The Great Global Warming Hoax

From the May 2008 edition of BayouVixen E-Magazine:

The Enron scandal has widely been attributed by the general public and the mainstream news media to lax ethics encouraged by the Bush Administration and the result of too many years of Republican leadership in Congress.

Yet it was under the leadership of a Democratic President that Enron began its greatest swindle of the public – and it’s a swindle which is still being perpetuated today, with the full cooperation of the nation’s news media, entertainment industry and, unfortunately, its leading politicians.

The swindle? Man-Made Global Warming.

Man-made global warming is a hoax, created by Enron as a way to cash in on the development of “green” technologies and picked up on by those who Enron persuaded to take up the cause before its demise.

At the heart of the whole global warming issue is the greed of a very few people who are already filthy rich and intend to get richer – old-money Europeans, new-money Americans and ruthless politicians seeking unlimited power.

The global warming issue arose after Enron made huge investments – buying the world’s largest wind-power generator company, GE Wind, from General Electric, and the world’s largest solar-power generation company in partnership with Amoco (now British Petroleum/BP-Amoco).

With so much invested in that new “green” technology, Enron needed a market for it – and an urgency in the public mind to make the change from fossil fuel to its “environmentally responsible” resources.

“In the early 1990s Enron had helped establish the market for, and became the major trader in, EPA’s $20 billion-per-year sulphur dioxide cap-and-trade program, the forerunner of today’s proposed carbon credit trade. This commodity exchange of emission allowances caused Enron’s stock to rapidly rise,” reports Investigate Magazine’s Ken Ring. “Then came the inevitable question, what next? How about a carbon dioxide cap-and-trade program? The problem was that CO2 is not a pollutant, and therefore the EPA had no authority to cap its emission.”
Ring reports that Enron successfully lobbied the Clinton White House, in particular Vice President Al Gore, who “almost immediately became infatuated with the idea of an international environmental regulatory regime.”

With its foot in the door legislatively, Enron turned its money loose on changing the “need” for “green technology.” The company lavished nearly $1 million on the Nature Conservancy’s Climate Change Project, which promotes global-warming theory, and dropped another $1.5 million on environmental groups around the world to spread the word that global warming was real and that man was the culprit.
“Enron then started to finance everything related to the global warming hype, including grants to scientists – but asking for results favorable to their interest – ‘proof’ that humans were responsible for the excessive emissions of CO2 through fossil fuel burning. The fire of malaise, now lit and kindled, only required feeding,” Ring writes.

As Enron-funded scientists began releasing disturbing reports of the immediate crisis of global warming, their friends in the Clinton Administration got the ball rolling on the Kyoto Treaty.

Criticized by Democrats for being so close to the Bush Administration, NewsMax.com’s Phil Brennan reported in 2002 that Enron actually was a major player on the other side of the political aisle as well: “(Enron) gave a cool $420,000 to Democrats when the corporation was desperate to get the Clinton administration’s help in having the potentially disastrous Kyoto treaty made the law of the land …Senate ratification of the treaty, which foes explained would have cost the U.S. billions and had a deadly effect on the U.S. economy, would have been a bonanza for Enron.”

Washington Times reporter Jerry Seper revealed an internal 1997 memo from Enron executive John Palmisano saying the Kyoto Treaty would be “good for Enron stock!!”

Seper reported: “”The memo said the Kyoto treaty - later signed by Mr. Clinton and leaders of 166 other countries, but never ratified by the Senate - ‘would do more to promote Enron’s business than will almost any other regulatory initiative outside of restructuring the energy and natural gas industries in Europe and the United States.’”

Brennan’s 2002 report notes that “During a White House meeting in July 1997, Enron Chairman Kenneth L. Lay prodded Clinton and Gore to support a ‘market-based’ approach to what he described as the problem of ‘global warming,’ a theory discredited by a majority of the world’s climatologists.”

