Posts Tagged → taxpayer
Labor: To work for something of value
Today is Labor Day in the USA, and while it might have some bad Marxist roots with the early unions, the fact is that it has also evolved into the uglier side of capitalism, which is an orgy of shallow consumerism. Big retail sales of everything from underpants to mattresses to cars, America today is awash in carnival tents and men in top hats and coat tails, barking loudly at the masses to step right up and buy the latest greatest gadget or whatever.
Not too long ago, labor unions played such an important role in American politics (and in British politics, for that matter), that every Tom, Dick, and Harriet knew precisely what Labor Day was about. That most Americans, especially our youth, make little or no mental connection between Labor Day and the people who labor away with their hands and bodies to make things of value for us, for them, is the real take-away meaning of today’s national holiday.
But how could young people know, or older Americans recall, what Labor Day is about if nearly all of our labor has been curiously shipped overseas, and to our enemies, no less? A factory job was the family and church and community- sustaining source of income from the 1930s until about 2000, when the last of our American factories were carefully packaged up and sent to China. Now we have 25 years of no no labor and no factories, just Rust Belt husks of buildings, churches, and communities across the Eastern and Mid-Western USA. No wonder our kids are clueless about Labor Day.
However, our snickering elected officials know precisely what Labor Day is about, because it is still directly relevant to them. These self-anointed elites who seek to dominate all of us use our labor to enrich themselves, through the mis-appropriation and mis-spending of our tax monies. This self-destructive activity happens most and worst in liberal “blue” states run by the Democrat Party, where voters enable single-party rule without the checks and balances of multi-party competition. That this repetitive voting pattern is self-defeating seems not to matter to leftist messianic utopians, whose Big Government god requires nonstop sacrifice and endless cash invested in friendly “businesses”.
Where does this endless cash come from, which enables the extravagant “public servant” aristocracy? YOU.
You labor, pay high taxes on your income, and that tax money is taken for messianic utopian policies, like disproven climate change nonsense, that enriches other blue aristocrats who are invested in these schemes.
Ideally, you, the citizen, pay taxes to the government so the government can pay for services to you, the citizen: Firemen, policemen, public education in math, history, and spelling, public roads, trash pickup, etc. This is the social compact of democratic representative government; you get concrete services in return for relinquishing your own money to the Tax Man.
But when government becomes detached from the symbiotic relationship, and begins doing things for itself, and ignoring the citizen, you have tyranny. This is becoming brutally apparent in Britain, France, and liberal states in America. California is an especially scary place because of how far out of alignment the state government is with the citizenry. No services, but instead illegal migrants, homeless encamped in private front yards, general lawlessness, and the highest of high taxes to boot. Complete breakdown of the social compact between citizen and government, and don’t you dare step out of line.
This failure continues because most of the citizenry continues to vote for a single dominant political party that hates the citizenry. In liberal venues, hating yourself is the greatest of virtue signals, and is highly rewarded with public acclamation. I myself could not live in such an unsustainable and bizarre place. The people there are living off of the banked fumes of once-great capitalist endeavors there, now either departed or departing for Texas, Tennessee, or Florida.
Last week Britain’s highest court ruled that the illegal migrants overwhelming British society – built with citizen labor taxes – have higher value and more rights than the citizens themselves. Such brazen detachment from the long established democratic social compact means the British citizens are now mere money sources, slaves, really, infested by and under the boot heel of a parasitic government and its new stakeholders, the illegals, who contribute nothing and demand everything.
Even the British Union Jack flag is being outlawed on the streets of Britain, because it “offends” the illegal border invaders! Say the “wrong” thing about this, do the “wrong” thing about this, and you actually go to jail. True tyranny, not freedom, not democracy.
Britain is headed to civil war, as any nation would be where the government has turned against the people it is supposed to serve, and upon whose tax-paying largesse the government depends. The same thing is happening here in American blue states, where entrenched single party rule, based on a taxpaying slave-political elite slave owner relationship, is about to be confronted by a fed-up federal government trying to hold the Union together. Something of value worth laboring for, again, as it was in 1861.
