Post Tea Party: A Sleeping Giant Awakens?

The government and media a just now noticing what the rest of us have known for a long time: the citizens of the United States are angry, and refuse to take it anymore.

At Grand Rants:

Following the successful attack on Pearl Harbor in World War II, Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto reportedly wrote in his diary, “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and filled him with a terrible resolve.”

The spending spree that has been the handiwork of President Obama and the Republicans and Democrats in Congress this year has similarly awakened the sleeping giant known as the American Taxpayer. Tens of thousands of us took to the streets yesterday (Tax Day) in Tea Parties designed to send a clear message to our elected officials: ”We’re mad as hell and we’re not going to take it any more!” Make no mistake: This was more than merely about taxes. It is time the President and Congress were reminded that they work for us, not the reverse.

Samuel Adams said it best:

“The liberties of our country, the freedoms of our civil Constitution are worth defending at all hazards; it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors. They purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or to be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men.“

It is time to put both the Legislative and Executive branches of our government on notice: The Giant is awake, and it didn't END with the tea parties. They were only a symbolic beginning. What comes next is the real work:

• It’s time to end the political careers of those who abuse the privilege of representing us in Washington.
• It’s time to make note of who is up for re-election during the mid-term elections next year and to make ourselves aware of their level of performance when it comes to special interests and pork barrel spending.
• It’s time we work with our neighbors to organize better than the liberals did in the last election, and get the grass-roots movement moving forward and to throw our support to someone who has the guts to do the right thing in Washington.

Libertarian George Baumler once wrote:

“A great wave of oppressive tyranny isn’t going to strike, but rather a slow seepage of oppressive laws and regulations from within will sink the American dream of liberty.”

When we look at what Obama and Congress have slipped through since January 20, one can imagine what they can (and will) do over the next four years, if we don't take a stand. Let that stand begin today.

Eleanor:

Actually some of us began to stand up and make up our voices heard a long time ago during previous administrations. Obama et al are trying to get away with shenanigans because the silent majority seemed to go along with Washington's double dealing.

So glad to have the rest of you along.

Comments

[Informed Lawyer]

George Baumler's statement quoted above is apropos in light of the observed reawakening of an otherwise apathetic American public.

However, to ensure that such reawakening has some staying power, people must continue to be informed and educated about issues that have more than inspire 'surface-level' outrage.

While at least a portion of the new wave of higher direct federal taxes and costly domestic regulations are easily discernible and quantifiable, other types of regulations are not. Indeed, some might even have a 'foreign' dimension to them, and they may even be indirectly related to international treaties that already have been, and are likely to be, introduced this year in the US Senate. Therefore, it is advisable for concerned Americans to put 2 and 2 together. In other words, what might otherwise be distinct domestic agenda and international agenda items may actually be integrally related to one another.

The following press release issued on May 6, 2009 that announces the release of a detailed article identifies such a scenario and deserves careful reading. It also provides concerned Americans with embedded hyperlinks and visible URLs (weblinks) to several different source documents, including the main article. Readers may wish to access the press release directly, since the two embedded hyperlinks do not appear on this posting. Please see:

ITSSD: Americans' Constitutional Rights Will Be Trampled Unless Congress Convenes Public Hearings on the UN Law of the Sea Convention

PRINCETON, N.J., May 5 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- In a new article appearing within the forthcoming issue of the Santa Clara Journal of International Law entitled, What Goes Around, Comes Around: How UNCLOS Ratification Will Herald Europe's Precautionary Principle as US Law, international attorney Lawrence Kogan calls upon all Americans to immediately exercise their constitutionally guaranteed 'right to know'. This article identifies the multiple pathways through which global environmental extremists, US trans-nationalists, and the 111th Congressional supermajority seek to use the highly complex United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) as a loading platform from which to import into the American heartland very harmful UN and European-anchored environmental treaty and customary international law rules. "Unless the public demands due process of law from their congressional representatives," emphasized Kogan, "such rules, resembling rogue waves, will collectively override US sovereignty and the supremacy of the US Constitution and its accompanying Bill of Rights".

According to Kogan, "The US Navy continues to publicly deny the likely adverse consequences of the more than 45 plus environmental UNCLOS articles, regulations, protocols and annexes that implicitly and explicitly incorporate Europe's Precautionary Principle. This principle is known not only to raise indirect taxes and to threaten American free enterprise by chilling investments in technological innovations, reducing economic activity and increasing product manufacturing, processing and distribution costs and service fees, but to also severely impact military planning. Indeed, since, at least the late 1990's, foreign governments and environmental activist groups have invoked this controversial European legal nostrum to block US commercial activity, to curtail the Navy's ability to train offshore with sonar equipment, and to impair the timely US naval exercise of customary international law rights to freedom of navigation and innocent passage, both on the high seas and in territorial waters and at the north and south poles."

"Meanwhile," notes Kogan, "there are 'environmentally-enlightened' congressional committee chairs and ranking members who appear to be enamored with the legislative and associated regulatory powers derived from Europe's political civil law Precautionary Principle, especially those who hail from the coastal States of Alaska, California, Maine, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York. They are busily preparing amendments to a host of US federal environmental, chemical and energy statutes that would expressly incorporate said principle as US law from within our own borders and thereby obviate the need for special US legislation to implement the UNCLOS' land and air-based pollution provisions. For example, these amended statutes, the new carbon cap-and-trade regime currently under development and the proposal for a new federal oceans policy are designed to achieve regulatory harmonization with socialist Europe. Their effect is to attenuate and subjugate US constitutionally guaranteed individual rights, including private property, to global communal interests. In addition to raising the cost of living for all Americans, they would also create disguised environmental trade barriers that are likely to injure and trigger retaliation from US trading partners, all at a time when the US is suffering from a deep financial crisis."

It has been observed that the Obama administration is paying lip service to ensuring Americans greater public transparency and a higher standard of governmental ethics than had its predecessors, even as it devises how to exploit the opaque federal administrative regulatory process to enshrine Europe's Precautionary Principle as US law. Perhaps, this explains why it has yet to 'walk the talk' to move those congressional committees possessing oversight jurisdiction concerning the UNCLOS' environmental, economic and tribunal components to hold open public hearings, prior to ratification, that substantively discuss their impact on the US economy, US national security, US constitutional rights and US sovereignty. If, however, 'change' is in the air as this administration insists, then nothing less than full disclosure will make it authentic.

The Institute for Trade, Standards and Sustainable Development (ITSSD) is a non-partisan non-profit international legal research and educational organization that examines international law relating to trade, industry and positive sustainable development around the world. An annotated version of this press release is accessible at: http://itssd.org/news.html . The full law review article is accessible at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1356837 .
Phone: 609-658-7417 Fax: 609-897-9598 Email: info@itssd.org Website: www.itssd.org
SOURCE Institute for Trade, Standards, and Sustainable Development

[propecia online]

I like this text: "Their effect is to attenuate and subjugate US constitutionally guaranteed individual rights, including private property, to global communal interests..." is very interesting!!!

[buy viagra]

Regulatory powers derived from Europe's political civil law Precautionary Principle, especially those who hail from the coastal States of Alaska