional Research Service [link] shows that Congress recognizes that Article V grants to Congress exclusive authority to set up a convention:

“Second, While the Constitution is silent on the mechanics of an Article V convention, Congress has traditionally laid claim to broad responsibilities in connection with a convention, including (1) receiving, judging, and recording state applications;…(4) determining the number and selection process for its delegates…” (page 4).

So Congress has the power to receive and judge the applications; how to count the applications, which ones to count, whether to aggregate the different forms of applications, etc.

Nothing in the Constitution permits State Legislatures to dictate amendments to be considered. The convention is the deliberative body.

Nothing in the Constitution requires Congress to permit States to select Delegates. Congress – the same Congress which Natelson tells us is “abusive”, “mendacious” and “revels in its power”- has the power to select the Delegates. Congress may appoint themselves as Delegates. 3

6. The People have the power to take down and set up governments

The push for an Article V convention is a hoax. The Globalists who stole the Election want a new Constitution. They are using “getting amendments to rein in the federal government” as a pretext for getting a convention where a new Constitution is sure to be imposed. Madison expressly warned of this stratagem [link].

Our Declaration of Independence is part of the “Organic Law” of our Land. It recognizes that The People take down and create governments. When Delegates meet in convention to address a Constitution, they are the Sovereign Representatives of The People. They cannot be controlled by the “creatures” of Constitutions previously ratified by the People [link].

In Federalist No. 40 (15th para) James Madison invoked the “transcendent and precious right” of a people to throw off one government and set up a new one as justification for the Delegates to the federal “amendments” convention of 1787 ignoring their instructions to propose amendments to the Articles of Confederation, and instead writing a new Constitution with its own easier mode of ratification.

Accordingly, even if the “abusive” and “mendacious” Congress doesn’t “revel in its power” to appoint Delegates, but graciously permits States to select Delegates, State Legislatures have no competent authority to control Delegates at a convention called by Congress pursuant to Article V. The Delegates, as Sovereign Representatives of The People, have the power to eliminate the federal & state governments! 4

Heed the warning of the great statesman Daniel Webster:

“The politician that undertakes to improve a Constitution with as little thought as a farmer sets about mending his plow, is no master of his trade. If that Constitution be a systematic one, if it be a free one, its parts are so necessarily connected that an alteration in one will work an alteration in all; and this cobbler, however pure and honest his intentions, will, in the end, find that what came to his hands a fair and lovely fabric goes from them a miserable piece of patchwork.” Daniel Webster, 4th of July Oration, 1802.

Endnotes:

1 In a speech Natelson gave on Sep. 16, 2010 [link at top of p. 2], he said he would no longer call what he wanted a “constitutional convention”; but would ‘put our concepts on “reset” ’ and henceforth call it a “convention of states”.

2 Noted conservative constitutional litigators and law professors William Olsen and Herb Titus have already recognized that COS’s “false assurances” are “reckless in the extreme” [link].

3 Page 40 of the CRS Report says it’s been recognized that there doesn’t seem to be any “… constitutional prohibition against [U.S.] Senators and Representatives serving as delegates to an Article V Convention..”

4 The proposed Constitution for the Newstates of America [link] does just that. Article XII, §1 provides for ratification by a referendum called by the President. Do YOU trust the voting machines?

Gatestone Institute: Denmark Cracks Down on “Parallel Societies”

This article from the Gatestone Institue describes Denmark’s attempt to “preserve social cohesion in the country by encouraging integration and discouraging ethnic and social self-segregation” — Denmark Cracks Down on “Parallel Societies”. The Danish Prime Minister said, “We must not accept that democracy is replaced with hatred in parallel societies. Radicalization must not be protected. It must be revealed.”

The Danish government has announced a package of new proposals aimed at fighting “religious and cultural parallel societies” in Denmark. A cornerstone of the plan includes capping the percentage of “non-Western” immigrants and their descendants dwelling in any given residential neighborhood. The aim is to preserve social cohesion in the country by encouraging integration and discouraging ethnic and social self-segregation.

The announcement comes just days after Denmark approved a new law banning the foreign funding of mosques in the country. The government has also recently declared its intention significantly to limit the number of people seeking asylum in Denmark.

Denmark, which already has some of the most restrictive immigration policies in Europe, is now at the vanguard of European efforts to preserve local traditions and values in the face of mass migration, runaway multiculturalism and the encroachment of political Islam.

The new proposals, announced by Interior and Housing Minister Kaare Dybvad Bek on March 17, are contained in a 15-page report, “Mixed Residential Areas: The Next Step in the Fight Against Parallel Societies.”

A main element of the plan calls for relocating residents of non-Western origin to ensure that, within the next ten years, they do not comprise more than 30% of the total population of any neighborhood or housing area in Denmark.

The plan also calls for phasing out the term “ghetto areas,” which has been criticized as being derogatory, and replacing it with the more politically correct “prevention areas” (forebyggelsesområder) and “transformation areas” (omdannelsesområder).

The term “ghetto,” which refers to areas with high concentrations of immigrants, unemployment and crime, first came into official use in Denmark in 2010 with the release of a government report, “Reinserting Ghettos into Society: A Showdown with Parallel Societies in Denmark.”

A “ghetto area” currently refers to a residential area with at least 1,000 inhabitants, where the proportion of non-Western immigrants and their descendants is higher than 50%, and where at least two of the following four criteria are met:

  • The proportion of residents aged 18-64 who are not in work or in education exceeds 40%.
  • The proportion of residents who have been convicted of violating the Penal Code, the Firearms Act or the Narcotic Drugs Act is at least three times the national average.
  • The proportion of residents aged 30-59 who have only a primary school education exceeds 60% of all residents in the same age group.
  • The average gross income for taxpayers aged 15-64 in the area (excluding education seekers) is less than 55% of the average gross income for all residents in the area.

In 2018, the Danish Parliament, with support from all of the country’s main political parties, adopted the “parallel society package” (Parallelsamfundspakken), also known as the “ghetto plan” (Ghettoplan). The 22-point plan states that there will be no “ghetto areas” in Denmark by 2030. Details are included in a government report, “One Denmark Without Parallel Societies.”

At the time, the government, explained the need for a comprehensive strategy to combat parallel societies:

“The government wants a cohesive Denmark. A Denmark that is based on democratic values ​​such as freedom and the rule of law, equality and freedom. Tolerance and equality. A Denmark where everyone participates actively. Over the past 40 years, Denmark’s ethnic composition has changed markedly.

“In 1980, we were 5.1 million people in Denmark. Today we are close to 5.8 million. The growth of the population comes from outside. Both immigrants and descendants of immigrants. The majority of the new Danes have a non-Western background.

“In 1980, there were about 50,000 people with non-Western backgrounds in Denmark. Today there are almost half a million. This corresponds to an increase from approximately one percent of the population to approximately 8.5 percent….

“What has gone wrong? At least three things.

“First, the individual immigrant has the responsibility to learn Danish, to get a job and become part of the local community and to be integrated into his new homeland. Far too few have seized the opportunities that Denmark offers, despite the fact that Denmark is a society with security, freedom, free education and good job opportunities.

“Second, as a society, for too many years we have not made the necessary demands of newcomers. We have had far too low expectations for the refugees and immigrants who came to Denmark. We have not made sufficiently tangible demands on jobs and self-sufficiency. Therefore, too many immigrants have ended up in prolonged inactivity.

“Third, for decades too many refugees and family-reunified people have not been integrated into Danish society. They have been allowed to clump together in ghetto areas without contact with the surrounding community, even after many years in Denmark, because we have not made clear demands on them to become part of the Danish community….

“It’s about to be the last call. In parts of Western Europe, massive challenges have arisen with ghettos and very ingrained parallel societies. Denmark is not there yet. And that is why we must make a massive effort now, so that we can stop the development before the problems become impossible to solve.

“There is only one way. The ghettos must be completely eradicated. Parallel societies must be broken down. And we must make sure that new ones do not arise. Once and for all, the very big task of integration must be tackled whenever immigrants and their descendants have not embraced Danish values ​​and isolate themselves in parallel societies.”

The 2018 agreement stipulates that if a residential area ends up on the so-called ghetto list, local councils must choose between four measures: 1) demolish public housing; 2) build new housing for private rental; 3) convert public housing to elderly or youth housing; or 4) sell public housing to private buyers or investors for private rental.

The plan seeks to reduce the share of public housing to no more than 40% in the most vulnerable areas by 2030. The overall goal is to transform the ghetto areas into normal residential areas.

Interior and Housing Minister Kaare Dybvad Bek says that the plan is working. The number of residential areas on the government’s most recent “ghetto list,” published in December 2020, has declined by half in three years, from 29 in 2018 to 15 in 2020. The number of “hardened ghettos,” which refers to any area that has been included on the ghetto list for four years in a row, has declined from 15 in 2018 to 13 in 2020.

Bek attributed the decline mainly to more people finding employment or pursuing an education:

“It is fantastically positive that it is progressing in so many areas, and we are already seeing the effect of the parallel society package. There is a historically large decrease in the number of vulnerable areas on all lists, especially because far more residents have come to find work or pursue education.