This is the meaning of Labor Day today.
Re NPR & PBS
Looking like far-left wing opposition research and partisan propaganda outlets NPR, PBS, and CPB are finally going to stop having American taxpayers’ hard-earned dollars supporting them. Good! I mean, why not give taxpayer money to the National Rifle Association, too? The NRA has been around since 1857, making it America’s oldest civil rights organization. The NRA certainly qualifies for getting lots of American taxpayer money, if NPR and PBS do.
Fact is, the entire world has changed since the 1970s, and public funding of radio and television programs goes back decades before that. By the time of Sesame Street and its band of cute fuzzy monsters talking about racial harmony, correct English spelling, and counting numbers correctly, the tide of technology was already turning in other directions. More TV and radio channels were becoming available every year. By the 1990s, the Internet was born, access to all sorts of programming and information became 24/7, and NPR, PBS, and CPB had gone hard left and become fully an arm of just one political party (not the GOP).
The marketplace of ideas and information had changed as radically as the industrial revolution had changed hand labor and home crafts, demand for government funded programming had greatly diminished, and yet NPR, PBS, and CPB were fully addicted to big wads of free taxpayer money. They insisted they were still relevant, and also wanted to be independent of taxpayers, but still getting our money. Which seems like a strange asymmetry. Usually if you get money from someone, you are accountable to them.
Now, bills are passing in Congress to withdraw all taxpayer money from NPR, PBS, and CPB, and it appears this will actually come to pass. This is a just and good outcome. However, we cannot forget the intellectual property of NPR, PBS, and CPB that was also created with public funding. Things like trademarks, logos, copyrights are all intellectual property that belongs to We, The People American citizens.
It is not as if NPR, PBS and CPB can get scads of private cash and continue on with their far left attacks on American culture and politics. No. They will have to relinquish the use of all of their identifying logos and trademarks. They have no claim on this public property. Oh, NPR can go ahead and do it is whatever they want to do, but they are going to have to come up with new names and new logos. It’s not my problem if they are undistinguished and unidentifiable in the marketplace.
It is almost as if they really did need that public funding after all, despite telling Americans for the past thirty years that our tax money was only a small amount of their overall budget. I think they were most aware that removing the public money also meant removing all of the other public taxpayer investments made there over the years, too.
It is almost as if without all the taxpayer money, NPR and PBS will really in effect cease to exist…Welp, too bad, NPR. So long Screwy, see ya in Saint Louie!
Sorry, that won’t work either, because that’s a Looney Tunes Bugs Bunny line, already taken, and you NPR people are going to have to use something else. Good luck, don’t take a wrong turn at Albequerque!
April 15th Tax Day vs April 19th Freedom Day
Today is April 15th, AKA “Tax Day,” because income tax reports are due to be submitted to the IRS by close-of-business today. Or at least American taxpayers are required to submit a somewhat detailed extension request today, because America’s tax laws and regulations are incredibly arcane and complicated. Everyone deserves the same opportunity to file the most law-abiding self-benefiting income tax report they can do.
(This is why I use a certified public accountant. There is no possible way in a zillion years that I would ever be able to fully understand or properly apply the tax laws and regulations to the income I have earned over the year. Yes, I have a very understanding CPA, someone who works with me, who goes over line items. The cost is worth it to me, given the potential consequences for making even small mistakes.)
April 15th symbolizes the government’s Sheriff of Nottingham coming to take away our money and our things, by threat of force. Nothing says “You are a serf and a powerless peasant” like having to bow and scrape before the mighty tax collector. It is worth noting that Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) has submitted legislation that will remove all armed law enforcement roles and duties that the IRS has somehow accreted over the years, and sell off the agency’s weapons and ammunition. Isn’t it strange that the IRS of all agencies has amassed a huge armory and stockpile of ammunition?
