2015 Meeting Notes

Discussion List—October 1st, 2015

EPA--Contrasting Fines
http://insider.foxnews.com/2015/08/31/wyoming-farmer-andy-johnson-files-lawsuit-over-massive-epa-fines-building-pond
http://media.graytvinc.com/images/620*350/before+and+after+animas.jpg

http://www.independentsentinel.com/gold-king-mine-owner-epa-incompetents-forced-their-way-on-to-his-property/

1. Wyoming farmer Andy Johnson is facing more than $16 million in fines from the Environmental Protection Agency for building a stock pond for his horses and cattle on his eight-acre property.
2. The pond served to settle waste-products from livestock, actually improving environmental conditions. Yet the agency ordered him in January 2014 to restore the area to its original condition or accumulate fines of $37,500 a day.
3. Four years ago the EPA threatened the owner of the Gold King Mine with $35,000 per day in fines if he didn't let them work on his property. Leaks from adjacent mines were seeping into this mine, which was acting like a reservoir, holding back the waste material from contaminating the local rivers.
4. In August this year the EPA itself was responsible for unstopping the mine and spilling over 3 million gallons of toxic metals and waste into the Animas and San Juan Rivers.
5. Did anyone threaten the EPA with fines? Would it help?

2015 UN Sustainable Development Summit
http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/summit/
https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/post2015/summit
http://www.naturalnews.com/051058_2030_Agenda_United_Nations_global_enslavement.html

1. Translation of the UN's 17 Goals for its "2030 Agenda"
2. Goal 1) End poverty in all its forms everywhere 
   Translation: Put everyone on government welfare, food stamps, housing subsidies and handouts that make them obedient slaves to global government. Never allow people upward mobility to help themselves. Instead, teach mass victimization and obedience to a government that provides monthly "allowance" money for basic essentials like food and medicine. Label it "ending poverty."
3. Goal 8) Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all 
   Translation: Regulate small business out of existence with government-mandated minimum wages that bankrupt entire sectors of the economy. Force employers to meet hiring quotas of LGBT workers while mandating wage tiers under a centrally planned work economy dictated by the government. Destroy free market economics and deny permits and licenses to those companies that don't obey government dictates.
4. Goal 13) Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts 
   Translation: Set energy consumption quotas on each human being and start punishing or even criminalizing "lifestyle decisions" that exceed energy usage limits set by governments. Institute total surveillance of individuals in order to track and calculate their energy consumption. Penalize private vehicle ownership and force the masses onto public transit, where TSA grunts and facial recognition cameras can monitor and record the movement of every person in society, like a scene ripped right out of Minority Report.
5. Goal 15) Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss 
   Translation: Roll out Agenda 21 and force humans off the land and into controlled cities. Criminalize private land ownership, including ranches and agricultural tracts....

CAPR V San Juan County
http://www.courts.wa.gov/opinions/pdf/905002.pdf
http://apps.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=42.30.010

1. Washington Supreme Court Decision Issued--10/1/2015
2. It didn't go well for CAPR, nor the rest of us.
3. "We reject CAPR's arguments because (1) none of the CAO team meetings constituted "meetings" of the San Juan County Council under the OPMA, (2) the CAO Team itself was not a "committee" of the Council, and (3) the CAO Team never acted on behalf of the Council."
4. So governments can convene secret meetings, which recommend adoption to the Council, and the public won't know what's going on and can't weigh-in until it's too late to respond.

Code Enforcement--Does it Abuse or Protect Property Value and Rights?

1. (Discussion Only)
2. Sometimes Code Enforcement is a weapon of NIMBY neighbors or government employees, who have some axe to grind, so they use the coercive power of local government to punish property owners.
3. However, in the absence of market-based incentives to protect property values, Code Enforcement can protect one property owner from abuse by another.
4. Are there other better alternatives?

The Fallacy of "Buy Land - They're Not Making Any More"
https://mises.org/library/fallacy-buy-land-%E2%80%94-they%E2%80%99re-not-making-any-more

1. "Buy land - they're not making any more!" is classic investment advice, but economically, it's completely false.
2. As counterintuitive as it may seem, we make land all the time. It just doesn't look like land.
3. Why? Because land's value is not in the space it occupies, but in its economic usefulness. From the value of things that can be done using that land. And that value is, indeed, changing all the time. Economically... we make land all the time.
4. It's not the actual space that matters, it's the access. Put a strip mall on Manhattan surrounded by crocodile-filled moats and snipers and it will have low value. The value is in access. So Manhattan is valuable because it's easy to get to other parts of Manhattan. And it's easy for other people to get to you. Customers, partners, and friends can all easily visit you if your apartment or office is in Manhattan, moatless and sniperless.
5. [The point is, the value of land is affected by usefulness and access and government can impact both through zoning and other regulations. Buying land only makes economic sense if you can use it. Or specifically, if the government lets you use it.]

Economy vs Land Mass
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_the_Soviet_Union

1. 1950 GDP (in billion 1990 dollars) 
   -- USSR -- 510 
   -- Japan -- 161 
   -- US -- 1456 
   1965 GDP (in billion 1990 dollars) 
   -- USSR -- 1011 (198%) 
   -- Japan -- 587 (365%) 
   -- US -- 2607 (179%)
2. What was happening between 1950 and 1965 in the United States, Japan, and the Soviet Union?

Discussion List—September 3rd, 2015

John Anthony--Shattering America's Trance
http://shatteringamericastrance.com/
http://www.sat-workshop-seattle.eventbrite.com—Issaquah--Saturday 9/19/2015
http://www.sat-workshop-vancouver.eventbrite.com—Vancouver--Sunday 9/20/2015

1. Shattering America's Trance (SAT) is a workshop to teach citizens how to use non-political language to alert community members to current issues, then engage them to stop the uncontrolled spread of government.
2. How to forge community coalitions to stop Regionalism, Common Core and the Affordable Care Act
3. How to frame your message in terms that win allies from all political sides
4. How to recognize and convince the "Daydreamers" and the "Deluded"
5. Simple ways you can replace the media as the 'go to' source for information in your community.
6. Full Day Workshops, Sponsored by CAPR—$45 admission—(EventBrite Links Above) Issaquah--Saturday September 19th, 2015 Vancouver--Sunday September 20th, 2015

EPA-Animas River Spill
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ga083kdeZU0 (3.9 min video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBNmOhfmwT0 (2.7 min video)
http://www.durangoherald.com/article/20150829/OPINION02/150829556/-1/Opinion

1. The EPA claimed responsibility for a HUGE toxic spill at the Gold King mine.
2. Claimed it was i million gallons.
3. Then tried to blame it on others.
4. Then it was discovered it was 3 million gallons.
5. Claimed the river was safe after only a few days.

EPA's Highest-Paid Employee And Climate Change Expert--Going to Jail
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/other/climate-change-expert-sentenced-32-months-fraud-says-lying-was-f2D11768995

1. The EPA's highest-paid employee and a leading expert on climate change was sentenced to 32 months in federal prison Wednesday for lying to his bosses and saying he was a CIA spy working in Pakistan so he could avoid doing his real job.
2. John C. Beale's crimes were "inexplicable" and "unbelievably egregious," said Judge Ellen Huvelle in imposing the sentence in a Washington. D.C. federal court. Beale has also agreed to pay $1.3 million in restitution and forfeiture to the government.
3. Beale said he was ashamed of his lies about working for the CIA, a ruse that, according to court records, began in 2000 and continued until early this year.
4. "Why did I do this? Greed - simple greed - and I'm ashamed of that greed," Beale told the court. He also said it was possible that he got a "rush" and a "sense of excitement" by telling people he was worked for the CIA. "It was something like an addiction," he said.
5. Beale pled guilty in September to bilking the government out of nearly $1 million in salary and other benefits over a decade. He perpetrated his fraud largely by failing to show up at the EPA for months at a time, including one 18-month stretch starting in June 2011 when he did "absolutely no work," as his lawyer acknowledged in a sentencing memo filed last week.
6. When Huvelle asked Beale what he was doing when he claimed he was working for the CIA, he said, "I spent time exercising. I spent a lot of time working on my house."
7. He also said he used the time "trying to find ways to fine tune the capitalist system" to discourage companies from damaging the environment. "I spent a lot of time reading on that," said Beale.
8. Prosecutor Jim Smith said Beale's crimes made him a "poster child for what is wrong with government."

Judge Blocks EPA Water Rule for 13 States Hours Before Implementation
http://www.washingtonpost.com/r/2010-2019/WashingtonPost/2015/08/28/Editorial-Opinion/Graphics/ND_Grant_PI_(4).pdf
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/08/28/north-dakota-district-court-blocks-controversial-waters-of-the-united-states-rule/

1. North Dakota district court blocks controversial 'Waters of the United States' rule

Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH)
http://sustainablefreedomlab.org/uncategorized/how-hud-will-legally-enslave-your-community/
http://affh.net/about/

1. The 377-page ruling from HUD called Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing attempts to remove discrimination and achieve balanced and integrated living patterns.
2. It amounts to back-door annexation—a way of turning America's suburbs into tributaries of nearby cities.

One Iranian Family's Fight to Keep a Colorado City From Taking Their Property
http://dailysignal.com/2015/08/18/one-iranian-familys-fight-to-keep-a-colorado-city-from-taking-their-property/

1. When Nasrin Kholghy opened the letter from the city of Glendale, Colo., in April, it transported her back to another country in another time.
2. The letter notified Kholghy of an upcoming city council meeting.
3. There, Glendale's leaders would be voting to approve the use of a tool that would give them the power to take Kholghy's property and transform it into a planned retail, entertainment, and dining redevelopment project.
4. The news brought Kholghy back to Iran, the country she emigrated from alone in the 1970s.
5. "When I got the letter of them being able to use eminent domain, I really, really felt-we lost a lot of land in Iran when the revolution happened," Kholghy said. "I thought, 'Oh my gosh, it's happening again. We're losing it again.'"
6. Eminent domain is a power given to the government to take private property for a public use. In Kholghy's case, the city had its eyes on six acres of property her family owned.

