On Monday, Sept 28, Michael Moore spoke at George Washington University about his new film, Capitalism: A Love Story.  One of the leaders of the GWU Liberty Society, Chad Swarthout (who is an active member of Students For Liberty, formerly a leader in the London School of Economics Hayek Society while studying abroad, leader in the DC Forum for Freedom, and all around great guy), managed to get up and question Michael Moore.  Focusing on the fact that most of the problems with the current US economic system being a result of government intervention and excessive influences of personal preferences in government regulation, Chad got Michael Moore to admit that the U.S. is not a free market, and point out that if the government doesn’t represent the people, maybe we just shouldn’t give the government so much power.

That’s right, Bureacrash has teamed up with Students For Liberty to provide resources for students and student groups dedicated to liberty to make the message of liberty seen and heard on college campuses!  Check it out on SFL’s new Student Protests page!  These resources include:

• Handbook on how to organize student protests for liberty
• Access to resources like shirts, flyers, and pamphlets for student protests
• Mini-grants to student groups to help them host protests for liberty
• Listing of past and upcoming protests students are holding around the country

The voice of liberty is being heard on campuses not only in the U.S., but all over the world!  These resources will help make that voice louder!  Organize a student protest on your campus today and let us know about it so SFL and Bureaucrash can provide you with the resources you need to make it succeed!  Look out for updates throughout the academic year both here and at SFL’s site to learn how these resources are being used and what some of the best student protests look like.

Lee Doren, the Crasher-in-Chief of Bureaucrash, had been networking with Crashers from all over the country to arrive at Freedom Plaza before the main event.  Not only did these members attend the event, but at 8:00am there were already tens of thousands of people there to join us.  In fact, 200 Bureaucrash t-shirts that Lee brought to Freedom Plaza were gone in under 30 min.  The Plaza was so packed that getting our cameramen to the stage before Lee spoke was almost impossible.

Right before Lee was to speak before the enormous crowd at Freedom Plaza, the Park service came and told the crowd that we needed to start the march down Pennsylvania Avenue 1 hour early because we had hit capacity.  Lee was told to run through the crowd marching down Pennsylvania Avenue to speak on the Capitol.  Around Noon, Lee was introduced to the massive crowd, some estimated at around one million people, where he gave his speech.

To date, this was Bureaucrash’s largest event, as well as the largest limited government rally in American history.

http://gallery.me.com/fgrahamo#100905

http://gallery.me.com/fgrahamo#100905

Brian Crowley

Click To Play

Bruce Walker

Click To Play

Jan Narveson

Click To Play

Kerry Howley

Click To Play

Martin Masse

Click To Play

Scott Reid

Click To Play

Today, activists all across America converged on their local congressional districts, to encourage them to vote against socialized medicine. Bureaucrash visited the office of Senator Jim Webb. A lot of other groups were there, including FreedomWorks, the Tea Party Patriots and Americans for Prosperity, on top plenty of private citizens who showed up independently. I was pleased with the turnout, especially for lunchtime on a weekday. We got some good video which will be up as soon as we finish editing the good bits together. We were also filmed by the local news, so if you live in the Arlington area, check us out tonight.

Today, we got a huge stack of boxes containing distilled freedom in garment form. Looks like I’m going to have my hands full over the next few days!

The T-shirts in the new shipment are all screen-printed. The men’s are 100% preshrunk cotton (manufactured by Gildan) and the women’s are 100% combed cotton (manufactured by American Apparel). The hoodies are 50% cotton, 50% polyester (manufactured by Jerzees).

This has been in the works for a while and it feels good to see it come to fruition.

Previous generations had clear struggles to overcome. The greatest generation overcame Nazism and Fascism. The civil rights movement fought draconian laws that excluded entire segments of the population from participating in the economy. Now, with Communism defeated, how does a citizen progress? Well, if you’re on the political Left, you simply fight a gas that all humans exhale and force millions to believe that our very existence on this Planet is evil. That way the struggle is endless because Utopia is the ultimate goal.

Sadly, many people around the world who consider themselves environmentalists never actually read, or listen to, the ideas spouted by those who currently lead the green movement. While, most people want clean air and water, few in the “compassionate majority” would support what the radical minority seeks to accomplish. In fact, I just read an editorial that articulates the minority viewpoint quite well, “Taking Shorter Showers Doesn’t Cut It: Why Personal Change Does Not Equal Political Change,” by Derrick Jensen, Orion Magazine. posted July 13, 2009.

Unlike Carol Browner and others currently in power, Jensen does not hide his true intentions; although his views still permeate the green profession. Notably, Jensen begins his editorial by equating environmentalism with the struggle against Nazism and Fascism:

Would any sane person think dumpster diving would have stopped Hitler, or that composting would have ended slavery or brought about the eight-hour workday, or that chopping wood and carrying water would have gotten people out of Tsarist prisons, or that dancing naked around a fire would have helped put in place the Voting Rights Act of 1957 or the Civil Rights Act of 1964? Then why now, with all the world at stake, do so many people retreat into these entirely personal “solutions”?