Contrast today, April 15th Oppressive Government Compliance Tax Day, with the upcoming April 19th, which I am hereby naming Freedom Day. It is strange that we rarely ever hear about April 19th as a holiday or even a day of note, even though our great American freedom started exactly 250 years ago on April 19th…
On April 19th, an armed dispute erupted between American colonists and the British Army, in the towns of Lexington and Concord, Massachusetts, outside of Boston. What came to be known as “The shot heard ’round the world” was fired April 19th, 1775, on the Lexington town green. It is unknown who exactly fired this first shot, Minute Man or British regular, but what ensued was the beginning of the American experiment in democratic rule: Government of, by and for The People, and nor by king or powerful army.
What is most noteworthy about the April 19th fatal confrontation beween the colonists’ militia men and the British “regulars” is that the individual American citizens were almost as well armed as the Redcoats. Each militia member carried a long gun, an edged weapon like a long hunting knife or a short sword or a hatchet, and plenty of lead and black powder ammunition for a prolonged fight. British military personnel were armed with the latest and best of all weapons, but the quality of the Patriots’ armaments were often not too far behind.
This model of the 1775 Minute Man militia member has stood the test of time, as a great many Americans today are also well armed and well provisioned with ammunition. This model of an armed free citizen, capable of standing up to an oppressive and lawless government, was later enshrined in the 1787-1789 Second Amendment to the Constitution, which guarantees that all Americans can own and openly carry firearms at all times.
To me, what a strange and wonderful juxtaposition this week represents: Oppressive Tax Day backed by government force, vs. Freedom Day, the day that individual Americans collectively stood up for all oppressed individuals around the world. I think the takeaway message of this week is this: Pay your taxes, but keep your family well armed and always prepared, and always coordinate with those who share your freedom-loving views.
Some evocative images of April 19th 1775 and the resulting Bunker Hill battle by artist Don Troiani:
Artist Don Troiani’s depiction of the Minute Man patriots at the Lexington Green, April 19th 1775
Artist Don Troiani’s depiction of the Patriot militia at the Concord Bridge on April 19th, 1775
Artist Don Troiani’s depiction of the American patriots at the Battle of Bunker Hill
No pain, no gain
The old gym motto “No Pain, No Gain” applies to the much-needed economic shakeup the Trump Administration is bringing to the entire planet. If we Americans do not put up with a little temporary pain and necessary readjustment now, for our own good, then we will enjoy no huge gain later on. It takes work to then earn and enjoy resulting benefits.
President Trump’s promise to American citizens was that he would return us to glory days, a golden age, which we richly deserve. Trump is correct that America has been the world’s piggy bank for decades, due to the huge tariff and trade imbalance. We should add that being the world’s piggy bank is an unsustainable and unfair arrangement paid for by the long forgotten American taxpayers, who see very few benefits in return for handing over their hard-earned cash to every Tom, Dick and Harry the American bureaucracy could dream up.
As we have learned over the past eight weeks from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), trillions of American taxpayer dollars have been illegally mis-spent on millions of dubious schemes, ideas, organizations, and fantasies, many of which directly aimed at harming the United States. American taxpayers have been funding their own sworn enemies through agencies like USAID, DHS, EPA, HHS, and the Department of Education.
In other words, domestic enemies here in America were running the federal government, and using our tax money to damage and destroy America. This egregious situation is only in addition to the lopsided international tariff arrangement that has grown out of control since about 1920.
The tariff situation is egregious by itself. All kinds of countries we Americans think of as “allies” have had heavy tariffs placed on importing American food and manufactured products, including milk and dairy, steel, etc. Many of these countries’ governments paid what minimal tariffs that the USA had in turn on products being imported into America, in effect buoying up their own private businesses.
America did not do that for our own businesses, and in fact America has had very low to no tariffs on most imports. And now after essentially handing over our own wealth and manufacturing sectors to foreigners for decades, we are tired of being the economic piggy bank or punching bag or host body for all of these takey-takey people around the world. It is hard to understand why Americans, particularly working and taxpaying Americans, support this large imbalance and wealth transfer from America to the world.
