Duck Dynasty, the Fed and the NDAA

Until last week I didn't know anything about Duck Dynasty. I really couldn't have cared less about those people, their business or their antics. Apparently, however, enough of my fellow human beings find them entertaining enough to make it worth A&E's time and effort to produce a show based on their lives. Now, suddenly, I know way too much about them. Now, suddenly, I feel like someone has grabbed me by the neck and shouted in my face "These people are important! What's happening to them is important! Pay attention to them!" All this because some old dude with a ratty looking beard expressed an opinion that to him a woman's vagina is more appealing than a man's anus, an opinion I happen to agree with, by the way.

What's happening to Duck Dynasty is not important. What he said was not important. The fact that some idiot executives (or highly intelligent and manipulative ones) at A&E decided to kick some commander of ducks off the show or some such thing is not important. What takes place between A&E and the duck people is between A&E and the duck people and has nothing to do with freedom of speech or any violation of human rights.

Sure the duck general, or whatever he wants to call himself, has the right to express his opinion, but no organization has the obligation to give him a platform upon which to do it. The only obligation here is to the federal government that they make no law violating the right to free speech. What we have in this witch's brew of inconsequential ingredients that has captured the attention of so many is a call to allow the federal government to do just that. It's all just a distraction, really, and in the meantime laws of real consequence that really do violate natural rights are being enacted and not a peep is heard because everyone's busy feeding the ducks. The magicians have once again done a good job diverting your attention while their slight of hand makes something precious disappear.

I am happy to notice that as this "controversy" grows more and more commentators are beginning to call out its artificial nature. Intelligent thinkers are pointing out the private nature of the contract between A&E and the duck people which makes the censorship not a First amendment issue and I've even read a couple of intellectual gay commentators point out that the tactics being used against Phil Robertson are the very tactics they abhor when used against gay people. It seems that perhaps people are finally beginning to understand the concept that in order for one to live freely one has to allow others to live freely, whether you agree with them or not. Allow others to have and to voice their opinions, however vile and repugnant you might find them. Allow others to conduct their own private business in their own way so long as they're not harming others or committing theft or fraud. Expect them to do the same for you. Just leave others alone to go about their day to day business and expect the same and we should all get along just fine. It really is a simple concept, "Do unto others..," Etc., ad nauseum, and yet one we still don't seem to get. Even so, it seems to me it's time to take the next step.

The time has come to stop talking about ducks and their dynasty. It is time to talk about parasites and theirs. The parasites I refer to are the central bankers, the corporate cartels and all the politicians which hail from these corporate families or are bought and paid for by corporate special interests. These are the people that attach themselves to the productive part of society and suck it's economic life's blood from it. These are the true entities of importance we should be talking about. These are the people that can truly affect your everyday life by their opinions and actions.

It is time now to start demanding a reversal of some of the things that make us less free rather than discussing what to do to curtail people who are exercising their freedoms, perhaps in a controversial way. It is time to start turning the conversation around and asking why aren't we trying to do something about the institutions that want to control and enslave us. It is up to the people who understand freedom to point these things out to those who might still have a foggy notion as to what freedom is.

For instance, as many of you might know, I feel the most important issue of our time is the Federal Reserve. I feel that if we could get rid of the Fed and decide for ourselves what currency to use when trading with others that many of our economic woes would disappear. So, if I'm standing around the water cooler and I hear someone talking about the ducks and their dynasty I might say something like, "That's nice, but you don't have to watch that show or read about what they're doing if you don't want to or if you disagree with them. We all pretty much have to use federal reserve debt notes in order to survive. We are forced to do business with families that are putting the nation into inescapable, incomprehensible debt. I think that matters a little more than what some duck dictator thinks." Keep the focus. Move the conversation to where it needs to go.

Another matter that is of importance is how the federal government is trying to use unconstitutional legislation to trash the Bill of Rights. For instance, while this whole pressed duck controversy was going on the 2014 NDAA was passed which still allows for indefinite detention and all kinds of other unconstitutional human right violations. So, if this is important to you, as you're standing at the water cooler and the whole duck kingdom thing comes up you might want to consider saying something like "Did you know that a new NDAA bill was passed while this duck BS was happening? They still think it's ok to indefinitely detain anyone, even Americans, without trial simply by calling them an enemy combatant. Why, they could accuse this Phil Robertson guy of plotting a terrorist action with renegade ducks, call him an enemy combatant and we would never hear from him again. I think that's a little more important than knowing whether or not he'd rather put his penis in a woman's vagina or a man's anus."

The point is, the establishment is using its media outlets to try to hide the issues that are truly important by creating issues that are not important. They don't want us talking about issues of importance and would rather have us clucking about non issues like a bunch of hens running around the chicken yard. They have used sneaky psychological methods in order to do so and it's up to us to counter as best we can in a way that nullifies the effectiveness of their methods. In the same way we must start denying consent to be ruled by a bunch of psychopaths in Washington, DC, we must also stop listening to their version of what is important and telling them what is truly important. As more and more people become aware of how the media is manipulating them, less and less will pay attention to the establishment media. When enough people deny consent and ignore the media, that is when we will see a true change for the better start to take place.

If you enjoy my writings, please visit szandorblestman.com to make a donation. For those interested, my latest work of fiction is entitled Galaxium 2: The Losaurian Conspiracy. A screenplay By Matthew Ballotti.

I have another new Youtube video created for the season entitled Workshop at the North Pole which is more like a commentary some of you might expect from me.

Below is a list of all my works available at smashwords.com. Please help me by purchasing one or more of my ebooks and writing favorable reviews if you like them so that others might also find and enjoy them.

Caged in America: A Collection of Essays Celebrating Freedom. By Szandor Blestman

Ron Paul's Wisdom, A Layman's Perspective. A Collection of Opinion Editorials. By Szandor Blestman

Galaxium. A screenplay By Matthew Ballotti

Galaxium 2: The Losaurian Conspiracy. A screenplay By Matthew Ballotti

The Colors of Elberia; book 1 of The Black Blade Trilogy. By Matthew Ballotti

The Legacy of the Tareks; book 2 of The Black Blade Trilogy. By Matthew Ballotti

The Power of the Tech; book 3 of The Black Blade Trilogy. By Matthew Ballotti

The Edge of Sanity. By Matthew Ballotti

The Ouijiers By Matthew Ballotti

The Spirit of Christmas, the Nature of Humankind

Christmas, for me, is a beautiful time of year. It's not the pretty lights and the shiny decorations that make it beautiful, although they are quite pleasant to the senses. It's not nature's show of ice and snow that make it beautiful. Although such scenes make nice postcards to look at, dealing with them in real life is annoying to me and can actually be quite hazardous. It's not the clear air and the twinkling stars in the night sky that make it beautiful, although I do enjoy contemplating them I prefer the longer warm days to the longer cold nights. What makes Christmas beautiful to me is the spirit that's in the air. Not the spirit of commercialism, but the genuine spirit of giving and caring that comes from the heart.

This, to me, shows the true nature of humanity. Humans are not the beings we see on the television nightly news shows scratching and clawing each other in order to obtain some electronic trinket at a greatly reduced price. Those occurrences are actually the exception and not the norm which is why they make the news. Humans are, for the most part, rather docile and compliant and will follow the rules of civility even when placed in a competitive circumstance. This can actually be a bad thing when a tyrannical government tries to assert its authority over the masses.

Humans are not the murderous, torturous, war mongering rabble mainstream history portrays them as. People are, for the most part, kind, considerate, empathetic beings who just want to love and laugh and live their lives as best they can. Even as we study wars and battles and great generals and leaders and man's capacity to be inhumane to his fellow humans, we have a tendency to skip over the feelings and general misgivings of the common soldier who questions the morality of what he is forced to do through his circumstances and longs to return to a life of love and caring. The glorification of warfare is the job of the historian, the politician, and others who may profit from such an activity, the true terror and vileness of warfare is remembered in the hearts of the common folk who participate and can poison them for life. It is, in essence, unnatural.

We are, for the most part, beings of light and love having an experience in the physical realm. Christmas time is evidence of this. We take the darkest, coldest time of the year in the northern hemisphere and make it as bright, warm and festive as we can. We celebrate peace and love, giving and caring. We feel good in our hearts and souls for all that we do for our fellow human beings. This is where the vast majority of human beings want to be, the state of mind most of us want to achieve. That's what true human nature is about. I don't imagine that those who conjure dark thoughts and prey on mankind's insecurities like this time of year too much. It makes me wonder about the true nature of our so called world leaders, for their true nature certainly does not seem to me to be human. I don't see them as beings of light as all, but as beings spreading darkness across the globe.

This is why we must strive to keep Christmas in our hearts at all times. We must always strive to keep the darkness at bay. We must remain secure in the thought that most human spirits are kind, gentle and loving beings and do not wish to harm others. We are all more alike than we are different. We are not perfect and the darkness in this world will manifest, but by striving to keep it from manifesting in your heart you make the world that much brighter for the rest of us. Peace and goodwill to you all.