It take someone with enormous intellectual depth to analogize the fight against throwing people in gas chambers to the fight against SUV exhaust. Like I said earlier, if there is no evil to fight, and no struggle to overcome, simply invent one. Also, it is rather disturbing that Jensen implicitly supports the Communist Revolution by identifying with those who fought the Tsars. History has demonstrated that the Communists made the Tsars look like saints despite the Tsarist oppression.

However, like the Reds of old, the Greens of today require everyone to support their cause. Jensen articulates this viewpoint quite well:

“[I]f we avidly participate in the industrial economy—we may in the short term think we win because we may accumulate wealth, the marker of “success” in this culture. But we lose, because in doing so we give up our empathy, our animal humanity. And we really lose because industrial civilization is killing the planet, which means everyone loses. If we choose the “alternative” option of living more simply, thus causing less harm, but still not stopping the industrial economy from killing the planet, we may in the short term think we win because we get to feel pure, and we didn’t even have to give up all of our empathy (just enough to justify not stopping the horrors), but once again we really lose because industrial civilization is still killing the planet, which means everyone still loses. The third option, acting decisively to stop the industrial economy, is very scary for a number of reasons, including but not restricted to the fact that we’d lose some of the luxuries (like electricity) to which we’ve grown accustomed, and the fact that those in power might try to kill us if we seriously impede their ability to exploit the world—none of which alters the fact that it’s a better option than a dead planet. Any option is a better option than a dead planet.”

So, Jensen advocates remaking the entire economy, even calling electricity a “luxury.”  I am sure those siting in hospital beds around the country, who are alive today because of high-tech electrical machines, would appreciate knowing that environmentalists advocate limiting electricity.  Of course, Jensen’s argument is that  if we do not follow his lead, the apocalypse is on the horizon so those dying in hospitals should sacrifice for the good of humanity.

It has in all objective measures become a religion. But, unlike most religions, environmentalism is allowed in our public schools and citizens generally tolerate forced adherence to its tenets. Jensen concludes with the Nazi analogy to remove all doubt that he truly believes in the moral equivalence of Nazism and environmental degradation:

“The good news is that there are other options. We can follow the examples of brave activists who lived through the difficult times I mentioned—Nazi Germany, Tsarist Russia, antebellum United States—who did far more than manifest a form of moral purity; they actively opposed the injustices that surrounded them. We can follow the example of those who remembered that the role of an activist is not to navigate systems of oppressive power with as much integrity as possible, but rather to confront and take down those systems.”

Overall, it is extremely important that the public is aware of environmentalism’s true goals. It is not about saving the Environment. Instead, it is about rapidly changing everyone’s way of life and scaling back the prosperity that took thousands of years to create.

Since I am not a normal human being, the first thing I thought of when I heard California was issuing IOUs was Article I, Section 10 of the Constitution. The first paragraph reads as follows:

No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts; pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts, or grant any Title of Nobility.

Bringing out the important part, we read that “No State shall emit Bills of Credit.”

It seems pretty obvious that an IOU is a “bill of credit,” but I was curious as to whether the court system would agree. I investigated the Supreme Court rulings pertaining to the “bills of credit” clause. The definition of “bill of credit” as the courts understand it is established mostly in Craig v. Missouri, 29 U.S. 410 (1830). Later rulings refined the Craig ruling somewhat but it has not, as far as I could tell, been overturned.

The key elements in the Craig ruling are:

• There’s a difference between a “bill of credit” and something like a municipal bond. The difference is that “‘bills of credit’ signify a paper medium, intended to circulate between individuals, and between government and individuals, for the ordinary purposes of society.” The ban on “bills of credit” extends to any paper medium issued by a State government, for the purpose of common circulation.
• It doesn’t matter whether or not the “bills of credit” are given legal tender status.
• It is relevant whether the bills can be used to pay taxes or to pay employees, because this gives them currency and makes them likely to circulate as would paper money.
• Several historical examples of the dangers of “bills of credit” are given, including one example from 1690 Massachusetts where the government found itself unable to pay soldiers returning unexpectedly from a failed expedition against Canada and issued “bills of credit” instead of payment.

A later case, Houston & Texas Central R. Co. v. Texas, 177 U.S. 66 (1900), further defined the definition of a bill of credit and a municipality’s obligation with regards to payment when it engages in a contract with the private sector.

• A warrant on a State’s treasury assets isn’t a bill of credit if the money the warrant entitles its holder to is actually in the treasury
• If a municipality contracts for a municipal improvement (e.x. hiring a construction company to build a road) which it has the authority to do, and engages to pay what it owes in a bond which it doesn’t have the authority to issue, the municipality must instead pay in money.

This means that even if there’s a provision in California State employees’ contracts which allows California to pay them in IOUs, California still has to pay in cash, because that part of the contract is null and void.

California’s IOUs seem to pass all the tests for being Constitutionally forbidden “bills of credit.”  About the only argument I could see being made against them is that their denominations make them ill-suited for circulation, but by all accounts they’re circulating anyway, and California clearly intended them to circulate…I don’t know how else they expected their employees to eat.