“The large drop in the number of vulnerable areas is especially a pat on the back to the housing organizations and municipalities that in recent years have worked hard to ensure mixed housing areas, so that all children have the same opportunities, no matter where they grow up.”

Bek’s newly named “prevention areas” are to be designated on the basis of the same criteria as the existing “ghetto areas,” but with lower limits. A “prevention area” refers to a residential area with at least 1,000 inhabitants, where the proportion of non-Western immigrants and their descendants is higher than 30%, and where at least two of the following four criteria are met:

  • The proportion of residents aged 18-64 who are not in work or in education exceeds 30%.
  • The proportion of residents who have been convicted of violating the Penal Code, the Firearms Act or the Narcotic Drugs Act is at least two times the national average.
  • The proportion of residents aged 30-59 who have only a primary school education exceeds 60% of all residents in the same age group.
  • The average gross income for taxpayers aged 15-64 in the area (excluding education seekers) is less than 65% of the average gross income for all residents in the area.

A total of 58 residential areas in Denmark will be categorized as “prevention areas” in the government’s new proposal, which will affect approximately 100,000 people of non-Western origin. Bek explained:

“For far too many years, we have closed our eyes to the development that was underway, and only acted when the integration problems became too great. Now we want to make sure that we do not once again stick our heads in the sand while new parallel societies emerge. We will do this by preventing more vulnerable housing areas and by creating more mixed housing areas throughout Denmark.

“Today, municipalities and housing organizations do not always intervene in time if large public housing areas enter into a negative spiral. Therefore, we will now provide access to most of the tools that apply to vulnerable residential areas. For us, it is about helping the residents and creating equal opportunities for all children, regardless of where they grow up in Denmark.

“The ‘ghetto’ term is misleading. I do not use it myself, and I think it overshadows the important work that needs to be done in the residential areas. This whole effort is about fighting parallel societies and creating a positive development in the residential areas, so that they are made attractive to a broad section of the population.”

Denmark’s governing center-left Social Democratic Party has pursued strong anti-immigration policies, partly in an effort to blunt the appeal of populist parties on the right.

Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, who has been in office since June 2019, recently announced that her government intends significantly to limit the number of people seeking asylum in Denmark. The aim, she said, is to preserve “social cohesion” in the country.

Denmark, which has a population of 5.8 million, received approximately 40,000 asylum applications during the past five years, according to data compiled by Statista. Most of the applications received by Denmark, a predominately Christian country, were from migrants from Muslim countries in Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

In recent years, Denmark has also permitted significant non-asylum immigration, especially from non-Western countries. Denmark is now home to sizeable immigrant communities from Syria (35,536); Turkey (33,111); Iraq (21,840); Iran (17,195); Pakistan (14,471); Afghanistan (13,864); Lebanon (12,990) and Somalia (11,282), according to Statista.

Muslims currently comprise approximately 5.5% of the Danish population, according to the Pew Research Center, which forecasts that this figure will double or possibly triple by 2050, depending on the migration scenario.

On January 22, during a parliamentary hearing on Danish immigration policy, Frederiksen said that she was determined to reduce the number of asylum approvals:

“Our goal is zero asylum seekers. We cannot promise zero asylum seekers, but we can establish the vision for a new asylum system, and then do what we can to implement it. We must be careful that not too many people come to our country, otherwise our social cohesion cannot exist. It is already being challenged.”

In her 2021 New Year’s address, Frederiksen said that in the year ahead, her government would continue to insist that immigrants integrate into Danish society:

“As a society, we must step more into character and stick to our Danish values. We must not accept that democracy is replaced with hatred in parallel societies. Radicalization must not be protected. It must be revealed.

“The government will rethink its integration efforts so that it is based to a greater extent on clear requirements and clear expectations with a focus on law and duty.

“Basically, it must be the case that once you have been granted residence in Denmark, you must of course support yourself. If this is not possible for a period of time, the government will propose that you — in return for your social welfare benefit — be obliged to contribute the equivalent of a normal working week of 37 hours. These are some of the tasks ahead of us in the new year.”

CPR, AED & First Aid Certification Class at Bleyhl’s Grandview, Mar. 24, 2021

Would you like to get certified in CPR, AED & First Aid?
Do you need to renew your current certification? We invite you to join us on Wednesday, March 24th for a training led by Firepoint Training Associates, LLC. We will be offering two classes on Wednesday, please see below for more information.
Cost:
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Straight Line Logic: The Inversion

Robert Gore at Straight Line Logic writes The Inversion about peer pressure, technologies, lies, and being a dissident.

Getting along by going along with the patently absurd.

A seamless web, they all believe because they all believe.

The Gordian Knot, Robert Gore, 2000

If it seems like the world has turned upside down it’s because it has. Right is wrong and wrong is right. Truth is lies and lies are truth. Knowledge is ignorance and ignorance is knowledge. Success is failure and failure is success. Reality is illusion and illusion is reality.

It would be comforting to say that this inversion is a plot by nefarious others. Comforting, but not true, in the pre-inversion meaning of the word true. Rather it stems from answers to questions that confront everyone. To think for yourself or believe with the group? To stand alone or cower with the crowd? It’s the conflict between the individual and the collective, and between what’s true and what’s believed.

We live in an age of fear. It’s not fear of germs, war, poverty or any other tangible threat that most besets humanity. It’s the fear of being disliked and ostracized by the group.

If every age has its emblematic technology, ours is social media, with its cloying likes and thumbs up and its vicious cancellations, doxing, and deplatforming. No longer must you wander through life plagued by that nagging insecurity—am I liked? Now you can keep virtual score: you not only know if you’re liked or disliked, you know how much and by whom. Unfortunately, that knowledge doesn’t seem to help; the scoreboards only amplify the insecurity. What was once an occasionally troubling question, privately asked of one’s self, has become a widely held, public obsession.

The official Covid-19 response is the apotheosis of inversion and probably the one that runs it off the rails. There’s a model that has repeatedly erred predicting infection and death rates by orders of magnitude. Use it! Politicians and bureaucrats, the two most power-hungry groups on the planet, are clamoring for unlimited powers to destroy jobs, businesses, economies, lives, and liberty. Give it to ’em, no questions asked! Sunshine, Vitamin D, fresh air, and exercise prevent diseases and lessen their symptoms’ severity. Lock ’em up! Lockdowns aren’t working. Lock ’em up harder! Masks don’t prevent or hinder viral transmission, their packaging says so. Double, triple, or better yet, quadruple mask! At high cycle thresholds, the PCR test throws off many false positives, inflating case counts. Crank up the cycle thresholds until Biden gets in office! Cheap medicines hydroxychloroquine, and ivermectin both prevent and cure the disease, provided it’s not too far advanced. Discourage their use! They work better than expensive vaccines. Make vaccinations mandatory! Scores of reputable and eminent doctors and scientists are questioning and criticizing the protocols. Censor them and follow our shapeshifting science! Death counts are inflated because hospitals have a financial incentive to attribute deaths to Covid-19 and anybody who has tested positive and subsequently dies of whatever cause is labeled a Covid-19 death. If they scare people into saving just one life…. The cure is far worse than the disease. Shut up or we’ll shut you up! There’s always germs out there and they constantly mutate, this horseshit could last forever. New Normal, Great Reset. It will last forever, and it will get worse, won’t it? We’ll circle back on that.

Peer pressure is the fundamental force of the social universe. Anyone who’s part of a collective will be pressured to accept its consensus on matters trivial and important. Congruence between what a collective believes and truth is happenstance. The larger the group, the higher the chance of incongruence.

Groups don’t think, they perpetuate and enforce belief. Collectives collectivize what passes for thought, none more so than governments. There’s always the danger that someone might ask why those who rule get to club everyone else into submission. Rulers either suppress that question or try to provide a nominal justification. If they have the clubs, what are they worried about?

The ruling caste is always small compared to the ruled. No matter how many clubs it has and how overmatched the subjects may be, the ruling caste knows its position is more secure if their subjects believe their propaganda and consent to their rule. The underpinnings of frightened compliance with “Do as you’re told or else!” are rickety compared to a chorus chanting in unison “We’re all in this together!” or some such rot.

None are so enslaved as those chained to group belief. Truth is irrelevant, group acceptance paramount. Belief is unquestioned and unchallenged, truth the shunned and hated enemy. Governments have promoted this inversion for centuries, always telling the same lies. Faith in government may be the strongest and longest-lived secular religion, and it’s certainly the one most resistant to questions, investigation, or contrary evidence.

The script never varies. We’re good, they’re bad, exterminate them. Conquest, domination, and empire are our nation’s greatness. Need not greed: those who earn it are selfish for trying to keep it; we’re virtuous for taking it away. Our pieces of paper are good as gold. Your squalor has nothing to do with our opulent lifestyles; be grateful for your bread and circuses. Dissidence must be suppressed; opposition is traitorous. Ruination and death are everyone’s fault but ours. You just weren’t good enough to live up to our ideals.

