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Posted on 04/22/2009 1:13:06 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
As I read about funding over various budget items, I wonder if legislators really understand what's important anymore. Debating financing over community centers, historical societies and theaters seems quaint. By comparison, losing focus on real priorities, squandering precious tax dollars and incurring trillions of dollars of debt will eventually destroy our country.
Governments at all levels are struggling to close budget gaps. Their jobs would be easier if they applied a "Priority of Government" approach to all decisions. For Kitsap County, that should entail actively acknowledging the principles included in the county commissioners' mission statement: "Kitsap County government exists to protect and promote the safety, health and welfare of our citizens in an efficient, accessible and effective manner."
In order to plug Kitsap County's $3.3 million budget shortfall, the commissioners agreed to reduce working hours for some county employees and to close government offices on Fridays, starting in May. A bright spot in this cost-trimming was the decision that no Kitsap County sheriff's deputies would need to be laid off.
Unfortunately that's not the case for neighboring Mason County where their commissioners voted to adopt county budget cuts that will include eliminating approximately five sheriff's deputies. Commissioner Tim Sheldon provoked controversy recently when he warned potential criminals that "You're on notice: If you attempt a home-invasion robbery, you may be met with armed resistance and could receive a Mason County hot lead enema." He described his friends and neighbors in the county as "very well-armed, self-reliant and very comfortable with firearms."
Sheldon portrayed the Mason County's Sheriff's prediction that "crime can be expected to increase as officers are laid off" as "fear-mongering." Sheldon said he wasn't advocating "roving bands of vigilantes" merely acknowledging the independence of the populace.
But sometimes an independent populace creates concerns for the elected establishment. Last week's "Tea Parties" are a case in point. Thousands gathered across the country to voice their disagreement with the "bailouts" and explosion of Big Government under President Bush last year and now with the gargantuan budget and "stimulus" spending of President Obama.
A front-page headline (and subhead) in the April 16 Kitsap Sun read: "Fear, Anger Percolate at Kitsap 'Tea Parties' — At antitax demonstrations in Port Orchard and Bremerton, protesters expressed high pique over high taxes and fear of a perceived change in the national culture."
More than 100 Kitsap residents also participated in the demonstration in Olympia.
Several days before the "Tea Parties" occurred, a document from the Department of Homeland Security surfaced. It was titled "Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment." Groups like the Ku Klux Klan and skinhead organizations like the Hammerskin Nation are rightly identified in the definition of "rightwing extremism", but so are groups " ... rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority ... and groups and individuals ... dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration."
It's one of the strangest and potentially most frightening government documents I've ever read.
Its opening statement declares the department "has no specific information that domestic rightwing terrorists are currently planning acts of violence ..." But it goes on to identify certain opinions held that might indicate potential "extremist" problems such as concern over same-sex marriage. "Antigovernment conspiracy theories and 'end times' prophecies could motivate extremist individuals and groups to stockpile food, ammunition, and weapons ..."
"Both rightwing extremists and law-abiding citizens share a belief that rising crime rates attributed to a slumping economy make the purchase of legitimate firearms a wise move at this time."
Do rightwing extremists wear hats easily identifying them as such? How does Homeland Security view our residents who are, as Sheldon described them, "very well-armed, self-reliant and very comfortable with firearms"?
The assessment also worries about returning veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan being recruited and radicalized. It refers to Timothy McVeigh and the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing as an example. I hardly think McVeigh, an executed domestic terrorist, represents a credible example of a returning veteran.
With the descriptions of "rightwing extremists" included in this report, I wonder about the recent anti-abortion demonstrations in Kitsap County exhibiting graphic pictures of aborted babies. Could this be included in the Department's definition of a "terrorist" act? The pictures may offend some, but they accurately represent the procedure.
An official government document questioning the legitimate political disagreements and beliefs of citizens is extremely worrisome. It's especially so because it was produced by government bureaucrats who have defined opposition to liberal orthodoxy (abortion, gun control, same-sex marriage) as "rightwing extremism."
Given a chance to vote on the issue, residents of most states have reaffirmed that marriage should only be between a man and a woman. How could this be defined as "extreme" when the majority supports it?
This assessment is misguided at best. At worst, it's an effort of stigmatize and silence political opposition. Reports like this belong in repressive states, not our United States.
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Pam Dzama may be reached at pdzama@gmail.com.
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It's BHO practicing Alinsky destructive-politicking against "the main enemy" -- the People of the United States.
DHS Janet Renolitano: New threat from the Right
DHS Expands Watch List
Miss USA a terrorist threat. Miss USA judges to advise DHS.
“’Right Wing Extremist’ Document is Alarming”
Nah. It’s the same old left-wing attempt to villify the opposition and it’s the same old tactic used by all the countless, totalitarian, psychotic punks who have ever lived.