If you enjoy my writings, please visit szandorblestman.com to make a donation. For those interested, my latest work of fiction is entitled Galaxium 2: The Losaurian Conspiracy. A screenplay By Matthew Ballotti.

I have another new Youtube video created for the season entitled Workshop at the North Pole which is more like a commentary some of you might expect from me.

Below is a list of all my works available at smashwords.com. Please help me by purchasing one or more of my ebooks and writing favorable reviews if you like them so that others might also find and enjoy them.

Caged in America: A Collection of Essays Celebrating Freedom. By Szandor Blestman

Ron Paul's Wisdom, A Layman's Perspective. A Collection of Opinion Editorials. By Szandor Blestman

Galaxium. A screenplay By Matthew Ballotti

Galaxium 2: The Losaurian Conspiracy. A screenplay By Matthew Ballotti

The Colors of Elberia; book 1 of The Black Blade Trilogy. By Matthew Ballotti

The Legacy of the Tareks; book 2 of The Black Blade Trilogy. By Matthew Ballotti

The Power of the Tech; book 3 of The Black Blade Trilogy. By Matthew Ballotti

The Edge of Sanity. By Matthew Ballotti

The Ouijiers By Matthew Ballotti

Central Banks and the Enslavement of Mankind

There is a saying that he who has the gold makes the rules. Indeed, throughout the history of mankind it has been shown that wealth is power. Why do you suppose that is? The answer to that question appears to be obvious. If you have money, many people will do what you want them to do simply to obtain that money. This is true whether you own a business and try to provide something costumers will pay for, or you work for a business and provide labor, or you sell sexual favors to lonely people. The answer should be obvious, and yet there exists sinister subtleties that allow for crafty conmen to take control of large swaths of governments and economies in this world. You see, there is evil afoot in this world, and I'm not talking about insignificant evil such as individuals doing drugs or having sex with strangers, I'm talking about industrial sized evil, evil on the scale of the holocaust, evil against all humanity, evil so subtle and pervasive that to many it doesn't seem like evil at all.

Imagine for a moment, if you would, that you were entrusted with the power to create currency for the nation you lived in. Imagine that everyone who engaged in commerce, in any kind of legal economic activity in your country had to, by law, use your debt notes as a means of exchange. Imagine that you got a portion of every legal transaction that took place across the nation. Even if it was a very small percentage, less than one percent, close to zero percent, you would still soon be a very, very wealthy individual before too long. Now imagine that this was so for many nations across the planet. It isn't hard to see how within a few years you'd be one of the wealthiest people on the planet, maybe even the wealthiest. Keep that business in the family for a couple of hundred years and there's little doubt that your family, your bloodline, would be one of the wealthiest, most powerful, most influential forces the world has ever known.

This is how it is with the families that own the central banks of the world. Their total wealth cannot be known. Their power and influence is unbridled. They are above all, masters of this world, and all because they were able to use their wealth and influence to pay for politicians who would sell out the common folk and create a system of currency based on debt, giving a monopoly on currency creation to those same families. Most people probably don't know about this little scheme of theirs, and they would like to keep it that way, which is why the fact that many central banks are privately owned remains hidden. But more and more people are becoming aware.

Many might wonder why people of such wealth would want to hide. Wouldn't they want to flaunt their power? Simply put, they don't want people to know who they are because they don't want to take personal responsibility for the damage they've caused. They certainly don't want the masses of humanity to know that such damage has been caused on purpose and with malevolence because they actually benefit more when damage is done than they do when humanity benefits. They know humanity is smart enough to figure them out and to target them and their agenda in so doing, so they hide as best they can behind propaganda, their masks of legitimacy and their political puppets who supposedly regulate and police them while actually enabling them.

The political class are actually also slaves to this master class which consists of old family royalty, the corporate elite and the banking elite families. They are just higher class slaves, the slaves inside the mansion rather than out in the fields, so to speak. If they want to keep their positions of comfort and avoid the whip they'd better do what is good for their masters, not what is good for the masses of humanity.

We, the common folk, we are their laborers. We are their property. At least that's how they see it. They infuse their "money" with magical symbols and pictures of our "great leaders" of the past and expect to receive real wealth in return. For their paper money is nothing but debt notes, and they expect to be paid back with real property and commodities, not with more debt notes. When you think about it, what does it mean to be indebted anyway? What is debt? Debt is something you owe to someone, a favor that needs to be paid back. What is a debt note? It is a promise that you will pay back the debt you owe, and if you can't you will lose any collateral you own that might be of real value.

The way the elite banking families look at it, they have done you the favor of printing out debt notes for you to use in commerce, and they want that debt repaid. And yet they never spell out exactly what they want for providing this service. Oh, they said in the beginning the income tax would pay for their services, but it seems to me they wanted much more than a simple income tax. History has shown again and again that the price for them to provide this service is steep indeed, as all monopoly services tend to be, so steep, in fact, as to be unaffordable, IMHO.

First off, in terms of simple money, even their own debt notes, what started out as a very small income tax on the very richest Americans in order to pay for the Federal Reserve System's operations has ballooned into a tax on every hard working American who earns over an arbitrary amount of money per year as determined by an unelected set of bureaucrats working for an unaccountable IRS. This in and of itself can be considered slavery for you are involuntarily working a certain percentage for the government. You are least that percentage of a slave whether you want to admit it or not and therefore you are a slave. And don't let anyone tell you that the income tax is voluntary. Just try not paying and see what happens. Look what they did to Wesley Snipes and Ed and Elaine Brown. But go ahead and tell yourself the income tax is voluntary, if you want. I don't live in denial and I know the only reason I pay it is because violence will be used against me if I don't.

But, more nefarious that that, is the price we pay in blood. Look deep into the history that is hidden from the general public and you will see banking interests behind the wars and revolutions that have ravaged this planet for centuries. War is good for the wealthy elite and when banking interests are playing both sides of the conflict they will reap a large profit no matter the winner, a strategy they also use when backing political candidates, by the way. One could well ask what humans would support warfare and violent revolution for something as transient and inconsequential as power and profit over the peaceful advancement of all mankind? Very sick humans, I would venture to say. Very deluded humans. Perhaps someone who is less than human, or very inhuman. Perhaps someone who sees the rest of humanity as their property, as pawns to be played on a chessboard of political intrigue where ideologies are pitted against each other in a twisted game where the one side dominates and the other side either submits or faces extinction. Perhaps someone who believes they own you and your progeny and can send them off to die in some foreign conflict at their whim. Perhaps someone who believes they have the right to bind and enslave all humanity.

Believe in conspiracy or not, the power of the Fed is hard to deny. The history of their founding, the nature of their funding and the reality of their private ownership are not disputed. While some apologists would claim that such analysis as mine is harsh I would argue that their own historical words and actions provide strong evidence to back my opinions. These people feel it is their right to enslave humanity, that we are indebted to them, that they own us all like we are livestock. They are very dangerous and hold far too much power and influence over our lives. Humanity needs to stand up and strip them of that power and influence before they leave humanity impoverished, enslaved and stripped of the dignity it has taken us centuries to gain.

If you enjoy my writings, please visit szandorblestman.com to make a donation. For those interested, my latest work of fiction is entitled Galaxium 2: The Losaurian Conspiracy. A screenplay By Matthew Ballotti. I have a new Youtube video created for the season which can be found here.

Below is a list of all my works available at smashwords.com. Please help me by purchasing one or more of my ebooks and writing favorable reviews if you like them so that others might also find and enjoy them.

Caged in America: A Collection of Essays Celebrating Freedom. By Szandor Blestman

Ron Paul's Wisdom, A Layman's Perspective. A Collection of Opinion Editorials. By Szandor Blestman

Galaxium. A screenplay By Matthew Ballotti

Galaxium 2: The Losaurian Conspiracy. A screenplay By Matthew Ballotti

The Colors of Elberia; book 1 of The Black Blade Trilogy. By Matthew Ballotti

The Legacy of the Tareks; book 2 of The Black Blade Trilogy. By Matthew Ballotti

The Power of the Tech; book 3 of The Black Blade Trilogy. By Matthew Ballotti

The Edge of Sanity. By Matthew Ballotti

The Ouijiers By Matthew Ballotti

The Biggest Bullies, Big Central Banks and Their Big Central Governments

I've been seeing a lot on bullying lately in the news and on social networking sites. It seems that no one really seems to like bullying much and everyone loves to see the little guy stand up to the bully. And yet there seems to be a disconnect when it comes to those who stand up to the biggest bullies of all. There seems to be some kind of cognitive dissonance that takes place when someone feels the bully is doing the bullying for your own good, or for the right reasons. I don't think bullying is ever good, no matter the reasons one might dream up for engaging in the practice. No matter how well intentioned, the ends never justifies the means when the means is immoral, and an immoral means always taints and corrupts a moral intention.

