OBAMA? WHY DID HE SEAL ALL HIS RECORDS?

http://john-gaultier.blogspot.com/2015/01/who-is-barack-hussein-obama-why-did-he.html?m=1

WHO IS BARACK HUSSEIN OBAMA? WHY DID HE SEAL ALL HIS RECORDS ??

One of the unexplained mysteries in the scanty documentation of the early life of the 44^th President of the United States is the appearance of the name Soebarkah as his last name on an official document filled out by his mother. 
In a recent contribution to American Thinker, Nick Chase offers very persuasive evidence that the long-form birth certificate released by Obama is a forgery.

While in the midst of developing an argument supporting the idea that Obama was adopted by the Indonesian Lolo Soetoro, Chase states:

Finally, we have Stanley Ann Soetoro's 1968 application to extend her 1965 passport (now destroyed) for an additional two years, as shown in Figure PPA.

On the second page of the application, Ann moved to exclude her son Barack Hussein Obama (Soebarkah) from her passport, but the item has been crossed out -- perhaps on the advice of the consulate in Jakarta, as this would have left seven-year-old Barry passportless -- so it didn't happen.

The appendage "(Soebarkah)" has never been satisfactorily explained by anyone, and I certainly don't know what "Soebarkah" means, but it does seem to indicate a name change or change in citizenship status for the boy.

Clearly, just what constitutes "a satisfactory explanation" varies with respect to persons, subject matter, context, and so forth.

And yet, there is a very good -- and simple -- explanation for the seemingly random appearance of the sobriquet "Soebarkah" on Mother Soetoro's passport application.

Believe it or not, the reason may be linked to one Loretta Fuddy.

Yes, that Loretta Fuddy -- the Hawaii state health director who approved the  release of Obama's long-form birth certificate and who has apparently succumbed to a nasty case of post random plane crash induced arrhythmia. 

Ann Soetoro and Loretta Fuddy appear to have one very odd thing in common:  both have been linked to the Subud cult, which originated in, of all places, Indonesia and was founded by the Javanese Muslim Muhammed Subuh.

The smallish cult appears to have had, at least circa 2001 and according to this profile of sorts in the Honolulu Advertiser, 20,000 members worldwide.   Notice the picture of Deliana Fuddy, then "regional helper" and member of the faith?  Let's return to her Subud status in a second. 

Note also that the World Subud organization seems to have been based in, of all cities....wait for it...Chicago.  Indonesia...Chicago...Hawaii... three locales linked to Obama's life.

Next, observe that the Advertiser article states that Subud was introduced to Hawai'i in the 1960s (more on this in the conclusion). 

Now to Ann Soetoro.  She was linked to Subud by her biographer (and New York Times reporter) Janny Scott (Harvard '77) in the book A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mother," reviewed by the New York Times here.

Loretta Fuddy was more than merely a follower of Subud; she worked her way up the ranks and became chairwoman of Subud USA, based in Seattle from 2006 to 2008, and was known to Subud not merely as Loretta Fuddy, but as "Deliana" Loretta Fuddy.  In fact, you can see that in its headline, the official Subud "memorial" page drops "Loretta" and refers simply to "Deliana" Fuddy.

Ann Soetoro's close association with members of the Subud cult will be documented below. But first, note in passing that of all the persons -- Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Atheist, Hindu, or you-name-it  --  that could have been installed as Director of the State Department of Health in Hawaii, Hawaii alighted on Fuddy -- a leader of a small cult with roots in Indonesia and connections to Ann Soetoro -- Obama's mother.  Second, observe that Fuddy assumed the Director position in Hawaii in January 2011, just a few months before the release of Obama's long form birth certificate.

Now to Ann Soetoro's links with Subud and to a brief discussion of the Barry "Soebarkah" mystery associated with Ann Soetoro's 1968 passport renewal application.

Read the following excerpt from SubudVoice in 2011(and please note that I have italicized a couple of sentences to emphasize that the Subud "Staff Reporter" is drawing on material from Janny Scott's biography of Ann Soetoro; they aren't simply making an anonymous, empty assertion that can't be substantiated.)

Obama's mother and Subud
By Staff Reporter...
A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mother,a biography of the mother of US President Obama, Ann DunhamSutoro, contains several references to Subud. As is generally known Obama lived with his mother in Jakarta for some years...
Arianne (no second name) wrote to me to say, "Talked to Irin Poellot who is reading the book about Obama's mother and has already run into several literal mentions of Subud!!! I remember the late Mansur Madeiros mentioning he knew her in Indonesia and he is mentioned in the book! I can't help wondering if we will get inquiries about Subud since it is mentioned often in a book which probably will be widely read. It also is a delicious fact that our Subud sister, Ms Fuddy, just was appointed to her post in the Health Dept in Hawaii in time to be involved in the documentation of fact that Obama was born there."
I wrote back asking for more specific information and Arianne replied, "Irin kindly supplied some quotes:In chapter 4 "Initiation in Java" the Subud members are quoted. And then (on page 116): "...she (Ann) was hired to start an English-language, business-communications department in one of the few private non profit management-training schools in the country."
Ann "found a group of young Americans and Britons enrolled in an intensive course in Bahasa Indonesia, the national language, at the University of Indonesia recalled Irwan Holmes, (a member of the original group). She was looking for teachers. A half dozen of them accepted her invitation, many of them members of an international spiritual organization, Subud, with a residential compound in a suburb of Jakarta.."
And ......Mohammad Mansur Madeiros, a reclusive and scholarly Subud member from Fall River, Massachusetts, and Harvard, whom Ann hired as a teacher, had immersed himself so deeply in Javanese culture, language and religion that friends nicknamed him Mansur Java. When he died in 2007, friends recalled his preference for the company of ordinary Indonesians --street vendors and becak drivers -- over that of other Subud members and expatriates."

But what might the Ann Soetoro, Deliana Fuddy, Subud links really have to do with the sobriquet Barry Soebarkah?

To help answer that, transport yourself backward in time and sit at the feet of the Indonesian Subud master Bapak circa 1963:

Question:1 Many people in Subud change their names. Is this necessary? Is it important? How does the change of a name affect us? Physically, spiritually or both?

Bapak: Brothers and sisters, whether it is necessary or not depends on what you want....

If changing one's name for "spiritual reasons" was something frequently done by followers of Subud's Bapak, and Stanley Ann Soetoro was in fact closely associated with Subud, it is reasonable to suppose that "Soebarkah" arose in the same way new names for others (like "Deliana" Loretta Fuddy?) associated with Subud did: as a matter of course depending on the case.

Readers might agree that the above is a quite reasonable account of the origin of Barry "Soebarkah."

But there is something else.  The above biographical material bonds Ann Soetoro to Subud members via an English language, business communications department post.  According to the New York Times here, that would have been around 1970 or 1971.  However, the passport renewal application with the name "Soebarkah" dates to 1968.  This suggests that either the "Soebarkah" handle came from nowhere, or that matters are as we have discussed and that Ann Soetoro in fact came to Subud before 1970 -- perhaps in Hawaii. 

Clearly, we might want to recall that the above linked Honolulu Advertiser Subud profile indicates that Subud was introduced to Hawai'i in the 1960s. 

In closing, the Ann Soetoro's 1968 passport renewal application raises the spectre of  possible Obama birth certificate fraud yet again.  Have a look at page 2 of the document:

"Sorebarkah" appears in the section labeled "Amend to Include (Exclude) Children."

The name Barack Hussein Obama (Sorebarkah) is crossed out.

Nick Chase has concluded that this signifies that Ann Soetoro had improvidently decided to exclude Barack  from her passport renewal.   Chase thinks that Soetoro changed her mind about exclusion after having been informed by the Consulate that doing so would leave Barack passportless.  

But there is another possibility -- one just as valid on its face.

What if Soetoro was trying to include Obama in the renewal, but she wasn't able to produce a birth certificate, and the Subud name "Soebarkah" just didn't do the trick? (hat tip Louise Hodges for the "inclusion" possibility; one can't be certain why she did not link the inclusion possibility to Soebarkah).

That could  explain why the name Subud name "Soebarkah" appears nowhere else (that we are aware of anyway),

Of course, we might then have to wonder exactly how Obama did his traveling at certain points in time, but then perhaps Subud is, at least at times, more than a mere cult?

MORE>>>>
Obama has lived for almost 50 years without leaving any footprints -- none!  There is no Obama documentation -- no bona    fides -- no paper trail -- nothing.

Original, vault copy birth certificate -- Not released (lawyers' fees greater than $4,000,000 ~ birth certificate is $15)
Certification of Live Birth -- Released -- Counterfeit
Certificate of Live Birth -- Released -- Counterfeit
Amended Certification of Live Birth -- Released --Counterfeit
Obama/Dunham marriage license -- Not released (if one exists)

Obama/Dunham divorce --   Released but incomplete (by independent investigators)
Obama Sr. INS file --Released

Noelani Kindergarten records -- Records lost(this is a big one -- read two frames)
Soetoro/Dunham marriage license -- Not released
Anna Soetoro/Dunham passport records -- Released, but key yearsare missing
Soetoro adoption records -- Not released
Fransiskus Assisi School  School application -- Released (by independent investigators)
Punahou School application -- Missing
Punahou School records -- Not released
Noelani 3rd Grade records -- Not released
Soetoro/Dunham divorce -- Released (by independent investigators)
Selective Service Registration -- Released (by independent investigators) -- Under suspicion
Social Security Numbers -- Released (by independent investigators) -- Under suspicion
Occidental College records -- Not released
Financial Aid Records -- Not released
Passport -- Not released and records scrubbed clean by Obama'sterrorism and intelligence adviser
Columbia College records -- Not released
Columbia thesis -- "Soviet Nuclear Disarmament" -- Not released
Harvard College records -- Not released
Harvard Law Review articles -- None
Illinois Bar Records -- Not released
Baptism certificate -- None (he was never baptized)
Medical records -- Not released -- nor is the source of this nasty scar
Illinois State Senate records -- None
Illinois State Senate schedule -- Lost
Law practice client list -- Not released
University of Chicago scholarly articles -- None
Rashid Khalidi video --Hidden by the L.A. Times
White House Visitors list -- Incomplete to the point of worthless
The Blagojevich Interview -- judge denies access to the FBI report
The Osama bin Laden photos -- sealed by Obama
The Fast & Furious documents -- Executive Privilege invoked

The Illinois State Archives told Judicial Watch that they never received any request from Senator Obama to archive any records in his possession.  In 2007, Obama told Tim Russert that his records were "not kept."

