One of the measurements in colonial times was a decline in the number of civil court cases. A quick search shows that the civil court case load in Rhode Island and Ohio has declined last year. Since many municipalities are cutting their police forces, we will see how this impacts the number of lawsuits and court cases in the future.

One of the few benefits from our economic downturn has been the resurgence of personal fiscal responsibilty. The following information comes from an article concerning credit card debt:

Credit card debt fell 4.1% to an average $4,591 during the quarter, according to credit bureau TransUnion. That marks the fifth straight quarter of declines and the first time credit card debt has dipped below $5,000 since the first quarter of 2002, according to TransUnion.

“Consumers continue to pay down their credit cards in response to economic uncertainty and high unemployment,” said Ezra Becker, director of consulting and strategy at TransUnion’s financial services unit.

Credit card delinquencies, which measure the percentage of debtors who are at least 90 days late in making payments, also continued to slide, to a mere 0.92% . That’s down a whopping 21.3% from the prior year and 17.1% from the prior quarter. Both are the biggest decreases since the recession began at the end of 2007, said Becker.

Our country was founded on Judeo-Christian religious beliefs that have been constantly under attack. However church attendance is on the rise this year which is another good sign for our future. I agree with Glenn Beck that our nation’s only remedy can be found through our faith in God.

David DeGerolamo

Date: Saturday, October 16, 2010
Time: 8:15 – 4:30
Where: North Raleigh Christian Academy – Raleigh, North Carolina
7300 Perry Creek Road, Raleigh
Price: $20/person (includes manual and lunch)  non-refundable
Come join us as we go back to the basics of the Constitution. Our founding fathers had a dream for this great country and its citizens. Unfortunately, many citizens are unfamiliar with the Constitution and its basic principles. As a result, we invited the National Center for Constitutional Studies (NCCS) to come teach us these founding principles. This event will be on Saturday, October 16, 2010 at the North Raleigh Christian Academy in Raleigh, North Carolina. 

Tickets can be purchased above in our online store at  http://makingofamerica-raleigh.com/

Contact us:
anna@makingofamerica-raleigh.com

The ticket price will be $20 per person (purchased online at the store), which will include a manual provided by NCCS and lunch. 

Tickets can be purchased above in our online store via paypal.
Who should attend: Families, young adults, and any other concerned citizen regardless of political affiliation that want to learn the principles of the Constitution, Bill of Rights, and the Amendments. 

Tickets should be purchased by September 1, 2010. This will allow us to finalize arrangements with NCCS and manuals.

Many people have attended the seminar all across the country and have shared their comments:

• In Bath, North Carolina a participant took the class because she was unsure of the roles of our governement. As a result, she has decided to run for County Commisioner and she urges everyone, young or old to take the course. She says “You will never view America in the same light.”
• In Libby, Montana, we were discussing the Founders’ principle that public officials only have the right to do what the people have legitimately authorized them to do, and the people can only authorize something that they have authority to do themselves. This principle alone, if followed, would eliminate over half of all proposed laws which are swamping our legislative bodies. One man came up to me during the break and said there are about ten state legislators in attendance and this is the first time they had heard such doctrine. It so impressed them that they were talking of having the whole legislature go through this course.
• In Tyler, Texas, an attorney came up to me on the break and enthusiastically said he had learned more about the Constitution today than during all three years of law school.
• A home schooling group in Scottsdale, Arizona suggested this be a regular course of study each year for their older students.
• A Baptist minister in Texas was so impressed with the Founders’ story that he invited us back later and we held the seminar in his church to which every member of the congregation was invited—and many of them came.
• The host for a seminar near Detroit, Michigan, was so impressed that he immediately booked another seminar for a month later and took advantage of the enthusiasm of those who attended the first to fill up the second.
• At a seminar in Boston, Massachusetts, seven different states were represented and from that several seminars were planned to be held in each of the other states.

• I wasn’t going to come but I am sure glad I did. I did not realize the answers to America’s problems were so simple.
• I have been floundering in my understanding of the events of the day because I did not know where to turn. This has been miraculous for me today.
• I wish I would have made my husband come. I know he would have enjoyed this.
• NCCS has made the Founders’ story so easy to understand and so economical to have in our home. From now on, our family will be into this much more!

Walter Mitty’s Second Amendment

By Jeff Snyder

Once upon a time, there was a people who inhabited a majestic land under an all-powerful government. Now this government had the resources to control practically every aspect of human existence; hundreds of thousands of “public servants” could access the most personal details of every citizen’s life because everyone was issued a number at birth with which the government would track him throughout his life. No one could even work in gainful employment without this number.