When we think of bullying, we often think of kids. We think of playground antics. We think of stealing milk money, or a cry for attention, or acceptance, or acting superior due to an inferiority complex, or of insecurity issues, or someone picking on someone else because they're different, or someone picking on someone else simply for the perverse pleasure they might get from instilling fear in another human being, from watching them squirm in fright. Mostly one thinks about the strong picking on the weak. It's especially about the strong picking on the weak.

But why think that these types of behaviors are limited to children? Why the belief that once a human being undergoes this process we know as puberty they suddenly drop the behaviors of childhood and blossom into adults who only engage in respectable behavior? In fact, don't we know from our personal lives that almost the opposite is true? Haven't we all seen adults in our own lives that act as immature today as they did when they were children? Doesn't it make more sense that the bullies of the playground might find an outlet in adulthood where they can engage in bullying techniques and it's not only respectable, many people might actually applaud it? Well, there are plenty of jobs in the public/government sector where bullies are needed to help implement the collectivist schemes of the power hungry political class.

Some may think about the law and enforcement arm of this little club of bullies that rules over the common folk when they read the above and I wouldn't blame them. The enforcement class, which would include judges and prosecutors as well as police, are the class that have to deal the most directly with the public. But these bullies who beat and intimidate with the muscle and the sheer power of "The Law" are not the biggest bullies on the playground by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, they likely have to deal with a different kind of bullying as they go about their work. No, the biggest bullies, the smartest and most nefarious bullies, are cleverly hidden. There is a good chance that most people would never dare to imagine them as bullies because they are so far from the picture of an archetypical bully that most of us carry around in our heads.

I'm talking, of course, about the banksters. Many people when thinking about bankers think about mild mannered, hard working, respectable businessmen. Indeed, when talking about a community banker, a George Bailey type for instance, this stereotype may prove true. When talking about central banking families, those more like Mr. Potter, the ones at the top pulling all the strings, however, nothing could be farther from the truth. These people are as notorious, as cold blooded, and as vile as you can imagine. They don't use muscle to bully so much as they use something much more powerful. They use money. They use economics, and economics targets everyone, not just those one wishes to control. Economic bullying is the carpet bombing of bullying.

These are the people who will threaten economic chaos should they be denied. These are the people who threatened congressmen with the spectre of martial law in 2008 unless they got a bailout. These are the people who can bring a politician's career to a swift end if they so choose. They are the puppet masters at the top of the power structure and they use their vast wealth to move forward with a collectivist agenda where they're in complete control and you will do as they say, or else.

It is the central bankers who have connived and plotted to centralize power in a system where power is supposed to be decentralized and the individual is supposed to have the power to run his own life. They bully those with federal power, who in turn bully those with state power, who in turn bully those with county power, who in turn bully those with city power, who in turn will bully you, the individual. Their favorite weapon of choice is fiat currency. They beat people over the head with the threat of funding removal. Some people might not see that as bullying, but that just makes it all the more subtle. Central bankers know all too well the harm that can be caused by crashing an economy. They count on it. It's all too clear in historical perspective. They also count on the common folk not understanding this, because no one likes to be bullied and if the common folk find out in great enough numbers they might actually do something about it.

So how do we stop such bullying? I believe the first step is to understand that is indeed what's going on. The next step is to confront the bullies. An audit of the Fed will initiate such a confrontation. After such an audit, a determination can be made as to just how much wealth was stolen from the common folk as a result of this bullying. Restitution then needs to be paid to the people in the form of real wealth, real assets and commodities, not paper debt notes that can be printed at will and have to have laws passed to force people to accept them as money. From there we should be very careful as to the rules we create as to what money is and how it drives the economy, with freedom and individual choice in currency markets taking a central role, remembering that history has shown us that what is easily given can be easily taken away.

We have lived in fear of the bully for far too long. The Feds have made excuses and covered their mistakes and their asses with their threats far too often. The system has been corrupted because its foundations have been corrupted with the insertion of a fiat, fractional reserve currency. Until we own up to such realizations we run the risk of the system collapsing around our ears. If we shine the spotlight on the bullies behind the scenes and expose them as those responsible for creating the economic mess we're in then maybe, just maybe, we can avoid economic catastrophe and figure out a way to return to monetary sanity. Perhaps it's time for the common folk to do a little bullying of our own. After all, there's nothing a bully hates more than being bullied.

If you enjoy my writings, please visit szandorblestman.com to make a donation. For those interested, my latest ebook is entitled Galaxium 2: The Losaurian Conspiracy. A screenplay By Matthew Ballotti. I have a new Youtube video created for the season which can be found here.

Below is a list of all my works available at smashwords.com. Please help me by purchasing one or more of my ebooks and writing favorable reviews if you like them so that others might also find and enjoy them.

Caged in America: A Collection of Essays Celebrating Freedom. By Szandor Blestman

Ron Paul's Wisdom, A Layman's Perspective. A Collection of Opinion Editorials. By Szandor Blestman

Galaxium. A screenplay By Matthew Ballotti

Galaxium 2: The Losaurian Conspiracy. A screenplay By Matthew Ballotti

The Colors of Elberia; book 1 of The Black Blade Trilogy. By Matthew Ballotti

The Legacy of the Tareks; book 2 of The Black Blade Trilogy. By Matthew Ballotti

The Power of the Tech; book 3 of The Black Blade Trilogy. By Matthew Ballotti

The Edge of Sanity. By Matthew Ballotti

The Ouijiers By Matthew Ballotti

Should Doctors be Arrested for Non-compliance?

"We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it." Nancy Pelosi on The Affordable Care Act.

There are many misconceptions about The Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare. The first is that it is a law. The second is that it is a tax. It is really neither, but it is both. It is a strange hybrid between the two. In short, it is an odd creature that has never really been seen before. Perhaps the best explanations for what Obamacare is, or is not, can be found here.

If the bill had been read in the first place, perhaps this wouldn't have happened. Perhaps our congress critters would have realized what a severe clusterfuck it was and wouldn't have passed it. After all, passing a bill without knowing what's in it is sort of like going to a pet store to buy your kids a cute little puppy for Christmas and coming home with a mystery package containing some kind of animal you haven't seen, but the clerk assured you the kids would adore it so much more than a run of the mill puppy. Christmas day rolls around and your child opens the package with great anticipation and out pops a dangerous, feral wolverine ready to turn your happy holiday into a mad Christmas nightmare.

Well like it or not congress did pass this monstrosity. They did set a dangerous, feral wolverine loose in the house even though their intent was to give the kids a cute, furry, harmless pet. Now we, the people, must deal with the huge mistake our supposed representatives foisted upon us. They certainly aren't. They exempted themselves from it. Kind of like the parents hiding in the bedroom and making the kids figure out how to handle the wolverine.

As an aside, perhaps the funniest aspect to this are those who still try to defend Obamacare and the Obama administration. In the wake of all the proven lies, the broken promises and the broken website, there are still people in the administration who will try to convince the public that all is well, and there are still people who truly believe. They still think government mandated private health insurance is a good idea, that it still saves money, or that at least it was well intentioned, despite the protests, the website problems, the lack of transparency, the job loses, the lost income, the cost increases and the phenomenal number of people losing their insurance and their doctors. You want to talk about being in denial? It's kind of like those people with the wolverine refusing to believe the store clerk lied to them. They sit there looking at a growling, rabid wolverine, in the midst of destroyed draperies, a sofa that's been ripped to shreds, after little Suzy's had her left eye clawed out and little Tommy's had his right ear chewed off, and say, "But it's so cute and cuddly and unique." Well, it is unique.

So this terrible, awful bill passed and now we have to deal with it. How do we deal? If it is a law then we have to, as the above video suggests at the end, disobey en masse. If it is a tax, we must refuse to pay it. Now, a law will more or less try to punish you for doing something you're not supposed to do. A tax tries to make you do something you don't want to do. We see both these approaches in Obamacare. It might seem like one is trapped and has to obey to stay out of trouble, but as always human beings are very good at figuring out ways to get around any given situation. This is why, IMHO, Obamacare is doomed.

Obamacare acts like a law in that it tells insurance companies and doctors they can't do this or they can't do that. It acts like a tax in that it mandates purchase of insurance and imposes fines on those who would refuse to buy. Much frustration revolves around what can be done against such blatant abuse of power. Many people feel that nothing can be done and so they just try to go along to get along. That's what the powers that be want. They want people to believe they are powerless. Yet there is actually much that can be done to peacefully change things. It's mostly just a matter of disobeying. It's mostly just a matter of remembering that each individual has the power to just say "no" and that by doing so you are refusing to simply give in to tyranny. There are even ways to go about saying "no" and still staying off the radar, so to speak.

Doctors and their patients are beginning to figure out ways to get around these intrusive laws. One, a Dr. Michael Ciampi featured in the clip at the end of this article, has taken a route many other doctors are taking and is moving to a cash only practice and refusing to accept insurance of any kind. He states he doesn't want to work for the insurance companies or the government anymore and simply wants to work for his patients. It's a novel concept, I perform a service for you and you pay me.

