Month: January 2016

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”The Gulag”][vc_column_text]In, The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn recounts his first-hand experiences  of life under the iron fist of a 20th Century government. His story records the thoroughly modernized tactics of a small, centralized group of  authoritarians whose goal was total control of its own citizens. As Solzhenitsyn describes the lay of the land, we see it isn’t only about calling for tanks, guns and ground troops but it also included the bureaucratic masses. As his story progresses, the bureaucratic regulators turn out to be some of the most unprincipled and perfidious weapons.

Under the leadership of Joseph Stalin, the administrative system of the state was enriched with resources and empowered with the facade of legality. The result was a multi-tentacled Russian monster that grew from its simple task of administrative enforcement to a full-fledged police state complete with surveillance and population management.

American Similarities

The political similarities embedded in our own nation’s growing surveillance state cannot be missed. Common-place  jurisdictional overreach, strangling regulatory regimes and unrelenting administrative takings all bear witness to unbalanced authoritarian rule.

Solzhenitsyn discloses one illustration of the supreme accuser, or Prosecutor General, who,  “had the right to intervene in any judicial proceeding.” He characterizes the nature of this office as having the power to “pardon[s] and punish[es], at its own discretion without any limitation, whatever.”

This invokes a chilling reflection of the recent re-sentencing that Dwight and Steven Hammond received. A jury of the Hammond’s peers in Harney County, suggested reducing the original minimum sentencing requirement. The judge, the defense and prosecution teams were all convinced that a reduced sentence was justified.

Federal Judge Hogan, also in Harney Co., explained that sentencing the Hammonds to the mandatory minimum, “would shock the conscience.” He further thought that it would violate the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, because five years behind bars is “grossly disproportionate to the severity of the offenses here.” In fact, both “the judge and jury found the fire had arguably increased the value of the land for grazing.”

Then, why the re-sentencing? Maybe, there is a “supreme accuser,” or someone who can fix the problem posed by a jury who supported individuals over bureaucrats.

The “Fixer”

Small details like needing a “fixer” can be arranged with a quick phone call because our Congress has so thoroughly debauched the Constitutional standards that were created for our protection.

On Oct. 7, President Obama appointed a new U.S Attorney for the State of Oregon, based in Portland, 300 miles from Harney County, Ms. Amanda Marshall. Although she had no experience with the federal system, she showed the gumption necessary to accomplish the goal. It was her duty to use the color of law as a disguise for politically motivated appellate action, calling Judge Hogan’s punishments “unlawful.”

Notice, the claim wasn’t that the sentence was “unjust,”  “inappropriate” or “inequitable.” The local community understood the true relevancy of any monetary damages and they knew government intrusions when they occurred. The Hammond’s peers proved best at harmonizing the defendant’s acceptance of responsibility, criminality, and/or misconduct. This is why our US Constitution requires, “The Trial of all Crimes … shall be by Jury.” Local community sentencing provides for truly just criminal punishment, criminal deterrence, and rehabilitation.

So, the “unlawful” nature of the penalties simply means that the Hammonds were not yet crushed. Solzhenitsyn reminds us, the “meat grinder of political interrogation” was designed too crush – body and soul. Over and over, the law is used to demonstrate that the defendant is wrong – in his views, his conduct, his life, and his relationships.

Solzhenitsyn forges a perspective where, “the engine room of the law,” spews out a “scrunched- up wad”  that was once a man. The goal was, “To crush him once and for all and to cut him off from all others, once and for all.”

Now you have some insight into why the Bundys and so many good hearted Americans are in Harney Co. They are fighting the unconstitutional use of administrative law. Law, which by nature, ensures the illegitimate power of the federal bureaucracy.

U.S Attorney, Amanda Marshall has shown us her allegiance. Her allegiance isn’t to securing our liberty, our rights, or our communities protection and justice. Her allegiance is to power and power alone.

Unfortunately, there are thousands in the regulatory state who serve the naked interests of an all-powerful bureaucracy. These warped statist ideas slowly alienate every American, regardless of one’s race, gender, religion, country-of-origin or walk-of-life. This includes people across the political spectrum, both the left and the right, because absurd regulations negatively impact everyone.

Unless “we the, still free, people” step forward and challenge the illegal power that pretends legitimacy, it will continue to metastasize and thereby destroy our freedoms. Thomas Jefferson fought against this authoritarian tendency throughout his life. He wrote, “To take a single step beyond the boundaries thus specially drawn around the powers of Congress, is to take possession of a boundless field of power…”
This boundless enrichment by the ruling class was why our founders established the strict separation of power, the Bill of Rights, and our Representative from of consensual government.

Rev. Samuel Williams, summarized it well, in 1774:

“In a despotic government, the only principle by which the tyrant is to move the whole machine … is fear, by the servile dread of his power.”

The men and women in Harney County are standing together with those who oppose administrative tyranny. They are standing for our founder’s vision where men have inalienable rights and governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Recommended Books…

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Making the Case

We have all heard the phrase “Don’t make a Federal case out of it!” Have you ever thought about what this means?

It means, you can’t win against the feds – so don’t even think about it. It means you can’t fight the raw power, money and monopoly interests that the federal government has ruthlessly acquired. It means that none of us can ever raise enough money to battle the accumulated wealth (originating from our own pockets) that will be ushered against our cause.