True, the government left certain domains of individual action largely free, particularly matters concerning speech and sex. These activities posed no real threat to the state. When not used to entertain and divert, the power of speech was used principally to clamor for more or better goods from the state, or for “reforms” to make the state work “better,” thereby entrenching the people’s dependency. And insofar as sex was concerned, well, the people’s behavior in this area also really had no effect on the scope of state power. In fact, the rulers noted that people’s preoccupation with matters of sexual morality — whether premarital, teenage pregnancy, adultery, divorce, homosexuality or general “who’s zooming who” — diverted the people’s attention from the fact that they were, for economic and all other intents and purposes, slaves.

Slaves, though, who labored under the illusion that they were free. The people were a simple lot, politically speaking, and readily mistook the ability to give free reign to their appetites as the essence of “personal freedom.”

In that fruitful land, the state took about 50 percent of everything the people earned through numerous forms of taxation, up from about 25 percent only a generation earlier. However, this boastful people, who believed themselves to be the freest on earth, retained the right to keep and bear arms. Tens of millions of them possessed firearms just in case their government became tyrannical and enslaved them.

In that land, an astronomical number of regulations, filling more than 96,000 pages in the government’s “code of regulations,” were promulgated by persons who were not elected by the people. The regulators often developed close relationships with the businesses they regulated, and work in “agencies” that had the power both to make law — and to enforce it.

The agencies were not established by the government’s constitution, and their existence violated that instrument’s principle of separation of powers. Yet the people retained the right to keep and bear arms. Just in case their government, some day, ceased to be a “government of the people.”

In that land, the constitution contemplated that the people would be governed by two separate levels of government — “national” and “local.” Matters that concerned the people most intimately — health, education, welfare, crime, and the environment — were to be left almost exclusively to the local level, so that those who made and enforced the laws lived close to the people who were subject to the laws, and felt their effects.

So that different people who had different ideas about such things would not be subject to a “one size fits all” standard that would apply if the national government dealt with such matters. Competition among different localities for people, who could move freely from one place to another, would act as a reality check on the passage of unnecessary or unwise laws.

But in a time of great crisis called the Great Economic Downturn, the people and their leaders clamored for “national solutions to national problems,” and the constitution was “interpreted” by the Majestic Court to permit the national government to pass laws regulating practically everything that has been reserved for the localities.

Now the people had the pleasure of being governed by not one, but two beneficient governments with two sets of laws regulating the same things. Now the people could be prosecuted by not one, but two governments for the same activities and conduct. Still this fiercely independent people retained the right to keep and bear arms. Just in case their government, some day, no longer secured the blessings of liberty to themselves or their posterity.

In that fair land, property owners could be held liable under the nation’s environmental legislation for the cleanup costs associated with toxic chemicals, even if the owners had not caused the problem.

Another set of laws provided for asset forfeiture and permitted government agencies to confiscate property without first establishing guilt.

Yet the people retained the right to keep and bear arms. Just in case their government denied them due process by holding them liable for things that were not their fault. (The Majestic Court had long ago determined that “due process” did not prevent government from imposing liability on people who were not at fault. “Due process”, it turned out, meant little more than that a law had been passed in accordance with established procedures. You know, it was actually voted on, passed by a majority and signed by the president. If it met those standards, it didn’t much matter what the law actually did.)

Oh well, the people had little real cause to worry. After all, those laws hardly ever affected anyone that they knew. Certainly not the people who mattered most of all: the country’s favorite celebrities and sports teams, who so occupied the people’s attention. And how bad could it be if it had not yet been the subject of a Movie of the Week, telling them what to think and how to feel about it?

In that wide open land, the police often established roadblocks to check that the people’s papers were in order. The police — armed agents of the rulers — used these occasions to ask the occupants whether they were carrying weapons or drugs. Sometimes the police would ask to search the vehicles, and the occupants — not knowing whether they could say no and wanting to prove that they were good guys by cooperating — would permit it.

The Majestic Court had pronounced these roadblocks and searches lawful on the novel theory, unkown to the country’s Founding Forebears, that so long as the police were doing this to everyone equally, it didn’t violate anyone’s rights in particular.

The roadblocks sometimes caused annoying delays, but these lovers of the open road took it in stride. After all, they retained their right to keep and bear arms. Just in case their government, some day, engaged in unreasonable searches and seizures. In that bustling land, the choice of how to develop property was heavily regulated by local governments that often demanded fees or concessions for the privilege. That is, when the development was not prohibited outright by national “moistland” regulations that had no foundation in statutory or constitutional law.

Even home owners often required permission to simply build an addition to their homes, or to erect a tool shed on their so-called private property. And so it seemed that “private property” became, not a system protecting individual liberty, but a system which, while providing the illusion of ownership, actually just allocated and assigned government-mandated burdens and responsibilities.