Personally, I see nothing wrong with this, but the insurance industry might. After all, if one can get the same quality service at less cost, one will usually opt for the cheaper option. Cutting out the middleman usually reduces cost because, well, now the middleman isn't taking his cut. That's what healthcare insurance companies have become, middlemen. They're not going to take kindly to someone who threatens their income, and they've already shown that they're willing to use government enforcers as strong arms to force Americans to buy their products. It wouldn't surprise me if their next step is to pass some kind of law to force doctors to accept insurance, nor would it surprise me to find out that such a provision is already buried deep in the tome that is Obamacare.

So what could they do? Charge private doctors in cash only practices with tax evasion, or with conspiracy to commit tax evasion for providing such services? After all, Obamacare is a tax despite the fact that so many promised it would not be a tax. Fine them so much that it puts them out of business? What if they refuse to pay the fines? Should they go to jail then? Should they be put in prison the same way many other tax protesters who have refused to pay their income taxes have been? Is this the road we want to travel?

We are supposed to be a free society. We are supposed to have freedom to associate with who we want to associate with. At the same time, we are supposed to have the freedom to not associate with people we don't want to associate with. These doctors obviously don't want to associate with these insurance companies. They should not be punished for that. No one should ever be forced or coerced to buy any product or service ever, which is exactly what Obamacare does.

Government is supposed to protect the weakest minority, the individual, from powerful corporations. They are not supposed to make powerful corporations even more powerful by agreeing to help them extort money from hard working individuals who have tried to do what's right and followed the rules their whole lives. If anyone should have to worry about going to prison it should be the corporate executives and the politicians who have helped to bring this abomination of a tax law to pass. I can only hope the establishment's enforcers come to realize this when they're asked to take the next steps.

If you enjoy my writings, please visit szandorblestman.com to make a donation.

Below is a list of all my works available at smashwords.com. Please help me by purchasing one or more of my ebooks and writing favorable reviews if you like them so that others might also find and enjoy them.

Caged in America: A Collection of Essays Celebrating Freedom. By Szandor Blestman

Ron Paul's Wisdom, A Layman's Perspective. A Collection of Opinion Editorials. By Szandor Blestman

Galaxium. A screenplay By Matthew Ballotti

The Colors of Elberia; book 1 of The Black Blade Trilogy. By Matthew Ballotti

The Legacy of the Tareks; book 2 of The Black Blade Trilogy. By Matthew Ballotti

The Power of the Tech; book 3 of The Black Blade Trilogy. By Matthew Ballotti

The Edge of Sanity. By Matthew Ballotti

The Ouijiers By Matthew Ballotti

New Illinois Law to Centralize Health Care

My eldest daughter works as a billing specialist for a doctor here in Chicago. Her job more or less requires that she familiarize herself with the laws regulating doctors and the insurance industry. Unlike the layman who simply wants to see a doctor when illness strikes and be able to afford the treatments offered in order to get well again, she has to get into the guts of a system that requires 1500+ page tomes trying to determine the cost for treating every malady imaginable. As such, she has been studying a proposed new law, The State Health Care Innovation Plan, or SHCIP, that the Illinois legislature will soon be voting on. It is 200+ pages or so long, and what she has read concerned her so that she gave me the first 8 pages to read to ask me what I thought of it.

I have to admit, I find reading legalese quite tedious, but I was interested in this legislation since it would affect how just about everyone in the state of Illinois goes about shopping for their health care needs. I think everyone should be interested in this law since it puts the state between the patient and one's doctor and regulates all aspects of the relationship one has with one's doctor.

The main gist is that all health care providers will need to be a part of an organization. There are, of course, a number of different organizations that can be chosen from. The organizations will be formed around a primary care physician, and all specialty services will need to be referred out through the PCP. The organization will be paid by the insurance companies, not by the procedures they perform, but in a bulk payment, known as capitation, once a month, to be distributed by the organization to their physicians, not by how much work the doctors have done, but by however they see fit. The doctors are becoming slaves and you no longer have a choice in what health care services you're allowed to receive.

As I read the first 8 pages of this law, the first thing that struck me is that it read more like a report than a law. They were citing statistics. They were pointing out flaws in the current system. They were discussing a vision for the future of health care in Illinois that they had. It was more like I was reading a sales pitch rather than a law. It was almost as if they were trying to justify to themselves what they were about to do as well as to everyone else. Bad ideas often need massive amounts of righteous justification before they are implemented, if for no other reason than to give the politically powerful the ability to use the "good intentions" excuse when things go wrong and individuals are harmed. When I finished reading these eight pages, I had a vague idea of what they were trying to say and do, but I wasn't quite certain. I wasn't even sure if it was a law since, well, you know, laws should usually be straight forward and explain what you can and cannot do. I called my daughter and asked her what I had just read, since she has to deal with these matters every day.

Her insight confirmed my suspicions. They are trying to rid the state of private health care practitioners. Any doctor with a private practice will not be welcome in the state of Illinois, and the Illinois state government will go to any length to make sure that anyone who tries to defy them and run a private practice will find it very difficult to do so. If you are not a member of an organization, or some other "health care entity," as they like to call it, you are going to be subjected to unfair regulations and scrutiny in an effort to scare off the mavericks that might try to question the system.

When I was a kid, we went to a nice doctor that my family knew and trusted for most of our health problems that arose, and as a child I had plenty of health issues. His name was Dr. Gibson and I remember him as a kindly old man who showed genuine care and compassion for us. I remember that my family had a wonderful relationship with this man. It seems to me that this is the kind of relationships the powers that be don't want us to have anymore. They can't have doctors actually caring for their patients. That could interfere with the "business" of health care.

A doctor who cares too much for his patients might not care enough about profit and might actually try to buck a system that wants to recommend procedures that are more profitable above procedures that might actually produce a cure for a given condition. They don't want doctors thinking for themselves, they want doctors to have to come to a consensus. After all, isn't that what politics is all about, consensus building? It's only natural, then, that when politicians have their say in the field of health care - and they do have their say for they are creating and passing the laws that regulate it - they create a system they are familiar with.

Combine this with the for profit corporations that have bought out governments at all levels and you have a combination lethal to small businesses and start ups. In the health care industry this means doctors wanting to start their own practices and treat patients one on one, face to face. The corporations don't want to face that kind of competition and so they ask their friends in powerful political positions to create laws which make it nigh impossible for such competition to grow roots. These for profit corporations are the insurance companies that have come to dominate that industry. They are the ones who want the doctors corralled into "health care entities" so that they can maintain not only control over their activities, but their livelihoods as well. That's what it boils down to, complete control.

Large corporations like those that dominate the health care insurance industry want to create and protect monopolies for themselves so that they can profit all the more from the services they offer. The best way for them to protect their monopolies is to turn to those who have a monopoly on legitimate force and ask them to create laws to make it difficult for competitors to compete. To accomplish this, the political class has taken to illusion. They want the common folk to believe they are being compassionate. They pass laws designed to profit their corporate buddies under the guise of compassion. At the same time they want to remove anyone else's ability to show compassion. In essence, it's not enough that they create a monopoly in health care, they need to create a monopoly on compassion also in order to justify the system they want to establish.

The Illinois law is a tributary of the ACA. It most likely would never have even been conceived if Obamacare had not passed. Now it is taking a bad law and making it even worse. Illinois is trying to become the most SSR like of all the SSRs in the USSA. This law will pass so long as most people remain unaware and allow it to happen. The only way now to prevent such laws from passing is to speak up and speak out against these intrusive and restrictive laws. Let them know you want choice over mandates. Let them know you want the freedom to determine for yourself the kind of health care you want. Otherwise they will continue to take those choices away from you until you have but one choice, their monopoly, and you will take that choice whether you like it or not.

If you enjoy my writings, please visit szandorblestman.com to make a donation.

Below is a list of all my works available at smashwords.com. Please help me by purchasing one or more of my ebooks and writing favorable reviews if you like them so that others might also find and enjoy them.

Caged in America: A Collection of Essays Celebrating Freedom. By Szandor Blestman

Ron Paul's Wisdom, A Layman's Perspective. A Collection of Opinion Editorials. By Szandor Blestman

Galaxium. A screenplay By Matthew Ballotti

The Colors of Elberia; book 1 of The Black Blade Trilogy. By Matthew Ballotti

The Legacy of the Tareks; book 2 of The Black Blade Trilogy. By Matthew Ballotti

The Power of the Tech; book 3 of The Black Blade Trilogy. By Matthew Ballotti

The Edge of Sanity. By Matthew Ballotti

The Ouijiers By Matthew Ballotti

The Law: Spirit and Letter, Enforcers and Corruption

Here's something not too many people know. Back in the mid 1980s, I was accepted to a couple of graduate school law programs. I never really told anyone because I decided I didn't want to go. Or rather I told myself that life had decided for me and that I couldn't afford to go. There have been times in my life when I have wondered how things would have turned out for me had I gone. Perhaps my life would have been better, perhaps not. I wonder if I would have let knowledge of the law corrupt me, as it seems to have done to so many others. I wonder if I would have let knowledge of this secretive and highly influential language taint my world view, or if I would have somehow managed to remain true to my morals and principles despite subjecting myself to the poisonous rot that passes itself off as law these days.