“As the movement to establish the Kyoto Protocol developed momentum, it was necessary for Ken Lay to build up alliances with the green movement including Greenpeace,” Ring’s report notes. “A 1998 letter, signed by Lay and a few other bigwigs asked President Clinton, in essence, to harm the reputations and credibility of scientists who argued that global warming was an overblown issue, because these individuals were standing in Enron’s way. The letter, dated Sept. 1, asked the president to shut off the public scientific debate on global warming, which continues to this date. In particular, it requested Clinton to moderate the political aspects of this discussion by appointing a bipartisan Blue Ribbon Commission. The purpose of this commission was clear – high-level trashing of dissident scientists.”
Unfortunately, science didn’t back up Enron. The company’s own internal study of global warming science turned out to be largely in agreement with the same scientists that Enron was trying to shut up. The report concluded: “The very real possibility is that the great climate alarm could be a false alarm. The anthropogenic warming could well be less than thought and favorably distributed.”
The U.S. Senate voted to reject the treaty 95-0, and some analysts now speculate that vote is what created the atmosphere which led to Enron’s eventual collapse.
Nonetheless, its cause was taken up by those who picked up the pieces – Gore in particular. Gore formed an investment group to publicize the case for global warming and the need for trading in “carbon credits,” and stands to make billions of dollars if his proposals become law.

Nonetheless, the public in general remains convinced that man-created global warming is real – thanks to the news media and Hollywood, which have adopted the cause as gospel fact despite almost-daily scientific studies which now indicate otherwise.

Al Gore: A Convenient Lie

The Former VP is the Chief Profiteer Behind the Swindle
(from the June 2008 edition of BayouVixen E-Magazine):

The biggest issue across the American political landscape this election cycle has become the debate over the environment – in particular, man-created global warming. The political left in particular has found its cause celebre and feels vindication for years and years of attacking American industry for its wasteful, environment-damaging ways.

But environmentalists have been screaming at the top of their lungs for years that we need to do something to “save the planet,” and the general public has proven to be less than interested – until now.

Why? Follow the money.

Man-made global warming is a hoax, cooked up by a number of large corporations with huge investments in creating new “green technology” – and the publicity campaign funding the scare is being funded by an investment group which includes former Vice President Al Gore. The companies and Gore stand to make billions of dollars by further wrecking the industrial capacity of the United States through restrictive regulations while more and more major manufacturers move overseas and more Americans lose their jobs.

Gore’s concept of “carbon trading” – rationing and taxing how much gas you use, how much power you use, even how often you barbecue in the backyard – is part of a huge swindle designed by a London-based network of swindlers through the Chicago Climate Exchange in 2003. According to a March 30, 2007 article in Executive Intelligence Review by Richard Freeman and Marcia Berry Baker, the same London-based cartel drove the skyrocketing of commodities prices in 2003-2006 which we are now feeling today as $150 barrels of oil and global shortages of foodstuffs like rice and corn.
“But why have neither Republicans nor Democrats challenged Gore on this?,” Freeman and Baker ask. “And why have they conspicuously refrained from confronting Sir Nicholas Stern—of the 2006 “Stern Review” on global warming, British Environment Minister David Miliband, and the other British “experts” streaming into Washington, D.C. in 2007, to demand U.S. “economic response” to climate change? Political amnesia. Elected officials are tightly locked in the grip of the Synarchist gamemasters—the Felix Rohatyn wing of the Democratic Party, and the George Shultz wing of the GOP—who have been in on creating this and prior swindles all along.”
How is Gore trying to profit from creating a climate change scare? Basically, he wants to make a fortune by creating a new market for a product that he is attempting to get Congress to create: “carbon offsets,” or rations. If he succeeds, Gore will be uniquely positioned to cash in.

Gore’s connection to the money-making end of the swindle is blatant – and studiously ignored by the mainstream media. He and his investment group are pouring $300 million into the effort.

“Former Vice President Al Gore has built a Green money-making machine capable of eventually generating billions of dollars for investors, including himself, but he set it up so that the average Joe can’t afford to play on Gore’s terms. And the US portion is headed up by a former Gore staffer and fund raiser who previously ran afoul of both the FEC and the DOJ, before Janet Reno jumped in and shut down an investigation during the Clinton years,” reports Dan Riehl of riehlworldview.com.

Generation Investment Management’s U.S. branch is headed by a former Gore staffer and fund-raiser, Peter S. Knight, who once was the target of investigations by the Federal Election Commission and the Department of Justice.

Tennessee’s Bill Hobbs lays it out even more: “Gore helped found Generation Investment Management, through which he and others pay for offsets. The firm invests the money in solar, wind and other projects that reduce energy consumption around the globe… Gore is chairman of the firm and, presumably, draws an income or will make money as its investments prosper. In other words, he buys his carbon offsets from himself, through a transaction designed to boost his own investments and return a profit to himself. To be blunt, Gore doesn’t buy “carbon offsets” through Generation Investment Management - he buys stocks.”