Inversions can only last so long. People consciously or unconsciously reject them, and reality doesn’t invert. A small coterie in Washington may believe they run a global empire, but Russia and China refuse to kowtow, even nominal allies are backing away, and the costs of maintaining its crumbling empire are helping drive the US into bankruptcy. What US cheerleaders call the best military in the world hasn’t won a significant war since World War II and its fighting forces are being ideologically culled or indoctrinated in wokesterism, systematically rendering it even less fit to fight.

The censors no longer hide their censorship. There are stories that cannot be reported, questions that cannot be asked, investigations that cannot be launched, platforms that cannot be allowed, and issues that cannot be discussed within the captured media. It cried foul when Donald Trump made “fake news” a catch phrase, but it caught on because it confirmed what millions know: much of today’s “news” is fraudulent propaganda.

After a month-and-a-half of one-party rule it’s clear that suppression is only going to get worse. Among those who intellectually stand outside the collective, suppression neither decreases belief in what is suppressed nor increases belief in the party line. They know the truth lies in what’s being kept from them.

Subconsciously, even adherents to the party line never completely believe it. Fully “woke,” you may “know” that Western civilization is a discredited product of the white male patriarchy. However, do you throw yourself from the top of a tall building because the properties of gravity were first described by white English patriarch Isaac Newton?

Psychological dissonance plagues true believers. What are they going to believe: dogma or their own senses and thought processes, such as they are? It’s the root cause of their psychic brittleness: the inability to answer questions or engage in debate, the insistence on ostensible agreement, and the need to suppress anyone who doesn’t go along.

The fragility that tries to adjust reality to belief runs head-on into the desire among those whose behaviors are to be adjusted to live their own lives as they see fit, not to mention reality itself. America’s divide is between those who want to be left alone and those who want to tell them what to do. It’s so much easier for the latter if they can impose at least the appearance of consent on the former through suppression, fraud, or force.

Reality doesn’t invert, no matter how many people believe otherwise. Governments and central banks will debase their fiat debt instruments until the illusion that they’re worth something is discarded. They have every incentive to do so and it’s happening now as governments go broke. Empires crumble because they require more energy and resources to maintain than they generate. The American empire will be no exception. The more production is taxed, regulated, and otherwise penalized, the less production you get. The more indolence is rewarded, the more indolence you get. As government’s power expands, people’s freedom shrinks. You can make people engineers or brain surgeons based on their race, ethnicity, gender, sexual preference or any other irrelevant factor, but it increases the likelihood that the bridge collapses and the patient dies on the operating table.

A society that corrupts science, the basis for discovering, describing, and employing reality, is doomed. Honest science requires free inquiry and debate. It is a never-ending process of proposing, testing, evaluating, revising and discarding hypotheses for new ones with more explanatory and predictive power. There is no such thing as settled science. The claims that there is with regards to climate, coronaviruses, or any other scientific issue are nothing more than admissions that the purported science is propaganda. Unchallenged science is a contradiction in terms; challenge is the lifeblood of science.

So add science that isn’t science to the long list of inversions that collectively could spell humanity’s doom. Consequences don’t recognize wishful thinking or political diktat. Climate and coronavirus dogma masquerading as science is the Trojan horse ushering in the great reset of a new world order. Global governance, state-approved science, political and cultural canons enforced with jihadist zeal, top-down economic command-and-control, the eradication of any vestiges of liberty, and billions of unthinking adherents will destroy rather than build, compounding today’s inversions and creating new ones.

The danger to all this is individuals who think and act for themselves, those who are woke to the woke, so to speak. The key to standing on the outside, critically examining what’s within, is to abandon any desire to be on the inside. The docile dreck and their puppet-masters within are usually sufficient inducement to stay outside. Once that decision is made, independence of thought is almost assured. (Those who see the inside for what it is and still want in are corrupt beyond redemption.)

Challenge dogma and propaganda and you’re a dissident. Not always a comfortable position, but the dissidents will have the best shot at surviving the coming collapse. The insiders will suffer shattering disillusionment as reality obliterates cherished belief…and the insiders.

The historically unprecedented scale of present inversions guarantees upheaval and change beyond reckoning when reality’s full force can no longer be denied or subverted. Even those who see things as they are and regard themselves as fully prepared will be shocked by what’s to come. At least they will retain the existential essentials of observational power and logic as they sort through the smoldering intellectual landscape, discard the inversions, and get on with the rebuilding.

AIER: Tell Me Again How Governments Are Essential

Joakim Book at the American Institute for Economic Research rants about the uselessness of governments in Tell Me Again How Governments Are Essential.

I don’t like governments. I don’t like how they are set up, how they’re ruled, how their existence furthers a one-size-fits-all approach to complicated social problems, or how they distort markets and behavior when they grab a share of every productive economic activity that they can spot. I don’t like how they’re the antithesis of liberty, and I particularly don’t like how their services – almost always and everywhere – are subpar.

It would be one thing if governments took 50%, 60%, or 75% of the value you created but gave you such excellent services in return that you felt like you got your money’s worth.

Instead, we get a hodgepodge of regulatory failures, bank bailouts, dead kids in the Middle East, and a runaway national debt, while politicians live grand lives at the expense of the subjects they pretend to represent. Emergency by fake emergency, they grow in size, inching the battle lines of respectable power wielding a little further each time.

Everyone I know has stories about government malpractice, about navigating impossible bureaucratic jungles, about unfair tax practices or creatively interpreted conditions that render the service for which they’re supposedly eligible less than useful.

God knows there are plenty of such stories in the private sector too (dig deep enough and you often find an unsuited government programme or regulation at the bottom of that) but at least private enterprises are financially punished for providing lousy services. And usually there are plenty of options if you want a replacement.

Proponents of governments or social democracy more broadly are often untroubled by stories of obvious government incompetence or inefficiency: that it’s always 45 minutes on the phone before one gets answers to simple questions about arbitrary tax rules; that it’s 10 weeks delay for a simple piece of paper; that every five years or so I must renew official documents that they demand I have, at my own expense. They happily shrug them off as one-offs: bugs and accidents in an otherwise well-functioning system.

It doesn’t take many steps down Alice’s more conspiratorial rabbit hole before you start thinking that the unending stories of government incompetence are connected. That it’s not by chance that government services are so bad. To put it bluntly: this is what governments do and what governments are. They are obstacles in the way: bureaucratic hurdles for the rest of us to move around. They don’t build or create anything; they live off the creation of others.

My latest story is an outstanding transaction I have with the Danish tax authority since 2017. A few years before I had the audacity to put some of my meagre leftover savings (after governments had pilfered their share) in a handful of shares in a Danish company. That was my first mistake: in a world of spendthrift governments, thou shalt not save or invest but merely spend (under certain circumstances, you may buy government bonds to keep down the interest rate on the government debt).

Through a quirk of international capital taxation that I most certainly don’t understand – and if I had to venture a guess: almost nobody does – many countries centered on taxing dividend payments from listed companies at 15%. We can argue over the ethics or efficacy of taxing money that has already been taxed several times (in consuming the company’s products and services, or through corporate income tax), but that’s not the point. Many tax systems adjust to deal with this, automatically deducting in your tax returns the dividend taxes that foreign governments have withheld against your domestic tax bill. Standard government bureaucrats shuffling money around without actually making much of an impact on anything, but since that’s what governments do nobody was much surprised.

A few countries then discovered a sneaky flaw in the system. If they upped their rate above 15% to, say 27% in the case of Denmark or 35% for Finland, they could pocket the difference if foreign shareholders were too lazy to file the papers that would claim back the excess tax. With a stroke of a legislating pen, there’d be more tax funds in the Treasury, involving only the processing of some supporting documents and a few more hires at the relevant tax authorities: a victory for everyone but taxpayers, naturally.

I was not too lazy (even though my time would have been better spent doing precisely anything else). In the winter of 2016-2017 I gathered the documents I needed, I navigated the Danish tax authority’s forms and websites, and submitted everything. A few months later, I received a confirmation that my issue had been received and was being processed. Great: I was on track to get back the lordly sum of DKK 76.68 – or about $11 at the time. More for me, and less for them – precisely in line with my ideological priors.

Then began a long stretch of silence. I made a note in my calendar to periodically remind me, but I mostly forgot about the issue. Some time in 2018, I think, I received a letter from the Danish authority saying that they’ve run into some obscure problem and that the process had been delayed: they guided, as is the way of enlightened government bureaucrats, 12-18 months.

Of course, while I waited, my 76.68 Danish Crowns were not earning interest and if anything were slowly depreciating in their purchasing power. Again, as is the government’s way.

Last week, almost four years to the date after the issue had first been recorded with the Danish authority (and about 12 months longer than the maximum they had estimated), I received the attached letter in the post saying that they had been subject of some unspecific fraud and were further investigating all claims – and estimated another 18 months before payout.

Intriguingly, they mention something about paying interest for the delay. When I peruse the legalese of relevant Danish tax law, it seems to say that it will run at the official central bank rate (0.05%) plus 8%. With compounding, this would be something like 118 DKK (about $19 on today’s exchange rate) by the summer of next year.

To be seen is how they crawl themselves out of that one.

This is just one story, and all things considered a microscopically small story. But, as an old saying goes – that has unfortunately fallen out of favor in the English language but whose Scandinavian equivalent is still widely used – “Many a little makes a mickle.” And stories like these are everywhere.