As it stands today, I have the clarity of hindsight to base my thoughts upon. I think that perhaps I have a better understanding of the law than many current day lawyers. At least I don't have the burden of knowing that I need the masses of people to not understand the nuances of law in order to make a living. I believe, as do many others, that the law should be written in plain English, or whatever language the masses understand, so that everyone understands it, not just a few who can then manipulate the language to their benefit. I believe we should do away with this language known as legalese which has a tendency to take common words and change their meaning for uncommon purposes.

The law should be simple. You don't harm others. You don't steal from others. Things like that. Of course there's going to be extenuating circumstances that might come about from time to time and these things should be considered, but the basics remain simple. So many people seem to worship this thing we call "the law" that it almost seems spiritual in nature. Yet spirit can be evil as well as good. Spirit can be detrimental as well as beneficial. There is a spirit behind these laws and that spirit should be designed to provide justice for someone who may be victimized by a powerful entity. The law ceases to be legitimate when it becomes the powerful entity that is victimizing the common folk.

In today's society, it is not the spirit of a law that is enforced, but the letter of the law. For instance, if a law says do not cross a street except at the crosswalk or you will be fined, you could be fined even if you had a legitimate reason for breaking that law such as trying to avoid someone who means to cause you harm. We'd like to think that those who enforce the law could use their discretion to understand when the spirit of the law is being violated as opposed to the letter of the law, but this is hardly ever the case. We'd like to think that judges and juries would be able to do the same, but this is again hardly ever the case. Enforcers enforce the letter of the law, no matter how much harm that letter might do to another human being. Judges and juries only judge guilt or innocence via interpreting the letter of the law, not it's spirit.

The power of the law is its spirit. That power has been usurped due to the desire for expedience and the laziness of the common folk. It has been corrupted due to governmental greed and the desire of the ruling class to control the masses. The justice system itself has become one huge injustice, one huge miscarriage of justice, one huge revenue generating mill that punishes the innocent by encouraging plea bargains where they plead guilty to a lesser charge to avoid attorney costs and jail time, protects the guilty in the same way, and upholds bad laws by not allowing or encouraging juries to judge the law itself over and above the defendant's guilt or innocence.

Today's laws are selectively enforced. They are often created by the dictates of government agencies controlled by the executive branch rather than through the conscientious debates of the legislative branch. Those with political power or who are able to afford the cost of political favors can oft times be excluded from the law while those without who can't afford it must suffer the consequences of a law that causes harm. Such is what we see in this huge 1600+ page monstrosity of a law that is fallaciously entitled the "Affordable Care Act" and more commonly known as Obamacare. It may have a well meaning spirit, but its letter is malicious and malignant. It is the letter of this law that will be enforced and as this happens its spirit vanishes into the ethers as a dystopian society sprouts into being.

The federal government has attempted to shut down some of its more innocuous aspects supposedly over the attempt to defund the implementation of this bill. The executive branch has failed miserably in its attempts to deny the public certain services (that should cost it extremely little to no money to provide) and to point the finger of blame at a certain political party. Many people now understand what this is really all about and that closing national monuments and parks is no way to go about solving this problem. It is my hope that those in the political class who are making a stand against funding Obamacare will take it one step further and repeal the entire law.

Yet I don't hold much hope that this will happen. There are powerful interests that want this law implemented no matter the consequences. As many have discovered and as I have said from the beginning it is the insurance companies who benefit greatly from this law, not the common folk. Think about it for a moment, how much better off would you be if you could get the federal government to mandate that everyone had to own the product or buy the service that you offer? With premiums going through the roof and the government forcing all to either buy the insurance or get fined, many will soon find that they will have much less cash to spend on things like food, rent, gas for the car, clothes, and other little necessities of life. Some may find they won't be able to afford such luxuries as new shoes for their kids. Some may have to leave their nicer homes in favor of more affordable abodes. Some may find they just can't afford to be alive after they are fired or reduced to part time labor all for the sake of a few insurance company executives whose companies' profits needed to be boosted by law.

Someday this law may indeed go into effect, and it may be someday soon. When this happens the people need to disobey. They need to simply not sign up for the mandated insurance. They need to simply say "no." When this happens they need to refuse to pay the fines. They need to, whenever possible, dare the establishment to come arrest them. They need to, in effect, grow a pair. When enough of the productive in society are threatened by government, something has to give. When this happens, it is my hope that the enforcers will side with the people who produce, not with the criminal, parasitic government. Bad law should not be enforced. When the letter of the law is harmful it should be judged illegitimate. No law that does such harm should be implemented in a free society, but if it is than it will be time for the people to stand and push back against it.

If you enjoy my writings, please visit szandorblestman.com to make a donation.

Below is a list of all my works available at smashwords.com. Please help me by purchasing one or more of my ebooks and writing favorable reviews if you like them so that others might also find and enjoy them.

Caged in America: A Collection of Essays Celebrating Freedom. By Szandor Blestman

Ron Paul's Wisdom, A Layman's Perspective. A Collection of Opinion Editorials. By Szandor Blestman

Galaxium. A screenplay By Matthew Ballotti

The Colors of Elberia; book 1 of The Black Blade Trilogy. By Matthew Ballotti

The Legacy of the Tareks; book 2 of The Black Blade Trilogy. By Matthew Ballotti

The Power of the Tech; book 3 of The Black Blade Trilogy. By Matthew Ballotti

The Edge of Sanity. By Matthew Ballotti

The Ouijiers By Matthew Ballotti

Is the Liberty Movement Delaying a Syrian Conflict?

So, a war looms with Syria and I find myself having the same conversations with so called progressives about why we shouldn't attack Syria as I had ten years ago with so called conservatives as to why we shouldn't attack Iraq. I would have never guessed that progressives and conservatives were so alike. They like to think of themselves as different parts of the political spectrum, but when it comes to war it appears they are both equally easy to lie to and fool. War is ok as long as it's their side that's promulgating it. It's ok as long as it's their respectables with their suits and ties making the case and telling the lies.

I suppose I could be wrong. One side or the other might be slightly easier to fool. It certainly seems to me that the Bush administration went to greater lengths to try to hide their lies and deceptions. Perhaps the Obama administration saw how well Bush was able to manipulate the emotions of his followers and figured it would be even easier to pull the heart strings of their own blind followers who are known for their bleeding hearts. After all, human nature makes it extremely hard to even admit that you could be wrong, as I just did above, and after all the Obama cheerleading and he's going to save the world and the hope and change thing and the peace thing, well any war he might want to get involved in must be justified, right? I think perhaps the Obama administration underestimated their followers. There's lots of people out there actually thinking these days and it's gotten much harder to use the same old excuses that have been used in the past. Jon Stewart does a wonderful job exposing this through his own special brand of comedy in this clip.

When you think about it, it's really not so surprising that things are the way they are. No one likes to admit that they're wrong. No one likes to admit that they backed a war mongering tyrant. Most people will quietly change their positions and go on with their lives as if they never did back him. Those who were the loudest and most out front about backing such a person are more likely to defend him to the point of absurdity. The human ego can be a powerful force when it comes to one's behavior, and yet it seems so fragile that a simple admission of just the possibility of being wrong can shatter it. Well, when it comes to war and dropping bombs, more than just egos are at stake, the very lives of many innocents are at risk. More and more people are putting their egos aside and taking up the call to protest any military intervention anywhere.

Public pressure has caused the Obama administration to cave on the issue of unilaterally launching a military strike without first seeking congressional approval. This public pressure is due, at least in part, to the freedom movement. It is due, at least in part, to the wisdom of the non aggression principle set forth in libertarian philosophy. It is due, at least in part, to the ideas and principles set forth in the individualist model of governance as opposed to the collectivist model. It is due, at least in part, to a desire to move forward into a new era of decentralization where power is put into the hands of ordinary individuals rather than backward into an era where power was centralized in the hands of a few wealthy royals. And while the powers that be might try to ignore such pressure and their mainstream media may try to create a perception that such pressure doesn't exist or is far less significant than it truly is, such forms of denial can't hold back the waters of reality indefinitely. Sooner or later, attention will have to be paid to the grassroots or the rest of the plant will wither and die.

Those of us with a freedom and libertarian mindset have said for decades that war is wrong. We've pointed out the suffering of innocents. We've pointed out that wars are expensive and a drain on the economy, not a boom to them. Only a very few corporate and banking entities profit from war. We've pointed out the dangers and expense of trying to maintain an empire. With the long, drawn out engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan, many people are beginning to agree. We have too many conflicts going on right now. We don't need to buy into another one.