And there's less on the web every day.  In time, the entire Obama body of knowledge will consist of 3 documents -- "DreamsFrom My Father" -- "The Audacity of Hope" -- and the latest -- "Change We Can Believe In" -- all written by Barack Hussein Obama or his "ghost-writers."

Just an accident?  I don't think so, but the overriding question is what, and why?  What is Obama hiding?  And, why is he using such extreme measures to hide it?

With his willing accomplices in the ObamaMedia, Obama has succeeded in evading the eligibility issue and seizing power.

Rev. Graham: Secularists Are ‘Anti-Christ’ and ‘They’ve Taken Control of Washington’

http://m.cnsnews.com/blog/michael-w-chapman/rev-graham-secularists-are-anti-christ-and-they-ve-taken-control-washington?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=marketing&utm_term=facebook&utm_content=facebook&utm_campaign=b-graham-washington

Rev. Graham: Secularists Are ‘Anti-Christ’ and ‘They’ve Taken Control of Washington’

Secularism followed on the heels of communism after the Berlin Wall came down, and the two ideologies are essentially the “same thing” because they are “godless” and “anti-Christ,” said Reverend Franklin Graham, adding that the secularists have “taken control of our country” and “taken control of Washington.”

“We live in a secular society led by people that call themselves progressives," said Rev. Graham, son of renowned evangelist Billy Graham, at the Oklahoma State Evangelism Conference on Jan. 26. "When communism, the Berlin Wall came down, everybody said, ‘we won,’ and [then] secularism came.”

“Secularism and communism are the same thing,” he said. “They’re godless. They’re anti-Christ. So now we have the secularists who’ve taken control of our country. They’ve taken control of Washington. They’ve taken control our city governments, our local governments, our school boards all across the country, and we have just sat back. It’s happened and we haven’t even realized it’s happened.”

He continued, “Now, you say, Franklin, your father [Billy Graham] wouldn’t get on to these subjects. Wait a second. My father, when he was going to school, they had a Bible in school. When he was going to school, they had the Ten Commandments on the wall. When he was going to school, you could pray in school, and the teachers would lead in those prayers.”

“Our country has changed.,” said Franklin Graham. “ We’ve got to take a stand. We cannot back up, we cannot retreat.”

The reverend, who oversees the organization his father founded, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (BGEA) and the international relief group Samaritan’s Purse, went on to say that Christian men and women must enter the political arena to turn America in the right direction.

“Let me tell you something, the church needs to get involved in politics,” he said.  “Now I’m not talking about Baptist or Republicans and Tea Party – I don’t even know who they are – but I have no confidence that any of these politicians or any party is going to turn this country around. The only hope for this country is for men and women of God to stand up and take a stand.”

“We need men and women of God who take these local elections serious, so we can take back these various offices and have men and women of God who believe in the Bible, who stand on the word of God,” said Rev. Graham.  “And let’s send to Washington men and women who believe in God and stand on the word of God and His Son the Lord Jesus Christ, who are not afraid.”

“America has changed and it’s not coming back unless the church takes a stand,” he said. “There are storms that are coming, and we find ourselves in these storms and many times, we as a church, we run. And we run to the wrong place. You see, Jesus is in the boat [with us]. All we have to do is call Him.”

“Call on His name,” said Rev. Graham.  “But the secularist and the humanist, no.  You mention the name of Christ and they jump all over you. I get jumped on all the time. I don’t care. I really don’t. I gave my life to Christ.”

Rev. Franklin Graham, 62, is married, has five children and lives in Boone, N.C. He is the oldest son of Pastor Billy Graham, the most influential evangelical preachers of the last 60 years, whose Christian message has reached an estimated worldwide audience of more than 2 billion people. 

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AMERICA: A REPUBLIC, If we can keep it...

VIDEO: Types of government explained in easy to understand language. 

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The Economy and The Fed

Animated video on "The Fed: The History of Our Economy"

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They Should Be Eradicated’: Sociologists Reveal Shocking Results of ‘Christianophobia’ Research

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/01/29/they-should-be-eradicated-sociologists-reveal-shocking-results-of-christianophobia-research-and-a-cautionary-warning-for-conservative-bible-believers/

‘They Should Be Eradicated’: Sociologists Reveal Shocking Results of ‘Christianophobia’ Research — and a Cautionary Warning for Conservative Bible-Believers

Sociologists at the University of North Texas are issuing a cautionary warning to Christians noting that, though there isn’t widespread “Christianophonia” in the U.S., the small group of those who have a strong aversion to conservative believers are among the influential and elite.

George Yancey and David Williamson shared findings corroborating this notion in their recently released book “So Many Christians, So Few Lions: Is There Christianophobia in the United States?” which promises to offer a “provocative look at anti-Christian sentiments in America.”

The sociologists, who define Christianophobia as “unreasonable hatred or fear of Christians,” argue that it’s worth exploring potential intense bias against Christians, as it helps readers understand the “social dynamics” that exist in the U.S., according to an official book description.

As far as how prevalent the problem truly is, Yancey told the Christian Post that it’s really a small group of people that hold strong hostility, though that group is comprised of elite individuals with more societal power than the average person.

Yancey said that he and his co-author were motivated to explore potential Christianophonia after they began collecting qualitative data from interviews with liberal activists and noticed a troubling trend among a certain subset of these respondents.

Photo credit: Shutterstock

That in mind, a few months ago, the sociologist shared a sampling of some of the “unreasonable hatred” he said he encountered through interviews with cultural progressive activists for the purpose of his study. Here are just three of the comments that were made about the Christian right:

“I want them all to die in a fire.” (Male, aged 26-35 with Doctorate)

“They should be eradicated without hesitation or remorse. Their only purpose is to damage and inflict their fundamentalist virus onto everyone they come in contact with.” (Female, aged 66-75 with Master degree)

“They make me a believer in eugenics….They pollute good air…I would be in favor of establishing a state for them… If not, then sterilize them so they can’t breed more.” (Male, aged 46-55 with Master degree)

These statements caused Yancey to look deeper at the pool of respondents — individuals who were chosen from unnamed groups that are actively opposed to sentiments held by many conservative Christians.

“We quickly saw some of the unnecessary vitriol and fears within many of our respondents. We also saw the social status of those who exhibited this hatred and many of them would be in positions that allowed them to at least subtly act on their anger and fears,” Yancey said. “That motivated us to take a more systematic look at Christianophobia and speculate on how this phenomenon influences certain social aspects in the United States.”

He said that there are important distinctions to be made when analyzing the demographics of those who have Christianophonia and who, as a result, see believers as being backward, child-like and barriers to progress, telling the Christian Post that, while there are more people who are hostile toward atheists than Christians, those who oppose the latter group tend to be highly educated.

“I have established that those with animosity towards conservative Christians tend to have more per-capita social power than those with animosity towards other religiously based groups,” Yancey wrote in a blog post last year. “They are more likely to be white, educated and wealthy. The education advantage creates a unique dimension in this group as one may contend that highly educated individuals are unlikely to engage in unreasonable level of hatred or anger.”

Photo credit: Shutterstock.com

In the end, he said that those who oppose atheism don’t “have the level of per-capita power of those who do not like Christians.” Considering that atheist activists have argued that they are discriminated against due to their secularism — and past polls have shown, for instance, that citizens are much less likely to even vote for them in elections — an important question emerges.

“So is a group worse off if more people do not like them or if those who do not like them have a lot of social power, but there are fewer of them? Context matters to answer such a question,” Yancey told the Christian Post. “If you want to get elected to political office, then atheists are at a disadvantage since more people do not like them. But if you want to get a higher education, then you will run into a lot more people with power who hate Christians than who hate atheists.”

Yancey cited as evidence non-discrimination policies enacted in California Christian colleges that have forced some student groups out of official recognition if they refuse to allow atheists and other non-Christiand the opportunity to lead those groups — something that he said seems to show evidence of college administrators exhibiting “some degree of latent Christianophobia with a fiction of promoting equality.”

“We documented that some level of Christianophobia is present among certain powerful subcultures in our society,” he continued. “This helps us understand some actions in our society.”

Read the Christian Post interview in its entirety here and explore an in-depth explanation of Yancey’s research and data collection.

(H/T: Christian Post)

–

Front page image via Shutterstock.com

BILL GATES: ONE WORLD GOVERNMENT

http://www.tpnn.com/2015/01/29/bill-gates-calls-for-one-world-government/

Bill Gates Calls for One World Government

Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates, who obtained his extreme wealth using the freedom gifted to him through America’s unique free enterprise system, is now calling for a command and control one world government, giving up United States’ sovereignty at the altar of the global warming religion. 

Gates, who co-founded Microsoft with Paul Allen in his garage in 1975 with no government intervention, now is seeking salvation by promoting the global warming cult through an international government controlist agenda. 

As Infowars reports, Gates told the Huffington Post that a global government was “badly needed” because current international bodies like the UN and NATO are insufficient in solving issues such as global warming:  

“You can make fun of it, but in truth it was sad how the conference in Copenhagen is run, how individual who behave like the UN system failed,” Gates said according to an English translation in the Huffington Post.