And Newsbusters.org’s Matthew Vadum makes it clear that Gore isn’t showing the public everything he plans to bring to the table: “As a politician, Gore speaks warmly of transparency. But as GIM chairman, Gore has not been forthcoming. Little is known about his shadowy firm’s finances, where it gets funding and what projects it supports.”

Adds Riehl: “If Gore’s motivation in pushing Global Warming is so altruistic, was it really necessarily for the already wealthy Gore to establish a multi-million dollar corporation in England to cash in?”

According to another independent media source, Gore is pretty good at asking Americans to limit their lifestyles while expanding his own: “Gore, whose film warning of a coming cataclysm due to man-made “global warming” won two Oscars, has a mansion in the posh Belle Meade area of Nashville that consumes more electricity every month than the average American household uses in an entire year, according to the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, citing data from the Nashville Electric Service.
“The think tanks says since the release of Gore’s film, the former presidential candidate’s energy consumption has increased from an average of 16,200 kilowatt-hours per month in 2005, to 18,400 per month in 2006.“
Gore is definitely not the only major player in this swindle: major multinational corporations and their key officials are involved through a growing number of interconnected organizations.

According to Freeman and Baker, “Among the 85-plus members of the CCX to date are DuPont, Duquesne Light Co. (owned by Macquarie), Ford, American Electric Power, and Smithfield Foods, plus the state of New Mexico, city of Chicago and other governments. One prominent CCX participant is Green Mountain Energy, run by the Wyly family of Texas, and big moneybags for Bush in the Presidential elections; three Wyly family members each gave $10,000 to the Swift Boat “527 Committee” to slander John Kerry in 2004. Now the Wyly hedge fund, Maverick Capital, has the distinction of being the worst example of tax-evasion in the United States, by using 58 offshore trusts to hide more than $700 million in income from taxation … Approved aggregators of farmland so far are the Iowa Farm Bureau, the Kentucky Corn Growers Association, and others. The Lugar Stock Farm is a participating “Offset Provider.” Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) boasts that he was the first farmer in his state to sign up.”

Another "Crisis in Education?"

From the June 2008 edition of BayouVixen E-Magazine:

If you’re in Texas and already paying the $2.00 per $100 valuation maximum tax on education funding for your local school district, don’t be surprised if Governor Rick and the fools in the state Legislature show up next year with a proposal to erase that cap.

You see, we have once again entered the “there is an education crisis” phase: the public education system isn’t working and needs to be “reformed,” and to do that we’ll have to cough up more money. We don’t like the idea, but hey – children are our future.

Those who have been out of diapers for half a century are starting to catch on, however. This has happened before. Several times. And public education keeps getting worse.

Some of us were in high school when the first wave of education reform hit during the 1970s. Prodded by the U.S. Department of Education, schools across the country stumbled all over themselves to adopt Mastery Learning – grades weren’t important, “real-world” experiences were, and we needed to find a way to make school more relevant to kids because nearly one in 20 was dropping out and becoming an auto mechanic or some such menial profession.

As the state with the second-largest school-age population, Texas has been on the forefront of the waves of the education reform movement – when Mastery Learning failed, it was Outcome-Based Education. Then along came New Standards, High-Performance Standards, School to Work and, under our “education governor” George W. Bush, we decided there should be No Child Left Behind. The dropout rate in Texas is now more than 25 percent, and in some urban districts the number is closer to 50 percent.

By golly, it’s high time to fix education! Again.

The issue isn’t whether education needs to be fixed – that part is a given. The issue is who’s going to do the fixing. And the answer to that isn’t a good one, because the answer is that the same people who “fixed” it before are going to try and “fix” it again.

Just five years after pasting the conservative members of the State Board of Education who attempted to thwart Bush’s plan to implement a renamed version of Outcome-Based Education called the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills, the New York Times and writers Diana Jean Shemo and Ford Fessenden in 2003 actually did some real journalism and found out that the “glowing successes” reported in the Houston ISD weren’t exactly successes. Shemo and Fessenden followed the story of one HSID student who had graduated at the top of her class and been named a Texas Scholar – but couldn’t cut the academic mustard at the hardly-challenging University of Houston and wound up in a trade school instead.