In public finance, we might tip our hats to what Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen may or may not have observed against excessive government spending: “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.” Of course, that was before the Great Inflation, and these days the same sentiment must be expressed with “trillions.”

I’m still routinely shocked that people think governments are essential to the operating of civilized life and crucial for our well-being. The more interactions like these that I have, the more confused I am that not everyone jumps ship and embraces a smarter world.

So: tell me again, why do we need governments?

Michael Tracy: How the Censors Won

Journalist Michael Tracy writes How the Censors Won.

Thomas Rid testifies before the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2017

On March 30, 2017, the Senate Intelligence Committee convened one of what would become an endless series of exhaustive hearings on “Russian interference in the 2016 election.” Media, cultural, and political elites — bewildered and angry — were desperate to get to the bottom of how a former beauty pageant proprietor and reality TV show host could have possibly just won the presidency.

Understandably dissatisfied with explanations that would require any kind of reckoning with their own seismic faults, politicians and journalists poured an enormous amount of resources into directing blame for the ascendance of Donald Trump at nefarious external actors, with Russia and its devious online trolling initiatives suddenly catapulted to public enemy no. 1.

The star witness in that 2017 hearing, appearing right alongside former National Security Agency chief Keith Alexander, was Thomas Rid. Impressively presented by C-SPAN as a “War Studies Professor” at King’s College London, Rid made a passionate case that the US body politic had been woefully unprepared to contend with an onslaught of what he called “the dark art of disinformation.” Rid’s mission was to alert the Senate and the Nation as a whole to just how dire a threat this new breed of “disinformation” posed.

Rid placed particular emphasis on the problem of “unwitting agents” getting duped into advancing the geopolitical objectives of hostile foreign states, in this case Russia, by aiding in the propagation of their “disinformation” offensives. “Three types of unwitting agents stand out,” he intoned, remarking on the various culprits for the polluted political atmosphere which purportedly enabled Trump’s rise. “WikiLeaks, Twitter, […] and over-eager journalists aggressively covering the political leaks while neglecting or ignoring their provenance,” he charged.

Later, in his scarily-titled book Active Measures, Rid would elaborate at length on the Journalists Doing Russia’s Bidding theme — lamenting that in the heady days of the 2016 presidential campaign, “reporters, worn down by breakneck news cycles, became more receptive to covering leaked, compromising material of questionable provenance.” Taken for granted by Rid was that the allegedly “questionable provenance” of these materials ought to have been journalists’ paramount consideration, as opposed to whether the materials were 1) authentic (which they were) and 2) shed light on the secret behavior of the country’s most powerful political factions (which they did).

In any event, the three entities that Rid singled out for condemnation in the testimony — WikiLeaks, Twitter, and “over-eager journalists” — either capitulated to varying degrees in the ensuing years to his demands, or were otherwise neutralized. The founder of WikiLeaks was prosecuted by the US government and currently languishes in UK prison, which removed one of the central threats that so troubled Rid. Twitter, whose founder once espoused a relatively maximalist conception of free speech (at least compared to other social media companies) drastically changed its philosophy on such issues — embarking on repeat banning sprees, suppressing newsworthy materials falsely classified as “Russian disinformation” just weeks before the 2020 election, and eventually purging the sitting president from the platform.

Even more excitingly for Rid, elite journalists’ attitude toward the alleged menace of “disinformation” became increasingly indistinguishable from his own. In the years since that 2017 testimony, it was more and more the journalists themselves who led the charge in demanding censorship to curtail supposed “disinformation,” especially if they could somehow speciously link such “disinformation” to “harassment” and/or “violence.”

And the “over-eagerness” of journalists to report newsworthy information that Rid had condemned was replaced by journalists instead harboring extreme paranoia about being accused of aiding scary foreign influence campaigns — and thereby turning into “unwitting agents” of those scary foreigners. That created a new industry-wide taboo against doing anything which may be perceived as assisting in the dissemination of unjustly “hacked” materials, even if those materials are authentic and expose the malfeasant conduct of powerful officials. Thus, in the years since Rid’s testimony, journalists converted into the most vocal advocates for the suppression of online political speech and the constriction of the bounds of acceptable political discourse — in large part to counteract the claimed threat of “disinformation.” Rid had gotten exactly what he wanted.

So he was perfectly justified in expressing pleasure this week upon the publication of the latest Intelligence Community Assessment regarding “foreign threats” during the 2020 election. Rid gushingly proclaimed the document “remarkable” and indicated how “impressed” he was by it, with his pleasure extending to heaping praise on Facebook for having been “particularly proactive” in purging Extremely Dangerous political content from the internet. “Twitter also delivered,” Rid added.

The most telling part of the “Intelligence Community Assessment” was its contention that a key tactic of Russia is “exacerbating sociopolitical divisions in the US.” Variations on this Rid-adjacent theme have frequently percolated in elite discussions of the horrors of “Russian interference” since 2016: the idea that Russia seeks to gain world domination by inflaming domestic divisions in the US and undermining confidence in US institutions, and so journalism which unduly inflames domestic divisions and/or undermines confidence in institutions ipso facto helps Russia. But weirdly, you’ll notice, this decree never seems to apply to by far the most inflammatory purveyors of division in the country, that being mainline corporate media. It’s their foundational business model. Also left out of the equation is whether these vaunted institutions deserve confidence in the first place, or if lacking confidence in them is in fact the only rational response to their deceptions and corruptions.

Those who are expelled from social media platforms tend to be political actors who operate outside the ambit of hegemonic left/liberal corporate consensus, rendering them susceptible to marginalization per the framework popularized by Rid and the Intelligence Community he holds in such high esteem. Which demonstrates the ultimate function this framework: to limit and constrict the range of acceptable political opinion in the US, because deviation from the acceptable range invites accusations that one is “furthering the cause of Russia” (as Rid put it in the 2017 testimony). And during the Trump years, “furthering the cause of Russia” was seen as tantamount to abetting Trump and thereby fascism, which as you might imagine is not the greatest thing for journalists’ career prospects.

After the publication of the Assessment this week, there were momentary flutters of an attempt by corporate media acolytes to hype a zombie Russiagate revival — it was alleged in the Assessment that Russia had technically “interfered” again — but this attempt quickly fizzled. Even journalists groping for a titillating storyline to fill the Trump-sized hole in the media landscape can evidently recognize that this sequel was never going to be as good as the original. And either way, why bother focusing too much on whatever “interference” may or may not have occurred during the 2020 election, if it ultimately did not impede the achievement of the outcome that cultural and political elites so viscerally craved — the removal of Trump.

The comparatively muted reaction to the Assessment provides further evidence that “disinformation” and “interference” are only regarded as existentially dangerous by political and media elites if it can be causally tied to what they regard as a bad political outcome — such as the election of Trump. Imagine if just 42,918 votes in three states had been shifted from Joe Biden to Trump in the 2020 election, and Trump had won Georgia, Arizona, and Wisconsin and thus another term in the White House. Does anyone with basic memory-recall facilities of the past several years doubt for one second that even the slightest indications of “Russian interference” would’ve been frantically hyped again as a causal explanation for Trump’s victory? But with Trump out of the picture, the narrative has ceased to perform the function it served during the 2016-2020 period. So the narrative propagators can just claim victory and move on.

In other words, Rid is entitled to celebrate his role in fostering what is now a far more stringently regulated and policed online information ecosystem. He — the censor — won.

POSTSCRIPT: There’s thematic continuity between Rid’s successful crusade to bludgeon US political and media culture into submission, and the latest round of anti-Substack hysteria that is now reaching a fever pitch among embittered and resentful journalists. Though Rid isn’t expressly calling for the destruction of Substack like so many others are, he was a critical figure in inculcating the key premises that underly this escalating drive for censorship — excessively obtrusive “content moderation,” de-platforming, and other speech-suppression initiatives in the name of combatting “disinformation.” For those interested, I was on Tucker Carlson’s show last night discussing the rage-fueled journalist-led drive to destroy Substack.

The Organic Prepper: Americans Aren’t Experiencing REAL Shortages Yet. We’re Just Living with Limited Options

The Organic Prepper talks about supply chain issues in Americans Aren’t Experiencing REAL Shortages Yet. We’re Just Living with Limited Options.

Imagine going to the store to pick up some everyday item – say, body wash for the shower – and not being able to find your usual brand. In fact, you can’t find any brand. The store is completely out so you have to go with bar soap.

In the grand scheme of life, this isn’t a big deal. Soap is soap is soap, right?  But in the United States, we have become spoiled with choices. In even a small-town store, there are dozens of options for body wash, lotion, toothpaste, and all the other things we consider necessary to live a civilized life. Don’t like the fragrance? Just go with a different brand. That laundry soap works better on your delicates and this one works better on work clothes.

Options.

Options.

Options.

This is NOT how it is in other countries. In fact, you regularly have to substitute something else entirely for the item you went to the store to purchase.

I would imagine that is also similar to how it may look in the US as the supply chain continues to crumble and personal finances keep plummeting. After all, in places like Venezuela and Greece, we watched on the news as people stood in long lines hoping to find basics like soap, diapers, rice, and cash from the ATM.