Gates went on to stress his position further, stating that a global government was “badly needed” in order to combat an array of issues ailing the planet.

“Take the UN, it has been created especially for the security in the world. We are ready for war, because we have taken every precaution. We have NATO, we have divisions, jeeps, trained people,” Gates said. “But what is with epidemics? How many doctors do we have as much planes, tents, what scientists? If there were such a thing as a world government, we would be better prepared.”

Appearing before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee in February last year, co-founder of Greenpeace, ecologist Dr. Patrick Moore said that, “There is no scientific proof that human emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) are the dominant cause of the minor warming of the Earth’s atmosphere over the past 100 years.”

Weather Channel co-founder John Coleman, who has referred to manmade global warming as a hoax, revealed to FOX News’ Megyn Kelly in October of last year that, “There are 9,000 PhD’s and 31 scientists who have signed a petition that says it is not a significant greenhouse gas. Oh, it’s a teeny weeny greenhouse gas, but it’s not in any way a significant and we are sure of it.” 

Matthew Burke is a former Financial Advisor/Planner for 24 years. He was a 2010 Constitutional Conservative candidate for U.S. Congress in Washington State. View all Posts by Matthew Burke

SOROS, INET, DAVOS AND THE FLEEING RICH

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/mike-ciandella/2015/01/28/leader-soros-founded-inet-rich-are-ready-flee-case-uprising?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=marketing&utm_term=facebook&utm_content=facebook&utm_campaign=soros-thinktank

Leader of Soros-Founded Think Tank: Rich Are Ready to Flee in Case of Uprising

By Mike Ciandella | January 28, 2015 | 9:05 AM EST

Rich people are preparing to flee in case of social unrest, at least according to the head of one group founded and partly funded by George Soros.

Robert Johnson, the head of the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET), argued that many wealthy people feared an uprising because of “growing inequality.”

Liberal billionaire George Soros had given $50 million to The Institute for New Economic Thinking, and used that group in 2011 to host a conference that focused on “new multilateral system” of economics. According to an INET press release from 2012, Soros “agreed to augment his foundation support of INET” with an additional $50 million.

In 2011, INET hosted the second Bretton Woods conference. More than two-thirds of the speakers at that conference had direct ties to Soros. Soros has said that "the main enemy of the open society, I believe, is no longer the communist but the capitalist threat." Before he was head of the Institute for New Economic Thinking, Johnson was the Managing Director of Soros Fund Management.

According to the Mirror (UK) and the International Business Times, Johnson told attendees at the 2015 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland that “hedge fund managers all over the world who are buying airstrips and farms in places like New Zealand because they think they need a getaway.” Neither news outlet reported any names of these skittish millionaires. The World Economic Forum website hasn’t posted video of this exchange, so it may not have been during one of the scheduled sessions.

The Mirror added that Johnson had said “the economic situation could soon become intolerable as even in the richest countries inequality was increasing” and “I think the rich are worried and they should be worried.”

The 2011 Bretton Woods conference brought together "more than 200 academic, business and government policy thought leaders' to repeat the famed 1944 Bretton Woods gathering that helped create the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Before he convened the second Bretton Woods, Soros said he wanted a new 'multilateral system," or an economic system where America wasn’t so dominant.

The Soros had been planning this conference for years. On Nov. 4, 2009, Soros wrote an op-ed calling for "a grand bargain that rearranges the entire financial order." He added that his goal was to bring about "a new Bretton Woods conference, like the one that established the post-WWII international financial architecture." Only a week before that op-ed was published, Soros helped found INET – the very group that hosted the second Bretton Woods conference less than two years later.

GA Religious Freedom Restoration Act 2015 Legislation

http://www.cwfa.org/resource-page-for-georgias-federal-religious-freedom-restoration-act-2015-legislation/

Resource Page for Georgia’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act 2015 Legislation

New!  Rep. Sam Teasley prefiles religious liberty bill: HB29 “Preventing Government Overreach on Religious Expression Act”.

Read CWA of Georgia’s Press Release.

Religious Liberty is one of CWA’s seven core issues on which we focus our efforts. CWA is concerned about the trend of government to diminish and disregard the God-given inalienable rights of individuals, and are working to see our government strengthen and renew its commitment to respect and protect each individual’s exercise of his God-given inalienable rights. Click to read more.

CWA of Georgia is supporting efforts by State Representative Sam Teasley (R-Marietta) and State Senator Josh McKoon (R-Columbus) to pass legislation that provides religious liberty protections for people of all faiths living in Georgia. As a reminder, the effort to pass similar legislation in 2014 was met with vicious opposition by Georgia-based corporate giants such as Delta, UPS, Coca-Cola and Home Depot. The companies bought into the media hype and misinformation, and used their lobbying power to kill the bills.

Educate yourself on the need for a state Religious Freedom Restoration Action in Georgia. Read through the resources provided by below.

Pray that our state legislators, Speaker, Lt. Governor and Governor will stand on the side of religious liberty and not buckle to the pressure of corporations who do not see the need to pass a religious liberty bill.

Contact the following five state officials and urge them to support religious liberty legislation. Bill numbers will be available after January 12, 2015.

Gov. Nathan Deal:  Phone: 404-656-1776 / Online Contact/Email Form

Lt. Governor Casey Cagle: Phone: 404-656-5030 / Online Contact/Email Form

Speaker David Ralston: Phone: 404- 656-5020 / E-mail: David.ralston@house.ga.gov

Your state senator and representative:
1. To find your state senator and state legislator, go to http://openstates.org/find_your_legislator/ and type in your home address.
2. Once you have determined your state legislators, go to the following web sites for mailing address, e-mail address, and phone and fax numbers.
State representative:http://www.house.ga.gov/
State senator: http://www.senate.ga.gov/

Online Resources

State Religious Freedom Restoration Act Resources:
Click to view document.

• View Historical Timeline of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (As a result of 1997 U.S. Supreme Court ruling, Georgians have been left vulnerable to state religious discrimination lawsuits.)
• Read Remarks by President Bill Clinton (Remarks by President Bill Clinton on signing the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993.)
• What a Religious Freedom Restoration Act Does and Does Not Do
• Recent Examples in Georgia of Religious Discrimination (Read actual examples of religious discrimination in Georgia.)

Federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act Resources:
The Hobby Lobby/Conestoga Woods Decision

• An Easy Guide to the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court Decision (CWA)
• CWA Talks Hobby Lobby and Religious Freedom on Fox and Friends
• Big Win for Religious Liberties, Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood at the Supreme Court (CWA)
• Importance of Burwell v. Hobby Lobby and Conestoga Wood Specialties v. Burwell (Becket Fund for Religious Liberty)

Others:

• 12 Reasons Why the Religious Freedom Restoration Act Benefits All Americans (Christian Legal Society)
• The Religious Freedom Restoration Act –20 years of protecting our first freedom (BaptisJoint Committee for Religious Liberty

Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore Will Not Bow to Same Sex Marriage Ruling!

http://savingourfuture.com/2015/01/alabama-chief-justice-roy-moore-will-not-bow-sex-marriage-ruling/

Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore Will Not Bow to Same Sex Marriage Ruling!

The Progressives will never be content until they have purged America of every vestige of our Judeo-Christian moral underpinnings.

Champions of abortion and same-sex marriage redefine millennia-tested words and precepts, then push forward with lawsuits to establish precedent that will abolish conservative, Biblically-based mores.

The too-oft repeated mantra “it’s all good” is the catch phrase of the day, employed by every liberal concerning their pet causes.

But it smacks of the words found in Judges 17:

“In those days there was no king in Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes.”

Enter Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, famous for his August 2003 stand on the Ten Commandments:

Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore stood firm Thursday, saying he has no intention of removing a Ten Commandments monument from the rotunda of the state judicial building, and will file papers taking the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

On Friday, January 23, U.S. District Judge Ginny Granade ruled that the Alabama Marriage Protection Act was unconstitutional. On Monday, January 26, Judge Granade, issued a two-week stay on her ruling.

Ashley Jackson, the Alabama director of the Human Rights Campaign, a national gay rights advocacy group, said:

“While we’re disappointed that committed, loving gay and lesbian couples in Alabama will not be able to marry, we’re hopeful the final legal barriers will be overcome quite soon.”

Not so fast Judge Ginny…Justice Moore has something to say about the ruling.

Alabama.com’s Brendan Kirby writes:

Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore has released a letter to Gov. Robert Bentley saying that he intends to continue to recognize the state’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriage and urging the governor to do so.

Moore’s office released the three-page letter that was delivered to the governor this morning in response to a federal judge’s ruling Friday striking down the ban.

Justice Moore’s letter includes:

As you know, nothing in the United States Constitution grants the federal government the authority to redefine the institution of marriage. The people of this state have specifically recognized in our Constitution that marriage is “[a] sacred covenant, solemnized between a man and a woman”; that “[a] marriage contracted between individuals of the same sex is invalid in this state”; and that [a]union replicating marriage of or between persons of the same sex…shall be considered and treated in all respects as having no legal force of effect in this state.” Art. I, § 36.3(c), (b) & (g), Ala. Const. of 1901.

Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange has filed an appeal for a longer stay that would be in effect until the Supreme Court rules on same sex marriage.

SCOTUS announced January 16 that the four same-sex marriage cases from Tennessee, Ohio, Kentucky, and Michigan will be heard in April, and the ruling given prior to the end of the term in June.

Justice Roy Moore is taking a courageous stand: he consistently prioritizes godly principles before his own status and gain.

Moore forthrightly quotes in his letter to Governor Robert Bentley:

The laws of this state have always recognized the Biblical admonition stated by our Lord:

But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and cleave to his wife; And they shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. (Mark 10:6-9.