Congress is due to vote on the resolution to intercede militarily in the Syrian civil war. Obama has intimated that his administration will carry out strikes against the Syrian regime regardless of how congress votes. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. It will be interesting to see if the Obama administration will be able to finagle the votes it needs from congress to rubber stamp his plans. It will be interesting to see if he does, indeed, go through with a military strike should he fail to get the votes. It will be interesting to see if he is somehow able to save face, or if he becomes a pariah among world leaders. The stakes are very high in this international game of centralization and control. The problem is they are playing with innocent lives they don't own and the rest of free humanity needs to remind them of this fact.

The ruling elite want this conflict. They want to entangle the United States of America in another Vietnam type quagmire. If that's not obvious than nothing is. I'm not exactly sure why, but there have been hints left in many places and miles long paper trails which need to be seriously considered and investigated. A very few wealthy elite run the world for their own amusement and profit. A very few well hidden individuals are too influential for their own good, let alone for humanity's good.

The ruling elite like to pretend that they can do what they want and it doesn't matter what the rest of the world thinks. They like to think they can hide behind their elite political puppets. They like to think their political puppets will take the heat when things go wrong and that they will still get what they want. That's changing. The real masters are being exposed. More and more people are beginning to see the men behind the curtains. It began with the bailouts when people began to question the Federal Reserve and it continues today with people questioning government sources more than ever, asking and investigating "cui bono?" more and more, and questioning the motivations of those who pound the war drums the loudest. We need to keep the pressure up and show just how frightened of the light the ruling elite truly are.

If you enjoy my writings, please visit szandorblestman.com to make a donation.

Below is a list of all my works available at smashwords.com. Please help me by purchasing one or more of my ebooks and writing favorable reviews if you like them so that others might also find and enjoy them.

Caged in America: A Collection of Essays Celebrating Freedom. By Szandor Blestman

Ron Paul's Wisdom, A Layman's Perspective. A Collection of Opinion Editorials. By Szandor Blestman

Galaxium. A screenplay By Matthew Ballotti

The Colors of Elberia; book 1 of The Black Blade Trilogy. By Matthew Ballotti

The Legacy of the Tareks; book 2 of The Black Blade Trilogy. By Matthew Ballotti

The Power of the Tech; book 3 of The Black Blade Trilogy. By Matthew Ballotti

The Edge of Sanity. By Matthew Ballotti

The Ouijiers By Matthew Ballotti

What Does it Mean to Wake Up When Life is Just a Dream?

These days, I hear more and more about how people are waking up. I even write about it. When I write about "waking up" I'm trying to convey the concept of becoming aware of hidden reasons for why reality is the way it is. I'm trying to get people to look behind the illusions and the curtains and discover the truth to the manipulations that are really going on. But what if there is more to even that truth than meets the eye? What if even the manipulators are being manipulated? What if those who are creating the illusions are merely an illusion in and of themselves? What if we are stepping out of one cave only to find ourselves in another? The possibilities are mind boggling.

I don't usually talk about my dreams in my blog posts. I don't mean the dreams I have for mankind and for living in a peaceful, prosperous, free society, I mean the dreams I have while I'm sleeping. A few nights ago I had quite an interesting dream. In fact, I found it interesting enough that I thought I might like to share it with the world.

In my dream, I was asleep. There was a powerful entity that was trying to wake me. At first I didn't know why he (it was a male presence) was trying to wake me, but he was not being at all pleasant about it. As I began to become more aware of what was happening, I began to feel an evil intent oozing from this entity who was trying to awaken me. He began slapping me and when I didn't respond he started slamming my body around. He then laid me out and made the whole world shake around me. This frightened me more than anything else he had done to me.

Still, I refused to wake up in my dream. Rather, I refused to move and let this being know I had awoken. You see, I suddenly realized that this being was trying to make me get up and run. I instinctively knew that this evil entity was planning on using my movement as an excuse to kill me should I try to make a break for it. Although every fiber in my body wanted to bolt, I fought with all my might to remain still and make the entity believe that I was still asleep. Finally, frustrated that his efforts hadn't worked, the being assaulting me took a baseball bat and started swinging it at my face. I didn't flinch, aware that as long as I didn't move there was a force protecting me from this being's malice. The bat was stopping inches from my face as he swung again and again. Still I did not move. It was at this point I awoke into this three dimensional reality and found myself laying in my bed.

I have bizarre dreams quite often, but usually I don't pay that much attention to them. I was unusually disturbed by this one and felt it was trying to tell me something, but I wasn't sure what. The imagery is rather obvious, and yet what is the meaning? Am I being warned to shut up? Am I being warned to not let them know I am awake, to make them think I'm still asleep? Or am I being told that I'm not actually awake yet, that though I might think I've awakened to some ubiquitous truth, there's a deeper reality which I am not aware of yet? It is my wont to ponder such difficult questions.

Here's a scary thought, what if certain elements within the NSA can tap into the dreams of individuals and observe them, or even alter them? That sounds extremely paranoid, but then a few years back it sounded extremely paranoid to ask what if a government agency was listening to all phone calls and other communications around the world. This is the stuff that science fiction is made of, but then how much of what we have now was just science fiction a mere decade ago? Is any idea really all that crazy anymore? Maybe we should all start taking crazy sounding ideas a little more seriously and start examining evidence with more open minds rather than being fooled into believing that dancing shadows on the wall are reality because that's more convenient, or less scary to think about, or more emotionally comforting, or for whatever reason.

What if life is just a dream, as the childhood song claims? Could we all just be characters in some theater created by someone else's mind? Could our actions and behaviors all be controlled by what someone else's subconscious determines it wants from us? What would happen then if someone woke up in that dream? What if that someone declared he was a sovereign individual, that it was he who owned his own body and not the dreamer? What if that someone decided to control his own actions and behaviors instead of letting some unseen dreamer do it?

What if that someone was you? Would you observe others in the dream still letting their lives and fortunes be determined by unseen forces? Would you try to wake them, or would you just go about your business knowing that you are free and not caring about the others? Since you would still have to interact within the dream, how would you go about changing things so that you could assert more control? Would you try to let the dreamer know you were awake, or would you just go about your life and hope he never noticed?

What if the dreamer discovered you? What if he wanted to prevent you from trying to wake others? If something was protecting you, would you stay down and let him try to break through it, or would you take a risk, get up and run hoping you'd be able to get away and warn others? That's the risk taken by those who blow the whistle and tell the truth, and those in control of the dreams of this world have made their lives nightmares.

What happens when the dreamer loses control of the dream? What happens when he wakes up? Do the characters in the dream disappear into some netherworld of unending emptiness, or do they find themselves free to create the type of world they want to see? Do they at that point become collective dreamers, each with his or her own goals and purpose? What if we are all connected, woven into the fabric of a dream, each with the power and capacity to change the world, and we just don't realize it?

What does it mean to wake up when life is just a dream?

If you enjoy my writings, please visit szandorblestman.com to make a donation.

Below is a list of all my works available at smashwords.com. Please help me by purchasing one or more of my ebooks and writing favorable reviews if you like them so that others might also find and enjoy them.

Caged in America: A Collection of Essays Celebrating Freedom. By Szandor Blestman

Ron Paul's Wisdom, A Layman's Perspective. A Collection of Opinion Editorials. By Szandor Blestman

Galaxium. A screenplay By Matthew Ballotti

The Colors of Elberia; book 1 of The Black Blade Trilogy. By Matthew Ballotti

The Legacy of the Tareks; book 2 of The Black Blade Trilogy. By Matthew Ballotti

The Power of the Tech; book 3 of The Black Blade Trilogy. By Matthew Ballotti

The Edge of Sanity.  By Matthew Ballotti

The Ouijiers By Matthew Ballotti

Obama's Tyranny Against the Media

Back in 1987 I graduated from a night school course in digital electronics from the DeVry Institute of Technology which had a campus in Lombard, IL at the time. While attending night school in the two years prior I had a chance to talk with a couple of technicians who worked for AT&T at the time. They were continuing their education which was being paid for by their company because technology back at the time was in a state of flux and they needed to keep up with the latest as AT&T was transitioning from old relay style switches to digital circuitry. Seems they're always transitioning from something to something newer.

I had occasion at the time, perhaps as early as 1985, to discuss with these gentlemen some of the more interesting aspects of their jobs. On at least one occasion that I can remember I was told of a switching room in the Oakbrook facility where one of the federal alphabet agencies kept some equipment. I was told this equipment could listen in on any phone conversation passing through that facility, and that facility handled millions of calls at least monthly, if not weekly or daily. They might not have called it PRISM back then, but the idea was very similar. At the time, I didn't think much about it. I thought it was strange that the feds might want to cast such a wide net, but I had other things to worry about. I was a new father trying to take care of a family and was on my way to getting a good paying job in the lucrative field of circuit board repair. I didn't give much thought to the implications of what I heard for myself or my children or the future of this nation.