In the spirit of adaptability and resilience, let’s talk about life with limited options.

Some Americans are already accustomed to life with limited options.

Some folks are in positions in which you eat what you’re served, you use the products that are supplied, and you drink the coffee that is available. Your options are to take it or to leave it. People deployed overseas to dangerous places have a few choices on the base instead of the dozens of choices they’d have in the US. This has prepared them for the retail austerity that we’re just lately beginning to see in the United States.

Folks who have lived in poverty for a long period of time tend to be accustomed to a lack of choices because their decision-making is largely driven by price. You don’t see a lot of people who are truly struggling using salon-quality shampoo – they pick up a bottle of Suave or the store brand.

Also, folks in remote areas have fewer choices due to limited transportation. They have a couple of different stores to go to, and the stores must stock the products that most people want, not a broad assortment of specialty items. The advent of Amazon and other internet merchants has helped those in isolated areas have a broader selection, but if the item is needed right away, the choices are fewer.

But the culture of abundance in the US is changing.

We’ve published quite a number of articles on this website about the fragility of our supply chain. Not only are grocery stores showing the strain, but so are clothing stores, hardware stores, appliance stores, and places like Walmart and Target.

All you have to do is walk into any department store. Where do you see the bare spots? That’s where the products we used to get from China used to be. It should be a vast shock and an awakening that so much of our manufacturing has gone to China to give us our quick fix of shoddy yet shiny merchandise at low prices. Nearly all the things that are now limited are because either the product itself or a vital component of it is made in China. Months ago, I warned that we’d soon be seeing supply chain issues of these essentials that formerly landed on a regular basis from China.

And this is just the beginning.

The difference between a lack of options and shortages

The word “shortage” is being thrown around a lot and it’s being misused. The Cambridge Dictionary defines the word shortage as “a situation in which there is not enough of something; a lack of something that is needed.” We had a shortage in toilet paper and cleaning supplies last year, but if we’re being pedantic, we are not currently suffering from “shortages” in food or consumer goods.

What we’re experiencing right now is a limit of options. No longer can you walk into the store and have 17 shades of beige from which to select your bathroom towels. When bopping around internet forums and chat groups, I’ve seen people complaining about this type of thing. We’ve lived for so long with such an abundance of variety that to many folks, it seems positively unthinkable to no longer be able to spend a half-hour waffling between cerulean, navy, and indigo for your placemats.

But it’s important to be clear that at this point, we may not have huge numbers of options, but we can still eat food from every food group, clean our homes, buy socks and underwear, and get dish soap. Real shortages are when there’s simply nothing to buy.

I’ve lived outside the US for most of the past two and a half years, in southern Europe and Mexico, and the type of choices we have in American stores is absolutely unheard of elsewhere. I wrote about the grocery stores:

Let’s take meat, for example. Here in the United States, our stores have a lengthy expanse with hundreds of packages of meat down one aisle of the store. Outside the United States (at least where I spent most of my time) you had a little corner with a couple of chilled cases of meat. In those cases you could find chicken in perhaps three forms – whole, cut up with bone-in, and chicken breasts. For beef, you might find a roast and ground meat. With pork, you might be able to get a tenderloin, a larger bone-in roast, and some pork chops.

Moving along to other sections of the store, produce is not a vast corner with 25% of the contents of the store. It was a small section and the options were fairly basic. You didn’t have 17 brands or types of potatoes from which to choose. You just had potatoes in general in a large bin where you reached in and bagged your own.

There was food, and plenty of it. It was just that you didn’t have 29 different brands of salad dressing. You didn’t have as much processed food. You had access to basics. (source)

So while right now it feels like we have shortages, there are really only a few things that are actually in short supply. Currently, in comparison with many other parts of the world, we still live in the land of plenty. The sooner you adapt to limitations, the better off you will be when true shortages occur.

Living with limited options

The key to not feeling deprived is learning to live within our current limitations. Whether that is a lack of food options, undesirable homekeeping items, or a lack of money, we need to learn to manage this. Here are a few tips to help adapt.

Try to think in terms of “different” instead of “worse.” The most important thing of all is to adjust your mindset away from one of deprivation. Where I live currently is beautiful with a year round growing season. Glorious, farm fresh produce is everywhere. But you can’t find the same kinds of processed foods that are readily available in the United States. At least in the part of Mexico where I live, you can’t pop into the grocery store and buy a frozen dinner or a frozen pizza or the same brands and flavors of potato chips they have in the US. I’ve heard ex-pats complaining about the “lack” of food when it’s literally growing all around us. But it’s different and some people are creatures of habit. Different is difficult for them.

I choose to look at the local food options and see them as a culinary adventure. I ask the local vendors how to cook things like jicama and plantain and they’re nearly always happy to make suggestions. (Although sometimes our conversations take place via a translate app on our phones.)

Your favorite brand of detergent isn’t there? Well, there are two kinds to choose from and the ingredients to make your own. Therefore, laundry soap is available.

Learn to cook with different cuts of meat and in-season produce. Maybe you wanted to make beef stew but there’s no stew meat available. Grab an inexpensive cut of roast beef and either ask the butcher counter to cut it up for you or cut it up into stew meat yourself once you get home. Learn to debone a chicken (here’s a quick video) and be sure to put those bones in the freezer to make some stock later on.

Start shopping for seasonal fruits and vegetables. You’ll save money, eat better, and you’ll be looking for what’s available as opposed to blueberries in December.

Buy locally. I can’t say this enough – you need to shorten your supply chain. By limiting the distance your products must travel to get to you, you will naturally have a more abundant selection. If I were to buy household goods here in Mexico, I could easily find pottery and copper, but stainless steel is an item that comes from much further away, and therefore, my selection is very limited.

This is true of household goods, manufactured goods, and food. Focusing on a local diet is essential for self-reliance.

Produce what you can. Are you producing or simply consuming? Surviving the current economy requires that you be a producer instead of a consumer. It’s not enough just to buy locally. You need to also be producing some goods. Building, sewing, needlecrafts, gardening, foraging, hunting, and animal husbandry skills will be more and more important.

Make sure to stock up on heirloom seeds while you can, as well as supplies and tools for the other items you produce. As well, learn multiple ways to preserve your extra food so that you have plenty to eat when harvest time has passed.

Make things last. Learning to mend, repair, maintain, and alter the goods you already have means you don’t need to replace them as often. Most folks really don’t think about how quickly things wear out when you use the same items all the time. My wardrobe is small since I’m mobile, so I’ve been wearing things out a lot more over the past two years. I hadn’t considered how often I replaced socks or how quickly I’d wear through shoes if I only have a couple of pairs for every day use.  I’ve never darned socks so much in my entire life.

Being able to alter clothing for growing children and for hand-me-downs can help reduce your wardrobe budget as well. Maintaining your essential tools means they will be in good shape when you need them most urgently. Instead of replacing, start repairing. A lot of small components are becoming more difficult to find, so get your spare parts now. Keep a few handy items on hand for quick fixes.

Use creative problem-solving skills. Finally, the most important thing is to learn to solve your problems creatively. Whether you call it workarounds or MacGuyvering, figuring out ways to fix things or make them using limited supplies is one of a preppers most vital skills.

When you have a repair done in Mexico, sometimes the handyman will ask you if you want it done the American way or the Mexican way. The American way will be prettier and the “proper” way to fix it while the Mexican way will be a little more labor intensive, require easy-to-obtain parts, and will be a whole lot cheaper. That’s why the USB port in my Jeep was repaired instead of replaced and why my bathtub gets filled using a garden hose that hooks up under the bathroom sink.

You may look at these kinds of alternatives right now with disdain, but I assure you that the ability to create a “redneck repair” will serve you well in the future.

This doesn’t mean there are no shortages.

There certainly are shortages of things like deep freezers, canning jars, certain automotive components, and specific foods. But we’re still at a point where we can work around this and keep living a lifestyle that is fairly normal.

However, it may not always be that way. As our economy continues to crumble we’ll see fewer imports and less manufacturing. After all, how are people without money going to buy consumer items? We could reach a point at which even if you have money, the items you want to buy are unavailable.

Start living more simply and going by the Great Depression credo: use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.

Tenth Amendment Center: When Can an Originalist Scholar Begin with the Constitution’s Text?

Constitutional scholar Rob Natelson at the Tenth Amendment center writes When Can an Originalist Scholar Begin with the Constitution’s Text?

I. The question

I recently wrote a post for the Federalist Society Blog, in which I examined the Constitution’s enumeration of who can be impeached and convicted. I concluded that the enumeration, coupled with the rules of construction the Founders intended to accompany the document, created a presumption that ex-officers could not be. But I added that this presumption was rebuttable by extraneous evidence.

Professor Michael Ramsey wrote a notice on the posting. He remarked that most originalist inquiries can proceed as I did—that is:

*          examine the text and apply the rules of construction to it, thereby establishing a presumptive meaning, and then

*          turn to outside evidence to see of it rebuts, qualifies, or reinforces the presumptive meaning.

I agree with Professor Ramsey. However, his comment got me thinking about the minority of cases where one cannot proceed in that manner. These are instances in which the text remains unclear even after applying the rules of construction. Moreover, sometimes after examining the text it even remains unclear whether that text is unclear. In fact, what seems obvious on initial examination may be entirely wrong.