Justice Moore concludes with this supplication:

I ask you to continue to uphold and support the Alabama Constitution with respect to marriage, both for the welfare of this state and for our posterity. Be advised that I stand with you to stop judicial tyranny and any unlawful opinions issued without constitutional authority.

Progressives and same-sex marriage proponents will ridicule and lob vitriol at Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore.

But in an eternal perspective, Moore stands tall as a man of faith who, like Daniel of old, will not bow.

Bravo Justice Moore!

MILLENNIALS ON EMBRACING ADULTHOOD

http://thefederalist.com/2015/01/27/dont-wait-for-your-wedding-to-buy-a-kitchenaid-and-other-ways-to-embrace-adulthood/

Don’t Wait For Your Wedding To Buy A KitchenAid—And Other Ways To Embrace Adulthood

One night a few weeks back, I found myself gleefully removing the packaging of a KitchenAid stand mixer and clearing a place for it on top of the old dresser that functions as extra counter space in my Lilliputian apartment. I stepped back to admire it—bold, shining, beautiful—blood rushing through my veins like I was doing something illicit. And then I made a pound cake.

“Don’t you have to have a marriage card to get one of those things?” a friend asked (between bites of KitchenAid-made pound cake) a few days later.

That’s what I had been thinking, too. I have longed for a KitchenAid mixer for years, but always pictured myself carefully unwrapping the appliance of appliances from crisp white paper and a lacy bow at a nebulous bridal shower. The KitchenAid would be a harbinger of my new life, the cornerstone of my new home.

But at 25, I am unmarried; and at 25, I love to cook. So, I recently decided to stop living like a college girl and start purchasing some proper kitchen tools—a full set of steel pots (with lids!), a citrus grater, and a vegetable peeler. I decided that this year, I would embrace adulthood, starting in my little kitchen.

Not that I have been acting like a complete child up until this point. I do, however, find myself unwittingly part of the generation of young Americans “prolonging adolescence”: no marriage, no mortgage, no kids.

Is Putting Off Adulthood Smart or Stupid?

“Is It Smart to Delay Adulthood?” is the title of a recent New York Times Room for Debate series. “Are [millennials] being smart by delaying the rituals of adult life until they’re more stable,” the Times asks contributors, “or are they being irresponsible?”

Millennials are growing older without growing up. And for better or for worse, I’m one of them.

The debaters’ answers varied. Some argued that, because of the Great Recession, adulthood is still out of reach for young Americans. “The arrested development of Generation Rent,” writes economist Ian Shepherdson, “is an economic imposition, not a choice.”

Others argued that millennials are simply (and selfishly) opting out. “Adulthood is increasing seen as a lifestyle option,” writes W. Keith Campbell, a professor of psychology at the University of Georgia. He continues: “It’s one thing to take a few years to find a career or put off marriage until one is mature; it’s quite another to just decide not to grow up at all.”

The causes of delayed adulthood are up for debate, but the symptoms are not: young Americans are working less, taking longer to achieve financial stability, and putting off marriage and childbearing. Millennials are growing older without growing up. And for better or for worse, I’m one of them.

We Can Act Like Adults Without Money, Marriage, and Kids

But what’s to be said about twenty-somethings like me—those of us who are not intentionally opting out of adulthood but are late adopters of its customs? Are we to think of ourselves of adults—can we think of ourselves as adults—if we do not have the boxes of financial stability, marriage, and family checked?

I think we can and we should.

Out of curiosity, I posed the following two questions to my Facebook friends recently:

1)     What does it mean to be an adult?

2)     When did you first feel like an adult (or do you)?

The general consensus of participants was that adulthood has something to do with responsibility, but that you can be married, have children, pay your own bills, etc., and still feel like a kid. Basically, even those who would be defined as adults don’t know exactly what adulthood is. I liked this response best:

If I had to pick a quality that best embodies ‘adulthood,’ I think it would be the ability to care more about other people and less about yourself.

There’s no doubt that the “rituals of adulthood” help develop this kind of selflessness. But can’t it be developed in other ways, too?

Try Inculcating Adulthood Instead of Rejecting Young Adults

What if instead of marginalizing the people who are “redefining adulthood” (I’m looking at you, think pieces and annoying listicles about millennials), we started helping them shape a new definition? And what if that definition was based less on a list of milestones that can make people like me feel like they don’t measure up and more as a state of being—maturity rather than immaturity, self-sacrifice rather than self-indulgence, responsibility rather than poor judgment, diligence rather than laziness, generosity rather than greediness, and, in the words of my friend, “the ability to care about other people and less about yourself?”

My new Kitchenaid is a tool I’ll be using to care more about other people and less about myself.

As I type, I can see my new KitchenAid glimmering in my peripheral vision. It does not symbolize the new chapter of life I once thought it would. Instead, it’s a reminder that I am opting into adulthood today, in this season—unmarried, childless, and not exactly what I would call financially stable.

Perhaps one day I’ll use that KitchenAid to mix batter for my kids’ birthday cakes. But today? I’m using it to make muffins for friends with a newborn and chocolate mousse for a dinner party. It’s a tool I’ll be using to care more about other people and less about myself. Yes, I’m an adult. I’m opting into adulthood, one cup of flour at a time.

Definition of the Word Conundrum

Definition of the Word Conundrum

A friend of mine sent me this.  I think there is an important point here:

Definition of the word Conundrum is:

Conundrum: something that is puzzling or confusing.

Free people are not equal.  Equal people are not free.

"A gun is like a parachute.  If you need one, and don't have one, you'll probably never need one again." 

Here are six Conundrums of socialism in the United States of America:  

1. America is capitalist and greedy - yet half of the population is subsidized.  

2. Half of the population is subsidized - yet they think they are victims.  

3. They think they are victims - yet their representatives run the government.  

4. Their representatives run the government - yet the poor keep getting poorer.  

5. The poor keep getting poorer - yet they have things that people in other countries only dream about.  

6. They have things that people in other countries only dream about - yet they want America to be more like those other countries.  

Think about it! And that, my friends, pretty much sums up the USA in the 21st Century!!!  

Makes you wonder who is doing the math.


These three, short sentences tell you a lot about the direction of our current government and cultural environment:  

1. We are advised to NOT judge ALL Muslims by the actions of a few lunatics, but we are encouraged to judge ALL gun owners by the actions of a few lunatics.  

Funny how that works!!!  And here's another one worth considering...  

2. Seems we constantly hear about how Social Security is going to run out of money.  But we never hear about welfare or food stamps running out of money?  What's interesting is the first group "worked for" their money, but the second didn't.  

Think about it.....and Last but not least:  

3. Why are we cutting benefits for our veterans, no pay raises for our military and cutting our army to a level lower than before WWII, but we are not stopping the payments or benefits to illegal aliens.  

 

When the lawless make the laws

http://personalliberty.com/lawless-make-laws/

When the lawless make the laws

Natural man fears chains more than he fears propaganda. But propaganda is the far greater despotism.

When men are in chains, they are aware of their slavery. But few understand the superior power of deception. Most people can be persuaded to do almost anything to their own detriment.

What we believe and act upon we consider our own free will. Nothing could be further from the truth. We as a people and a nation are subject to massive and continuous propaganda. So programmed are the masses that they become hostile to truth.

Democracy is a mask, a front for total power of an oligarchy ruling via forced persuasion. Such a system might be tolerable if the oligarchs had the people’s best interests at heart. But the focus of forced persuasion is to channel all social, economic and moral law to the federal establishment. The stated altruistic justification is the perpetual utilitarian argument that the majority can require and force the minority to self-sacrifice for what the establishment-created majority has determined to be the greater good.

But altruism is a farce and a ruse. Altruism is the very foundation of statist propaganda and power that the individual must place his interests, including his property, beneath the “need” of the collective (state). In our time this is called “in the public interest.”

The term “public interest” translates into the government interest always. Therefore, the army of federal judges and politicians claim to act in the “public interest,” and they would tell you in a minute that they do everything in the “public interest.” This is a deception that few unravel mainly because of the self-deception of altruism. As long as an individual believes that he is obligated to share his property and produce for the “common good,” he is in reality no longer an individual but a part of the collective slaves of the state. Altruism motivates people to self-sacrifice. This is why altruism is at the root of all governments. Governments must instill self-sacrifice to solidify political power.

Unmasked, democracy is a study of power attained through persuasion instead of physical conquest. Think how many have died for this farce.

The nature of government is to perpetually grow. And the nature of politics and politicians is to seek wealth, power and aggrandizement. They represent government, not you.

Governments and politicians mask their agendas and create illusions to deceive and misrepresent. Governments, bureaucrats and politicians look upon the public as a herd that should be deceived and led for the benefit of government and the elite.

The public has been trained to think in terms of what is legal and what is illegal. The politicians and their elite bosses operate above the law and outside the law. This is contempt for the people.

Politicians, bureaucrats, judges and their friends are untouchables. Yes, occasionally one or two are sacrificed on the altar in the name of “justice,” but it is nothing more than a ruse that keeps the system in place.

The saturation point is coming, and it can’t be stopped. Sociopathic political behavior self-destructs over time. Satan rends himself. Ethics and decency in politics are anathema. A politician is not a statesman, and a statesman is not a politician.

Politics is power, and politics creates predators. Money has surpassed self-worth and dignity. Politics in America is incest with the government. Do we hear politicians warning Americans that the money creators are destroying their savings, their retirement and their purchasing power, as well as that of future generations?

The system is now beyond resolution. We are in the final stages of economic, social and moral collapse.

Investment banks have made billions while destroying America. They create financial products that are designed to fail, market them to the unsuspecting and then take short positions against them. They are a show-me-the-money culture, and the system protects them in their financial crimes. The great recession is their handiwork.