And yet, as we see, plenty of working Americans are arguing against tariff parity, and are setting fire to Tesla cars and dealerships as a form of protest against DOGE finding and eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer money. Do you have to be mentally ill to belong to that one political party? Do you have to be self destructive to be a voting member of that one political party?
Do you have to hate America, Americans, the rule of law, and everything great about America to belong to that one political party?
Why would any normal American belong to that one political party?
Just as DOGE is causing Americans to take a long hard look at federal government mismanagement, Trump’s tariff parity is going to cause a shake-up in our international trade relationships, no doubt. It is going to cause some re-arrangements of pricing and products we are used to having easily available to us. For example, cheap Chinese crap on Amazon is probably not going to be as cheap any longer. And yesterday the Princess of Patience and I went to look at a new car for her, and we see how the new tariff parity might effect car prices. We learned that those foreign-brand vehicles already ordered and in the pipeline are not subject to tariffs (our family is positively prejudicial in favor of Toyota vehicles).
Of course, foreign brand vehicles made here in America are not subject to tariffs, either, and many Toyota cars and trucks are made in America.
Long and short of this subject is give these policy changes time to work. Already America is seeing immediate positive responses from many foreign trading partners, who are lowering their own tariffs because they know that their own industries cannot afford to absorb Trump’s tariffs. They will lose their export markets if they lose American buyers. So just be patient, remember that this is all being done for your own good and your own bank account, and know that it will work out well.
Putting up with these changes is like making deposits into your bank account. You might feel like you are missing opportunities to party with your money in the short term, but in the longer term you will be very happy.
Send in Delta Force to DC Govt offices?
President Trump was sworn in to office three days ago, on January 20th, and within 24 hours he had signed something like a hundred executive orders. Maybe more. I lost count. One Trump executive order covered 78 EOs signed by Joe Biden.
Two Trump policies in particular have garnered widespread discussion and deserve focus: The pardoning of roughly 1,500 January 6th political prisoners and hostages held by the Federal DC Swamp, and the immediate suspension of all DEI activities and staff in federal offices.
Every pardoned J6 hostage was required to be released from jail immediately, and every DEI staff person was required to leave office and stay out of federal offices. With all DEI activities ended, there was no reason for those staff to remain in office. The pardons are a legal directive, and when the rule of law prevails, the pardoned immediately walks out of jail to their relatives or friends.
In response to President Trump’s executive directives, open insubordination, really an open insurrection and mutiny against the government, by public taxpayer funded employees has unfolded. Many of the DEI staff were simply moved into new positions with new titles in their agencies, instead of going on administrative leave, as their boss directed them to do.
Many of the J6 political prisoners are still being held in jail, and some have been badly beaten by prison staff within just the last 24 hours. Other J6 hostages have been deliberately flown and released into remote places far away from their homes and families, with no money, hardly any clothes, some wearing only prison slippers in the dead of winter in cold parts of America.
We are witnessing a raw power contest between the entrenched and heretofore unaccountable federal bureaucrats (Deep State or Administrative State), and their chief executive, their boss, the president of the United States. The president has issued directives, and the bureaucrats are telling him “Go eff yourself, we are not going to listen to you.”
Emboldened by decades of weak executive leadership and zero accountability (I have my own crazy war stories I can tell from my years working for the Federal government in DC three decades ago) (for a federal worker to get fired, both Heaven and Hell must be moved simultaneously, which is impossible to happen), federal employees are thumbing their noses at the president. I don’t think they are consciously daring him to follow up on his authority. Rather, the bizarre and artificially insulated, cozy culture that surrounds most federal workers has shielded them from ever experiencing real accountability, and it seems they do not expect to experience it. They can’t even imagine it.
From where a lot of outsiders stand, it sure looks like a large portion of the federal workforce has declared its autonomy from the chief executive, and is in the beginning of a full out insurrection against the American people, the Constitution, the rule of law. Recall that the American people chose this chief executive, this chief commanding military officer, this president. So when federal bureaucrats and military officers tell this president to Eff Off, they are telling the American people, the democratic process, the Constitution, and the rule of law to eff off.