Think about that for a second. It was 1987 at the latest. Ronald Reagan was still president. The Internet was not yet available to the general public. PCs were just barely making inroads into the marketplace. There were very few in private homes. Cutting edge technology at the time would have been something like a 10 megabyte hard drive and 250K RAM. Running computer programs often times meant swapping out floppy disks quite often. Windows 3.1 hadn't even hit the market yet. People were still complaining about DOS. 9/11 was years away. Waco and Ruby Ridge were just small dots on the map no one had ever heard of. Already, 26 years ago, the seeds for the current police state were being planted.

There I was, nobody special, just some guy looking to make a better life for myself, and I'm exposed by circumstance to a story that would some 26 years later become one of the most talked about stories of the day. I have to wonder, why wouldn't some reporter have heard about this? I knew about it and I was just a classmate with some low level technician. It seems to me that some reporter somewhere was friends with someone higher up at AT&T who should have known about this. How has this remained so quiet for so long? Why wasn't this broadcast far and wide decades ago?

People talk. The alphabet agencies install their equipment in a private company and people have to know. They have to tell the people who repair the equipment to leave it alone. They have to warn the low level technicians not to touch anything that belongs to them. Those people aren't going to remain silent. They have lives. They go out drinking with their buddies on the weekends. They talk to their spouses at night and let them know how their day went. They tell people what they know. They aren't out to leak government secrets. They aren't trying to expose government wrong doing or abuse of power. They are simply explaining an aspect of their work that they have to deal with. It has never been a huge secret. It seems to me that just about everyone has known for a very long time now that the government has been listening, that they've been overreaching. Why did they wait so long to report it and to bring the debate to the public square?

One might wonder what would have happened if this had been seriously reported on 26 years ago. Would that have stymied the oppressive surveillance state? Would there have been arrests made and precedent setting court rulings? Would our privacy have been honored by government agencies? Would we be safer now and feel more secure that our rights were being respected, or would terrorists have managed to hatch secret plots that would have killed most of us? It's all just speculation because it wasn't reported on enough to bring it to the forefront of American consciousness all those years ago.

So why now? Because Edward Snowden publicly spoke out? Who is Edward Snowden anyway? Is he any more credible than my classmate who told me all those years ago about what he'd seen? Could my classmate be more credible since he was not involved with a government spying agency, he was talking to someone who was not involved (at the time) with any news organization and he had no way of knowing his revelations would come out in some obscure blog some 26 years later? Blogging wasn't even a remote concept back then. Is this some sort of strange psychological operation put into motion to get the American public to accept NSA spying as a normal fact of life? Are the powers that be desperately trying to gain the ability to openly rule the world instead of having to do it from behind the scenes? Is there something else going on that they don't want us talking about so they bring this to the forefront of our national debate? I don't have the answers to these questions and apparently the mainstream media remains reluctant to investigate such matters, but it seems to me that there's more here than meets the eye.

Perhaps the so called mainstream media has finally started to pay attention to this story because it has finally, for them, come home to roost. It wasn't too long ago that it was revealed the NSA has been spying on news agencies. It has been spying on specific news reporters. It has been intercepting and reading emails and such. Now, suddenly, the news agencies are paying attention. Did they think they were going to be immune to the spying? Did they think that if they kept quiet about it and just went along with what the government wanted they'd be able to keep operating like it was business as usual? Does that sound maybe a bit to conspiratorial to you?

Even in my own experiences I have come to see just how deep this spying goes. In the last half a year or so, I have had trouble with my Internet connection every time I try to publish one of these articles. When I go to add pictures to the article, suddenly I can't access my server and the connection times out. When I called my web hosting service they told me that the server was fine, that the connection was being interrupted somewhere between the server and my computer. I will wait a half hour or so, and suddenly there is no problem. This has yet to prevent me from publishing an article, but who knows what the future holds? Are they watching us? What other conclusion am I supposed to draw? I'm just a small time blogger expressing a freedom oriented opinion. I am peaceful and have never advocated violence. Why should they watch me? I pose no threat to anyone, but they seem to think I do. They are wasting my time and your tax dollars. It needs to end. Our right to privacy needs to be honored.

Well that's nothing compared to Michael Hastings' death. Here was a reporter with a long history of taking on the establishment who had apparently been in touch with some other news sources and was claiming to be pursuing a huge breakthrough story. Strange how he should somehow end up dead not long after, before he could make his huge story public. I wonder what he found. Strange, too, that he should die in such a bizarre manner. Well, I suppose dying in a car accident isn't so strange, but the way in which this car accident took place, it's almost as if they wanted people to believe he was murdered. It's as if someone was sending a message to other journalists, a message like "if you don't want to end up dead, you'd better not stick your nose where it doesn't belong." I know it's just speculation, but it's kind of like the old Soviet Union where reporters would mysteriously die just as they were about to expose some kind of ongoing government misdeeds. Coincidence? I think not. There's been an awful lot of "coincidences" lately that keep moving neocon and new world order agendas forward.

The question that I ask when I hear about something like what happened to Michael Hastings is, "Who benefits?" It's a question that not enough reporters ask anymore. Who benefits from Michael Hastings' death? If the answer is no one, then I would be more inclined to believe that it was, indeed, an accident. If the answer is someone, but that someone didn't have the means or the motivation to create such an accident, then I would still be inclined to believe that it was an accident. If the answer is someone else, and that someone else does have the means and the motivation to create such an accident, then things start to look a little suspicious to me. If what is said about Michael Hastings is true and he was about to break a huge story about spying on Americans, and I have no reason to doubt that it is true, then the intelligence gathering agencies within the United States of America would benefit from his death and had the means and the motivation to create a fatal accident for Michael Hastings.

So yes, I am a little conspiratorial. I'm a little tired of people claiming that conspiracies don't exist. I'm a little tired of hearing people say those who believe in conspiracy theories are crazy nut jobs in tinfoil hats. I'm especially a little tired of people saying conspiracy theories involving government should be treated with derision and not investigated. Of course conspiracies happen, do you really think things like political assassinations, bombings, planes flying into buildings, etc. happen without two or more people plotting them? Do you really think that elements within the government wouldn't plot to increase their power and influence? Does it make someone crazy simply because they ask "who benefits?" Does it make someone crazy because they can see the obvious answer to that question and they point it out even though it might destroy the childlike fantasy we have that government is good and watches over us, or are so called "conspiracy theorists" called crazy simply because so many don't want to face the reality that we've been had by the establishment and we are no longer free and independent as we were meant to be?

The Obama administration has taken to tyrannizing the media. They obviously don't want the truth of what some agencies in the federal government have been doing to come out, especially the spy agencies. They have a war on whistleblowers going on and now they have extended that war to the media. How long before that war is extended even further, to maybe anyone who says anything bad about any federal government agency? How long until we are living in the dystopia that is George Orwell's "1984?" Some would say we're already living it, and I would tend to agree.

This op/ed piece was not approved by the ministry of validated opinions.

If you enjoy my writings, please visit szandorblestman.com to make a donation.

Below is a list of all my works available at smashwords.com. Please help me by purchasing one or more of my ebooks and writing favorable reviews if you like them so that others might also find and enjoy them.

Caged in America: A Collection of Essays Celebrating Freedom. By Szandor Blestman

Ron Paul's Wisdom, A Layman's Perspective. A Collection of Opinion Editorials. By Szandor Blestman

Galaxium. A screenplay By Matthew Ballotti

The Colors of Elberia; book 1 of The Black Blade Trilogy. By Matthew Ballotti

The Legacy of the Tareks; book 2 of The Black Blade Trilogy. By Matthew Ballotti

The Power of the Tech; book 3 of The Black Blade Trilogy. By Matthew Ballotti

The Edge of Sanity. By Matthew Ballotti

The Ouijiers By Matthew Ballotti

Free Markets, Central Planning and the Family Budget

Recently a Facebook friend of mine commented on a story about austerity not working and made a statement to the effect that therefore Hayek was wrong and Keynes was right. I was quick to race to the defense of Hayek and free markets. I pointed out that we haven't had a truly free market ever and that Keynesian policies had been in place since before Keynes even became a famous economist. I told him that if he was going to give Keynesianism credit for all the good that's come from economic policy, he needed to blame it for all the bad repercussions also. We haven't been vacillating between Keynesianism and free markets, we've been steadily but incrementally becoming more and more a Keynesian economy since at least the inception of the Federal Reserve and the institutionalizing of a fiat fractional reserve central banking system.

Since my friend leans toward the liberal side of things, I even included some quotes from Hayek to show he was firmly against austerity measures. It seems Hayek was not the cold hearted libertarian many historians paint him as, nor was he as staunch in his belief of the free market's ability to take care of every humane need as some might suggest. Of course, being that he was in academia and therefore likely heavily influenced by bureaucracies of some form or another, seeing him acquiesce to some points is almost to be expected. If he hadn't, I wonder if history would even remember him at all. But I digress.

Not long after airing my defense of Hayek, I read an article that contained an explanation of why the government's budget is not like a household budget, said that comparing the two was fallacious and offered an opinion as to why the deficit is a good thing. These explanations even seemed to make sense and I could see why the uninitiated would be easily fooled by the reasoning. It said, in short, that the government needed to keep spending up so that the economy wouldn't go into a death spiral, so that unemployed people could continue to collect unemployment and spend money at the grocery store so that grocers didn't go out of business, and basically to keep things going until the private sector got back on its feet. It needed to do this even if it had to borrow far beyond its limits and that eventually the deficit would be paid back.