Bush won the Oval Office based on his record in Texas, but “an examination of the performance of students in Houston by The New York Times raises serious doubts about the magnitude of those gains.”

Dr. Samuel L. Blumenfeld, writing for deathfromrotalin.com, calls it “the great American education fraud” and suggests the primary problem with the U.S. public school system is the fact that educators have strayed from traditional teaching methodology.

“The great American education fraud consists of not teaching inner city, minority children to read in the proper phonetic manner, then expecting them to pass an academic assessment test based on so-called high standards in order to graduate,” Blumenfeld writes. “But how can they pass such a test when they’ve been deliberately crippled in the primary grades? The crippling process is deceptively simple but highly efficient. All you have to do is teach children in kindergarten and the first grade to develop a holistic reflex in reading and they will become poor readers for the rest of their lives.”
Blumenfeld examines the situation in Massachusetts, where Bush’s “No Child Left Behind Act” has wrecked academic achievement.
“In Boston, where the minority is now the majority in the city’s public schools, 50 percent of 10th graders failed English, 63 percent failed math, and 69 percent of eighth graders failed history. In Brockton, a city with a large Latino population, 69 percent of eighth graders failed history and 72 percent failed science. In Chelsea, another city with many Latinos, 84 percent of eighth graders failed science, 68 percent failed history. In Holyoke, 82 percent of eighth graders failed history, 81 percent failed science, and 58 percent of 10th graders failed English. Even in a town like Belmont, where a lot of Harvard faculty members live, 22 percent of eighth graders failed history.”
Many critics of the public education system maintain that this shift toward mediocrity is in fact intentional – designed to enable more and more American employers to shift their jobs overseas for a lack of qualified employees as part of a global plan to turn North America into a giant pool of service-industry workers.

“From early on in the history of public school systems there have been those who believe the intent is to provide enough education so the majority of students can function as “worker bees” but not be able, or motivated enough, to challenge the powers that be,” maintains David W. Kirkpatrick, Senior Education Fellow at the U.S. Freedom Foundation. “One example is Martin Luther who promoted education for the masses but primarily so they could adequately serve the needs of the church. Frederick the Great of Prussia did the same because of a perceived need for minimally competent workers and, especially, soldiers while, at the same time, not creating a citizenry that would challenge the emperor. Other nations, not least of all the United States, adopted features of the Prussian system.”

Kirkpatrick maintains that “mindlessness” is part of the established and accepted mindset in public education, and “Much of the public doesn’t just accept these practices, but has bought into these failed procedures as the way things should be done.”

Blogger Steve LaTulippe, writing at LewRockwell.com, says that the public’s ignorance of why education keeps failing is a key factor in allowing the education bureaucrats and slick marketers who keep introducing “reform” every few years to keep succeeding at it.

“But so long as the fundamental issues are ignored, no amount of “reform” or increased tax expenditures will make any difference,” LaTulippe writes.

“There are, in my opinion, two fundamental purposes of education. First, is the ‘nuts and bolts’ issue of teaching young people the basic skills they will need to survive and prosper in their adult lives. The second, more abstract purpose is to inculcate children with the values and traditions of their culture. This latter function gives children a guidepost for the philosophical essentials of living a moral life and allows them to psychologically place themselves on the larger continuum of their civilization. It should teach them what has come before, and inspire them to work to carry their culture forward.
“While socialism is destroying the first purpose of education, political correctness is strangling the second,” LaTulippe adds. “The system cannot be fixed any more than a fish can be taught to ride a bicycle.”

LaTulippe calls this “cultural Marxism,” and says it has created a far more serious problem than stupid students.

“Since the seizure of our academic infrastructure by 60’s Leftists several decades ago, the system’s core agenda has veered into the wilds of multiculturalism, ethical relativism, and radical egalitarian socialism. It is no exaggeration to say that the fundamental mission statement of the current system is to defame and deconstruct Western culture and history. The existence of Western civilization is blamed for most of the evils of history, and the value of its eradication is implicit in the very foundation of the system … And despite the system’s miserable failure at teaching basic academic skills, it is having a raging success at this corrupt new political undertaking.”

As we head into yet another round of “education reform,” however, the question remains whether traditionalists can this time be heard in the debate. In past years, like Texas’ State Board of Education, objections have been marginalized, ridiculed and intimidated into compliance with the status quo.