In such cases, we must consult outside evidence to establish a presumptive meaning.

Fortunately, the impeachment enumeration I addressed in my FedSoc post was clear, at least as far as I needed to go. However, as explained below, on first reading another impeachment phrase—“high . . . Misdemeanors” —is not.

In this post I offer some guidance as to when an initial resort to extraneous evidence is necessary to establish the text’s presumptive meaning. For illustrations, I’ve mined my thirty or so articles and book chapters on the original meaning/understanding of specific constitutional clauses.

II. Dictionaries

In some cases, I have been able to reach a presumptive meaning by examining 18th century dictionaries. Mind, though, that when consulting dictionaries, one must not stop with Samuel Johnson, because his definitions are sometimes archaic or idiosyncratic. I have about 25 18th century dictionaries in PDF form, not counting multiple editions. Some are specialized, such as dictionaries focusing on law, military terms, Latin, or Law French. Most are general-purpose. When writing on original meaning I consult all or most of them. I find I can learn much from how their definitions vary or track each other.

But dictionary searches can prove inconclusive. Sometimes dictionaries offer multiple definitions, so you have to examine extraneous evidence to determine which one the Constitution employs. Sometimes a term appears in a specialized dictionary, but not in others. Sometimes the definition employed by the Constitution does not appear in any dictionary at all.

Results like this compel resort to extrinsic evidence to determine presumptive meaning. Here are some typical scenarios.  You will notice that some of them overlap.

III. Some Scenarios

Scenario #1: The dictionaries offer several common meanings of a word or phrase, but it is not clear which one the Constitution employs

I encountered an example when researching my article on the Coinage Clause. The Coinage Clause reads, “The Congress shall have Power . . . To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin . . . ” As is true today, during the 18th century the most common use of the verb “to coin” was to strike metallic tokens. Libertarians long relied on the assumption that this was the Constitution’s meaning, and therefore claimed paper money is unconstitutional. Left-of-center commentators relied on the same assumption to illustrate the impracticality of originalism.

However, no one seems to have noticed a textual problem with interpreting coinage as referring only to metal. That interpretation would leave Congress in the unlikely position of enjoying power to regulate foreign metallic tokens, but bereft of power to regulate foreign paper currency.

The 18th century dictionaries reported a secondary meaning of “to coin:” to fabricate. Today that usage is exceedingly rare: a survival is the expression “to coin a phrase.” But a survey of 18th century databases revealed that the secondary meaning was then much more common. People spoke of “coining” paper money, leather money, and so forth.

Thus began a full-bore investigation into the history of money, especially the extraordinary monetary innovations undertaken in the colonies of British North America. After acquiring this background, my presumptive conclusion was that the Coinage Clause authorized Congress to issue and regulate “coin” in media other than metal. Ambiguous comments during the Constitutional Convention were insufficient to rebut this result, and the ratification-era debates only reinforced it.

When researching my early article statutory retroactivity, I encountered another problem with which the dictionaries offered no help. This was ambiguity of the phrase “ex post facto law.” During the 18th century, the term might refer only to criminal statutes, or it could include retroactive civil statutes as well. The framing and ratification records clarified that the prevalent understanding was the former. A search for contradictory evidence led only to confirmation: James Madison’s and John Lansing’s subsequent drive for Takings and Due Process clauses to limit the scope of civil retroactivity.

Scenario #2: A word or phrase with an ordinary meaning appears in the Constitution, but as a legal term of art

In this scenario, a colloquial meaning may appear in lay dictionaries, but the manner in which the Constitution uses the word appears in law dictionaries or other legal works.

Over the years, I’ve been impressed by how often a puzzling word—or even, at first blush, an unpuzzling one—turns out to be an 18th century legal term of art. It’s not so surprising, if you think about it. The chatter about how the Constitution is written in “plain language” is not quite the truth. The Constitution is a legal document and it was written by a group of people about two-thirds of whom had been practicing lawyers. Most of advocates who explained it to the public were lawyers, Madison and Tench Coxe being the most notable exceptions.

Nor were their explanations necessarily unintelligible to the involved American public, because that public was then unusually well educated in law: As Edmund Burke remarked when urging conciliation with America, “In no country perhaps in the world is the law so general a study.”

Of course, you expect a phrase like “habeas corpus” to embody a legal meaning. You don’t expect the same from a word like “necessary.” Yet in research on the Necessary and Proper Clause, I found that the Constitution uses “necessary” as a signal for incidental powers—a very common approach in 18th century legal documents.

Learning enough to establish a presumptive meaning for the Necessary and Proper Clause required deep initial research into contemporaneous law books, documents, and judicial cases.

Other examples of 18th century legal boilerplate reproduced in the Constitution include “Privilege” and “Privileges and Immunities.” A search through contemporaneous law and legal documents found that they denoted government-created entitlements, including very important ones such as trial by jury and “the Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus.” But as the Constitution used those words, they did not comprehend rights established by nature and nature’s God. They were creations of government. Justice Bushrod Washington therefore got it largely wrong in his famous, and somewhat incoherent, passage in Corfield v. Coryell.

It probably comes as no surprise that “direct tax” was another legal term of art. What did surprise me is that the concept was far more defined and comprehensive than commonly supposed.

Both Britain and American states adopted omnibus tax statutes that provided for assessment of certain items and imposed levies upon them. In Britain and some states these were called “Land Tax” laws. But they levied on much more than real estate. They taxed human beings (capitations on both free and slave); status; wealth; professions (“faculties”) and other activities; wages, interest, profits and other kinds of income; household items, livestock, and other personal property. All the levies imposed by these omnibus statutes, and others like them, were called “direct taxes.” (Other statutes imposed indirect taxes, primarily on consumption or discrete events: excises and other “duties.”)

Thus, the Supreme Court’s much-abused case of Pollock v. Farmers’ Loan and Trust Company was correctly decided, for income taxes are direct taxes after all.

Obviously, arriving at a presumptive meaning of “direct tax” required a great deal of work with extrinsic evidence, including but not limited to 18th century tax statutes.

One final example: For decades commentators had argued over the Constitution’s term “high . . . Misdemeanors” as a ground for impeachment. Apparently only one researcher, Raoul Berger, had considered whether the phrase might be a legal term of art. But his investigation, undertaken without the benefit of modern word-search technology, was cursory and unsuccessful. Too late to prevent me from embarrassing myself in print with another hypothesized definition, I finally thought to check legal sources and certain lay sources (such as encyclopedias) explaining legal terms.

The answer was decisive: High misdemeanors were serious crimes not meriting the death penalty, such as bribery (which the Constitution mentions in this context) and assault. A mere breach of fiduciary duty was not, as I previously had thought, a high misdemeanor.

Scenario #3: The Constitution’s use of a term is not in dictionaries at all

Sometimes the framers employed words and phrases in ways that don’t appear in 18th century dictionaries or similar reference works. Instead, the constitutional meaning arose in a context the lexicographers had overlooked.

I encountered this situation when researching the Constitution’s use of the word “emolument.” The dictionary definitions were very broad: “profit” or “advantage.” Those broad definitions, I found, accurately reflected much lay usage, but for various reasons they made no sense in the constitutional text. Hence it became necessary to consult extraneous evidence to arrive at a presumptive meaning.

It turns out that in political discourse, “emoluments” carried any of three narrower meanings: (1) financial gain or, more commonly (2) gain from salary or wage plus associated fringe benefits, or (3) fringe benefits alone. Placing the Constitution’s emoluments clauses within the wider context of a then-current trans-Atlantic movement to reform how government officials were compensated enabled me to fix on what I believe is correct: An “emolument” as the Constitution uses the term refers to gain from a salary or wage plus associated fringe benefits.

Scenario #4: Some of the Constitution’s words are Americanisms

This is really a subset of Scenario #3, because these are usages that do not appear in the dictionaries, almost all of which were published in Britain.

For example, in researching my article on the Taxation Clause I found that “Eighteenth century British lay dictionaries defined ‘duty’ widely enough to include almost any financial exaction” and commercial dictionaries defined it more narrowly. But in American usage, a duty was “any financial exaction that did not qualify as a direct tax.” Thus, a duty could mean an indirect tax or a non-revenue-producing exaction to regulate commerce or other conduct. Other evidence reinforced this presumed meaning.

In 1787, the word “constitution” was an Americanism-in-development. In Britain it referred only to the political system, and that is how all contemporaneous dictionaries defined it. That was the American meaning when the Declaration of Independence was written (“a jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution”), and it was still employed that way in Virginia’s 1786 call for the 1787 federal convention. (Contrary to common belief, the convention was called in late 1786 by the Virginia legislature, not by Congress; Congress’s February 21, 1787 resolution merely endorsed the effort after seven states already had accepted Virginia’s invitation.)

However, the meaning was in flux. The “frames of government” adopted in the states often were called “constitutions.” Then came the U.S. Constitution, whose title sealed the change. A new Americanism was born.