The word “conspiracy” is an establishment word used to imprison multitudes of nonviolent people (who are not in favor of the power structure) and confiscate their property outright without due process and under a feigned color of law. The politicians know this.

This is no different from the old Star Chamber motivated by the word “treason” (today it is “conspiracy”). Then came the thumbscrew and the rack to extract confession and an excuse to hang the victim. So what’s the difference today?

There are clearly privileged classes in America, those in political power backed by illegal police power. They act against the people outside the law and the Constitution. My friends, it has become so obvious.

While we slept, the political regime has shifted the “burden of proof” to the defendant. One is entrapped, charged and prosecuted under hundreds of laws and statutes he didn’t know existed. The “justice” system with its never-empty purse is brought to bear against the “defendant,” who often has seen his assets frozen even without a conviction and has been separated from his livelihood, rendering him unable to mount a defense.

This is the new democracy. Democracy is rule of the rabble by the elite.

The possibility of reform has passed. The point of saturation of the full measure of disgust is near. Sparks can trigger revolution.

Morality has collapsed. Politicians, federal judges and prosecutors will eat their young for fiat money, power and aggrandizement. They all have a lawyer Ponzi mentality.

The soul of America has been penetrated with toxic greed. Political rigor mortis is everywhere. The state is collapsing of its own corruption.

Politicians, beware, you “elected” vipers!

Global warming believers are like a hysterical fanatical religious cult says an MIT scientist [Video]

http://rightwingnews.com/religion/global-warming-believers-like-hysterical-fanatical-religious-cult-says-mit-scientist-video/

Global warming believers are like a hysterical fanatical religious cult says an MIT scientist [Video]

I wish all these experts would make up their minds whether we are going to fry or freeze to death already. There is a new report out that we are entering a mini-ice age. This MIT professor is obviously right – climate change whack jobs have turned it into a fanatical religious cult worshiping Mother Gaia, or some such nonsense. Seriously, these people need to a) get a life and b) stop trying to rip the world off for larger and larger sums of money in the hugest ponzi scheme of all time.

Dr Richard Lindzen (right) told a Massachusetts-based radio station that people who believe
in global warming are becoming more hysterical in their arguments. ‘As with any cult, once the mythology
of the cult begins falling apart, instead of saying, oh, we were wrong, they get more and more fanatical,’ he said.

The Daily Mail:

Climate change alarmists have been likened to a fanatical ‘cult’ by an MIT professor of meteorology.

Dr Richard Lindzen told a Massachusetts-based radio station that people who believe in global warming are becoming more hysterical in their arguments.

‘As with any cult, once the mythology of the cult begins falling apart, instead of saying, oh, we were wrong, they get more and more fanatical,’ he said.

‘You’ve led an unpleasant life, you haven’t led a very virtuous life, but now you’re told, you get absolution if you watch your carbon footprint. It’s salvation.’

According to Howie Carr at Breitbart, the 74-year-old highlighted reports by Nasa that 2014 was the hottest year in recorded history.

He points out that the Nasa climate scientists who made the claim was only 38 per cent sure this was true.

‘Seventy per cent of the Earth is oceans, we can’t measure those temperatures very well,’ he said. ‘They can be off a half a degree, a quarter of a degree.

‘Even two-10ths of a degree of change would be tiny but two-100ths is ludicrous. Anyone who starts crowing about those numbers shows that they’re putting spin on nothing.’

Dr Lindzen was a lead author of Chapter 7, ‘Physical Climate Processes and Feedbacks,’ of the IPCC Third Assessment Report on climate change.

But he has previously blasted the IPCC for blaming humans for a global warming trend that appears to have cooled in recent decades – and then glossing over the warming slowdown.

‘I think that the latest IPCC report has truly sunk to level of hilarious incoherence,’ Dr Lindzen told Climate Depot – a site known for questioning the theory of global warming.

A number of studies have suggested that powerful winds in the Pacific Ocean, which have driven surface heat deep underwater, could be the reason behind the current ‘pause’ in global warming.

The IPCC has said that rising temperatures will exacerbate poverty and damage land and marine species.

It also claims that the world is in ‘an era of man-made climate change’ and has already seen impacts of global warming on every continent and across the oceans.

On Tuesday, President Obama said that ‘no challenge poses a greater threat to future generations than climate change’.

He has pledged that he would veto legislation turning back White House efforts on the environment.

Obama is at the forefront of this alarmist crap. It’s a Marxist wet dream. Under the climate change mantel you could institute a world government, redistribute wealth to your corrupt heart’s content, commit genocide under the guise of population control, tax people into oblivion, control the people through technology and resource allotment and regulation, do away with private property ownership and the coup de gras… once and for all redo or get rid of the Constitution and bring the US to her knees where she belongs on the world stage. This is a world religion for gullible weenies and the uber criminal elite. At least someone at MIT gets it and has the cajones to speak up. Next, he’ll be labeled a Flat Earther and a heretic – just watch.

Congressional GOP Seeks to Achieve Success Through Cowardice Congressional GOP Seeks to Achieve Success Through Cowardice

http://www.redstate.com/2015/01/26/congressional-gop-seeks-achieve-success-cowardice/

Congressional GOP Seeks to Achieve Success Through Cowardice

Congressional GOP Seeks to Achieve Success Through Cowardice 
  Over at RealClearPolitics, liberal Bill Scher has some advice for the GOP for how they can grow their majority. Like most of these insipid pieces from liberals, it helpfully suggests that Republicans will have much more success if they ignore demands from their base about... well, basically everything. It's always precious when a member of the party who just got trounced offers advice to the victors about what sorts of strategies and tactics they should adopt to not get trounced themselves. The problem in this case is that the Congressional GOP seems to have been listening to the advice of Scher or at least people like him. As literally anyone could have predicted (and as we predicted here numerous times), the Congressional GOP has already signaled its intent to pre-emptively fold on Obama's executive amnesty, even though they swore up and down they were going to fight this thing tooth and nail once they had control of Congress. The GOP's cowardly capitulation on a popular abortion bill on the eve of the March for Life has also been well documented. And that is to say nothing of Sen. John Hoeven (R-ND)41%'s embarrassing own goal on climate change with respect to the Keystone Pipeline bill. We're about two minutes into the new Congress and already the tactics of GOP leadership are clear: keep their heads down. Avoid any controversial votes. Throw some red meat to the base without risking any votes that could actually put them on the record or stop Obama from accomplishing everything he wants to accomplish. Pull any controversial votes that look like they might pass. Let Obama take the blame for a bunch of stuff that they frankly want to happen anyway. All this having been accomplished, they will then come back to us in 2016, shrug their shoulders, put on their best "aw, shucks" grin and say, "Well, not a lot we could have done with that crazy Obama in the White House, now give us some more money and send us some more Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-NC)51%es back to Congress!" The Republicans in Congress think they can grow their majority - just for the sake of having a bigger one, not for the sake of doing anything with it, mind you - by being afraid and by trying to foster that fear among the base. What they clearly don't do, or at least don't do enough, is fear the voters they need to have any chance of winning. They are, by temperament, cowards. And the only way you can succeed with a coward is to make him more afraid of you than the other guy.

Sent from my iPhone

SAME SEX MARRIAGE VOTE: It Doesn't Add Up

http://www.afa.net/the-stand/press-releases/it-doesnt-add-up/

It Doesn't Add Up

The reality is that millions of voters, acting through the democratic process, have upheld marriage in 31 states across the nation

- AFA President Tim Wildmon

The number of voters in 31 states who voiced their opinion to protect time-honored marriage far outweighs the number in just three states where voters approved same-sex marriage. And voter numbers supporting natural marriage also greatly exceed the number of individual judges who overturned the voters’ wishes with just their signature.

Nationwide, according to Family Research Council’s Peter Sprigg, 3,360,580 voted for same-sex marriage in three states—Maine, Maryland and Washington State—compared to more than 41 million who have voted for marriage protection amendments or bans on same-sex marriage in 31 states—a ratio of more than 12 to 1. Yet, today, same-sex marriage is legal in 36 states and more than 70 percent of Americans live in these states, even though two-thirds of the American public live where the people have voted for a constitutional one-man-one-woman marriage definition.

The math just doesn’t add up, says the American Family Association (AFA, www.afa.net).

“Time and time again, the American people have spoken—41 million of them, in fact—and time and time again, their voices have been ignored,” said AFA President Tim Wildmon. “Whether through activist judges overturning existing law or the legislature ignoring the opinions of their constituents, the wishes of the American people on this issue are largely being rejected.”

The topic is especially timely as the U.S. Supreme Court recently announced it would hear the issue of same-sex marriage, which previously had been left up to each state. Their ruling, expected in June, could have blanket effects for the entire nation.

Sprigg wrote extensively about these numbers on the FRC.org blog, stating that same-sex marriage advocates use numbers like “70 percent live in states where same-sex marriage is legal,” but that does not mean that 70 percent favor gay marriage. The numbers are skewed, he says, because, for example, 37 million residents—or 12 percent of the U.S. population—live in California, where same-sex marriage is legal.

Sprigg continued, “One could, however, just as easily come up with other ways to statistically describe how widespread the acceptance of marriage’s redefinition has become—ways which would give quite a different impression. For example, in some states marriage was redefined (or its legal benefits redistributed) by judicial fiat, bypassing normal democratic processes of law-making altogether. Subtracting those would result in a lower percentage figure. In others, it was pushed through legislatures through heavy-handed lobbying, while the people were denied the opportunity to vote on the issue. Subtracting those would result in an even lower percentage. In either of these situations, the mere existence of same-sex ‘marriages’ should not be interpreted as public acceptance of them.”