IP in a World Without Scarcity
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2413974

1. Things are valuable because they are scarce. The more abundant they become, they cheaper they become.
2. But a series of technological changes is underway that promises to end scarcity as we know it for a wide variety of goods. The Internet is the most obvious example, because the change there is furthest along.
3. The Internet has reduced the cost of production and distribution of informational content effectively to zero. In many cases it has also dramatically reduced the cost of producing that content. And it has changed the way in which information is distributed, separating the creators of content from the distributors.

Discussion List—August 6th, 2015

Does "I, Pencil" Need a Pro-Government Update?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYO3tOqDISE (6.5 min video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67tHtpac5ws (2.5 min video) Milton Friedman
http://fee.org/anythingpeaceful/detail/does-i-pencil-need-to-be-revisited

1. I, Pencil—an essay written by Leonard Read in 1958.
2. Some recent authors suggest that the I, Pencil narrative leaves out an important role for government.

You Didn't Build That
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKjPI6no5ng (1 min video) Barack Obama
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-P-CoSNYaI (1 min video) Elizabeth Warren

1. Puts forward the idea that government is responsible for progress.
2. Uses wrong examples of where government contributed—roads and public schools.
3. Instead, they should have identified laws and courts protecting Life, Liberty, and Property. Also the creation and enforcement of contracts.

Who Built That: Awe-Inspiring Stories of American Tinkerpreneurs
http://smile.amazon.com/dp/1476784949

1. A tribute to the hidden American capitalists who pioneered everyday inventions.
2. Included the "little big things we take for granted: bottle caps and glassware, tissue paper, flashlights, railroad signals, bridge cables, revolutionary plastics, and more."
3. Includes a chapter called "I, Toilet Paper"

27 States Challenge WOTUS in Court
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/246539-27-states-challenge-obama-water-rule-in-court
http://www.agweb.com/blog/your-precious-land/flood-of-lawsuits-follows-epas-wotus-rule/

1. New EPA rule asserting power over small waterways like streams and wetlands. Waters of the United States (WOTUS)
2. The lawsuit claims that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) violated the Clean Water Act, other laws and Supreme Court decisions when it declared that tributaries and other small waters are subject to federal jurisdiction and pollution control laws.
3. States filing lawsuits are: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, Wyoming, Ohio, Michigan, Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Utah, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.

Discussion List—July 2nd, 2015

27 states challenge Obama water rule in court
http://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/246539-27-states-challenge-obama-water-rule-in-court

1. Nine states sued the Obama administration Tuesday over its rule asserting power over small waterways like streams and wetlands, bringing the total number of states challenging the regulation to 27.
2. The states in Tuesday's lawsuit argue, similarly to those in the other cases, that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) violated the Clean Water Act, other laws and Supreme Court decisions when it declared that tributaries and other small waters are subject to federal jurisdiction and pollution control laws.

WA State Maritime Heritage Area
http://www.behindmyback.org/2015/07/01/wa-state-maritime-heritage-area/
http://kilmer.house.gov/sites/kilmer.house.gov/files/MaritimeHeritageAreaMaps_comp.pdf

1. The proposed Maritime Heritage Area includes the area one-quarter mile landward and one-quarter mile seaward of the median shoreline.
2. National Park Service National Heritage Areas are partnerships between the National Park Service, states, and local communities through which the National Park Service supports local and state efforts to preserve natural resources and promote tourism.
3. The study team expects that A PRIVATE NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATION is the most likely type of management group for a National Heritage Area in Washington State
4. Affects: Clallam County Jefferson County Pierce County King County Grays Harbor County Mason County Whatcom County Skagit County Snohomish County Kitsap County Thurston County Island County San Juan County

Supreme Court Raisin Case—government can't take property without compensation
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/jun/22/supreme-court-rules-raisin-case-govt-cant-take-pro/

1. The Supreme Court ordered that the government can't swoop in to seize someone's property without paying a full, fair price for it.
2. In this case, that meant rejecting the government's claim under an antiquated agriculture law that it was entitled to claim as much as half of a California raisin farmer's crop to maintain market "stability" and keep prices up for other raisin farmers.
3. Harkening back to the Revolutionary War, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said property rights were a fundamental part of the country's founding and that the government cannot casually trample on those liberties.
4. The 8-1 ruling established two key tenets: Possessions, such as cars, or in this case farm produce, are entitled to the same kinds of protections as real property such as land, and the government cannot get around those limits by insisting that the seizure is being conducted for the owner's own good - in this case, a stable raisin market.
5. "The government has a categorical duty to pay just compensation when it takes your car, just as when it takes your home," Chief Justice Roberts wrote.
6. Business groups hailed the ruling as a major check on the government's grabbing behavior but said it was stunning that it took a Supreme Court ruling to curb federal authorities' appetites.

The History and Danger of Administrative Law
https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/history-danger-administrative-law/

1. Administrative law is commonly defended as a new sort of power, a product of the 19th and the 20th centuries that developed to deal with the problems of modern society in all its complexity. From this perspective, the Framers of the Constitution could not have anticipated it and the Constitution could not have barred it.
2. In contrast, this article (and author) argues that administrative power is actually very old. It revives what used to be called prerogative or absolute power, and it is thus something that the Constitution centrally prohibited.
3. What is administrative law or administrative power? Put simply, administrative acts are binding or constraining edicts that come, not through law, but through other mechanisms or pathways. For example, when an executive agency issues a rule constraining Americans-barring an activity that results in pollution, for instance, or restricting how citizens can use their land-it is an attempt to exercise binding legislative power not through an act of Congress, but through an administrative edict. Similarly, when an executive agency adjudicates a violation of one of these edicts-in order to impose a fine or some other penalty-it is an attempt to exercise binding judicial power not through a judicial act, but again through an administrative act.
4. This article compares Administrative Power to the The Prerogative Power of Kings
5. After absolute power was defeated in England and America, it circled back from the continent through Germany, and especially through Prussia. There, what once had been the personal prerogative power of kings became the bureaucratic administrative power of the states. The Prussians were the leaders of this development in the 17th and 18th centuries. In the 19th century they became the primary theorists of administrative power, and many of them celebrated its evasion of constitutional law and constitutional rights.
6. Meanwhile, American Progressives were becoming increasingly discontent with elected legislatures, and they increasingly embraced German theories of administration and defended the imposition of administrative law in America in terms of pragmatism and necessity.
7. In this way, over the past 120 years, Americans have reestablished the very sort of power that the Constitution most centrally forbade.
8. The conventional understanding of administrative law is utterly mistaken. It is consolidated power, exactly like our Constitution was designed to prevent.

Judge Rules Administrative Court System Illegal After 81 Years
http://www.armstrongeconomics.com/archives/33280

1. There have been discussions behind closed doors (never in public) that the Administrative Law Courts established with the New Deal were totally unfounded and unconstitutional.
2. With the anniversary of Magna Carta and the right to a jury trial coming up on June 15 after 800 years, the era of Roosevelt's big government is quietly unraveling.
3. A federal judge's ruling against the Securities and Exchange Commission for using its own Administrative Law judges in an insider trading case is perhaps the beginning of the end of an alternative system of justice that took root in the New Deal.
4. Administrative Law Courts are a fiefdom, to put it mildly. They have long been corrupt and traditionally rule in favor of their agencies, making it very costly for anyone to even try to defend themselves.
5. In a 45-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Leigh Martin May in Atlanta issued an injunction halting Administrative Law proceedings against Charles Hill, a businessman who the SEC accused of reaping an illegal $744,000 profit trading in Radian Systems stock. This is typical. The legal fees involved will exceed the amount of money he is alleged to have made, the typical result is to just pay the fine and they go away, it is cheaper.
6. The judge ruled that the SEC agency violated the Appointments Clause of the Constitution by subjecting Hill to proceedings before an Administrative Law judge, who isn't directly accountable to the president, officials in charge of the SEC, or the courts under Article III. The ruling is 81 years overdue. The entire structure of administrative agencies blackmailing people has been outrageous. Then you take the banks who just entered a plea of CRIMINALLY guilty to manipulating markets. They are now formally FELONS who engaged in violating SEC rules and thus under the SEC rules, they are no longer eligible for a banking license. The banks are "too big to jail" and the SEC has waived their own rules, of course, to exempt the banks. So they can engage in fraud and manipulation, get caught, pay billions in fines, and the SEC exempts them from losing their licenses. This is how corrupt the administrative agencies really are.
7. This new decision calling the Administrative Law Courts what they really are is reminiscent of the notorious extrajudicial proceedings of the Star Chamber operated by King James I. The court of Chancery set up outside of the King's Bench, so there were no trials by jury. It had the same purpose, to circumvent the law. This is where our Fifth Amendment privilege came into being. That came about following the trial of John Lilburne (1615-1657) for handing out a pamphlet the government did not like.

Right of Jury Trial
http://www.courts.wa.gov/court_rules/?fa=court_rules.display&group=sup&set=CR&ruleid=supcr38

1. [Question: Can we demand a jury trial for proceedings typically conducted by hearing examiners or in Administrative Courts?]
2. Definition: A trial is the judicial examination of the issues between the parties, whether they are issues of law or of fact.
3. (a) Right of Jury Trial Preserved. The right of trial by jury as declared by article 1, section 21 of the constitution or as given by a statute shall be preserved to the parties inviolate.
4. (b) Demand for Jury. At or prior to the time the case is called to be set for trial, any party may demand a trial by jury of any issue triable of right by a jury by...