We have not even begun to see the full DOJ, FBI, CIA, or Pentagon insurrrection, or a real showdown between ICE and lawless jurisdictions aiding and abetting illegal invaders.
And so, one concludes that President Trump must do the updated version of what President Lincoln did under similar circumstances in 1861: Send in the troops and secure Washington, DC.
In 2025, however, the US military is not riven by North-South/ Pro-Slavery-Anti-Slavery divisions, as Lincoln faced, or like George Washington faced between Patriots and Loyalists in the Revolutionary War. Rather, President Trump now faces a federal bureaucracy and a great portion of the US military that sees itself as autonomous from and removed from the American people. So who can President Trump rely upon to enforce his lawful orders and directives?
Sad to say, there are only a few military units that have withstood the anti-America, anti-democracy DEI onslaught, and who remain purely loyal to the constitutional chain of command and to their oaths of office: The elite American warriors, including the Navy SEALs, the Green Berets, and Delta Force commandos. These are the people who President Trump can most reasonably rely upon to see that his orders are being fulfilled in a timely fashion.
These are the people who President Trump needs to send into the J6 prisons, the FBI headquarters, the CIA headquarters, the ATF headquarters, the Pentagon, with full arrest powers, to ensure that the constitutional chain of command is being honored. Or in the alternative, that the insurrectionists are arrested and processed through the proper courts.
And I would suggest that the proper courts to hold trials of the insurrectionists are all out in the hinterlands, like western Nebraska, northern Idaho, Wyoming, west Texas, where judges still know how to properly mete out justice.
California teaches America a lot of lessons
Southern California is on fire, and why it is still on fire one week, at least fifteen lives lost, endless misery, and $150 Billion in losses later reads like a graduate course in Bad Government 101.
California has been the drug addict child of the United States for a long time, but especially in recent years. Californians can’t ever get too much woke politically correct crazy, and so they keep voting for more of it and for the drunk sailor spending that enables it. No one there knows where the money is coming from, no one cares, they just keep throwing money around for empty virtue signaling.
And no money for saving water for a bad day and cleaning up old brush around residential areas. No, these two activities were generously funded, but not implemented. They both contributed to the annual Santa Ana Winds-fueled wildfires now leveling entire neighborhoods in the Los Angeless area, as reservoirs were dry, hydrants had no water, and years of unaddressed dry brush resulted in uncontrollable fires.
For many years already, California has suffered at the hands of criminal homeless and illegal aliens. Suffered unnecessarily in the name of some vague understanding of some sad people somewhere. But these fires may have taught the citizen voters there that there are limits, hard breaks, up against the best of intentions fail.
Lessons taught, maybe not necessarily learned:
a) Repeat voting for a single political party that continuously places homeless and illegal immigrants ahead of taxpaying citizens is unsustainable and will end up destroying your society.
b) Repeat voting for a single political party that makes DEI and ESG and other foolish woke virtue signaling a central point and purpose of government will end up destroying your society. The pathetic and avoidable failures of state and local government across the Los Angeles area are all attributable to race and gender ideology hiring choices, incompetent people, not hiring practices based on merit and individual capabilities, resulting in competent people who have fire hydrants with water in them in case of a fire happening in a fire-prone ecosystem.
c) Making silly, emotional, childish public policy choices, instead of responsible adult-level decisions is no way to run any level of government. These bad choices will always come back to haunt those who are subject to them. Eventually you must pay the piper. California is now paying for Gavin Newsom’s childish ideas and bad policies.
In sum, California voters now see that they have a real choice to make. They can move forward and select leaders who make responsible decisions that protect the citizenry, or they can continue to select leaders who blame human-caused wildfires on supposed “climate change,” and continue to fail.
My own takeaway from California’s fiery carnage is that no one is more racist than a white liberal Democrat. No one. The amount of destruction they wreak on people of color everywhere is unimaginable. Chicago, Philly, New York, you name an American city and you will almost always find failure and black people suffering there, for decades, and it all goes back to people like California governor Gavin Newsom and his fellow white liberals. They just can’t not hurt people, especially people of color. It has to be purposeful.