“The reality is that millions of voters, acting through the democratic process, have upheld marriage in 31 states across the nation,” Wildmon continued. “At issue before the Supreme Court is not only marriage but also the validity of our nation’s laws and constitutionally established legislative systems. We sincerely hope the High Court upholds the rule of law rather than rejecting established democratic processes and placing our nation’s liberties at grave risk.”

(Unless otherwise noted, the opinions expressed are the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the views of the American Family Association or American Family Radio.)

Al Gore’s latest salvation: Ban cars from cities worldwide

http://personalliberty.com/al-gores-latest-salvation-ban-cars-cities-worldwide/

Al Gore’s latest salvation: Ban cars from cities worldwide

Former Vice President and environmental profiteer Al Gore has partnered with former Mexican President Felipe Calderon to propose a global program of urban planning that would eradicate cars from cities while forcing cities to grow inward in a bid to make public transportation the eminent form of getting around.

Their plan, outlined in a presentation to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, calls for a worldwide outlay of $90 trillion, to be spent shoring up the infrastructure of inner cities to make them more amenable to mass transit while banning cars outright.

The goal, of course, is to end the urban environment’s contribution to global warming. It’s an… ambitious… plan — to say the least.

“Here’s one way to solve global warming: Spend $90 trillion (£59 trillion) over the next few years to redesign all the cities — as in all the cities on Earth — so people live in more densely packed neighbourhoods and don’t need cars,” wrote Business Insider UK:

The key will be to persuade the mayors — again, all the mayors on Earth — that designing new cities this way will be vastly preferable to the old way, in terms of efficiency and prosperity for their residents. “The mistake we made in Mexico was to let cities develop however they want, and it’s a mess,” Calderon told Business Insider. “It’s in their [the mayors] best interests” not to repeat that “mistake,” Calderon said.

Lest a figure like $90 trillion alarm anyone, Gore and Calderon helpfully explained that amount is likely to be spent anyway as cities improve their infrastructures over time — so why not spend all that money in a concerted way across the globe?

An Oklahoma Officer Has To Make an Agonizing Choice at a Wedding & Bodycam Shows the Intense Moment

http://www.ijreview.com/2015/01/238470-cop-responds-threat-bodycam-shows-quickly-things-can-go-calm-terrible/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=organic&utm_content=conservativedaily&utm_campaign=Crime

An Oklahoma Officer Has To Make an Agonizing Choice at a Wedding & Bodycam Shows the Intense Moment

Warning: The following footage is graphic and may upset some viewers.

On Saturday, Pastor Aundrea Jones was conducting a wedding at the Old Agency Baptist Church in Muskogee, Oklahoma. During the service, a woman in attendance at the wedding explained to Jones that an ex-boyfriend had threatened to kill her. That’s when Jones called 911.

What was even more terrifying for the woman was that the boyfriend was waiting for her outside in the church parking lot.

Police took the threat seriously. Officer Chansey McMillin was immediately dispatched to the scene. McMillin’s body camera captured the sequence of events.

Once McMillin arrived he asked the ex-boyfriend, now identified as 21-year-old Terrence Walker, to show both of his hands.

Walker cooperated as McMillin moved in to pat him down. Then, McMillin asked Walker if he had any weapons. Things seemed to be going smooth enough.

However, something surprising happened a few moments later — Walker suddenly swung his arm at McMillin. The attempted assault gave Walker just enough time to try to escape, while McMillin followed.

According to the Daily Mail:

Giving chase, McMillin is heard to immediately shout, ‘Drop the gun, I am running’, and then the camera shows Walker lose his balance and appear to drop something.

He stoops while still moving to pick it up and seems to face McMillin for a split second.

At that moment, McMillin fired his sidearm several times. The shots proved fatal, as Walker’s body rolled into a ditch. CW 33 reported on the police department’s explanation for why McMillin chose to discharge his firearm:

“This officer had a split second to make that decision,” said Muskogee Police Sgt. Mike Mahan. “We believe he acted according to his training.”

Cops say the suspect dropped a gun and pointed it at the officer. They did find a gun — loaded and cocked — next to the suspect’s body.

With over a hundred guests attending the wedding, many of them were puzzled as to why McMillin fired when Walker ran away. However, according to a witness, when McMillin showed Walker’s gun they were more understanding.

As is standard for any officer involved in a fatality in the line of duty, the case is currently being reviewed by Oklahoma’s Bureau of Investigation.

Obama's New Psychiatric Diagnosis Targets “Internet Users" and "Internet Conspiracy Theorists” for Gun Ineligibility

http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/pamela_geller/2015/01/obamas-new-psychiatric-diagnosis-targets-internet-conspiracy-theorists-for-gun-ineligibility.html

Obama's New Psychiatric Diagnosis Targets “Internet Users" and "Internet Conspiracy Theorists” for Gun Ineligibility

Anyone who gets his or her news outside of the enemedia and the alphabets (ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC) will be disarmed by the Democrat thought police.

This is serious. The era of the totalitarians is upon us -- with a smiley, winking emoticon of course.

New Psychiatric Diagnosis Targets “Internet Conspiracy Theorists” Posted on January 24, 2015 by Dave Hodges, DC Clothesline

The Obama administration has a new partner in crime and it is the American Psychiatric Association (APA).  The APA created the new Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (5th Edition) which was recently adopted. DSM 5 is highly controversial and has sparked outrage from the mental health practitioners.

As many of these practitioners point out, the new DSM-V makes a pathology out of simple and normal behaviors such as grieving for the loss of a loved one.

This constitutes a new subjective approach in diagnosing of mental illness in that it promises to end free speech and any form of political dissent. The federal government has already declared anyone who opposes its unconstitutional policies as having “political paranoia,” which is now diagnosed as a type of mental illness.

Particularly disturbing is that the new manual targets internet users and conspiracy theorists. If someone is judged, by some vague set of criteria, to spend too much time on the internet, they could be judged to be mentally ill and ineligible to own a gun. How are you receiving this information? The chances are that you are, at least according to Obama and Biden, giving in to your internet addiction and reading this article. Under the new Obama guidelines this would be grounds for gun confiscation. The alternative media is predicated on internet readership and listenership. These groups would be among the first groups to oppose a martial law crackdown, and now they are the first to be targeted.

Subsequently, this is just another backdoor method to disarm citizens who would oppose the abject tyranny being imposed upon America. And these facts sum up what is truly behind the Obama administration’s latest attack upon gun ownership because they want to prey upon a defenseless nation by disarming as many of us as possible before the purges can begin in earnest.

Under Obama’s new proposed gun regulations, anyone who has a diagnosable, or is potentially diagnosable (i.e. pre-crime) for being mentally ill, can have their gun confiscated. Vice President Biden even feels that they can violate HIPPA privacy regulations in requiring the states to report who has been treated for a mental illness. Therefore, in the name of confiscating your gun, this administration thinks it is acceptable to violate federal privacy laws.

What is interesting to me is that the Obama administration is not even trying to distinguish between mental illnesses in terms of who should, or should not own a gun. In the eyes of the Obama administration, all mental illnesses are created equal. A person with a phobia is just as dangerous as a sociopath. One in six Americans have a “diagnosable anxiety disorder”. This is completely understandable given the economic and political times that we live in. However, under the new proposed guidelines, all of these people would be ineligible to have a gun in their possession even though there is not a shred of research which indicates this population would be inclined towards gun violence any more than any other population.

I once predicted that any form of political protest would be demonized and used as the basis for the labeling of mental illness based upon anyone who disagrees with the government.

Political Schizophrenia

This is the new Soviet style political schizophrenia. We will see confinements among the alternative media and the veterans for things like ADHD, grieving, normal anxiety, bad eating habits, etc. All of these behaviors and more have been categorized as pathologies under the Obama administration and a supportive American Psychiatric Association.

Oppositional Defiant Disorder Is the Newest Weapon Against Political Dissent

When I went through my clinical training, the Bible of mental illness, The Statistical and Diagnostic Manual (DSM-4r) defined Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) as a highly controversial mental illness used to describe children and teens as mentally ill if they exhibited disobedience and defiance. When I was first nationally credentialed, most practitioners did not take this diagnosis seriously and we mistakenly believed that it would fade away. We uniformly believed this to be true because defiance and oppositional behaviors are hallmark traits of healthy rebellion exhibited by children and teens as they seek independence. Rather than ODD fading away, the diagnosis has become the tool of the ruling elite.

The new DSM (5) has expanded the definition of ODD to include adults who exemplify “paranoid ideation” about the government and frequently express these delusional ideations on the internet.

Conclusion

In its analysis of the political abuse of psychiatry in both the Soviet Union and China, The Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, stated that “Psychiatric incarceration of mentally healthy people is uniformly understood to be a particularly pernicious form of repression, because it uses the powerful modalities of medicine as tools of punishment, and it compounds a deep affront to human rights with deception and fraud…” In psychiatric terms, we have become the old Soviet Union where we can be incarcerated and stripped of our rights for having the illness of “political schizophrenia”.

Clichés of Progressivism: Rockefeller and Standard Oil

http://fee.org/freeman/detail/41-rockefellers-standard-oil-company-proved-that-we-needed-anti-trust-laws-to-fight-such-market-monopolies

#41 – “Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Proved That We Needed Anti-Trust Laws”

CLICHÉS OF PROGRESSIVISM

JANUARY 23, 2015 by LAWRENCE W. REED

Filed Under : Cliches

The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) is proud to partner with Young America’s Foundation (YAF) to produce “Clichés of Progressivism,” a series of insightful commentaries covering topics of free enterprise, income inequality, and limited government. See the index of the published chapters here.

#41 – “Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Proved That We Needed Anti-Trust Laws”

(Editor’s Note: This article first appeared in The Freeman, the journal of the Foundation for Economic Education, FEE, in March 1980. Footnotes can be found in that version on FEE.org. The author is president of FEE and the editor of this series of “Clichés.”)