Civil Asset Forfeiture
http://www.forfeiturereform.com/ (Americans for Forfeiture Reform)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United_States (Wikipedia)
http://www.ij.org/policing-for-profit-the-abuse-of-civil-asset-forfeiture-4 (Download Policing for Profit)

1. Known by different names: Civil Asset Forfeiture, Civil Judicial Forfeiture, Asset Forfeiture, Asset Seizure, Asset Confiscation.
2. A controversial legal process in which law enforcement officers take assets from persons suspected of involvement with crime or illegal activity without necessarily charging the owners with wrongdoing.
3. While civil procedure, as opposed to criminal procedure, generally involves a dispute between two private citizens, civil forfeiture involves a dispute between law enforcement and property such as a gold crucifix, a pile of cash, a house or a boat, such that the thing is suspected of being involved in a crime.
4. To get back the seized property, owners must prove it was not involved in criminal activity.
5. Criminal and the civil legal systems generally use separate courts, different procedures, and different evidentiary rules.
6. By The Institute for Justice—Policing for Profit: The Abuse of Civil Asset Forfeiture chronicles how state and federal laws leave innocent property owners vulnerable to forfeiture abuse and encourage law enforcement to take property to boost their budgets. The report finds that by giving law enforcement a direct financial stake in forfeiture efforts, most state and federal laws encourage policing for profit, not justice.
7. Policing for Profit also grades the states on how well they protect property owners-only three states receive a B or better. And in most states, public accountability is limited as there is little oversight or reporting about how police and prosecutors use civil forfeiture or spend the proceeds.

Empowering The Jury As The Fourth Branch Of Government
http://freedom-school.com/citizenship/jury-nullification-pamphlet.pdf

1. Pamphlet by former Washington State Supreme Court Justice William Goodloe.

Ranchers Are Not Criminals... for Now
http://www.farmtoconsumer.org/blog/2015/06/09/ranchers-are-not-criminals-for-now/

1. The latest from Paradise Ranch: The judge has ordered that all the animals we are charged with neglecting be forfeited unless we pay a bond of $39,780 by 4 p.m. Pacific time, Thursday, June 11. Unless we come up with the money by that time, 35 of our animals (cows and their calves, yearlings, and a boar) will be forfeited.
2. My partner, Ross, and I are small ranchers in eastern Oregon. We produce grass-fed beef and lamb. We're passionate about our work and life. But now we stand accused as criminals, facing animal neglect accusations. We are being charged with 45 counts of neglect. If convicted, these charges could result in a significant jail sentence. We are being targeted by a joint effort between the Union County District Attorney's Office and essentially an animal rights foundation because of how we manage our livestock which we raise to provide meat for our customers.
3. What we do is considered immoral and criminal by the California-based Animal Legal Defense Fund and we are being prosecuted by the only special prosecutor in the country whose salary is paid by a private special interest group.
4. Jacob Kamins is the State of Oregon "Animal Cruelty DDA" (Deputy District Attorney). His position is funded by an annual grant from the Animal Legal Defense Fund. His home office is the Benton County, Oregon District Attorney's office, but he appears in cases all over the state, including our case in Union County.
5. On Tuesday, January 27, 2015 we became accused criminals... on the grounds of "criminal neglect"-but nothing more specific than that. They stole our breeding boar and sow, 6 mules, 5 horses, 23 yearling calves, 2 bulls, 4 steers, and 43 cows. The mother cows represent years of genetic selection for cows that will do well living on pasture and eating only grass.
6. It's easy for law enforcement employees, casual observers, or neighbors to be judgmental and self-righteous when observing the activities on a ranch. It's easy to second guess another person's management decisions. Ranching is full of controversy for some people. It's common industry practice for animals to be castrated without anesthetic, cows get dehorned, injured or sick animals are usually euthanized at the end of a gun barrel, etc. But the worst for ranchers is Mother Nature. She is not kind, sympathetic, or compassionate. She's brutal. We struggle to keep our animals safe from predators and disease, to move animals to the best places for different seasons of the year, to keep mothers close by when they are calving, lambing, and farrowing, to keep animals fed appropriately, and to provide veterinary care when we know it will make a difference. We struggle with the knowledge that any mistake, accident, or poor decision in dire circumstances can cost a life. We also struggle with financial reality. We're not doing this to get rich, but we do have to make a living in order to pay our bills and stay in business serving our customers.
7. We now find ourselves battling something far more intimidating and frightening than even Mother Nature. We're battling our justice system.

Discussion List—June 4th, 2015

Grassroots Movement in Alaska Kills Agenda 21
http://freedomoutpost.com/2015/05/grassroots-movement-in-alaska-kills-agenda-21/
http://solutions-institute.org/grassroots-alaska-kills-agenda-21/

1. The people of the Borough of Kodiak, Alaska have defeated a zoning bill that would have severely restricted property rights and changed the character of their community.
2. Many residents were deeply concerned, but a coalition did not exist. Activism brought these people together, and all who contributed to the bill's defeat are to commended for defending long-standing property rights. (Solutions Institute)

Lysander Spooner (Quote)
http://www.lysanderspooner.org/MAS.htm

1. "Nearly all the positive legislation that has ever been passed in this country, either on the part of the general or state governments, touching men's rights to labor, or their rights to the fruits of their labor...has been merely an attempt to substitute arbitrary for natural laws; to abolish men's natural rights of labor, property, and contract, and in their place establish monopolies and privileges...to rob one portion of mankind of their labor, or the fruits of their labor, and give the plunder to the other portion."

How Eminent Domain Abuse Harms the Poor
http://www.spotlightonpoverty.org/ExclusiveCommentary.aspx?id=1fb37f4b-110a-4477-8fc5-8052c02e80b5
http://smile.amazon.com/dp/022625660X/ (The Grasping Hand: "Kelo v. City of New London" and the Limits of Eminent Domain)

1. In 2005, the Supreme Court ruled that the city of New London, Connecticut, could condemn fifteen residential properties in order to transfer them to a new private owner. Although the Fifth Amendment only permits the taking of private property for "public use," the Court ruled that the transfer of condemned land to private parties for "economic development" is permitted by the Constitution - even if the government cannot prove that the expected development will ever actually happen. The Court's decision in Kelo v. City of New London empowered the grasping hand of the state at the expense of the invisible hand of the market.
2. This June is the tenth anniversary of Kelo v. City of New London. The controversial Supreme Court decision held that it is permissible for the government to use eminent domain to take private property and transfer it to other private interests in order to promote "economic development." Not surprisingly, the ruling was opposed by libertarians and conservatives because it undermines property rights. But it has also met with strong criticism from many on the left, including Ralph Nader, the NAACP, and former president Bill Clinton.
3. This unusual cross-ideological coalition arose because takings that transfer property to private interests often tend to victimize the poor, racial minorities, and the politically weak. As Hilary Shelton of the NAACP put it in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, "allowing municipalities to pursue eminent domain for private economic development [has] ... a disparate impact on African Americans and other minorities."
4. His point is backed by much painful historical experience. Since the 1940s, "blight," urban renewal, and economic development takings have forcibly displaced several million people in the United States, most of them poor and racial minorities. In the 1950s and 60s, urban renewal condemnations were sometimes called "Negro removal" because of their tendency to target blacks.
5. Most of the people displaced were left even worse off than they were before. The condemned property was often transferred to politically influential developers and business interests. While such condemnations are less common in recent years, blight takings still disproportionately occur in poor and minority neighborhoods, and still inflict great harm both on their victims and on the surrounding communities.

Problematic Prairie Pup Protections Put "Propriety" In Perspective
http://www.cato.org/blog/problematic-prairie-pup-protections-put-propriety-perspective

1. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, exercising power purportedly delegated to it pursuant to Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce, has classified the countless Utah prairie dog, which has no commercial value and has never dug holes in any lands beyond southwestern Utah, as "threatened" under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), thereby prohibiting the "take" of said prairie dogs-which essentially means doing anything that disturbs the little rodents' habitat. If the varmints invade their property, human residents cannot build homes, start or operate certain businesses, or, in the case of Cedar City, protect playgrounds, an airport, and a local cemetery from their burrowing and barking.
2. Joining as People for the Ethical Treatment of Property Owners (PETPO), and represented by the Pacific Legal Foundation, residents filed suit, claiming that the "take" rule for the noncommercial, intrastate Utah prairie dog exceeds Congress's power to regulate interstate commerce. Congress has the power to regulate "commerce among the states," not species. PETPO's suit argues that the ESA cannot reach activities that are intrastate and noncommercial-activities, for example, like filling holes in your lawn or otherwise developing land where prairie dogs might live. The federal district court agreed and therefore struck down the "take" regulation. The case is now before the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals.
3. Joined by constitutional law professors Jonathan H. Adler, James L. Huffman, and Josh Blackman, Cato has filed a brief supporting the landowners. We argue, consistent with prior Supreme Court precedent, that the Constitution's Commerce Clause affords Congress the power to regulate only items, channels, or instrumentalities of interstate commerce. If Congress wants to regulate activities that "substantially affect" interstate commerce, that power rests in the Necessary and Proper Clause, which gives Congress the means to regulate interstate commerce-provided those means are both necessary and proper. But the prohibited activities do not substantially affect interstate commerce. Moreover, the "take" rule is not necessary for regulating interstate commerce; Congress can regulate that commerce without prohibiting these residents from using their property. Nor is the rule proper since the power to regulate uses of property that do not affect interstate commerce belongs to the states. For those several reasons the "take" rule as applied to the Utah prairie dog exceeds the powers the Founders and the Founding generation delegated to Congress.