This got me to thinking. I have used the household budget example in the past, particularly when talking about debt and the fact that piling on debt upon debt does not get one out of debt, it gets one deeper in debt. The author of that article dismissed that argument out of hand because, well, government debt and your personal debt are two different animals, to coin a phrase. So, I wondered, where is the disconnect? Perhaps these economies of scale aren't understood not because the comparison is invalid, but because it is a case of the seen versus the unseen. Moral issues notwithstanding, this is another area where it takes a little more critical thinking and a little imagination to understand what has never been.

What is it that we've never seen? Well, for one thing, I don't think in the history of the world we've ever seen a truly free market, except perhaps for a time in the so far distant past that it is long forgotten and archeologists find it hard to fathom. There's almost always been some kind of government intervention into the market system where someone powerful has used that power to bully people into doing things their way, usually revolving around taxes or the form of currency used to make transactions or some such thing. It is therefore fallacious to blame free markets for market failures. A closer look at failures will likely show that the intervention itself is to blame, either through corruption of the supposed objective of the intervention, through abuse of power that comes when intervention is turned to law, or through unintended consequences that inevitably occur when such interventions take place. What we've never seen is the power we as individuals would have to exercise if we lived in a truly voluntary society with a truly free market economy.

To demonstrate this, I will use the well worn example of the family budget versus the government's budget, only this time I'm going to try to put a little twist on it. Let's begin by looking at the family budget as it exists in this reality, in modern times. There are a few things you're going to need money for every month. The top priorities are of course going to be housing such as mortgage or rent, food, utilities such as electricity, heat, and maybe water and sewer, communications such as telephones and Internet access, transportation expenses such as gasoline, car payment, and automobile maintenance, insurance payments, etc. All these are your responsibility. It's up to you to figure out which is most important to pay and how much you will need every month to pay these things.

What this means is that you have the power to determine your lifestyle. Maybe you want the bigger, fancier home, so you have to drive a smaller car, or a used one. Maybe you don't need or want a large home, so you get a smaller one or rent so that you can afford the nicer car. Maybe clothes are important so you give up something to afford the really nice name brand suits. Maybe you want the latest in electronics, or the best food, or whatever, so you live more frugally in one area so that you can splurge in another. Maybe you just want to save your money so you have a nest egg so you live more frugally in all areas. The point is, it's your decision. You decide how the budget will work. You also decide which companies you want to do business with and which you don't. This gives you quite a bit of power as companies compete to give you the best deal so that they can obtain the dollar you budgeted for their product.

Of course, if you run a business, budget priorities are different from that of a household, but the same principles hold true. It's your business, your decisions to make. Whether you succeed or fail depends on your ability to determine how much money will be coming in, where the money is best spent to help increase or maintain profit levels, and how well you can adapt to competition in a changing market. It also depends on how happy you can keep your customers so that they keep coming back.

When government creates a budget, they don't have to worry about earning the money they get. They don't have to worry about keeping customers happy. They claim and have the authority to tax. They get their money no matter what. Why should they care if you're happy or not? If you don't pay your taxes you will lose your home, or your business, and they will sell it for the taxes you owe. They will use force to make it so, if necessary. You would think that would make government budgets the easiest to manage, for they should know how much they'll be getting year after year and how much they need to spend. Yet, somehow, it always seems like governments have the most difficult time sticking to a budget. It seems they just can't stand the thought of sticking to constraints. No matter how much money flows into their coffers, it never seems to be enough.

Now, let's suppose for a minute that government was unable to just extort your money in the form of taxes and needed to compete against other organizations offering the same services they offer. In this case, every cent you ever earned would be yours to decide what to do with. All of a sudden you'd find yourself faced with more decisions to make and you'd have to think quite a bit more about what's important to you. On the national level, you'd have to think about how much each month (or year) you'd like to spend on things like the armed forces, the National Security Agency (NSA), the Transportation Safety Administration (TSA), and a myriad of other national agencies that every year clamor for more tax dollars and bigger budgets claiming they need more to do their jobs properly.

On a more local level you'd have to think about how much per month you'd want to pay for education services, both for your family and your community, for police services, fire protection services, roads, libraries, parks, etc. Some of you would have to think about things like water, sewer and garbage services while others already have private wells and septic systems and a private company to haul away garbage. Yes, it might be a little more work. You might have to plan a little more for your children's future. You might even have to get a little more involved with your community and talk to your neighbors a little more often. You might have to take time to do some actual organizing or set up alternative organizations to field competing ideas. But just think what you could do with all the money you'd have if you didn't have to pay property taxes. Just think of the good you could do if you and others decided how that money would best be spent rather than a bunch of control freak politicians.

Some people do this partially anyway. People already shop for a home in a neighborhood with good schools, some choosing to pay more in taxes because of the school district. Some people choose to dish out additional money to send their kids to private schools. A few may look for a neighborhood with good policing criteria, or may put out the extra money to live in a gated community. People donate freely to police and fireman benevolence charities. I remember once when the fireworks event in a community I lived in was going to be cancelled, but it went on that year better than ever because the park district asked for donations by putting jars out in the neighborhood grocery stores and people gave freely to the cause.

Can you see the point I'm trying to make by using the example of the family budget? This all isn't merely about spending money, it's about power. It's about your power to decide what your future will look like. It's about taking your power away from you and entrusting it with someone else. It's about trying to make you believe that you're entrusting that power to some nice, well meaning politician when, in fact, that politician is most likely lying to you and the real power resides in the corporations paying for the politician's campaign. When you give away your power to a group of bureaucrats, whether those bureaucrats live in your neighborhood or in Washington, DC, your future is at least partially being decided by them. It should be obvious by now that they don't have the same vision of the future that you have. It should be obvious that their priorities are quite a bit different from yours. In fact, judging by the way things are going these days, it seems to me that they are the paranoid, delusional ones, not the common folk. It seems that the crazy people have all ended up in so called leadership positions and the sane folk are too frightened of them to do anything except obey.

This is how they really maintain control, not through politics, not through political actions, not through their ordinances, not through their regulations and oversights, not through the laws they pass, but through economic means. Through the budget. Through not only telling you how much you should be spending on certain things, but by making you to pay that much through bullying and force of law. Through keeping you from even thinking that perhaps you should have a say in such matters. Through making you believe that they know better than you how to spend your money. Through making you acquiesce to their theft of your earnings. They are the biggest bullies of all. They are the mob. If you were able to withdraw not only your consent to be ruled, but your funding of their efforts to enslave you without fear of retribution, then it would be they who would have to change their way of thinking or suffer dire consequences. As it is right now you are the one who has to think the way they want you to think or you will suffer at their hands. This is what fundamentally needs to change.

It's strange to think that usually I'm the one who's trying to simplify things. Usually I'm the one who's pointing out the obvious. When it comes to budgeting, I think it needs to become a little more complicated for the common folk. For too long we have shunned our responsibilities. For too long we have delegated our power to politicians just so we wouldn't have to think too much. If we want freedom, we will have to take responsibility for our actions, and for our economy. We will have to claim personal responsibility for our spending practices and will be expected to use this power to hold poorly run companies accountable for their foibles. Then we will live in a truly voluntary society.

I cannot guarantee that a true free market society would be a better society, but evidence of past performance suggests it would certainly be a more prosperous one. I cannot guarantee that all our problems would be fixed by a free market economy, but it certainly makes sense that a myriad of solutions being tried at the same time is more likely to find the best solutions than any one size fits all solution based on force that government agencies might come up with. I don't promise that having a free market would lead to utopia because I am not a politician and I don't make promises that I don't intend to keep like they do. I simply believe that if we want to make a more fair and honest world we need to stop making excuses for and allowing practices akin to theft and extortion at any level, for any reason. After all, how can we have a fair and honest world when the basic fundamentals of our governing systems rely on unfair and dishonest principles?

If you enjoy my writings, please visit szandorblestman.com to make a donation.

Below is a list of all my works available at smashwords.com. Please help me by purchasing one or more of my ebooks and writing favorable reviews if you like them so that others might also find and enjoy them.

Caged in America: A Collection of Essays Celebrating Freedom. By Szandor Blestman

Ron Paul's Wisdom, A Layman's Perspective. A Collection of Opinion Editorials. By Szandor Blestman

Galaxium. A screenplay By Matthew Ballotti

The Colors of Elberia; book 1 of The Black Blade Trilogy. By Matthew Ballotti

The Legacy of the Tareks; book 2 of The Black Blade Trilogy. By Matthew Ballotti

The Power of the Tech; book 3 of The Black Blade Trilogy. By Matthew Ballotti

The Edge of Sanity. By Matthew Ballotti

The Ouijiers By Matthew Ballotti