The only difference is that these are distinctly
American-born punks who legitimize and hide their psychosis behind the obnoxious Democrat party.
IMHO
DHS is the department that never should have been.
This document is what is known as a “White Paper.”
Personally I take issue with the notion that there is anything on the right or right with the above named groups. And it seems to me it is a well promoted myth that immigration is opposed. We have an invasion of illegals that is sanctioned by high minded lawless people.
I am against the KKK or this 'Hammerskin Nation' (first I have read/heard of such group) having any association with being 'right'. I find Bama and the majority in both houses of Congress very very 'extreme' and in the process of shredding the very Constitution that has from our inception been the standard that assures freedom in this great nation.
What I find all extreme groups have in common is the usage of 'fear' to extort from a free people power and authority they never were given authority to have. They are like a thief that robs first one and then all those 'rights' our founders were given the wisdom to know and declare .... the unalienable 'rights' endowed by the Creator to US (citizens) life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. NOT bondage and bended knee to some surrogate.
Such as those who believe in the US Constitution's 10th Amendment.
Only in the mind of a liberal is the US Constitution considered right wing extremism.
I have just returned from a tour in Afghanistan only to find that I am now considered a potential ‘terrorist’ by the DHS...
Meanwhile REAL terrorists from the left wing (ELF/ALF/PETA/ANSWER/ACT/ACORN/WWP/Code Pink/et al) and Islam (Jamal al Faqua, AQ, HAMAS, Hezbollah, Muslim Brotherhood, etc) are either causing real damage or planning major attacks and they are pointedly IGNORED. Some now receive government funding.
Un-freaking believable... Wait, considering the treason and collusion of the left in the past 8 years, very freaking believable, but still disgusting.
I think it's time for DHS to send out a memo warning that healthcare workers should be watched as potential serial killers /s
The hair on the back of my neck stood up when I heard GWB announce its formation. I did some light research and learned that formation of a "Homeland Security Agency" had been discussed and in the works for years.
You can bet your bottom dollar that discussions are underway at this point for government agencies to be unveiled as suitable (and inevitable) crises present themselves. The public is highly manipulated, woefully uninformed, and compliant.
Last year we had a situation where several motorist called to report an obviously impaired driver on a major Tampa street. The city police, county sheriff's office and the Florida Highway Patrol were notified. Calls continued to come in for half-an-hour as the person was reported by motorist after motorist. It ended when the driver had gone two miles or so, the wrong way, on an expressway and collided head-on with another car, killing a mother and her child. In all that time there wasn't sufficient manpower to intercept and stop this driver, even though they knew where he was time and again.
I am not faulting the authorities, there's always more to a story than meets the eye. I cite this event only to underscore the fact that you simply can't depend on them to protect you.
Mr. LIEBERMAN: ... Shortly after the attacks, the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee held a hearing to explore how government could better organize itself to defend against such threats. Former Senators Gary Hart and Warren Rudman, co-chairs of the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century, offered compelling testimony in favor of creating a homeland security agency.Website of the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century (Hart-Rudman Commission, formed in 1998) discusses its history and vision for the future. The firm Booz-Allen & Hamilton is probably the primary provider of substantive material.The legislation we are introducing today is based largely on the Commission's recommendation. It will create a cabinet-level Department of National Homeland Security.
From the April 2001 Volume I of the the Phase III report (1.2 Mb pdf file):
D. The national security of all advanced states will be increasingly affected by the vulnerabilities of the evolving global economic infrastructure; ...Just saying, there's a "shadow" operation that is barely discernible to the public, that is at least influential and often determinative in setting public policy.The U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century proposed a new national security strategy to meet the needs of the future security environment described above. In Seeking A National Strategy: A Concert for Preserving Security and Promoting Freedom,3 the Commission's Phase II report articulated America's survival, critical, and important national interests, established a future strategy for the United States--a concert for security and freedom--and developed six key objectives and policies to attain those objectives. These objectives were:
First, the preeminent objective is "to defend the United States and ensure that it is safe from the dangers of a new era." Achieving this goal, and the nation's other critical national security goals, requires the U.S. government, as a second key objective, to "maintain America's social cohesion, economic competitiveness, technological ingenuity, and military strength." A third key objective is "to assist the integration of key major powers, especially China, Russia, and India, into the mainstream of the emerging international system." The Commission's fourth key U.S. objective is "to promote, with others, the dynamism of the new global economy and improve the effectiveness of international institutions and international law." The fifth key objective is "to adapt U.S. alliances and other regional mechanisms to a new era in which America's partners seek greater autonomy and responsibility." The sixth and final key objective inheres in an effort "to help the international community tame the disintegrative forces spawned by an era of change." ...
The National Economic Council (NEC) was created in January 1993 by executive order. It was designed to coordinate domestic and international economic policy, to integrate economics with traditional foreign and national security activities, and to provide advice to the President.
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