Still, this mightily productive people believed themselves to live in the most capitalistic society on earth, a society dedicated to the protection of private property. And so they retained the right to keep and bear arms. Just in case their government ever sought to deprive them of their property without just compensation.

Besides, the people had little cause for alarm. Far from worrying about government control of their property, the more immediate problem was: what to buy next?

The people were a simple lot, politically speaking, and readily mistook the ability to acquire and endless assortment of consumer goods as the essence of personal freedom.

The enlightened rulers of this great land did not seek to deprive the people of their right to bear arms. Unlike tyrants of the past, they had learned that it was not necessary to disarm the masses. The people proved time and time again thaty they were willing accomplices to the ever expanding authority of the government, enslaved by their own desire for safety, security and welfare.

The people could have their guns. What did the rulers care? They already possessed the complete obedience that they required.

In fact, in their more Machiavellian moments, the rulers could be heard to admit that permitting the people the right to keep and bear arms was a marvelous tool of social control, for it provided the people with the illusion of freedom.

The people, among the most highly regulated on earth, told themselves that they were free because they retained the means of revolt. Just in case things ever got really bad. No one, however, seemed to have too clear an idea what “really bad” really meant. The people accepted the fact that their government no longer even remotely resembled the plan set forth in their original constitution. And the people’s values no longer remotely resembled those of their Founding Forebears. The people, in their naiveté, really believed that the means of revolt were to be found in a piece of inanimate metal! Really it was laughable. And pathetic.

No, the rulers knew that the people could safely be trusted with arms. The government educated their children, provided for their retirement in old age, bequeathed assistance if they lost their jobs, mandated that they receive health care, and even doled out food and shelter if they were poor.

The government was the very air the people breathed from childhood to the grave. Few could imagine, let alone desire, any other kind of world.

To the extent that the people paid any attention to their system of government, the great mass spent their days simply clamoring for more or better “programs”, more “rational” regulations, in short, more of the same. The only thing that really upset them was waste, fraud, or abuse of the existing programs. Such shenanigans brought forth vehement protests demanding that the government provide their services more efficiently, dammit! The nation’s stirring national anthem, adopted long ago by men who fought for their liberty, ended by posng a question, in hopes of keeping the spirit of liberty alive. Did the flag still fly, it asked, over the land of the free?

Unfortunately, few considered that the answer to that question might really be no, for they had long since lost an understanding of what freedom really is.

No, in this land “freedom” had become something dark, frightening, and dangerous. The people lived in mortal terror that somewhere, sometime, some individual might make a decision or embark upon a course of action that was not first approved by some government official.

Security was far more preferable. How could anyone be truly free if he were not first safe and protected?

Now we must say goodbye to this fair country whose government toiled tirelessly to create the safety, fairness and luxury that all demanded, and that everyone knew could be created by passing just the right laws. Through it all, the people vigorously safeguarded their tradition of firearms ownership.

But they never knew — and never learned — that preserving a tradition and a way of life is not the same as preserving liberty. And they never knew — and never learned — that it’s not about guns.

American Handgunner, Sep/Oct 1997, reprinted without permission

The speech’s theme was based on Thomas Jefferson and John Dickinson’s Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms. All of my resources will now be devoted to one cause: I will do anything that will restore freedom to our children. If anyone has a better goal to unite us, let me know.

David DeGerolamo

www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKZjm7P7PgA

www.youtube.com/watch?v=WasOIV822lo

David DeGerolamo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A8FvbrxRZNY

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecpco2zEV3g

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DzvkBv0iDM

July 28, 2010

Dear xxxx: 

Thank you for contacting me regarding your concerns about the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.  I supported the bill, and appreciate the opportunity to explain my views on the issue.  

The 2008 collapse of the US financial system reverberated throughout the global economy, setting in motion the worst recession since the Great Depression.  Eight million Americans lost their jobs, and $17 trillion in retirement savings and net worth evaporated virtually overnight.   

The crisis revealed enormous vulnerabilities in our financial system, primarily the potential for abuse, and laid bare the oversight failures of prior Administration.  Over time, many in the industry had adopted business practices that promoted excessive risk-taking and rewarded shortsighted profiteering at the expense of long-term stability and consumer protection.  In some cases, they exploited loopholes and lax regulation, and in others, they knowingly engaged in risky behavior which had the potential for big payoffs.  At the end of the day, it is clear that the existing oversight authorities were not adequate to avert collapse.   