“Would that we could ‘tweak’ the entire education system in America and make it work again,” writes Alan Caruba in “The Destruction of American Education” for enterstageright.com. “The reality, however, is that the thing is broken. It doesn’t work. Year after year, children pass through it from kindergarten to twelfth grade, too frequently emerging into the world functionally illiterate and with their little heads crammed full of leftist and environmental nonsense of no value to anyone but the puppet masters who have crafted programs designed to make them docile, easily manipulated little ‘citizens of the world.’”

Caruba charges: “This year, the Bush administration blithely gave a $1.2 million grant to the United Nations-sponsored International Baccalaureate program designed to make students citizens of the world, not proud citizens of the United States. In the midst of our war on terrorism, the IB teaches ‘peace studies.’ … There’s a reason why home-schooling children has become the desperate and heroic option of parents who want to insure they receive a good education.”

Written Off: Abandoning A Neighborhood To Criminals

From the June 2008 edition of BayouVixen E-Magazine

(I moved out of Bacliff at the end of August, just before the neighborhood was smashed by Hurricane Ike.)

Public officials in seaside Galveston County, Texas, have figured out how to make it look like their county isn’t overrun by crime: provide a safe haven, a virtual lawless zone, for criminals to operate.

Galveston County, located just south of Houston, is home to a large number of chemical plant operations and thus much of its populace is blue-collar; in recent years, more upscale residents have flocked to League City with the addition of a number of expensive developments such as Victory Lakes and Tuscan Lakes, and on Galveston Island itself, city and county officials have worked hard to turn the economically-depressed island into a vacation paradise.

But all that development has attracted more than its fair share of less reputable elements. The construction boon has attracted hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants – virtually every new residential development in the League City area employs them, and the city itself makes no effort to restrict illegals from working there (as long as they don’t live there). The expansion of wealth has also attracted drug dealers from Houston and created a number of home-grown ones, especially among the chronically lazy.

“Hey, I pay for my baby this way,” one 23-year-old mother openly advertises on her MySpace page. “I don’t care if it’s legal or not, I make more money doing this than working for Wal-Mart.”

Long a haven to outlaws and seedy elements, the county’s municipalities outside Galveston have been engaged in a concerted effort in recent years to control gangs and drug crime, and the result has been an improved image for cities like Texas City, LaMarque and Dickinson. That effort has been successful because the gang members have been moving in droves to unincorporated areas of the county – in particular the “cop-free” zone of Bacliff.
“I’ve lived here 30 years and it’s gone from good to bad to worse,” says “Joe,” a 67-year-old retiree who asked for anonymity to avoid retaliation. “At first it was just the bikers and their lot, they weren’t bad and over time they became good people. But now, these kids, it’s a circus out here 24 hours a day.”
Even the feds have gotten involved with Bacliff. On May 21, a federal task force arrested 10 members of the area’s 4th Street Blood Gang for cocaine and methamphetamine trafficking, and more indictments are expected. But local law enforcement is rarely seen.

At the intersection of 17th Street and Avenue A, a paid of shoes tied together is strung over a telephone line suspended above the street – the universal sign that drugs are sold here. Every residence in the immediate vicinity is inhabited by illegal immigrants, only a few of whom speak English. And those who do speak English are fond of certain terms.

“Get out of here you white motherfuckers!” screams one tattooed young man as a car drives past, flipping his middle finger at the driver while holding his other hand behind his back as if he had a concealed weapon.

Indeed, while the biggest impact on the area has been the influx of Hispanics – primarily Mexicans. And there is evidence to indicate that the new arrivals are not the hard-working types George W. Bush tells us are just here to do the jobs Americans won’t do.

At one residence on 15th Street, for example, there is very little grass in the yard – because it’s occupied by an average of 20 cars at any given time, from beat-up wrecks to brand-new Escalades and even a Hummer. Neighbors report dozens of people at a time flood into and out of the two-bedroom home, indicating strongly that those living there permanently may be involved in the smuggling of illegal aliens into the U.S.

“I tried contacting ICE to tell them about it, but they didn’t seem very interested,” says one neighbor, who also asked for anonymity to avoid retaliation.

Indeed, retaliation seems to be a key element which prevents the area’s law-abiding residents from fighting back.