Here it is, right in front of you, urban Americans. You can learn from this lesson in California, or you can ignore it and continue to suffer. It is your vote. Just don’t continue to vote for the Gavin Newsoms of America and then put out your hand and demand American tax dollars to fix your bad policy decisions.
Nope we Americans have now learned that lesson.
Hurricane Helene says No Such Thing as White Privilege
“White privilege” may be the most racist thing you will hear anyone say or allege in your lifetime, probably from the most racist people on Planet Earth, white liberal Democrats, but that has not stopped this fake social construction from being pronounced and bandied about like it is actually real.
Well, Mother Nature herself has recently descended from the heavens above to demonstrate that in reality and in the natural world too, there is no such thing as “White privilege.”
In the form of Hurricane Helene last week, Mother Nature inflicted huge devastation and destruction upon eastern Tennessee and northern North Carolina and the regional demographic there. It is a group of people I have had a lot of life experience with and who I maintain intense admiration for, white rural working people.
That there are a lot of white liberal Democrats in Asheville folded into the mix of Hurricane Helene victims does not mitigate or reduce my sympathy or hope for everyone’s full recovery there. Everyone is equal before the law, everyone is created in the image of God, and we are all Americans who should be caring for one another, regardless of our political opinions or religious views.
So Hurricane Helene destroyed billions of dollars in built infrastructure, including homes, towns, villages, farms, rural roads and interstates and bridges and schools and hospitals, stranding hundreds of thousands of largely white rural American citizens without power, water, or food.
And so just to demonstrate that white people can be victims and actually have no racial privilege whatsoever, the federal government response to Hurricane Helene has been… almost silent. Like cavalier and ignoring the huge mess of human misery. Like on purpose.
Recall that to our elites, Appalachian whites are the deplorable, disposable, ignored, maligned, forgotten Americans who nonetheless mine the coal that gives us most of our electricity, serve as the roughnecks on oil and gas drilling platforms that run our vehicles, fill up the special forces and combat infantry positions in our most highly motivated and patriotic high-risk fighting forces, who log the forests that provide us with high grade lumber for our fancy kitchens and furniture, who work for the railroads, and who drive trucks across the interstates that bring Amazon Prime to your home super pronto.
In every one of these professions, these (white, rural) people are taking big risks that almost always exceed their expected financial return. Why? Because they are proud to work hard, and they love America more than they love themselves. And they are devoted to America because there is no other nation anywhere that will give them the same freedom and opportunity.
White rural working people are the people who disproportionately make America work and run and give you, dear reader, the comfortable lifestyle to which you have become all too accustomed. And now that these people need a lot of help to get through this natural catastrophe, it sure appears that they are being abandoned by the same federal government that is simultaneously giving away unlimited taxpayer dollars right and left to border-jumping illegal migrants and to the porous demi-government in Ukraine.
I am hearing mostly consistent reports of aid efforts from acquaintences, friends, and family in Asheville and eastern Tennessee (some of their own photos are below; one of my family members from there is now in a hotel in South Carolina). Last week a friend of mine from Harrisburg loaded up his work van with bottled water and food and drove seven hours to the literal end of the paved road in eastern Tennessee, where he followed signs to a Baptist church. There in the church parking lot he was met with tears of fear and appreciation, and many needy hands as entire families sought shelter there with their sole remaining belongings: Their clothing on their bodies. (Some of his own photos of this are below).
Radio personality Glenn Beck reported his unbelievably negative experience with a sole FEMA crew instructive example of No White Privilege To Be Found Here.
Plenty of political fallout has resulted from apparent Biden-Harris government failure, or even willful blocking of aid efforts. While checking his email at a FEMA post, a partisan leftist Democrat in my family there said this is all politically generated misinformation, but I don’t know if I can accept that. The damning reports and real-time online videos are overwhelming and seem irrefutable, while politically partisan mainstream media outlets appear locked into a defend-Kamala Harris-at-all-costs posture, instead of having their crews on the ground recording what the citizens journalists are capturing.