The Dodd-Frank Act is designed to ensure that our regulatory infrastructure is up to the task of managing the 21^st century financial system.  The legislation limits the size and scope of financial institutions, ending the era of “too big to fail” by providing a mechanism for the FDIC to seize and liquidate failing institutions that pose a risk to the financial system and our economy, with shareholders and creditors, first, and then the financial industry bearing the costs – not taxpayers.  This major reform is crucial in preventing a repeat of the major job losses that resulted in 2008 when the disorderly failure of several large financial institutions caused chaos in the financial system, drying up credit and suffocating small businesses.   It establishes rigorous oversight of risky, unregulated financial instruments like derivatives and gives more enforcement and oversight power to the Securities and Exchange Commission.  It imposes restrictions on banks’ ability to gamble with the college and retirement savings of millions of Americans.  And it limits pay and bonus practices – including excessive executive compensation – which fostered the behavior that brought the system to the brink of failure. 

In addition to reining in Wall Street, the Dodd-Frank Act will ensure that the federal government is actively protecting consumer and small-business interests in the financial realm.  The bill creates a new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), which will have the power to end abusive mortgage lending practices, compel lenders to ensure a borrower’s ability to repay, require easy-to-read mortgage contracts, eliminate hidden fees, and put an end to manipulative and deceptive schemes in the marketplace.  It will also have the authority to ensure American consumers get the clear, accurate information they need to shop for credit cards and student loans (including access to their credit score), while protecting them against abusive terms and deceptive practices. Small and mid-size banks and credit unions, those with under $10 billion in assets, will not be subject to direct CFPB examination.  Also, merchants, retailers and other non-financial businesses that extend credit directly to consumers for the purchase of goods or services will not be subject to CFPB authority.

The cost of the bill is fully paid for and reduces the deficit by $3.2 billion over 10 years. I believe enactment of legislation to reform Wall Street and establish a safer, more stable financial system is vital to our economic security, and that is just what the Dodd-Frank Act will do.  The President signed the bill into law (P.L. 111-203) on July 21, 2010. 

Again, thank you for contacting me about this important legislation, and please continue to be in touch on issues of concern to you. 

Sincerely,

DAVID PRICE 

Member of Congress

“If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.”

Currently, the American people “love wealth more than liberty”. Take the passage of the extension of the unemployment benefits to 2-1/2 years yesterday. Let’s call this “benefit” what it really is: welfare payments to stay dependent on the state. According to www.usdebtclock.org, the current real unemployment rate is 18.17%. What would happen if a large portion of these people were not being paid off? Welfare vs. Liberty? At this point in time, we the people are choosing welfare over liberty.

We do not understand liberty and freedom as our founding fathers did. George Washington would not accept any limitation on his freedom since this was an affront to our God given rights. We talk about the loss of some of our freedoms as acceptable only because we have been indoctrinated to accept dependence in steps. Let’s talk about the section of the Declaration of Independence which states:

“we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor”

I challenge everyone reading this article to think how this applies to you. The phrasing in our society today is:

“we mutually pledge to each other their lives and their fortunes”

Sacred Honor is not part of our culture anymore since it is not politically correct to refer to our religious foundation. When was the last time you voted for a politician because you felt he or she had honor?

The first thing to understand about freedom is that the concept is not plural. If we talk about freedoms, we already are willing to give up some of our “freedom”. Freedom is not divisible into smaller parts that can be traded or sold. Consider this quote from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:

“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.“

Our politicians and ruling class have mastered this principle. We have been led to the trough of slavery through legislation designed to “protect” us and our rights. The list includes TARP, stimulus legislation, health care legislation, finance reform legislation and limiting our right to free speech by implementing a kill switch on the Internet.

Are you confident that you understand the concepts of Liberty and Freedom? Lord Halifax put it succinctly:

“If none were to have Liberty but those who understand what it is, there would not be many freed Men in the world.”

So where does this leave us? Consider this quote from Alexis de Tocqueville:

“The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money.”

So I ask not your counsel nor your arms as you follow a path to slavery. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.

David DeGerolamo

Raleigh, NC – Beyond their manufactured turmoil and attempts to sully Wake County’s image are very tangible costs brought on by the NAACP and Great Schools’ antics. Data provided by the Wake County Public School System shows dramatic security cost increases directly attributable to their ongoing chaos creation activities.

 Unfortunately these costs have undoubtedly increased significantly since April and show no signs of abating. 

Total July 2009 – November 2009: $451.58

Total December 2009 – April 2010: $14,719.39

 Since the December 1, 2009 Board of Education Meeting the system has spent $14,719.39 on hiring both private security officers and off duty police officers for security for the Board of Education Meetings.  These funds are paid from our Security Department’s contracted services budget.  I have attached a month by month breakdown of these expenses.

Michael Evans
Chief Communications Officer
Wake County Public School System

Source: Wake County Public School System