In Memoriam: the Fifth Amendment
http://ti.org/antiplanner/?p=10652

1. • The Antiplanner spoke in Spokane last Friday at the annual meeting of Spokane chapter of Citizens Alliance for Property Rights. The focus of my presentation was how cities have eroded the property rights protections of the Fifth Amendment in order to promote the density schemes of urban planners. • The Fifth Amendment, which says that government may not take private property for public use without due compensation, was once interpreted to mean that government cannot take private property for private use at all and must pay compensation when it takes it for public use. But over time it has come to be reinterpreted to mean that government can take property rights through regulation without compensation and it can take private property from one owner and give it to another private party with compensation. • Several Supreme Court decisions have led to this result, but three are probably the most important: The Euclid decision legalized zoning to prevent nuisances; the Penn Central decision approved takings of property rights through land-use regulation even when there was no danger of a nuisance; and the Kelo decision allowed cities to take peoples' land by eminent domain to give to private developers even when the land wasn't blighted. All of these rulings have one thing in common: the Court said that the cities involved could ignore the traditional interpretation of the Fifth Amendment because they had written an urban plan. No wonder urban planners have so much power: the Supreme Court has given any city that employs one a get-out-of-the-Fifth-Amendment-free card.

Florida Court Rules "Off Grid" Living Illegal
http://drleonardcoldwell.com/2015/06/02/florida-court-rules-off-grid-living-illegal/

1. Robin Speronis had been living in an off-grid home for many years without incident, until she was interviewed by a local FOX affiliate in November of 2013.
2. Shortly thereafter, the city of Cape Coral tagged a "notice to vacate" on her property, due to multiple code violations, all of which stem from the fact that her home isn't connected to water, sewage, or the electrical grid.
3. The city has tried to argue that she is in violation of the International Property Maintenance Code for relying on rainwater and solar panels, instead of utilities.
4. Since that time, Speronis has been fighting the courts for her right live off the grid. Magistrate Harold Eskins recently ruled that she can live without using water or electricity, but she still has to be connected to these utilities no matter what.
5. Despite his ruling, Eskins admitted to the press that the code may be unfair, "Reasonableness and code requirements don't always go hand-in-hand." Despite his supposed sympathies, he still feels compelled to enforce the code.
6. Still, Speronis has decided not to give up, and will continued to defend her case in court. Even if she doesn't win, she has no plans to leave her home. "Even if they board the house up, I'm not leaving...They did the best they could when they took my dogs and arrested me. It fell apart because I'm unshakable."

By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission
http://smile.amazon.com/dp/0385346514

1. American freedom is being gutted. Whether we are trying to run a business, practice a vocation, raise our families, cooperate with our neighbors, or follow our religious beliefs, we run afoul of the government-not because we are doing anything wrong but because the government has decided it knows better. When we object, that government can and does tell us, "Try to fight this, and we'll ruin you."
2. Author Charles Murray describes how civil disobedience backstopped by legal defense funds can make large portions of the 180,000-page Federal Code of Regulations unenforceable, through a targeted program that identifies regulations that arbitrarily and capriciously tell us what to do. Americans have it within their power to make the federal government an insurable hazard like hurricanes and floods, leaving us once again free to live our lives as we see fit.
3. By the People's hopeful message is that rebuilding our traditional freedoms does not require electing a right-thinking Congress or president, nor does it require five right-thinking justices on the Supreme Court. It can be done by we the people, using America's unique civil society to put government back in its proper box.
4. The Madison Fund has three goals: 1. Defend people who are innocent of the regulatory charges against them. 2. To defend people who are technically guilty of violating regulations that should not exist. 3. To generate as much publicity as possible.

June 15, 2015—800th Anniversary of Magna Carta
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_Carta

1. Latin for Great Charter. Also called Magna Carta Libertatum—Great Charter of the Liberties
2. Guaranteed certain liberties, including Trial by Jury.
3. Influenced the Constitution of United States and Bill of Rights.

FIJA—Fully Informed Jury Association—Jury Nullification
http://fija.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification

1. The primary function of the independent juror is not, as many think, to dispense punishment to fellow citizens accused of breaking various laws, but rather to protect fellow citizens from tyrannical abuses of power by government.
2. The Constitution guarantees you the right to trial by jury. This means that government must bring its case before a jury of The People if government wants to deprive any person of life, liberty, or property. Jurors can say no to government tyranny by refusing to convict.
3. In 1771 John Adams, signer of the Declaration of Independence and second president of the United States, said of the juror: "It is not only his right, but his duty... to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment, and conscience, though in direct opposition to the direction of the court."
4. Judges rarely inform juries of their nullification power.
5. Before the Revolutionary War in the United States, colonial juries frequently nullified laws they didn't like. Jury nullification became so common that many British prosecutors gave up trying certain cases because conviction seemed hopeless.
6. In the pre-Civil War era, some juries refused to convict for violations of the Fugitive Slave Act.
7. During Prohibition, juries often nullified alcohol control laws, possibly as high as 60% of the time.

Discussion List—May 7th, 2015

Why the Government Hasn't Yet Managed to Destroy the Economy
http://mises.org/library/why-government-hasn%E2%80%99t-yet-managed-destroy-economy

1. "Markets are like weeds. They are impossible to stamp out..."
2. "While regulation has retarded - but not crashed - the economy, just how much damage has regulation perhaps done long term?"
3. "if federal regulation had remained at its 1949 level, 2011 U.S. GDP would have been $54 trillion instead of its actual $15 trillion."
4. Over the 57-year period of the study, it's a slow steady decline from potential of just over $2,000 per year, per capita.

Housing Affordability
https://www.washingtonpolicy.org/sites/default/files/how-government-officials-icrease-home-prices.pdf
http://www.newgeography.com/content/001423-the-heavy-price-growth-management-seattle

1. In 2008 the University of Washington Economist Theo Eicher published research showing that regulation added $200,000 to average home prices in Seattle between 1989 and 2006.
2. He said, "Seattle is one of the most regulated cities and a city whose housing prices are profoundly influenced by regulations."
3. The Washington Chapter of the American Planning Association (W-APA) was NOT happy with Eicher's conclusions, because they, themselves, were largely responsible for creating the very regulations which resulted in these increases.
4. The Planning Association criticized the Eicher study for focusing "solely on cost" and ignoring how land use regulations add to the quality of life. However, even in their analysis, they attributed $68,000 of the increase to regulations. So the fact that regulations impact affordability is inescapable. The only debate is how much.
5. The Washington Policy Center published a report in 2010, which stated, "Even a low estimate between these two findings confirms that efforts by officials to collect revenue adds significantly to the market price of housing, and makes realizing the dream of home ownership more difficult for many Washington families.".
6. Additionally, the APA's review of the Eicher study contains this statement: "There is no doubt that overly restrictive growth controls, ill-considered regulations, and needless permit delays can have an outsized impact on housing costs. And unfortunately, history shows that there have been cases where communities have deliberately used zoning and other regulatory tools to limit housing supply and as a barrier to entry, to keep certain types of people or income levels out.... The members of APA Washington, and our organization, pledge to work to ensure that our state's communities provide housing opportunities for all."
7. Growth Management drives up housing prices as market participants perceive scarcity. When government policies constrict the supply of land, developers purchase "land banks" to ensure that they have access to land inventory. Without growth management, developers and builders can purchase land when they need it, because governments have not placed artificial restrictions on its supply.
8. The NewGeography web site states that the 10-year trend of house prices increases in the Seattle metropolitan area supports Eicher's analysis, while any claim to improved "quality of life" is dubious. They question, "whose quality of life? As housing affordability declines, the quality of life may be raised for some, but only by keeping others down."

The Many Failures of the CPI
https://mises.org/library/many-failures-cpi

1. When it comes to the cost of living, most people prefer falling prices to rising prices, a condition that typically characterizes a true free market economy.
2. Austrian Economists oppose the whole notion of trying to accurately measure "inflation" which mainstream economists see as a general rise in prices. (Austrians view inflation as a politically engineered increase in the money supply.)
3. Government economists attempt to hide inflation by focusing on the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which can be manipulated based on what's counted and what's left out of the equation.
4. Like deciding what to do about changes in quality. For example, what do you count when Apple introduces a new and improved iPhone at the same price as the previous version?
5. To deal with this, government statisticians systematically increase the weights for goods that are going down in price and reduce the weights of things are going up in price. If the quality of a good goes up, the statisticians "hedonically" reduce the price of the good.
6. [This reminds me of the quip... "Figures don't lie, but liars can sure can figure."]
7. Economist Mark Brandly believes the full impact of the central bank's monetary policy is better described by adding consumer price inflation (higher prices) and the foregone price deflation together. The combined amount shows a truer picture of the negative impact the Fed's monetary policy has on the typical wage or salary earner.
8. He calculates what the CPI would have been between 1959 and 2005 if the money supply had been fixed. Using data on the actual money supply and actual CPI, he calculates that the actual CPI in 2005 was 6.7 times higher than the CPI in 1959. In the absence of increases in the money supply, however, he calculates that CPI would have fallen by 80 percent so that the actual CPI was thirty-four times larger than what the CPI would have been in the absence of the Fed.
9. What would this mean for the common man? Brandly provides a few estimates about what this world would look like in terms of the prices of goods the consumer would face today:
10. "Let's put this in everyday terms. Suppose these estimates represent the changes in the prices of goods such as hamburgers, cars, and housing. According to these numbers, a hamburger that cost 60¢ in 1959 would have cost $4 in 2005. If the money supply had been fixed, however, that hamburger would only cost 12¢ today. Similarly, a $20,000 car in 2005 would have cost slightly less than $3,000 in 1959. Again, without the monetary effect on prices, that car would only cost $600 today. The price of a $45,000 house in 1959 would have increased to $300,000 in 2005. With a fixed money supply, that house would cost $9,000 today."