Yet, the Hammonds and the Bundys are making headlines in Harney County, Oregon because they are doing just that. These families are the focal point of the media onslaught.

The problem in Harney County is not a new problem. It is a systemic problem that the Founders recognized and feared. At the heart of the issue is the probability that the central government would seek to, “annihilate and absorb the legislative, executive, and judicial powers of the several states, and produce… an iron banded despotism.” **

The blame lies with successive Congressional administrations who have failed to secure the unalienable rights and individual liberties of American citizens. Our so-called representatives have abandoned their Constitutional obligations to a limited federal government and the rights and liberties of the people within their state governments. Instead, they have funded every federal overreach allowing the slow annihilation of state sovereignty and the despotic absorption of state lands.

Why is the West “Federally” Managed?

Federally controlled land is predominately concentrated in the West. Nationally, the United States government has direct control over almost 650 million acres of land — nearly 30% of its total territory.  In Oregon, where I and the Hammond family live, the federal government controls 54% of all of the land. In Nevada, where the Bundy family lives, the federal government controls 84.5% of the land in the state.

Now, imagine if  you owned a business and some bureaucrat decided it was in the public’s best interest for them to manage 54%, or 84% of your resources – this is what is happening throughout the West. The feds under the false color of law have essentially done this to the Western states. The feds also receive the benefit of those resources and they control the disposition of all of those assets.

This is why thousands and thousands of Americans are standing with and applauding these families who are fighting back against the abuses of these federal agencies.

Teddy and the Midnight Reserves (warning: not a bedtime story)

In Oregon, this tragedy started a hundred years ago with grossly unconstitutional actions by a Republican “progressive” living in the White House – Theodore Roosevelt.

Between 1902 and 1906, President Roosevelt, with his fountain pen and telegraph poles, went tearing through the maps of Oregon. He grabbed enormous swaths of Oregon’s pristine landscape and forested wilderness for federal control.

Oregon’s U.S. Senator Charles W. Fulton was outraged by these unprecedented actions. Fulton introduced legislation to eliminate the president’s authority to establish national forest reserves via executive orders in 1907.

The night before signing this law, Roosevelt issued another Executive Order snatching an additional 16 million acres from Oregon’s control. Honest journalists of the day deridingly labeled these new forests as the “Midnight Reserves.”

Then, in 1908, after the legislation prohibiting these blatant land grabs, Roosevelt engineered a new scheme to pluck more land from the states.

Roosevelt designated land surrounding Malhuer, Mud and Harney Lakes in Eastern Oregon as an “Indian reservation.” Roosevelt’s swindle avoided using the phrase “forest reserve,” which was now illegal after Fulton’s legislation. Instead, these new takings were identified, “as a preserve and breeding ground for native birds.”

This was nothing more than an unconstitutional land grab.  Later this “Indian reservation,” which did not include the 13,700 acre Burns Paiute Reservation, became the Malhuer National Wildlife Refuge.

This refuge is the immediate source of the BLM conflict with the Hammond family in Oregon.

The Constitution

Federal fiddling in these areas is flatly unconstitutional. The only relevant authority for federal land ownership comes from the US Constitution. It is known as the Enclave Clause:

“To exercise exclusive Legislation… over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased… for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;”

– Article I, Section 8, Clause 17

While Washington, D.C. remains within the boundary limit of “ten Miles square,” the federal government has blown through all reasonable expectations for forts, ports, arsenals and other military installations. Those installations now exceed 44,500 square miles of land within the states.

The federal government’s rough-shod management of an additional 1 million square miles (650 million acres) of state land is wholly unconstitutional. The Department of the Interior administers 96% of these ill-gotten state lands with one non-elected office holder (Secretary of the Interior), who serves at the pleasure of the President, directing this  unbridled Leviathan.

These are the reasons why large segments of the Western states support the Hammonds,  Bundys and the myriads of other families that come under the gun of these federal marauders.

Last week, Oregon’s U.S. Rep. Greg Walden issued a warm-hearted plea which contained many great talking points. Unfortunately for Americans, it is another toothless gesture. During Walden’s 18 years as a House member he has done little to rein-in this voracious federal machine. Instead, Walden, along with his RINO cohorts and Democrat allies, has needlessly ladled a steady stream of trillion dollar, taxpayer funded budgets into the mouths of D.C.’s lobbyists and bureaucrats.

Congress has long ignored the beauty and strength of 1) limited government, and 2) fiscal accountability. They have promoted government growth at unprecedented levels while their constituents have been successfully bribed by promises for economic riches.

The power of the purse is key

These federal raids on our state sovereignty can only be stopped by using the Constitution rightly. First, this means state nullification of unconstitutional federal actions. Secondly, our Representatives need to exercise their Constitutional obligation to manage federal dollars prudently and begin to do the hard work of defunding these gigantic Federal Bureaucracies.

Thomas Jefferson, wrote, “In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.”

Adherence to our U.S. Constitution is the Federal case that we must make. It is the ONLY Solution Big Enough!

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** Bruce Frohnen, The American Republic: Primary Sources, ed. Bruce Frohnen (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2002). 1/10/2016. http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/669#Frohnen_0082_1989