“We had a lot of boom cars driving by my house one night because my husband gets out there and gets after them,” says one woman. “The next morning they waited until he left for work, then spray-painted my car with graffiti. They’ve bashed our mailbox before too. All the sheriff’s guys told us was well, maybe we ought to think about moving.”

The husband in question has been especially vocal about “boom cars” – gang members driving around with their stereo systems blasting deep bass “booms,” penetrating walls, rattling furniture and making it impossible for those with jobs to sleep in their off-hours.
“At one point I took to video-taping them, even following them to see where they were coming from, with the idea that I would turn that all over to the Sheriff to prosecute them,” he said. “Then one day these guys hopped out of their car and attacked me, grabbing my camera and throwing it into the bushes beside the road and threatening to kill me if I didn’t stop complaining about them. When the deputies arrived, they gave them a citation for terroristic threat – that’s all. The guys have since made it a habit to drive by my house intentionally four or five times a day.

“I don’t even bother trying to confront them any more,” he said. “The sheriff didn’t even want all the videos I’d made of the evidence, they said that unless they themselves witness it there’s not much they can do.”
The gangs and gang-wannabe’s are pretty open about who’s in charge of Bacliff now: they even advertise on MySpace. PunxNThugz Productions (www.myspace.com/punxsnthugprod) openly advertise their criminal affiliation with the use of an illegal weapon as their logo.

Some residents have attempted to get more help to fight back against the gangs, but they’ve been met by resistance above the level of the outmanned Galveston County Sheriff’s Department. Maj. Ray Tuttle of the Sheriff’s office in particular has been “extremely helpful,” according to many residents, but “their hands are tied because they don’t have any tools to work with.”

Sheriff’s deputies are forced to work with an outdated Texas noise-regulation law which requires them to measure the noise with a decibel-meter (the county has only one) and if only in effect after 9 p.m. at night.

“We got in touch with the county, they told us they can’t pass any ordinances restricting noise,” says the boom-car fighter. “So I tried contacting our state legislators. (State Rep. Craig) Eiland sent me back a nice little letter saying that someone else introduced legislation to improve the state nuisance-noise law last session and it got defeated, but he didn’t make any indication he was the least bit interested about it otherwise. I never heard back from my state senator.”

“I moved out here last year because I wanted to raise my little girls away from the big city,” says Jesse Bronson, 26. “But I’m afraid to let them play in the yard now because it seems like every time I look up there’s some Mexican walking down the street real slow looking at them. It scares me.”

Conspiracy Theorists, and Those Who Love Us

From the June 2008 edition of BayouVixen E-Magazine:

The thought struck me a while ago while I was fending off the clouds of mosquitoes during the annual rite of mowing my yard.
We live in a country where an estimated half the black population believes fervently that the U.S. government created the HIV virus as a way to control population growth among black Americans, despite clear evidence the virus originated all on its own.

We live in a country where almost 15 percent of people — that would be nearly half of those who openly call themselves “true liberals” — are firmly and fully convinced that the collapse of the Twin Towers was engineered by the Bush Administration as a pretext for launching a war, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

We live in a country where a healthy segment of the partisan voting population believe without question that George W. Bush stole two elections through subterfuge, despite very clear evidence it was the other way around.

We live in a country where nearly two in three are fully convinced that “global warming” is a man-made phenomenon and the entire planet is going to burn up unless we do something immediately, despite a growing preponderance of evidence to the contrary.

We live in a country where the vast majority of the residents of poorer sections of New Orleans will tell you without question that the disaster that befell them was George Bush’s fault, not that of Gov. Kathleen Blanco, who refused to call for federal help until the disaster was out of hand.

Yet many of the same believers of the above scenarios will look at you cross-eyed, bust up laughing and dismiss you as a lunatic when you try to tell them that the same George Bush they so revile is busy selling out our country to create a North American Union — in spite of a plethora of evidence which (at least to conspiracy nuts like me) plainly indicates it to be the verified truth.

We all know, of course, that the Posse Comitatus Act prevents the federal government from using federalized troops to establish order and perform police actions on American soil. Did you also know that on Feb. 14, 2008, the commander of US Northern Command (NORTHCOM) signed an agreement with his Canadian counterpart which would enable the U.S. President to mobilize Canadian (and, presumably, Mexican as well) troops to charge into American cities in the event of a major “civil disturbance” to restore order?