Among the great misconceptions about a free economy is the widely-held belief that “laissez faire” embodies a natural tendency toward monopoly concentration. Under unfettered capitalism, so goes the familiar refrain, large firms would systematically devour smaller ones, corner markets, and stamp out competition until every inhabitant of the land fell victim to their power. Supposedly, John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company of the late 1800s gave substance to this perspective.

Regarding Standard Oil’s chief executive, one noted historian writes, “He (Rockefeller) iron-handedly ruined competitors by cutting prices until his victim went bankrupt or sold out, whereupon higher prices would be likely to return.”

Two other historians, co-authors of a popular college text, opine that “Rockefeller was a ruthless operator who did not hesitate to crush his competitors by harsh and unfair methods.” That’s what the superficial orthodoxy holds.

In 1899, Standard refined 90 per cent of America’s oil—the peak of the company’s dominance of the refining business. Though that market share was steadily siphoned off by competitors after 1899, the company nonetheless has been branded ever since as “an industrial octopus.”

Does the story of Standard Oil really present a case against the free market? In my opinion, it most emphatically does not. Furthermore, setting the record straight on this issue must become an important weapon in every free market advocate’s intellectual arsenal.

Theoretically, there are two kinds of monopoly: coercive and efficiency. A coercive monopoly results from, in the words of Adam Smith, “a government grant of exclusive privilege.” Government, in effect, must take sides in the market in order to give birth to a coercive monopoly. It must make it difficult, costly, or impossible for anyone but the favored firm to do business.

The United States Postal Service is an example of this kind of monopoly. By law, no one can deliver first class mail except the USPS. Fines and imprisonment (coercion) await all those daring enough to compete. (Editor’s Note: In the years since this article was written, technology in the form of fax machines, overnight delivery services, the Internet and e-mail have allowed the private sector to get around the government monopoly in traditional, first-class mail delivery).

In some other cases, the government may not ban competition outright, but simply bestow privileges, immunities, or subsidies on one firm while imposing costly requirements on all others. Regardless of the method, a firm which enjoys a coercive monopoly is in a position to harm the consumer and get away with it.

An efficiency monopoly, on the other hand, earns a high share of a market because it does the best job. It receives no special favors from the law to account for its size. Others are free to compete and, if consumers so will it through their purchases, to grow as big as the “monopoly.”

An efficiency monopoly has no legal power to compel people to deal with it or to protect itself from the consequences of its unethical practices. It can only attain bigness through its excellence in satisfying customers and by the economy of its operations. An efficiency monopoly which turns its back on the very performance which produced its success would be, in effect, posting a sign, “COMPETITORS WANTED.” The market rewards excellence and exacts a toll on mediocrity. It is my contention that the historical record casts the Standard Oil Company in the role of efficiency monopoly—a firm to which consumers repeatedly awarded their votes of confidence.

The oil rush began with the discovery of oil by Colonel Edwin Drake at Titusville, Pennsylvania in 1859. Northwestern Pennsylvania soon “was overrun with businessmen, speculators, misfits, horse dealers, drillers, bankers, and just plain hell-raisers. Dirt-poor farmers leased land at fantastic prices, and rigs began blackening the landscape. Existing towns jammed full overnight with ‘strangers,’ and new towns appeared almost as quickly.”

In the midst of chaos emerged young John D. Rockefeller. An exceptionally hard-working and thrifty man, Rockefeller transformed his early interest in oil into a partnership in the refinery stage of the business in 1865.

Five years later, Rockefeller formed the Standard Oil Company with 4 per cent of the refining market. Less than thirty years later, he reached that all-time high of 90 per cent. What accounts for such stunning success?

On December 30, 1899, Rockefeller was asked that very question before a governmental investigating body called the Industrial Commission. He replied:

I ascribe the success of the Standard to its consistent policy to make the volume of its business large through the merits and cheapness of its products. It has spared no expense in finding, securing, and utilizing the best and cheapest methods of manufacture. It has sought for the best superintendents and workmen and paid the best wages. It has not hesitated to sacrifice old machinery and old plants for new and better ones. It has placed its manufactories at the points where they could supply markets at the least expense. It has not only sought markets for its principal products, but for all possible by-products, sparing no expense in introducing them to the public. It has not hesitated to invest millions of dollars in methods of cheapening the gathering and distribution of oils by pipe lines, special cars, tank steamers, and tank wagons. It has erected tank stations at every important railroad station to cheapen the storage and delivery of its products. It has spared no expense in forcing its products into the markets of the world among people civilized and uncivilized. It has had faith in American oil, and has brought together millions of money for the purpose of making it what it is, and holding its markets against the competition of Russia and all the many countries which are producers of oil and competitors against American oil.

Rockefeller was a managerial genius—a master organizer of men as well as of materials. He had a gift for bringing devoted, brilliant, and hard-working young men into his organization. Among his most outstanding associates were H. H. Rogers, John D. Archbold, Stephen V. Harkness, Samuel Andrews, and Henry M. Flagler. Together they emphasized efficient economic operation, research, and sound financial practices. The economic excellence of their performance is described by economist D. T. Armentano:

Instead of buying oil from jobbers, they made the jobbers’ profit by sending their own purchasing men into the oil region. In addition, they made their own sulfuric acid, their own barrels, their own lumber, their own wagons, and their own glue. They kept minute and accurate records of every item from rivets to barrel bungs. They built elaborate storage facilities near their refineries. Rockefeller bargained as shrewdly for crude as anyone before or since. And Sam Andrews coaxed more kerosene from a barrel of crude than could the competition. In addition, the Rockefeller firm put out the cleanest-burning kerosene, and managed to dispose of most of the residues like lubricating oil, paraffin, and vaseline at a profit.

Even muckraker Ida Tarbell, one of Standard’s critics, admired the company’s streamlined processes of production:

Not far away from the canning works, on Newton Creek, is an oil refinery. This oil runs to the canning works, and, as the new-made cans come down by a chute from the works above, where they have just been finished, they are filled, twelve at a time, with the oil made a few miles away. The filling apparatus is admirable. As the new-made cans come down the chute they are distributed, twelve in a row, along one side of a turn-table. The turn-table is revolved, and the cans come directly under twelve measures, each holding five gallons of oil—a turn of a valve, and the cans are full. The table is turned a quarter, and while twelve more cans are filled and twelve fresh ones are distributed, four men with soldering cappers put the caps on the first set. Another quarter turn, and men stand ready to take the cans from the filler and while they do this, twelve more are having caps put on, twelve are filling, and twelve are coming to their place from the chute. The cans are placed at once in wooden boxes standing ready, and, after a twenty-four-hour wait for discovering leaks, are nailed up and carted to a nearby door. This door opens on the river, and there at anchor by the side of the factory is a vessel chartered for South America or China or where not—waiting to receive the cans which a little more than twenty-four hours before were tin sheets lying on flat-boxes. It is a marvelous example of economy, not only in materials, but in time and in footsteps.

Socialist historian Gabriel Kolko, who argues in The Triumph of Conservatism that the forces of competition in the free market of the late 1800s were too potent to allow Standard to cheat the public, stresses that “Standard treated the consumer with deference. Crude and refined oil prices for consumers declined during the period Standard exercised greatest control of the industry.”

Standard’s service to the consumer in the form of lower prices is well-documented. To quote from Professor Armentano again:

Between 1870 and 1885 the price of refined kerosene dropped from 26 cents to 8 cents per gallon. In the same period, the Standard Oil Company reduced the [refining] costs per gallon from almost 3 cents in 1870 to 0.452 cents in 1885. Clearly, the firm was relatively efficient, and its efficiency was being translated to the consumer in the form of lower prices for a much improved product, and to the firm in the form of additional profits.

That story continued for the remainder of the century, with the price of kerosene to the consumer falling to 5.91 cents per gallon in 1897. Armentano concludes from the record that “at the very pinnacle of Standard’s industry ‘control,’ the costs and the prices for refined oil reached their lowest levels in the history of the petroleum industry.”

John D. Rockefeller’s success, then, was a consequence of his superior performance. He derived his impressive market share not from government favors but rather from aggressive courting of the consumer. Standard Oil is one of history’s classic efficiency monopolies.

But what about the many serious charges leveled against Standard? Predatory price cutting? Buying out competitors? Conspiracy? Railroad rebates? Charging any price it wanted? Greed? Each of these can be viewed as an assault not just on Standard Oil but on the free market in general. They can and must be answered.

Predatory price cutting is “the practice of deliberately underselling rivals in certain markets to drive them out of business, and then raising prices to exploit a market devoid of competition.”  Let’s see if it’s a charge that holds water or just one of those one-liners progressives like to toss out whether the evidence is there or not.

In fact, Professor John S. McGee, writing in the Journal of Law and Economics for October 1958, stripped this charge of any intellectual substance. Describing it as “logically deficient,” he concluded, “I can find little or no evidence to support it.”

In research for his extraordinary article, McGee scrutinized the testimony of Rockefeller’s competitors who claimed to have been victims of predatory price cutting. He found their claims to be shallow and misdirected. McGee pointed out that some of these very people later opened new refineries and successfully challenged Standard again.