Scenario #5: A word may have a constitutional meaning we don’t suspect because that meaning is now archaic

My favorite example of this—in fact, I think a perfect one—is the appearance of “perfect” in the Constitution’s Preamble. Modern Americans sometimes puzzle over how a Union can be made “more perfect.” This is because we almost always use this word to mean “without flaw.” How can something be “more without flaw?”

The answer is that the more common 18th century use of the term was the Latinate meaning of “complete” (Latin: perficere, to finish). The new Union was to be more complete—more tightly woven together—than the union formed by the Articles of Confederation.

Fortunately, there are not many non-legal archaisms in the Constitution—at least not many that sneak up on you. They are more likely to do that when you read other Founding-Era materials.

A good example was Leonard Levy’s mistaken conclusion that the Senate was to be the primary conductor of foreign policy because the framers sometimes referred to the president as the foreign policy “agent.” Levy didn’t realize that there was another, more Latinate, meaning of “agent” then common. Although an “agent” could mean a representative, it also could mean a “doer” or “driver” (from agere, to do or drive). The founders were using the latter sense: The president, not the Senate, was to be the primary driver of foreign policy.

Of course, you might not realize that a word is an archaism and therefore not think to consult a dictionary. That is one reason I recommend that constitutional scholars immerse themselves in 18th century writings and become familiar with the Latin language. (“But that’s time-consuming and hard!” Answer: “You bet it is.”) Latin was the Founders’ second language and significantly influenced 18th century English usage. If you have it, you see much more.

IV. Conclusion

Professor Ramsey is correct to say that we usually can reach a presumptive meaning of a constitutional provision from the text alone. But there are many situations in which you have to consult extrinsic sources before arriving at a presumptive meaning.

If you find yourself in such a situation, I can offer two sources of comfort: First, much of the evidence you explore while seeking the presumptive meaning leads you to evidence that rebuts or reinforces that meaning. Second, the historical journey is usually fascinating.

Prolonged Field Care: Medical Support to Resistance

Prolonged Field Care published an article originally from the 2019 Special Warfare magazine on Survivability: Medical Support to Resistance  which discusses “a whole-of society approach to preparing military and civilian medical resources that will build readiness and resiliency… improve casualty mortality rates and enable both resistance members and allied forces to sustain the fight.”

Hope is a primary driver of resistance movements, and the best way to keep hope alive in a resistance movement is to keep people alive. There are many aspects to enhancing survivability of a resistance movement, and medical support is one critical part. Doctrinal military health service support constructs, such as combat support hospitals or forward surgical teams, will be wholly inadequate to support resistance movements in a peer conflict in Europe for the primary reasons that they are overmanned and under trained. This article will discuss a whole-of society approach to preparing military and civilian medical resources that will build readiness and resiliency of our allies or partners, improve casualty mortality rates and enable both resistance members and allied forces to sustain the fight to regain territorial sovereignty against an illegal occupation. Medical infrastructure is vastly different in peacetime Europe than in more austere areas frequented by U.S. Special Operations Forces. Medical evacuations begin with calling 112, the European 911 equivalent, ambulances arrive to provide pre-hospital care, sometimes with physicians onboard, the patient is transported to a trauma center, and medical care is generally comparable to U.S. standards. If peer conflict occurs again in Europe, medical infrastructure will be severely degraded and significant obstacles to medical support will immediately arise, especially regarding extremely prolonged evacuation times and scarce resource availability. The U.S. military has not faced as severe a challenge to provide medical support since World War II. The SOF medical community has been bracing for the regression of medical support in emerging conflicts since at least November 2017 when U.S Army COL (Ret.) Dr. Warner “Rocky” Farr published The Death of the Golden Hour and the Return of the Future Guerrilla Hospital; yet the existential threat facing Eastern Europe poses the worst case scenario for medical support to resistance. The restricted mobility for friendly forces in territory occupied by a peer adversary will severely limit external medical support to U.S. SOF and our allied partners, including the resistance. The isolation of U.S. and allied forces in a denied environment will by necessity convert the delivery of medical care from a linear progression of medical evacuations from point of injury to higher echelons of care outside the combat zone, to a cyclical progression of evacuation, treatment, convalescence and return to duty, all completely within occupied territory.

A resistance scenario in Europe presents a unique risk to U.S. SOF supporting resistance movements, as organic capabilities will not be able to provide required medical support in this tactical environment. Recent exercises have demonstrated that U.S. SOF surgical teams will be severely restrained and may not be survivable in a denied environment, and conventional medical forces will likewise be absent. U.S. SOF medics are highly capable within their scope of practice, but over-inflation of their ability results in commanders miscalculating risk; a medic’s ability to reduce serious risk is often predicated on access to definitive care. The Maquis in occupied France and Partisans of Yugoslavia faced similar challenges in World War II but were still able to provide medical support despite great odds. The relevance of these historical precedents might be limited, however, by exponential advances in technology over the last 75 years. Providing medical support to U.S. SOF and resistance forces will be immensely challenging, but there is one great advantage over historical precedence: there is time and space now to enable ourselves and our allies and partners to be prepared to provide medical support to resistance prior to conflict, instead of reacting after a violation of a country’s national sovereignty.

BACKGROUND

In early 2018, SOCEUR conducted a multinational SOF exercise focused on irregular warfare and resistance in the Baltic region of Eastern Europe. Key medical lessons learned from the exercise were that medical evacuation in restricted areas during peer conflict is incredibly challenging, and U.S. SOF surgical teams as currently configured and trained will have low, if any, chance of survival in occupied territory. It was evident that planning medical support solely using only a U.S. military doctrinal construct was impractical and ineffective; civilian medical resources were identified as, and will necessarily be, the center of gravity for medical support to resistance. Resistance doctrine was turned to as a possible solution to the way ahead, but existing doctrine was found to be largely inadequate for the range of potential operational environments in future conflicts against a peer adversary in Eastern Europe. The focus of U.S. resistance doctrine on unconventional warfare and resistance movements assumes that conflicts have already begun or are ongoing. Furthermore, reverse engineering resistance constructs prior to conflict is difficult because it is impossible to forecast who and what will survive the initial invasion. The whole-of-society approach advocated by the Resistance Operating Concept was embraced as a potential solution for addressing critical gaps in providing medical support to resistance.

WHOLE-OF-SOCIETY APPROACH TO MEDICAL SUPPORT FOR RESISTANCE

The SOCEUR Surgeon’s Office has developed a whole-of-society approach to enable medical support to resistance (Figure 01) as a tiered approach to improve trauma care from point of injury through surgical intervention, convalescence and return to duty. Additionally, it aims to increase medical interoperability with Allies and partners in preparation for a resistance scenario in Eastern Europe.

U.S. SOF MEDICINE

The core of this approach begins with increased readiness for U.S. SOF. If peer conflict in Eastern Europe occurs, U.S. SOF medics will be required to treat casualties on extended timelines with limited supplies. Proficiency in Prolonged Field Care improves the SOF medic’s ability to do this, but is dependent on the medic’s ability to transfer casualties to higher echelons of care for definitive treatment or required convalescence. SOF surgical teams may be part of the solution, but will require manning changes and additional training in order to improve survivability in peer-adversary occupied territory.

Previously, the SOCEUR Surgeon’s office developed and conducted a course in UW medicine for surgical teams. This training was conducted as a proof of concept in Fall 2017, and was subsequently turned over to U.S. Army Special Operations Command with a request to further develop UW training for SOF surgical teams. Currently, the SOCEUR Surgeon’s office is continuing to develop Trojan Footprint as an opportunity for U.S. SOF medical units to practice UW medical tactics and techniques in a major exercise. The command is developing training opportunities for U.S. SOF medics and surgical teams to work in partner-nation trauma centers in Eastern Europe. This aims to achieve multiple objectives including enhanced interoperability of U.S. medical personnel and potential partners, information sharing regarding medical materiel and techniques and potentially to raise standards of trauma care as best practices are shared between allies and partners. The strong relationships that would be created by this course of action would be mutually beneficial. These types of training opportunities may be expanded beyond U.S. SOF to other U.S. military medical personnel, further increasing interoperability and alliance building. SOCEUR is also assisting USSOCOM to define the Special Operations Forces Baseline Interoperability Standards for medics and surgical teams. These efforts attempt to link SOF medical requirements to National Defense Strategy priorities in order to develop the force for the future, and not simply to fight the last battle. Finally, current U.S. SOF doctrine on medical support to resistance appears to have gaps in Eastern Europe’s potential operational environment, especially with regard to preparing Allies and partners to conduct resistance prior to conflict. Working with USASOC’s medical teams will help develop future iterations of doctrine in order to prepare U.S. SOF for best success in an extremely challenging environment… (continues)

Click here to download a PDF version of the article.

Colion Noir: Proof Facebook Fact-Checkers Are Censoring Debates On Constitutional Rights Like the 2nd Amendment

From Colion Noir:

I made a video in response to US Representative Mike Thompson, who tweeted, HR8 “A Universal Background Check Bill”, Has bi-Partisan Support from 90 percent of the American People. In my video, I stated that this is not true, because the polls where Mike Thompson got this 90% number from were misleading because they didn’t ask about Universal Background Checks which are different from the Regular background checks that we already have.