It’s the truth — as is the fact that the President of the United States, through this agreement, entered into a treaty with a foreign nation that was not presented to Congress for ratification as required by the U.S. Constitution. Google it; interestingly enough, you can no longer access the NORTHCOM web site.

I’m sure you’ve all heard of the many meetings of the “Three Amigos” — the leaders of the U.S., Canada and Mexico — at events called the Security and Prosperity Partnership, the most recent of which took place in New Orleans April 21-22. Do you know how many new agreements and treaties have been reached between the three leaders?

Don’t worry — no one else does either. Where our government is normally quite keen to publicize its every good deed, every one of the SPP summits has passed in a veil of complete secrecy. Even Congressmen and Senators who have requested information have been met with silence.

I’m sure you’ve all seen the new billboard advertisements popping up all over town about how we need to “be prepared” to leave town in a hurry, presumably in the event of a hurricane. Isn’t it interesting and entirely coincidental that NORTHCOM and other federal agencies practiced coordinating their activities the first week in May in a series of drills around the nations which simulated how they would react to a terrorist nuclear attack?

More than a year ago, the FBI warmed that Al Quaeda may have already smuggled components for a nuclear weapon into the United States, thanks to help from Mexican drug smugglers. The Border Patrol and local law enforcement have made several seizures of weapons, including assault rifles and explosives, over the last year or so — including several shipments headed for Houston.

Ten years ago, me and a few others tried to tell Texas that George Bush was selling you a load of poop with his new “high-stakes” education program. We got laughed off as “social conservatives.” Texas now enjoys a 25 percent dropout rate and unprecedented levels of violence in our public schools.

But y’all believe what you want to believe; stay tucked inside your comfortable little soccer mommy coccoons. After all, I’m just a conspiracy theorist.

Texas Independence: It's Not Just for Whackos Any More

February 22nd, 2009

The circus of disaster currently being showcased in Washington is making more and more Texans wake up and realize that all the dire predictions by the “lunatic fringe” over the last decade or two really weren’t just the ravings of lone tax protesters, bigoted zealots and conspiracy theorists. After years of scoffing at the talk, folks are coming to realize that our government really DOES think it knows better than you do, it really DOES ignore the Constitution whenever it’s convenient and it really IS turning our nation into a Third World slum.

Welcome to the loony bin, Soccer Mom and Plantworker Joe. It’s nice to have you on board, and we look forward to your contributions to the discussion.

First of all, realize that when we use the words “Texas” and “Secession” in the same sentence, we’re not talking about firing the first shot at Fort Hood and going through all the grief of the 1860s again. This ain’t the Confederacy resurrected. Armed rebellion would be suicidal, and Texas could very well wind up as a colony of Mexico should we strike out on our own without at least the tacit blessing (and military support) of the U.S.

This is about fundamental differences in the beliefs between Texans and the rest of the U.S. about what the role of government should be in our lives. By and large, Texans want to succeed on their own without anybody else’s help, especially the government’s — it’s a matter of personal pride. We don’t need the government to legislate common sense.

The United States is plummeting down the road toward Eurosocialism and bankruptcy. We in Texas have looked at history, we have seen where that leads, and we have decided we don’t want to go there. It’s that simple.

Secession can’t happen, however, in the current political arena. While it’s true there are some Blue Dog Democrats and some Republicans who are at least friendly to our cause, those of us who seek independence have to realize that the two major political parties have a vested stake in the status quo; remember how difficult it was for Kinky Friedman to get on the ballot last gubernatorial election cycle? We need to form a new party in Texas, get on the ballot, and win elections.

Here in the Houston area, I daresay we’ve developed fertile ground for change in that arena because of the anger over how we were handled after Hurricane Ike by the insurance companies and trial lawyers — the two biggest contributors to the campaigns of state legislators. We need to throw the bums out; only when the two major parties can’t monopolize Austin can we begin to talk about Texas independence.