Legal Plunder in The Law, by Frederic Bastiat
http://fee.org/files/doclib/20121116_TheLaw.pdf
http://www.constitution.org/cmt/bastiat/the_law.html
http://smile.amazon.com/dp/1508481881/

1. Frédéric Bastiat published The Law in 1850.
2. It begins with these words: "The law perverted! And the police powers of the state perverted along with it! The law, I say, not only turned from its proper purpose but made to follow an entirely contrary purpose! The law become the weapon of every kind of greed! Instead of checking crime, the law itself guilty of the evils it is supposed to punish!"
3. He continues later with these words, "The law has been perverted by the influence of two entirely different causes: stupid greed and false philanthropy. Let us speak of the first."
4. Property and Plunder Man can live and satisfy his wants only by ceaseless labor; by the ceaseless application of his faculties to natural resources. This process is the origin of property.
5. But it is also true that a man may live and satisfy his wants by seizing and consuming the products of the labor of others. This process is the origin of plunder.
6. Now since man is naturally inclined to avoid pain-and since labor is pain in itself-it follows that men will resort to plunder whenever plunder is easier than work. History shows this quite clearly. And under these conditions, neither religion nor morality can stop it.
7. When, then, does plunder stop? It stops when it becomes more painful and more dangerous than labor.
8. It is evident, then, that the proper purpose of law is to use the power of its collective force to stop this fatal tendency to plunder instead of to work. All the measures of the law should protect property and punish plunder.
9. But, generally, the law is made by one man or one class of men. And since law cannot operate without the sanction and support of a dominating force, this force must be entrusted to those who make the laws.
10. This fact, combined with the fatal tendency that exists in the heart of man to satisfy his wants with the least possible effort, explains the almost universal perversion of the law. Thus it is easy to understand how law, instead of checking injustice, becomes the invincible weapon of injustice. It is easy to understand why the law is used by the legislator to destroy in varying degrees among the rest of the people, their personal independence by slavery, their liberty by oppression, and their property by plunder. This is done for the benefit of the person who makes the law, and in proportion to the power that he holds.
11. Victims of Lawful Plunder
12. Men naturally rebel against the injustice of which they are victims. Thus, when plunder is organized by law for the profit of those who make the law, all the plundered classes try somehow to enter-by peaceful or revolutionary means-into the making of laws. According to their degree of enlightenment, these plundered classes may propose one of two entirely different purposes when they attempt to attain political power: Either they may wish to stop lawful plunder, or they may wish to share in it.
13. Woe to the nation when this latter purpose prevails among the mass victims of lawful plunder when they, in turn, seize the power to make laws!
14. Until that happens, the few practice lawful plunder upon the many, a common practice where the right to participate in the making of law is limited to a few persons. But then, participation in the making of law becomes universal. And then, men seek to balance their conflicting interests by universal plunder. Instead of rooting out the injustices found in society, they make these injustices general. As soon as the plundered classes gain political power, they establish a system of reprisals against other classes. They do not abolish legal plunder. (This objective would demand more enlightenment than they possess.) Instead, they emulate their evil predecessors by participating in this legal plunder, even though it is against their own interests.
15. It is as if it were necessary, before a reign of justice appears, for everyone to suffer a cruel retribution-some for their evilness, and some for their lack of understanding.

New Cingular V City of Clyde Hill
http://www.proprights.org/KING/docs/NewCingular_v_ClydeHill_716263.pdf

Frontpage Magazine Free Downloads
http://www.frontpagemag.com/downloads/

Cool It—By Bjorn Lomborg
https://archive.org/details/CoolIt

1. Climate catastrophe? The end of civilization as we know it?
2. Cool It is based upon the book of the same name and lectures by Bjorn Lomborg, the controversial author of The Skeptical Environmentalist. Award-winning filmmaker Ondi Timoner travels the world with Lomborg exploring the real facts and true science of global warming and its impact. Lomborg is the founder and director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, a globally respected think tank that brings together the worldâs leading economists to prioritize major global problems â among them malaria, the lack of potable water and HIV/AIDS â based upon a cost/benefit analysis of available solutions. Amidst the strong and polarized opinions within the global warming debate, Cool It follows Lomborg on his mission to bring the smartest solutions to climate change, environmental pollution, and other major problems in the world.
3. Lomborg was inspired by the writings of Julian Simon to simply look at the true facts and he concluded that things were not as bad as most environmentalists claimed. Things were getting better.
4. Lomborg still believes that man-made CO2 is effecting the climate, but he is not convinced that drastic harm has come from it.

The Incredible Persistence of Politically Correct Myths
http://mises.org/library/were-american-indians-really-environmentalists (By Thomas E Woods)
http://smile.amazon.com/dp/0307346692—33 Questions About American History You're Not Supposed to Ask
http://www.snopes.com/quotes/seattle.asp
http://smile.amazon.com/dp/0803709692 (Brother Eagle Sister Sky by Susan-Jeffers)
http://smile.amazon.com/dp/0262181959 (Contains Terra Nova interview with Ted Perry)
http://web.archive.org/web/20070703094552/http://www.suquamish.nsn.us/chief.htm (Dr. Henry Smith version of Chief Seattle speech)
http://smile.amazon.com/dp/0395578213/ (Al Gore's Earth In The Balance)

1. The stirring 1854 speech by Chief Seattle about the sanctity of the land was actually written in 1971 by screenwriter Ted Perry.
2. The Northwest historian, David Buerge, said "Chief Seattle is probably our greatest manufactured prophet."
3. The real Chief Seattle did give a speech in 1854, but he never said "The earth is our mother." Nor did he say "I have seen a thousand rotting buffaloes on the prairie, left by the white man who shot them from a passing train."
4. There were no bison within 600 miles of the chief's home on Puget Sound in the Pacific Northwest, and trains to the West were years away.
5. The closest we have to an authentic version of Chief Seattle's 1854 speech was translated by Dr. Henry Smith who published his recollection in 1887 - 33 years after it was given.
6. Chief Seattle spoke in the Lushootseed language, someone translated his words into Chinook Indian trade language, and a third person translated that into English. Smith took notes at the time, which he used to create his version many years later.
7. Clarence Bagley created the History of King County in 1929, which included the speech, except he made some additions of his own.
8. Ted Perry wrote his version in 1971 to be used for a movie named "Home" produced by the Southern Baptist Convention.
9. Other people felt free to further change the speech, beyond what Ted Perry wrote.
10. In an interview with Ted Perry, Terra Nova asked Ted if other people should be able to rewrite the speech. He said, "I did."
11. However, Ted did not want anyone to try passing them off as Chief Seattle's own words.
12. He tried to clarify that he "wrote" the words and he never meant them to be attributed as authentic statements of Chief Seattle. However, the movie producer changed the attribution from "written by Ted Perry" to "researched by Ted Perry" because it sounded more "authentic."
13. In most passages, there is little or no similarity between the Dr. Smith version and the mythical version. Although in some cases the two are total opposites. For example: Mythical version—"One thing we know, which the white man may one day discover - Our God is the same God." Smith version: "Your God is not our God! Your God loves your people and hates mine.... He makes your people wax strong every day and soon they will fill all the land; while my people are ebbing away."
14. People quoted from Ted's version, who were then quoted by other people, and quoted by still others, so eventually it seemed to gain in credibility by having so many cross-references. Today there are many different versions, some longer and others shorter.
15. Ted Perry was embarrassed when people accused him of feigning authenticity and he often protested that he never intended for it to be ascribed to Chief Seattle.
16. The mythical words of Chief Seattle have been widely quoted in books, on TV, and from the pulpit.
17. A children's book, Brother Eagle, Sister Sky: A Message From Chief Seattle, by Susan Jeffers, sold 280,000 within the first six months of its issue in 1991.
18. Ted Perry tried to correct Susan Jeffers and her publisher, telling them that he wrote the words in her book. She later reported, "I can't say he wrote them, because I don't know." However, she eagerly attributed them Chief Seattle with absolutely NO evidence they were true. (Do you think the money coming in from book sales influenced her choice???)
19. Al Gore's book Earth In The Balance also quotes from the mythical Chief Seattle speech, despite the fact the speech had been thoroughly discredited long before Gore wrote his book.
20. [Poster of Chief Seattle Speech purchased for $10 at a Native American bookstore in Tacoma WA]
21. [Words of Thomas Woods in Mises Article noted above...]
22. Environmentalists who have cultivated the myth of the environmental Indian who left his surroundings in exquisitely pristine condition out of a deeply spiritual devotion to the natural world have done so not out of any particular interest in American Indians, the variations between them, or their real record of interaction with the environment. Instead, the intent is to showcase the environmentalist Indian for propaganda purposes and to use him as a foil against industrial society.
23. The Indians' real record on the environment was actually mixed, and I give the details in my new book, 33 Questions About American History You're Not Supposed to Ask. Among other things, they engaged in slash-and-burn agriculture, destroyed forests and grasslands, and wiped out entire animal populations (on the assumption that animals felled in a hunt would be reanimated in even larger numbers).
24. On the other hand, the Indians often succeeded in being good stewards of the environment - but not in the way people generally suppose.
25. Although we often hear that the Indians knew nothing of private property, their actual views of property varied across time, place, and tribe. When land and game were plentiful, it is not surprising that people exerted little effort in defining and enforcing property rights. But as those things became more scarce, Indians appreciated the value of assigning property rights in (for example) hunting and fishing.
26. In other words, the American Indians were human beings who responded to the incentives they faced, not cardboard cutouts to be exploited on behalf of environmentalism or any other political program.
27. In some tribes, family- and clan-based groups were assigned exclusive areas for hunting, which meant they had a vested interest in not overhunting, and in making sure enough animals remained to reproduce for future years. They likewise had an incentive not to allow people from other families and clans to hunt on their land. In the Pacific Northwest, Indians assigned exclusive fishing rights that yielded a similar kind of stewardship: instead of catching all the salmon, some were left behind with an eye to the future. Whites who later established control over salmon resources unfortunately neglected this important Indian lesson.
28. Indians have not always recalled that lesson themselves. Consider the Arapahoes and Shoshones on Wyoming's Wind River Reservation, who in recent years (and with the help of all-terrain vehicles and high-powered rifles) have all but wiped out entire animal populations. Whatever happened to their spiritual kinship with nature?
29. In fact, this is the predictable result when wildlife is said to belong to everyone. There is no incentive to preserve any stocks for the future, since anything you might leave behind will simply be killed by someone else. Without property rights in hunting, there is no way (and no incentive) for anyone to prevent such short-term, predatory behavior. That's why Indian tribes assigned these exclusive rights - it was the best way to preserve animal species and provide for the future.
30. Say, doesn't this lost Indian wisdom bear repeating?