I further Stated that if the people who were polled understood the distinction between a background check and a “UNIVERSAL” background check and that a Universal Background check can’t be enforced effectively without a national gun registry I highly doubt 90% of Americans would agree with a UNIVERSAL Background Check.

Four Days after I released my video, I got an email from a guy named Tom Kertscher with PolitiFact asking me to submit proof by noon CT today.

A few hours later, PolitiFact Released an article from Tom concluding my video was flagged as part of Facebook’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its news feed & my video was false.

Tom is anything but objective on this issue. All you have to do is search Guns on his Twitter feed and the vast majority of his gun tweets are anti-gun tweets from politicians and the PolitiFact articles that he’s written to try to disprove pro-gun arguments.

Toms’s entire argument for why my video was false, is based on polls about background checks. Here’s the problem, none of the polls used the phrase UNIVERSAL Background Checks in their question. Tom used it in his title when he concluded: Support for UNIVERSAL Background checks on gun buyers is near 90%, but none of the polls actually used the phrase UNIVERSAL background check or explained the difference from the Background Checks we already have.

The reason why this is important is that Universal Background checks do not only apply to gun sales they apply to all transfers.

It’s even harder to believe this 90% Number when this percentage doesn’t show itself when universal background checks are voted on the state level.

Washington State has universal background checks but it only got 59% of the popular vote in Washington and that’s a state that hasn’t elected a Republican senator since 1994 or a republican Governor since 1980.

In Nevada, it only got 50.5% of the popular vote and in Maine, Lost with only 48% support.

If you combine the number of people who actually voted on universal background checks in all three of those states, it’s close to 3.97 million people, and each of these states leans blue, and out of the 3.97 million voters in those three states, only 54.7% voted in favor of Universal Background Checks.

Facebook is supposed to be a platform for open discussion. Instead, it’s turning into a platform where random fact-checkers get to play GOD.

How are we supposed to have an open dialogue and exchange of ideas and opinions when the platforms where the vast majority of these conversations are happening, use a clearly biased “Independent fact-checker” to justify invalidating my video and as a result limiting its reach.

I’m just trying to inform people about one of the most important if not the most important right we have in this country.

I get that Facebook is a private platform and they can do whatever they want and use whatever guy named after a pair of shoes they want to determine what can be posted on your platform but have an ounce of intellectual honesty and let us have the conversation without artificially limiting our voices.

That doesn’t help the country nor does it help the platform. We become stronger as a country by sharpening our ideas against the blade of open discourse. All these so-called fact-checkers are nothing more than political and intellectual bullies, not because they critiqued my video but because there’s no one to check the fact-checkers.

They have the final say and their say dictates how many people get to hear and see my ideas and that indirectly makes them Gods of online political and intellectual discourse and it’s insanely dangerous.

Urban Survival Network: Nine Important Survival Antibiotics Every Prepper Should Know

Urban Survival Network has an piece on Nine Important Survival Antibiotics Every Prepper Should Know. Someone recently quipped that there are two stages to serious gut infections: Stage One you wonder is you’re going to die, and Stage Two you wish you would die. My wife, who spent some days hospitalized because of such while in the Peace Corps, confirmed the truth of this witticism. Questionable meat/food and bad water, staples of a disaster situation as well as remote third world villages, can lead to just such circumstances. In good times, the doctor and antibiotics may only be a miserable, embarrassing few hours drive away, but in a disaster…

It often happens that preppers overlook antibiotics as a part of their preps, but these wonder meds can actually turn out to be life savers. Effective and easy to use, survival antibiotics will certainly come in handy post collapse and when you’re having to deal with an infection. To be completely honest with you, I had been blissfully unaware of the many types of antibiotics that existed until not too long ago when I developed an infectious colitis in my colon. I didn’t know about the condition until I was in excruciating pain and I went to see my doctor. This infection was triggered by a bacterial infection, and one of the causes may have been through the consumption of uncooked meat.

The situation was life-threatening and it was something I could no longer ignore – this is where antibiotics stepped in and literally saved my life. For no less than 10 days I took a cocktail of two different antibiotics (Metronidazole and Ciprofloxacin) and in less than two weeks I was back on track. I do not even want to think about what could have happened to me if I didn’t take the antibiotics. Now just put yourself in my shoes – what if you were confronted with a similar situation and were in urgent need of medication? This is why stocking up on survival antibiotics could be a serious matter.

In this article you will find the top 9 most efficient and most widely used survival antibiotics, but before we move on to describing each type it is important to understand that I am not a doctor and I am not entitled to give any medical advice. If you want professional and competent advice, I strongly recommend you to consult your doctor as he/she is the only one who can give you the details you need.

Also, it is important to understand that one should never take antibiotics for a simple cold, a small fever or a slight pain – these medications are aimed exclusively at bacterial infections and they should be taken only in case of emergency, and only when your doctor tells you to. If you take antibiotics on a constant basis, you will become immune to them and their efficiency will be decreased in the long term, which means that you will have a hard time trying to treat bacterial infections in the future.

Like any other type of medication, antibiotics may trigger some side effects – if you notice a rash, then you might be allergic to a compound in the antibiotic, and you must stop taking the medication and consult your doctor immediately. Also, the meds must be taken for as long as recommended by your doctor, even though you may feel better after only a couple of days – this does not necessarily mean you have overcome the infection completely!

In a nutshell, there is a wide range of antibiotics available on the market and they come in many different sizes, shapes and strengths. The following antibiotics can treat most bacterial infections, and for further information on antibiotics, their uses and their mechanism of action I strongly recommend you to read some medical books (many of them are available in PDF format as well). Having said that, here are (in my opinion) the top 9 most efficient survival antibiotics:

1. Cephalexyn
Cephalexyn is currently one of the most commonly used antibiotics for respiratory infections of all kind, mainly pneumonia and severe bronchitis. At the same time, doctors prescribe Cephalexyn to treat middle ear infections as well. This survival antibiotic comes with few adverse reactions and what’s most important is that it can be safely used by children as well as by pregnant women.

2. Amoxicilin
Amoxicilin has almost the same mechanism of action as Cephalexyn, keeping in mind that it is aimed at respiratory infections and it deals with the same types of bacteria. Children and pregnant women can safely take Amoxicilin to treat bacterial infections, although this survival antibiotic can trigger serious allergic reactions. If you notice any of the signs that indicate an allergic reaction, stop taking Amoxicilin and get in touch with your doctor immediately.

3. Ciprofloxacin
Ciprofloxacin can be considered an all-purpose survival antibiotic, given the fact that it can treat a wealth of infections, from infections of the prostate and the urinary tract to bronchitis, pneumonia, bacterial diarrhea and even the infectious colitis I was talking about at the beginning of the article. However, it must be mentioned that Ciprofloxacin must never be used by pregnant women and children at all costs!

4. Metronidazole
Metronidazole is widely used for the treatment of anaerobic bacteria and it is commonly used in conjunction with other survival antibiotics to treat colitis, diverticulitis and other infections of the intestines. Moreover, it is also very good for the treatment of meningitis, lung and bone infections as well as for the treatment of bacterial vaginosis. Nursing or pregnant women and children should avoid taking Metronidazole.

5. Sulfamethoxazole And Trimethoprim
This is a combination of powerful antibiotics that are especially created for urinary tract infections and respiratory infections. At the same time, this antibiotic cocktail is highly efficient against staphylococcus aureus that is resistant to Methicillin – a very strong strain of staph .

6. Ampicilin
Ampicilin is certainly one of the most popular survival drugs at the moment, because it carries a very low allergy risk and it is aimed at treating different infections like gastrointestinal infections, bacterial meningitis, infections of the respiratory tract and even the feared Anthrax.

7. Azithromycin
Azythromycin is not exactly the cheapest survival antibiotic on the market, but it is a very versatile and effective medication as it treats Syphilis, Typhoid, Chlamydia, Lyme disease and a wealth of respiratory tract infections. It has some side effects like nausea and diarrhea but they are rare, therefore it is generally safe to use.

8. Erythromycin
Erythromycin treats the well-known Lyme disease, Chlamydia, Syphilis and various infections of the respiratory system and middle ear. Nonetheless, it must be mentioned that Erythromycin can trigger several unpleasant side effects, from diarrhea and vomiting to nausea and severe abdominal pain. Even so, it is still great to have this survival antibiotic around, just in case!

9. Doxycycline
Doxycycline has the same effects as Erythromycin. Doxycycline can treat some dangerous illnesses such as Malaria or Typhus. This antibiotic must never be used by pregnant/nursing women or children. You’ll also need to drink a lot of water while on Doxycycline. This Antibiotic can be found as “Fish Cycline”, and although not intended for humans, it can still be used with little issue (unless of course expired).

Conclusion
To sum it up, you don’t need to have all 9 survival antibiotics when you travel – you only need two or three types that cover the widest variety of infections, just to stay on the safe side. They should be kept in the refrigerator to expand their lifespan (without freezing them, as this affects their efficacy). These antibiotics are cost-effective and they can save your life or the life of somebody dear to your heart, so make sure you do not neglect them! It is better to have them and not need them, than to need them and not to find them at a looted/plundered drug store.