The Home Depot: You Can Do It, We'll Steal if From You

March 1st, 2009

You know what I find amazing? It’s incredible that big box retailers like The Home Depot are still in business.
I have a new motto for my one-time employer: “You can do it, we’ll steal it from you.” And this from a company which fires people for stopping those who steal!
I was promoted to a position as the supervisor over lumber, building materials and millworks at Home Depot 1853 in League City, Texas, only a couple of days before Hurricane Ike hit Houston. In the months following the storm, my departments accounted for nearly half the $9 million profit above and beyond sales plan the store raked in, and even after the closer-to-impact Galveston and Clear Lake Shores stores re-opened, our store was still doing three times the business in my departments that it had been doing before the storm up to Feb. 18, the day I walked out.
In spite of all that, our store never rated any more man-hours in my departments than it had rated before the storm – meaning that very often, I and the associates I supervised often worked one-man shifts in the very labor-intensive end of the building.
Nonetheless, I was looking forward to a very hefty bonus check for all my hard work in the fourth quarter of FY2008. By my reckoning, it was to be in the neighborhood of $2,500. But now I’m not going to get it; instead, some corporate executive who’s never broken a sweat gets it — all because I took care of my customers.
On Feb. 18, you see, I’d pulled the mid-shift, meaning that the moment I came on my opening man was scheduled to go to lunch. Immediately, I was inundated with requests to help customers get this and that. It’s amazing how many people have bad backs and can’t lift anything these days, especially if they need bags of concrete.
One customer, however, needed an entire bundle (240) of fence pickets. Because of the large quantity, we kept the bundles in an area by the Garden Center on the other side of the building. I would need a forklift to get them. I sent the customer to the Garden Center to await my arrival, hopped on the forklift, and got on the radio to call for a spotter.
Now, The Home Depot believes in safety. They fire people for stopping shoplifters because they’re scared someone might hurt the shoplifter. And I knew that in order to move that forklift, I needed to have a spotter out there with orange flags to wave off people who might foolishly walk in front of me without my seeing them.
(Believe it or not, there really are people like that.)
So I got on my radio and called for help. I called a second time. I called a third time. I got on my department’s mobile phone and broadcast over the store loudspeaker that I needed help on the forklift.
No one showed. I called on the radio again. I called on the phone again. I called on the radio again. Finally, I went inside and corralled a cashier who was headed for the break room, and got her to spot me to the “safe zone” beside the building, where I could safely move around the building with no spotter needed.
While I drove around the building, I called on the radio twice more for someone to please, please meet me at the garden center entrance to spot me. When I arrived at that location, there was no one there and no one had even acknowledged my radio call. My customer was waiting for his fence pickets and getting anxious.
So I did what The Home Depot urges its associates to do – I rendered great customer service by taking my forklift and getting the man his pickets.
As I got my customer loaded up, two members of our “safety team” walked out the door and right past us. Then the store manager came out and asked where my spotter was. I told him I didn’t have one, despite repeated calls. He let me know that well, this was a serious safety violation and they’d just have to pull my license.
Whether or not the customer was a happy camper was a secondary consideration – after all, if some car racing through the parking lot hit my forklift instead of my spotter, well, the customer’s car would be totaled and they’d sue us. Can’t have that. Can we?
So I handed the store manager my lift license, I walked straight back to the break room, removed my work apron and called out on the radio my best wishes to all those I’d worked with all these long months. Then I walked out.
A day later, one of our assistant managers called me on the phone and asked if I’d come back in to discuss whether I really wanted to quit or not, that maybe we could work out something where I’d step down as department head and where my lack of a lift license wouldn’t matter. I reluctantly agreed.
We sat down in the store manager’s office and I read a statement about why I’d operated the forklift without a spotter – namely, because The Home Depot failed to provide adequate staffing – and why I’d walked out. I said I didn’t feel it was right to rigidly enforce the rules in that situation while it took weeks and months to get rid of people who made a habit of not showing up for work.
The store manager and assistant thanked me … then fired me. I was told the decision to terminate had been made at the district level BEFORE our meeting began. In other words, I was lured back to the store so that they could establish that THEY initiated the termination for a “conduct” violation, thus making me ineligible for re-hire – and ineligible for hire almost anywhere else, too.
In addition, that made it possible for The Home Depot to claim I was not “an associate in good standing,” and thus ineligible for the bonus I’d worked so very, very hard to earn. My bonus will be distributed to some deserving senior management person — probably the district staff which proved so effective at establishing the situation which led to my alleged “safety violation.”
I guess this is all my fault. I cared. I actually believed the schtick that customer service was my number one job, and I believed what our district manager uttered in the single class I’d been given on how to run a department, that “I’ve never fired anyone for taking care of a customer.”
Well, you have now, Sean. Hope you enjoy my money.