Discussion List—April 2nd, 2015

James Madison on Property
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch16s23.html

1. This term in its particular application means "that dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in exclusion of every other individual."
2. In its larger and juster meaning, it embraces every thing to which a man may attach a value and have a right; and which leaves to every one else the like advantage.
3. In the former sense, a man's land, or merchandize, or money is called his property.
4. In the latter sense, a man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them.
5. He has a property of peculiar value in his religious opinions, and in the profession and practice dictated by them.
6. He has a property very dear to him in the safety and liberty of his person.
7. He has an equal property in the free use of his faculties and free choice of the objects on which to employ them.
8. In a word, as a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.
9. Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.
10. Where there is an excess of liberty, the effect is the same, tho' from an opposite cause.
11. Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses.
12. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own....
13. That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where the property which a man has in his personal safety and personal liberty, is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest....
14. That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where arbitrary restrictions, exemptions, and monopolies deny to part of its citizens that free use of their faculties, and free choice of their occupations, which not only constitute their property in the general sense of the word; but are the means of acquiring property strictly so called....
15. A just security to property is not afforded by that government, under which unequal taxes oppress one species of property and reward another species: where arbitrary taxes invade the domestic sanctuaries of the rich, and excessive taxes grind the faces of the poor; where the keenness and competitions of want are deemed an insufficient spur to labor, and taxes are again applied, by an unfeeling policy, as another spur; in violation of that sacred property, which Heaven, in decreeing man to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow, kindly reserved to him, in the small repose that could be spared from the supply of his necessities.
16. If there be a government then which prides itself in maintaining the inviolability of property; which provides that none shall be taken directly even for public use without indemnification to the owner, and yet directly violates the property which individuals have in their opinions, their religion, their persons, and their faculties; nay more, which indirectly violates their property, in their actual possessions, in the labor that acquires their daily subsistence, and in the hallowed remnant of time which ought to relieve their fatigues and soothe their cares, the influence [inference?] will have been anticipated, that such a government is not a pattern for the United States.
17. If the United States mean to obtain or deserve the full praise due to wise and just governments, they will equally respect the rights of property, and the property in rights: they will rival the government that most sacredly guards the former; and by repelling its example in violating the latter, will make themselves a pattern to that and all other governments.

Karl Marx on Property
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm

1. From the Communist Manifesto: "the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property."

Code Enforcement
http://www.stgeorgeutah.com/news/archive/2013/11/06/hyde-perspectives-code-enforcement-versus-property-rights/

1. Code enforcement versus property rights—By Bryan Hyde—November 6, 2013
2. "At its heart, code enforcement is an official mechanism to maintain cleanliness and order within a municipality. These are desirable attributes, but there are some questions that must be answered. For instance, do the ends always justify the means? Put more bluntly: How many of our rights are we willing to sacrifice for the sake of appearance?"
3. "Our sense of aesthetics, however refined, should not justify the use of government force against a neighbor who doesn't share our high standards. Our disapproval over weeds, junk, or other eyesores does not equate with a legally actionable injury to our person or property."
4. "A common justification for strict code enforcement is concern that an eyesore will drain the value from the properties around it. But unless those complaining are actively trying to sell their property at that moment, they're asking that someone be punished for an injury that hasn't yet happened."
5. "Where is the harm in taking a concern to one's neighbor or even offering to help clean up a substandard property? Once government gets involved, it's too easy to switch off our consciences thereby absolving ourselves of personal responsibility. Our inner tyrant prefers using authority to force people to do what we want rather than persuading them to correct a problem."
6. "This mindset of coercion creates a divide between neighbors where cooperation could build bonds."
7. "Proponents of code enforcement maintain that we'd all be living next to slaughterhouses and toxic waste dumps if not for comprehensive codes and rigorous enforcement. We seem to presume the worst about others when the city is willing to play the heavy for us."

CEOs Against Private Property
http://mises.org/library/ceos-against-private-property

1. The governor of Indiana last week signed the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, modeled on similar federal legislation. The Indiana statute states that a person's religious beliefs may not be "substantially burden[ed]" by anti-discrimination statutes. In other words, if anti-discrimination laws could be construed as forcing a person to violate his own religious conscience, then the law allows for an exemption in that case to anti-discrimination mandates.
2. The response from the left has been fierce, and multiple CEOs of major firms, including Apple and Salesforce, have come out against the legislation with Salesforce announcing that it will impose a partial boycott on Indiana.
3. The actual points of the bill are murkier, and Gov. Pence of Indiana is now claiming that the bill does not actually allow business owners to discriminate.
4. Rather than get mired in a discussion of the minutiae of the Indiana law and similar laws, let it just be said that if the law allows for greater discrimination - and thus, enhances private property rights and lessens the load of government regulations - then it is good. If the new law does not do this, then it's difficult to see what the point of it is except as a scheme to gain favor with some right-wing religious groups.
5. Exclusion Is a Foundation of Private Property
6. Even if the bill does allow for greater control over private property on the part of the owners, the new government-allowed discretion would still be far too restrictive since it would apply only to religious objections. After all, religion is merely one criteria that a property owner might employ to determine how he or she wishes to use his or her property. If an owner wishes to dispense with religious motivation in favor of the pure avaricious pursuit of profit, or wishes to use the business to forward the goal of restoring the Russian monarchy, why should those motivations be any less respected than religion?
7. By framing the debate as a religious matter, the advocates of regulated discrimination are able to portray many of the advocates as zealots. Meanwhile, the supporters of religious freedom in this case have reduced their argument to a discussion about the motivations behind how one uses private property, when they should really be advocating for the unhampered exercise of full private property rights....

Public Accommodations--Property Rights and Freedom of Association
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_accommodations
http://volokh.com/2010/05/25/some-strange-consequences-of-public-accommodations-laws/
http://www.stanfordlawreview.org/sites/default/files/66_Stan_L_Rev_1241_Epstein.pdf

1. Within US law, public accommodations are generally defined as entities, both public and private, that are used by the public. Examples include retail stores, rental establishments and service establishments, as well as educational institutions, recreational facilities and service centers. Private clubs and religious institutions were exempt.
2. However, in 1984, the United States Supreme Court declared the previously all-male Junior Chamber International, a chamber of Commerce organization for persons between the ages of eighteen and thirty-six, to be a public accommodation, which compelled the admission of women into the ranks.
3. Public accommodations must be handicap-accessible and must not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, or national origin.
4. ------------------------------------
5. Title II of the 1964 Civil Rights Act..., especially at the state and local level, have expanded way, way, beyond their original purpose of ensuring that previously excluded minorities are served in restaurants, hotels, and the like. This has happened more via aggressive judicial interpretation of the language of these laws than from the laws themselves, which were phrased to not infringe unduly on private behavior.
6. For example, the Boy Scouts of America v. Dale case involved the courts of New Jersey declaring that the membership policies of the Boy Scouts violated the state's ban on discrimination in places of public accommodation. This even though the membership policies of the Boy Scouts are clearly not a "place," the Boy Scouts of America is not an "accommodation" in the the usual sense of the word, and the membership policies of private organizations are not "public."
7. The decline of the principle that a business owner has at least some right to exclude what he deems undesireables has led to some very bizarre cases, such as this one from 1986:
8. At a German restaurant called the Alpine Village Inn, in Torrance California, a group of four neo-Nazis came to eat, each wearing a lapel pin with a swastika on it. The management asked them to take off the lapel pins. They refused. The management asked them to leave. They refused. The management called the police, who arrested them.
9. Then, the Southern California ACLU sued the restaurant for calling the police on the Nazis! The restaurant ultimately lost at trial, and the insurer refused to foot the bill for an appeal.
10. ------------------------------------
11. On its fiftieth anniversary, Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 enjoys widespread social support on all sides of the political spectrum. That support is fully deserved to the extent that the nondiscrimination in public accommodations provisions offset the monopoly power of common carriers and public utilities, or neutralize the abusive application of public power and private violence to suppress the free entry of firms that would otherwise target minority customers in competitive markets.
12. The subsequent expansion of Title II's nondiscrimination principle becomes much more difficult to justify, however, when applied to normal businesses when segregationist forces no longer hold sway. In particular, these principles are suspect when applied to membership organizations that care about their joint governance and common objectives. In these cases, the principles of freedom of association should constitutionally protect all groups, even those that do not fall under the uncertain rubric of expressive associations.
13. The application of the modern antidiscrimination rules for public accommodations to Christian groups who are opposed to gay marriage on moral principle represents a regrettable inversion of the original purpose of Title II, using state power to force these groups to the unpalatable choice of exiting the market or complying with these modern human rights laws that prohibit any discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation. These rules should be struck down even if the other antidiscrimination prohibitions represent a group of settled expectations that no one today wishes to overturn.