Tons of on-the-ground reports are pouring out of the region, showing a complete lack of federal interest in helping, and a complicated mix of local territorialism, miscommunication, petty power flexing, and even theft of supplies. And even when the Biden-Harris Administration does speak publicly, they are actually saying sorry, we have no money for your disaster relief.
Because Joe Biden and Kamala Harris ALREADY GAVE AWAY all the unsustainable taxpayer money to illegals and the endless war in Ukraine.
Folks, not only was there never any such thing as White privilege, but when there was an opportunity to demonstrate that American Whites get treated at least equally with everyone else, both American citizen of color and illegal border jumper alike, the point is made by our current federal government that American White people come last, if they get any help at all.
Had my day in court
Literally had my day in court yesterday, in the Dauphin County courthouse in Downtown Harrisburg. After nearly ten years of taxpayer-funded expensive stonewalling and dodging and delaying, Harrisburg City’s expensive taxpayer-funded attorneys (Lavery) were forced to actually litigate.
Harrisburg City was forced to actually argue for and explain why it has maintained three patently illegal ordinances on the books for years. At issue are city ordinances that criminalize carrying guns in a public park, discharging a firearm within the city limits, and failing to report a lost or stolen gun.
Each of these ordinances is subject to state pre-emption, because Pennsylvania state law clearly prohibits any political subdivision, like Harrisburg City, from creating its own gun regulations. This is in order to avoid a crazy-quilt pattern of gun laws within a state, where just crossing from one municipality to another, one township to the township next door, with a firearm, could result in an unintentional felony and violent arrest and incarceration. No society can operate like that, whether it’s gun regulations, abortion regulations, car regulations etc.
So, somehow the elected officials of Harrisburg City believed they were above the law, and they passed these illegal city ordinances. A group I belong to FOAC-ILLEA and Firearms Owners Against Crime, filed suit against the city many years ago, to compel the city to remove these illegal ordinances. After all, what is the purpose of having illegal laws on the books? What is the purpose of having illegal laws on the books, and actually spending hundreds of thousands of Harrisburg taxpayer dollars fighting to keep said illegal laws in place?
I will tell you why these ordinances are on the books: Harrisburg City wants to have the threat of these ordinances to use against people the city doesn’t like. People with different political beliefs, maybe the wrong skin color, maybe the wrong religion, you name it, these illegal ordinances can and will be used by city leaders for purely political and punitive purposes.
Even if the city charges someone with these ordinances and eventually loses in court, the city will still have won. Because the criminal process is the punishment. Simply dragging someone through the expensive, scary legal process from being arrested and handcuffed, having their person and home ransacked by police, being jailed, having to get a lawyer, maybe losing your job, is pretty bad punishment. So even if the city eventually loses a criminal prosecution with any of these ordinances, they will have really hurt someone.
And that is the purpose of ALL liberals everywhere, to scare and control and punitively hurt and damage people who disagree with them. Especially gun owning individuals who represent an armed citizenry capable of pushing back against tyrannical government. Like all liberal-run Democrat Party bastions everywhere across America, Harrisburg City desires to control its citizens, not represent them.
And so yesterday we finally got to sit in Judge Andrew Dowling’s court room and have a real, genuine legal offense-defense. It was something out of a Hollywood movie, with real court room drama, an occasionally piqued or openly amused judge, a sharp litigator (Joshua Prince) and a defense attorney who – no lie, no embellishment here – actually bellowed “I am being bushwhacked! This is an ambush!” after the judge reminded him that he was the attorney who said let’s move this trial to this date today.
Being the plaintiff of record from Harrisburg City itself, I had my opportunity to testify from the witness stand. I was cross examined at length, sometimes with real humor, by the defense counsel. I really don’t believe myself to be a “lawbreaker” when I am defying a patently illegal law, and it was nice to see the attorney have to concede that. I also enjoyed recounting how, during the catastrophic flood of 2011, I walked up and down my block and adjoining blocks with a shotgun and a handgun, to deter looters. That raised eyebrows, and led to an interesting line of questioning from the defense counsel and thumbs-up from my fellow plaintiffs.