Beyond the actual record, economic theory also argues against a winning policy of predatory price cutting in a free market for the following reasons:

1. Price is only one aspect of competition. Firms compete in a variety of ways: service, location, packaging, marketing, even courtesy. For price alone to draw customers away from the competition, the predator would have to cut substantially—enough to outweigh all the other competitive pressures the others can throw at him. That means suffering losses on every unit sold. If the predator has a war-chest of “monopoly profits” to draw upon in such a battle, then the predatory price cutting theorist must explain how he was able to achieve such ability in the absence of this practice in the first place!
2. The large firm stands to lose the most. By definition, the large firm is already selling the most units. As a predator, it must actually step up its production if it is to have any effect on competitors. As Professor McGee observed, “To lure customers away from somebody, he (the predator) must be prepared to serve them himself. The monopolizer thus finds himself in the position of selling more—and therefore losing more—than his competitors.”
3. Consumers will increase their purchases at the “bargain prices.” This factor causes the predator to step up production even further. It also puts off the day when he can “cash in” on his hoped-for victory because consumers will be in a position to refrain from purchasing at higher prices, consuming their stockpiles instead.
4. The length of the battle is always uncertain. The predator does not know how long he must suffer losses before his competitors quit. It may take weeks, months, or even years. Meanwhile, consumers are “cleaning up” at his expense.
5. Any “beaten” firms may reopen. Competitors may scale down production or close only temporarily as they “wait out the storm.” When the predator raises prices, they enter the market again. Conceivably, a “beaten” firm might be bought up by someone for a “song,” and then, under fresh management and with relatively low capital costs, face the predator with an actual competitive cost advantage.
6. High prices encourage newcomers. Even if the predator drives everyone else from the market, raising prices will attract competition from people heretofore not even in the industry. The higher the prices go, the more powerful that attraction.
7. The predator would lose the favor of consumers. Predatory price cutting is simply not good public relations. Once known, it would swiftly erode the public’s faith and good will. It might even evoke consumer boycotts and a backlash of sympathy for the firm’s competitors.

In summary, let me quote Professor McGee once again:

Judging from the Record, Standard Oil did not use predatory price discrimination to drive out competing refiners, nor did its pricing practice have that effect. Whereas there may be a very few cases in which retail kerosene peddlers or dealers went out of business after or during price cutting, there is no real proof that Standard’s pricing policies were responsible. I am convinced that Standard did not systematically, if ever, use local price cutting in retailing, or anywhere else, to reduce competition. To do so would have been foolish; and, whatever else has been said about them, the old Standard organization was seldom criticized for making less money when it could readily have made more.

A second charge is that Standard bought out its competitors. The intent of this practice, the critics say, was to stifle competitors by absorbing them.

First, it must be said that Standard had no legal power to coerce a competitor into selling. For a purchase to occur, Rockefeller had to pay the market price for an oil refinery. And evidence abounds that he often hired the very people whose operations he purchased. “Victimized ex-rivals,” wrote McGee, “might be expected to make poor employees and dissident or unwilling shareholders.”

Kolko writes that “Standard attained its control of the refinery business primarily by mergers, not price wars, and most refinery owners were anxious to sell out to it. Some of these refinery owners later reopened new plants after selling to Standard.”

Buying out competitors can be a wise move if achieving economy of scale is the intent. Buying out competitors merely to eliminate them from the market can be a futile, expensive, and never-ending policy. It appears that Rockefeller’s mergers were designed with the first motive in mind.

Even so, other people found it profitable to go into the business of building refineries and selling to Standard. David P. Reighard managed to build and sell three successive refineries to Rockefeller, all on excellent terms.

A firm which adopts a policy of absorbing others solely to stifle competition embarks upon the impossible adventure of putting out the recurring and unpredictable prairie fires of competition.

A third accusation holds that Standard secured secret agreements with competitors to carve up markets and fix prices at higher-than-market levels.

I will not contend here that Rockefeller never attempted this policy. His experiment with the South Improvement Company in 1872 provides at least some evidence that he did. I do argue, however, that all such attempts were failures from the start and no harm to the consumer occurred.

Standard’s price performance, cited extensively above, supports my argument. Prices fell steadily on an improving product. Some conspiracy!

From the perspective of economic theory, collusion to raise and/or fix prices is a practice doomed to failure in a free market for these reasons:

1. Internal pressures. Conspiring firms must resolve the dilemma of production. To exact a higher price than the market currently permits, production must be curtailed. Otherwise, in the face of a fall in demand, the firms will be stuck with a quantity of unsold goods. Who will cut their production and by how much? Will the conspirators accept an equal reduction for all when it is likely that each faces a unique constellation of cost and distribution advantages and disadvantages?

   Assuming a formula for restricting production is agreed upon, it then becomes highly profitable for any member of the cartel to quietly cheat on the agreement. By offering secret rebates or discounts or other “deals” to his competitors’ customers, any conspirator can undercut the cartel price, earn an increasing share of the market and make a lot of money. When the others get wind of this, they must quickly break the agreement or lose their market shares to the “cheater.” The very reason for the conspiracy in the first place—higher profits—proves to be its undoing!

2. External pressures. This comes from competitors who are not parties to the secret agreement. They feel under no obligation to abide by the cartel price and actually use their somewhat lower price as a selling point to customers. The higher the cartel price, the more this external competition pays. The conspiracy must either convince all outsiders to join the cartel (making it increasingly likely that somebody will cheat) or else dissolve the cartel to meet the competition.

I would once again call the reader’s attention to Kolko’s The Triumph of Conservatism, which documents the tendency for collusive agreements to break apart, sometimes even before the ink is dry.

A fourth charge involves the matter of railroad rebates. John D. Rockefeller received substantial rebates from railroads who hauled his oil, a factor which critics claim gave him an unfair advantage over other refiners.

The fact is that most all refiners received rebates from railroads. This practice was simply evidence of stiff competition among the roads for the business of hauling refined oil products. Standard got the biggest rebates because Rockefeller was a shrewd bargainer and because he offered the railroads large volume on a regular basis.

This charge is even less credible when one considers that Rockefeller increasingly relied on his own pipelines, not railroads, to transport his oil.

Did Standard Oil have the power to charge any price it wanted? A fifth accusation says yes. According to the notion that Standard’s size gave it the power to charge any price, bigness per se immunizes the firm from competition and consumer sovereignty.

As an “efficiency monopoly,” Standard could not coercively prevent others from competing with it. And others did, so much so that the company’s share of the market declined dramatically after 1899. As the economy shifted from kerosene to electricity, from the horse to the automobile, and from oil production in the East to production in the Gulf States, Rockefeller found himself losing ground to younger, more aggressive men.

Neither did Standard have the power to compel people to buy its products. It had to rely on its own excellence to attract and keep customers.

In a truly free market, the following factors insure that no firm, regardless of size, can charge and get any price it wants:

1. Free entry. Potential competition is encouraged by any firm’s abuse of the consumer. In describing entry into the oil business, Rockefeller once remarked that “all sorts of people . . . the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker began to refine oil.”
2. Foreign competition. As long as government doesn’t hamper international trade, this is always a potent force.
3. Competition of substitutes. People are often able to substitute a product different from yet similar to the monopolist’s.
4. Competition of all goods for the consumer’s dollar. Every businessperson in competition with every other businessman to get consumers to spend their limited dollars on him.
5. Elasticity of demand. At higher prices, people will simply buy less.

It makes sense to view competition in a free market not as a static phenomenon, but as a dynamic, never-ending, leap-frog process by which the leader today can be the follower tomorrow.

The sixth charge, that John D. Rockefeller was a “greedy” man, is the most meaningless of all the attacks on him but nonetheless echoes constantly in the history books.

If Rockefeller wanted to make a lot of money (and there is no doubting he did), he certainly discovered the free market solution to his problem: produce and sell something that consumers will buy and buy again. One of the great attributes of the free market is that it channels greed into constructive directions. One cannot accumulate wealth without offering something in exchange!

At this point the reader might rightly wonder about the dissolution of the Standard Oil Trust in 1911. Didn’t the Supreme Court find Standard guilty of successfully employing anti-competitive practices?

Interestingly, a careful reading of the decision reveals that no attempt was made by the Court to examine Standard’s conduct or performance. The justices did not sift through the conflicting evidence concerning any of the government’s allegations against the company. No specific finding of guilt was made with regard to those charges. Although the record clearly indicates that “prices fell, costs fell, outputs expanded, product quality improved, and hundreds of firms at one time or another produced and sold refined petroleum products in competition with Standard Oil,” the Supreme Court ruled against the company. The justices argued simply that the competition between some of the divisions of Standard Oil was less than the competition that existed between them when they were separate companies before merging with Standard.

In 1915, Charles W. Eliot, president of Harvard, observed: “The organization of the great business of taking petroleum out of the earth, piping the oil over great distances, distilling and refining it, and distributing it in tank steamers, tank wagons, and cans all over the earth, was an American invention.” Let the facts record that the great Standard Oil Company, more than any other firm, and John D. Rockefeller, more than any other man, were responsible for this amazing development.

Summary

• If the Standard Oil Company was any kind of “monopoly,” it was not a “coercive” one because it did not derive its high (and temporary) market share from special government favors. There were lots of competitors to it, here and abroad. If it was a monopoly, then it was of the “efficiency” variety, meaning that it earned a high market share because consumers liked what it offered at attractive prices.
• The prices of Standard products (chiefly kerosene in the company’s early history) steadily fell. The quality steadily improved. Total production grew from year to year. This is not supposed to be the behavior of an evil monopolist, who supposedly restricts output and raises prices.
• Accusations against Standard—predatory price cutting, buying up competitors, conspiracy to restrict output and raise prices, securing railroad rebates, etc—sound plausible on the surface but fall apart upon close inspection.
• For further information, see:

“John D. Rockefeller and the Oil Industry” by Burton Folsom: http://tinyurl.com/q9cz7p5

“How Capitalism Saved the Whales” by James S. Robbins: http://tinyurl.com/qf2ltds

“John D. Rockefeller and His Enemies” by Burton Folsom: http://tinyurl.com/q8dghca

“A Review of Chernow’s biography of Rockefeller” by D. T. Armentano: http://tinyurl.com/peqv68o

“Herbert Dow and Predatory Pricing” by Burton Folsom: http://tinyurl.com/pvh94tj

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