Discussion List—March 5th, 2015

Why the Government Hasn't Yet Managed to Destroy the Economy
http://mises.org/library/why-government-hasn%E2%80%99t-yet-managed-destroy-economy

1. Study shows that if federal regulation had remained at its 1949 level, 2011 U.S. GDP would have been $54 trillion instead of its actual $15 trillion."

Roots of Agenda 21
http://americanpolicy.org/2010/05/07/fight-agenda-21-or-lose-your-freedom/

1. Interesting article about different opinions of Agenda 21 held by Tom DeWeese and Randall O'Toole.
2. [Some people focus on Agenda 21 as the source of our problems with Smart Growth and Sustainable Development, while others identify the source as other policies that go back decades earlier.]
3. [It's vital to understand how Agenda 21 and many other policies are all in play at the same time, influencing our decisions and policies.]
4. [It's also important to tailor our opposition so it's most effective with any given audience.]

Timeline of the Environmental Movement
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/timeline/earthdays/
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/timeline/earthdays/2/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_movement

1. PBS account of the history of the environment movement, entirely prior to 1990.
2. "1968--In The Population Bomb, Paul Ehrlich argues that the world's environmental problems are caused by overpopulation. At 3.5 billion people, the population of the world had more than doubled in the past half century. Despite the fact that his dire predictions of catastrophe will never come to pass, Ehrlich's apocalyptic warnings play a pivotal role in bringing the issues of family planning, contraception and legalized abortion to the forefront of domestic and international politics."
3. [The Wikipedia timeline is more comprehensive--it starts more than 100 years earlier and goes through the UN Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro (1992).
4. The conservation ethic that began to evolve included three core principles: that the human activity damaged the environment, that there was a civic duty to maintain the environment for future generations, and that scientific, empirically based methods should be applied to ensure this duty was carried out.

Agenda 21 Foundations Laid in HUNDREDS of Popular Movies
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dystopian_films
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_Green
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_Max
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterworld

1. "Soylent Green is a 1973 American science fiction film directed by Richard Fleischer and starring Charlton Heston, Leigh Taylor-Young, and, in his final film, Edward G. Robinson. The film combines the police procedural and science fiction genres, depicting the investigation into the murder of a wealthy businessman in a dystopian future suffering from pollution, overpopulation, depleted resources, poverty, dying oceans, and all year humidity due to the greenhouse effect. Much of the population survives on processed food rations, including "soylent green".
2. "Waterworld is a 1995 American post-apocalyptic science fiction action film directed by Kevin Reynolds and co-written by Peter Rader and David Twohy. It was based on Rader's original 1986 screenplay and stars Kevin Costner, who also produced it with Charles Gordon and John Davis. It was distributed by Universal Pictures."
3. "Mad Max is a 1979 Australian dystopian action film... law and order has begun to break down following a major energy crisis."

William Gibson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Gibson

1. Gibson coined the term "cyberspace" in his short story "Burning Chrome" (1982).
2. Credited with predicting the rise of reality television and with establishing concepts supporting the growth of virtual environments such as video games and the World Wide Web.
3. Wrote the novels Neuromancer (1984), Count Zero (1986), and Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988) and the short stories Fragments of a Hologram Rose (1977), Johnny Mnemonic (1981), Burning Chrome (1982), and New Rose Hotel (1984), all of which took place in a fictional environment called "The Sprawl."
4. The Sprawl extended along the entire East Coast of the United States, from Boston to Atlanta, enclosed inside several geodesic domes and merged into one megacity.
5. The Sprawl was portrayed as a dismal place where an "artificial sky is always grey" and "the actors change but the play remains the same."

North Cascades Grizzly Bear Restoration Plan
http://parkplanning.nps.gov/projectHome.cfm?projectId=44144
http://www.fws.gov/mountain-prairie/species/mammals/grizzly/

1. National Park Service (NPS) and the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) are jointly preparing a North Cascades Ecosystem Grizzly Bear Restoration Plan
2. They are inviting public comment.

Discussion List—February 5th, 2015

Crying Wolf
http://cryingwolfmovie.com/

1. Details the transplantation of wolves from their homeland in Canada and release in Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho in 1995 and '96.
2. Describes the true agenda behind wolf transplantation, which was never about saving wolves or balancing ecosystems, but gaining access to tens of millions of dollars and greater control over both private and public property.
3. [You can buy the DVD for $9.99 or download online for $4.99]

Blue
http://www.bluebeatsgreen.com/

1. BLUE is more than a film, it's an idea. Ideas have the power to change the way we think, begin movements, and even change the world. One of the most prominent idea of our time today is the Green Movement, which says that the Earth is threatened by the activity, even the existence, of mankind, and that the noble response is to restrict our freedom in order to save the planet. The movie BLUE challenges that idea. BLUE is an independently funded and filmed documentary by director, JD King.
2. [You can buy the DVD for $19.99]

Small Town Deploys SWAT to Collect 75-Year-Old's Fines
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/10/27/small-town-deploys-military-style-maneuvers-to-collect-75-year-old-mans-debt/
http://thefreethoughtproject.com/24-cops-armored-vehicle-collect-fines-argumentative-75-year/
http://goo.gl/dedw2d (Street View)

1. Marathon County, Wisconsin dispatched a swat team to collect fines due for clutter in a 75 year old's yard.
2. The tiny town of Stettin, Wisconsin has fewer than 3,000 residents, one of whom is 75-year-old Roger Hoeppner.
3. Hoeppner runs a tractor- and pallet-repair business. For years the town has been trying to get him to clean up the parts and pallets strewn across his property.
4. Hoeppner was arrested without any physical resistance, and was escorted to a bank where he was forced to withdraw $80,000 and hand it over to police.

Man Going To Jail If He Doesn't Remove His Windmill
http://www.dcclothesline.com/2015/01/23/man-will-go-jail-6-months-doesnt-remove-windmill-property/

1. A Minnesota man named Jay Nygard is routinely risking jail time because he refuses to remove a wind turbine from his property. Nygard has been in and out of court for over 4 years.
2. A judge ruled in his favor in October 2014, but he is now risking jail time again, facing an ultimatum from the city.
3. Jay owns a company called Go Green Energy, which sells wind turbines in other areas of Minnesota, but he isn't able to do so in Orono where he lives because of permit and licensing laws. These are the same laws that are preventing Nygard from building on his own property.
4. The local government and a few nosy neighbors had been disputing the placement of this turbine for over 4 years, since it was built in 2010.
5. Another judge recently ordered that Nygard be arrested if he doesn't disassemble the turbine in his front yard by February 19.
6. The judge has said that the turbine produces an "intense flashing light and sound" that "no person should be expected to endure."
7. However, the turbine isn't even operating, so there isn't any lights and there is no noise because the turbine has been locked down and not turning.
8. Nygard told reporters, "This is my city. I can't believe they're doing this to me. That's the craziest thing, all of this is happening over going green."
9. If Jay doesn't take the turbine down by the deadline of February 19, then both him and his wife will be jailed for up to 6 months for refusing to obey a court order.
10. Nygard now sees his resistance as a duty to protect property rights of other people in similar situations.
11. "They seem to think they can control our property, and what we do on our property is their business, it's my right to have it... I'm ready to go to jail for everyone's right. If that's what it takes..."
12. [Good example of bad neighbors using government for nimby purposes...]

Why the Government Hasn't Yet Managed to Destroy the Economy
http://mises.org/library/why-government-hasn%E2%80%99t-yet-managed-destroy-economy

1. "Markets are like weeds. They are impossible to stamp out..."
2. "While regulation has retarded - but not crashed - the economy, just how much damage has regulation perhaps done long term?"
3. "if federal regulation had remained at its 1949 level, 2011 U.S. GDP would have been $54 trillion instead of its actual $15 trillion."
4. Over the 57-year period of the study, it's a slow steady decline from potential of just over $2,000 per year, per capita.

Over 300 People Stand up to Agenda 21 in Alaska
http://solutions-institute.org/blog/victory-300-people-stand-agenda-21-alaska/

1. The Borough of Kodiak, AK (Pop. 13,600) attempted to entirely revamp the zoning code and place greater restrictions on property owners, including a $1,000 fine per violation.
2. They expected there to be little opposition, and little knowledge of the change.
3. Instead, they were surprised when over 300 residents attended the January 12th meeting to voice opposition.
4. Many residents could not attend due to flooded roads and driving rain, yet there were still over 69 speeches and over 4 hours of testimony.
5. The zoning code in question, enforces many of the suggestions of the UN Agenda 21, including making it easier for local officials to seize private property.
6. The code has not been defeated yet, but citizens are so involved they feel it's only a matter of time before the new code is scrapped.