Other plaintiffs, Howard Bullock, who lives outside Harrisburg City but who works within it, and Jim Stoker, president of FOAC, also took the witness stand, and were also cross-examined. All three of us did well representing our case. And the bushwhacked lawyer who raised ridiculous objection after ridiculous objection, including once to his own statements (the judge kindly reminded him that he was now arguing against himself), was clearly deflated after Judge Dowling said he would issue a decision on this trial.
Nearly ten years of Harrisburg taxpayer gravy train defending the indefensible are about to end for Lavery Law! And for me, the rule of law is being established, our flag of freedom being firmly planted in a small county court room far from the public eye. Not one news reporter was present, not one City employee, nobody but us freedom fighters, the judge and his staff, and the hapless bushwhacked lawyer.
Once again the forgotten taxpayer is out of sight, out of mind, though a holding of any sort in this case will then raise questions about why Harrisburg City spends hundreds of thousands of rare taxpayer dollars so frivolously and carelessly.
It was a great day for the law and a great day to be in court forcing the law to be upheld by striking illegal laws from the books. Thanks to attorney Joshua Prince for representing the rule of law, and to Judge Dowling for running his court room fairly and often with real humor and sharp observations.
(L to R) Plaintiff Howard Bullock, attorney Joshua Prince, attorney Kevin Fenchak, attorney Dillon Harris, plaintiff Yours Truly Josh First, and plaintiff Jim Stoker of FOAC fame in the Dauphin County courthouse yesterday.
America needs an Exodus moment
America as founded is dying. The pro-individual rights constitutional republic carefully constructed through competing equal branches of government since 1789 is being forcefully bulldozed by rogue Big Government forces. Our unique system of checks and balances, meant to disperse power widely across the body politic, is under atttack at every turn. Central planners desire to collapse decision making into just a few hands.
Whether it is the Electoral College that prevents mob rule, or free speech under the First Amendment, or private ownership of firearms under the Second Amendment, or secure borders meant to protect free taxpaying citizens, every safeguard designed to protect the individual citizen is being ignored or forcefully broken into little pieces in front of our faces by the advocates of government totalitarianism. In our media, academia, and indeed from within government itself there is a huge emphasis on growing powerful big government and diminishing the ever smaller citizen into the role of powerless serf.
With FBI and ATF federal government excution squads running lawlessly amok across America, a weaponized and now heavily armed IRS looking deeply into the private lives of their political opponents, an enormous replacement of native Americans with lawless illegal aliens, the leading political leader being hounded by a dozen fake lawsuits and under threat of being illegally jailed during an election year, and on and on, America as a distinct nation based on the rule of law is dying. It is being killed, axe murdered, set on fire and blown up right in front of us.
Yes, one political party is directly responsible for this, but the other political party is enabling the attack by deliberately not fighting back or resisting. Both political parties are killing America, and with the failure of political leadership it’s now up to our citizens to decide how we want to live.
Tonight is the beginning of Passover, and it is a reminder that America needs an Exodus moment. We need a shining example of direct Diving intervention that results in our people being set free from the rampant lawlessness and injustice being forced on us, to make us all into slaves to Big Government. Hopefully, we are worthy of it. Incidentally, when the Jewish People left Egypt roughly 3,300 years ago, they were “chamushim,” meaning fully armed. Just as free Americans should be in 2024.
Pray hard, folks, and also prepare for the long, hard spiritual renewal journey ahead of us this year. Do not look to politicians for salvation or freedom, that road is now closed. Rather, look to each other and to God.
Charlton Heston portrayed a prophet, and also served as one when he encouraged Americans to defy and resist our lawless government-gone-rogue.
King George III called George Washington “the greatest man in the world” because he declined to be king of America, and instead sacrificed himself for the creation of a people-led constitutional republic. Washington prayed hard before leading his surprise attack across the Delaware River. All Americans should aspire to be like Washington, especially in 2024.