Socialist Influence in Urban Planning
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Unwin
http://www.independent.org/pdf/tir/tir_04_4_otoole.pdf

1. Sir Raymond Unwin, a Socialist Reformer and author of Nothing Gained by Overcrowding.
2. Consulted with President Franklin D. Roosevelt on the New Deal in 1933.
3. Unwin's theories of planning and housing are described as "among the most influential of the 20th Century."
4. Urban planning rests on the ideas that urban residents impose numerous externalities on one another and that planning and regulation can minimize such externalities.
5. The history of urban planning is the story of a series of fads, most of which have turned into disasters. Urban renewal and public housing are two obvious examples.
6. Ironically, the failure of past planning is the premise for the latest planning fad, variously called new urbanism, neotraditionalism, or smart growth.
7. Smart-growth planners see numerous problems in our urban areas, including congestion, air pollution, sprawl, unaffordable housing, disappearing open space, and costly urban services.
8. These problems they blame on past generations of planners who, say "got it all wrong." The solution, of course, is to give the current generation of planners more power than ever before because this time they claim to have it right.
9. Smart growth is a threat to freedom of choice, private property rights, mobility, and local governance. Although smart-growth policies seem drastic, they are really a natural extension of the zoning laws that cities have adopted since the 1920s. Those zoning laws have been made increasingly restrictive over the years, and smart growth will make them even more prescriptive. Smart growth is clearly an example of creeping social regulation, if not creeping socialism.

Zoning and Urban Sprawl
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoning
http://www.cato.org/blog/libertarian-view-urban-sprawl
http://news.streetroots.org/2011/06/16/inclusionary-zoning-combines-social-justice-community-health
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclusionary_zoning

1. Until the last 20 years or so, most zoning reaffirmed the kind of development that people wanted in their neighborhoods. [They did this to ensure stability of property values, similar to restrictive covenants in communities with home-owner associations.]
2. But zoning is only one method for achieving stability. Other methods are just as effective, and would not provide government with more power over property rights and making it subject to greater cronyism and corruption.
3. Houston is the largest city in the US without zoning.
4. In Houston you can build a 7-Eleven in the middle of single-family homes or an apartment building in an industrial district. To the extent that Houston has a separation of uses, it is because that is what people want. Convenience stores want to locate on busy streets where they are visible to lots of potential customers, so they don't often locate in the middle of neighborhoods of single-family homes. People don't want to live in industrial districts, so you don't see too many apartments in them.
5. American cities sprawl because Americans, like people all over the world, prefer to live in single-family homes and like to have a little land they can call their own for gardening, entertainment, and play areas. The automobile made it possible for almost everyone to achieve this dream, where before the auto only the upper classes could do so.
6. Government planners began manipulating zoning regulations to promote Social Justice in the early 1970's. Inclusionary zoning policies are intended to reverse "exclusionary" policies, which kept the poor out of wealthy neighborhoods. Affordable housing to promote "Social Justice" became the goal of government, not merely developers, who previously solved such issues. But now it was at public expense.

New Urbanism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Urbanism

1. New Urbanism is an urban design movement which promotes walkable neighborhoods containing a range of housing and job types. It arose in the United States in the early 1980s, and has gradually influenced many aspects of real estate development, urban planning, and municipal land-use strategies.
2. New Urbanism is strongly influenced by urban design practices that were prominent until the rise of the automobile prior to World War II; it encompasses principles such as traditional neighborhood design (TND) and transit-oriented development (TOD). It is also related to regionalism, environmentalism, and smart growth.
3. The organizing body for New Urbanism is the Congress for the New Urbanism, founded in 1993. Its foundational text is the Charter of the New Urbanism, which begins:
4. "We advocate the restructuring of public policy and development practices to support the following principles: neighborhoods should be diverse in use and population; communities should be designed for the pedestrian and transit as well as the car; cities and towns should be shaped by physically defined and universally accessible public spaces and community institutions; urban places should be framed by architecture and landscape design that celebrate local history, climate, ecology, and building practice."
5. New Urbanists support regional planning for open space, context-appropriate architecture and planning, and the balanced development of jobs and housing. They believe their strategies can reduce traffic congestion, increase the supply of affordable housing, and rein in suburban sprawl. The Charter of the New Urbanism also covers issues such as historic preservation, safe streets, green building, and the re-development of brownfield land. The ten Principles of Intelligent Urbanism also phrase guidelines for new urbanist approaches.

Discussion List—January 1st, 2015

John Locke on Property
http://www.constitution.org/jl/2ndtr05.htm

1. God, who hath given the world to men in common, hath also given them reason to make use of it to the best advantage of life, and convenience.
2. The earth, and all that is therein, is given to men for the support and comfort of their being.
3. Though the earth, and all inferior creatures, be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person: this no body has any right to but himself.
4. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his.
5. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property.
6. It being by him removed from the common state nature hath placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other men: for this labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least where there is enough, and as good, left in common for others.
7. He that is nourished by the acorns he picked up under an oak, or the apples he gathered from the trees in the wood, has certainly appropriated them to himself.
8. No body can deny but the nourishment is his. I ask then, when did they begin to be his? when he digested? or when he eat? or when he boiled? or when he brought them home? or when he picked them up? and it is plain, if the first gathering made them not his, nothing else could.
9. That labour put a distinction between them and common: that added something to them more than nature, the common mother of all, had done; and so they became his private right. And will any one say, he had no right to those acorns or apples, he thus appropriated, because he had not the consent of all mankind to make them his? Was it a robbery thus to assume to himself what belonged to all in common?
10. If such a consent as that was necessary, man had starved, notwithstanding the plenty God had given him.
11. We see in commons, which remain so by compact, that it is the taking any part of what is common, and removing it out of the state nature leaves it in, which begins the property; without which the common is of no use. And the taking of this or that part, does not depend on the express consent of all the commoners.
12. Thus the grass my horse has bit; the turfs my servant has cut; and the ore I have digged in any place, where I have a right to them in common with others, become my property, without the assignation or consent of any body. The labour that was mine, removing them out of that common state they were in, hath fixed my property in them.

James Madison on Property
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch16s23.html

1. This term in its particular application means "that dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in exclusion of every other individual."
2. In its larger and juster meaning, it embraces every thing to which a man may attach a value and have a right; and which leaves to every one else the like advantage.
3. In the former sense, a man's land, or merchandize, or money is called his property.
4. In the latter sense, a man has a property in his opinions and the free communication of them.
5. He has a property of peculiar value in his religious opinions, and in the profession and practice dictated by them.
6. He has a property very dear to him in the safety and liberty of his person.
7. He has an equal property in the free use of his faculties and free choice of the objects on which to employ them.
8. In a word, as a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights.
9. Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions.
10. Where there is an excess of liberty, the effect is the same, tho' from an opposite cause.
11. Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses.
12. This being the end of government, that alone is a just government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own....
13. That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where the property which a man has in his personal safety and personal liberty, is violated by arbitrary seizures of one class of citizens for the service of the rest....
14. That is not a just government, nor is property secure under it, where arbitrary restrictions, exemptions, and monopolies deny to part of its citizens that free use of their faculties, and free choice of their occupations, which not only constitute their property in the general sense of the word; but are the means of acquiring property strictly so called....
15. A just security to property is not afforded by that government, under which unequal taxes oppress one species of property and reward another species: where arbitrary taxes invade the domestic sanctuaries of the rich, and excessive taxes grind the faces of the poor; where the keenness and competitions of want are deemed an insufficient spur to labor, and taxes are again applied, by an unfeeling policy, as another spur; in violation of that sacred property, which Heaven, in decreeing man to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow, kindly reserved to him, in the small repose that could be spared from the supply of his necessities.
16. If there be a government then which prides itself in maintaining the inviolability of property; which provides that none shall be taken directly even for public use without indemnification to the owner, and yet directly violates the property which individuals have in their opinions, their religion, their persons, and their faculties; nay more, which indirectly violates their property, in their actual possessions, in the labor that acquires their daily subsistence, and in the hallowed remnant of time which ought to relieve their fatigues and soothe their cares, the influence [inference?] will have been anticipated, that such a government is not a pattern for the United States.
17. If the United States mean to obtain or deserve the full praise due to wise and just governments, they will equally respect the rights of property, and the property in rights: they will rival the government that most sacredly guards the former; and by repelling its example in violating the latter, will make themselves a pattern to that and all other governments.

Karl Marx on Property
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm

1. • From the Communist Manifesto: "the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property."

The Enduring Power of Story
http://m.nationalreview.com/article/391047/enduring-power-story-jonah-goldberg

1. Article by Jonah Goldberg
2. The clash of conflicting narratives about America is what's tearing us apart.
3. There is an enormous amount of whining these days about our ideological debates. This gets the problem wrong. Ideological debates are fought over ideas, but politics is more often about competing stories...
4. Victor Hugo declared, "There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come."
5. ... but the only reason an idea's time ever arrives is that some story gives it birth.
6. Odds are that every lesson you ever learned came at the end of a story, either one you lived or one you watched unfold.
7. We evolved to learn through stories. We may as well be called homo relator, or storytelling man.
8. Ideas are surprisingly easy to let go of, if pried loose by the right story. Stories, meanwhile, are shockingly difficult to let go of, even if they convey a bad idea.
9. The story about the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo.
10. The story about the rise of the Islamic State, fueled by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
11. The story about modern-day environmentalism is full of talk about data and "settled science." But science is never settled, because science is the craft of unsettling what we know at any given moment. If science could settle, man would never learn to fly or read by electric light. Meanwhile, inconvenient data is left on the cutting-room floor as an ancient story is retold in modern terms.
12. Michael Crichton observed, If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs...
13. Preindustrial times are our Edenic past, when man and nature were in balance...

Misplaced Blame
(Draft Discussion Only)

America, Imagine the World Without Her

1. Video Documentary by Dinesh D'Souza. (1 hr 44 minutes)
2. Corrects the false narrative of America as "stealing" wealth from others.
3. Discusses the influence of the "history book" of Howard Zinn
4. (Review from about 17 minutes to 35 minutes...)