I have to insert the caveat here, up front:

“I am no member of the GOP; I am opposed to a long litany of things, to include murder, particularly the murder of children; exploitation of same; gender and orientation bias; littering; pollution, generally speaking; crime; lies and the oppression of minorities. Further, I am in favor, generally, of goodness, and opposed to the machinations of cartels, foreign and domestic.”

So, that said, I checked the news this morning and got depressed.

As you well know, the President’s Budget is supposed to be submitted to Congress on the first Monday in February. We used to sweat the submission on our budget staff right through the holidays, which made the ho-ho-ho thing sort of suck. This morning, though, there are rumors that the law will not be followed. The PresBud may not be rolled out until early March, more than a month late.  That would bring several scary things to a head all at once:

– Falling off the “fiscal cliff”
– Running out of funds provided by the Continuing Resolution
– Hitting the debt ceiling
– Late submission of the FY14 President’s Budget

That all is too much at once for the ADD-addled folks at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, and I noted that there are still several weeks before the Government shuts itself down. So, I decided to think about how to get by the disaster personally, rather than worry about things over which I have absolutely no control.

I was thinking about diversifying the pathetic little portfolio I have amassed since the divorce, and whether it is smart to include precious metals in the mix- You know, Silver dollars or bullion of some kind. In the process of trying to imagine how that would work in practice, I got wrapped around Illinois Senate Bill 3341.

I have think I have confided to you my belief that the United States Government is engaged in a variety of criminal conspiracies.

(Insert caveat here.)

This applies to both the Stupid Party and the Corrupt Party- but of course, only the former is subject to much scrutiny by the Press. Imagine what the reaction would have been if President Bush had been authorizing drone strikes from the Oval Office.

Consider the now-forgotten Fast and Furious gun-walking operation conducted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms; EPA administrator Lisa Jackson and her clandestine e-mail coordination of a covert campaign to bankrupt otherwise legal coal power plants; add in the bogus loans to well connected Green companies from the public trough; throw in the whole global warming thing that seems to change all the time.

Remember? It has gone from “warming” (which it has not for sixteen years) to “climate change” (of course it does, though not as quickly as the accepted narrative goes) to “Extreme Weather.”

My beloved NY Times was all over that this morning. “2012 was the hottest year ever!” screamed the article. I read it carefully to see if they were going to mention that the claim is based on preliminary data that is almost certainly going to be revised downward. I failed to see any disclaimer.

In fact, the article got better. Hot, Cold, dry, wet, all of it was mixed together in a mix that I could not decipher. The historical record indicates there have been monster storms since the dawn of time, and though there are more and more of us in vulnerable concentrations on the coast, we are lucky. The frequency of storm strikes is at a historic low.

Never mind. There is a relentless publicity campaign in progress to terrify a helpless population. That things don’t quite add up is quite beside the point. (Insert disclaimer, and add “I am no “denier,””) The evidence is fairly clear that the global temperature has bounced around over time and increased almost half a degree Celsius since 1840. The “why” of it is still not clear, and the science is far rom settled. I am uncertain why we are supposed to panic about it.

(Insert the disclaimer again here.)

“Men and the weather,” I thought, and went back to trying what to do. SB3341 was featured in one of the financial advice columns I read periodically, trying to figure out how I can best survive the rigged game played on Wall Street and at the Treasury. One gold-bug pundit was railing about the legislation.

I thought for a moment that it was new national legislation to track the sale of precious metals- establish a paper trail similar to that Senator Feinstein wants to establish about firearms. There can only be one reason for that, and it made me queasy.

Of course, there already is Federal regulation tracking the sale of precious metal above a certain denomination in value, I forget what, but this state-level law makes it illegal to pay for precious metal in cash. That would appear to violate the little motto above where Jack Lew is going to be placing his illegible signature. You know, the one that says “This note is legal tender for all debts Public and Private.”

The synopsis of the legislation reads:

“Creates the Precious Metal Purchasing Act. Provides that a person who is in the business of purchasing precious metal shall obtain a proof of ownership, create a record of the sale, and verify the identity of the seller. Provides that a person who is in the business of purchasing precious metal shall not pay for the precious metal in cash and shall record the method of payment. Requires the purchaser to keep a record of the sale for one year or, if the purchase amount is over $500, for 5 years.”

As we approach new regulations on firearms- apparently to be implemented by Executive edict rather than by Congress- it is worth a moment to contemplate what we have given up in terms of liberty lately.

I am getting uneasy about what we have surrendered to the central government without a shot.

At the time of its passage, I liked parts of the Patriot Act. I was in the government then, and I felt the time was long past that we should apply Constitutional protections to the avowed enemies of the United States- but other parts of the Act permitted my vacuum-cleaning associates at NSA to join Law Enforcement in vast data collection efforts, linking IP addresses to all manner of things with no relation to the GWOT or unrelated activities.

The Department of Homeland Security is so woefully inept (Remember, DoD took a half century to begin to get its act together) and its bizarre components naturally overreach.

The TSA is clearly out of control. Their “conditioning” activities against law-abiding citizens queued up like cattle are outrageous.

Think about the indignities we suffer in the interest of Higher Truth and let’s do the numbers:

The First Amendment is under assault. I vividly recall Sen. Chuck “Blowhard” Schumer (D-NY) last summer ruminating about imposing restrictions on speech on the floor of the US Senate.

The Second is under assault. We will see what edict emerges from the Vice President’s task force to land on the President’s desk next Tuesday. The Governor of New York has mentioned confiscation as a logical next step.

(Insert caveats and disclaimer here and here.)

The Third, Fourth and Fifth Amendments are increasingly irrelevant due to technology. As to the Third, I have no particular fear of foreign troops being billeted at the farm- though if a child, spouse or contract worker were found in possession of controlled substances on the property the Culpeper police might legally confiscate the farm and auction it off to pad their budget- even if I am innocent of any crime. And as to the 4th and 5th….

Well, a pal sent a note along about a suicide in a little town in one of the Square States. It turned out the former mayor of the city, a respected attorney and former state legislator, had been paid a visit by the law enforcement representatives of a cyber task force tracking down child pornography.

(Insert disclaimer here.)

Obviously, the matter was a huge controversy in a small place. The sensational nature of the arrest left the public generally with the opinion that the lawyer must have been guilty of something awful, even if it was simple possession of graphic images of minors.

That he was convicted in the court of public opinion goes without saying, and it struck me with a chill that there was actually a team of cyber analysts tracking file sharing and IP addresses- presumably under a duly executed warrant- but what of the IP addresses that were linked to his by virtue of his public service or private practice?

What of the lists and links that result from the hunt? That is, after all, what brought the cops to the attorney’s door in the first place. We do that sort of stuff all the time when we do links-and-nodal analysis to find High Value Targets. HVU is one of my favorite acronyms.

The Sixth Amendment ensures a right to a speedy trial- but we have gone beyond that. We have recently executed American citizens with drone strikes, being compliant with the Constitution by speedily proceeding from identification right to the post-sentencing phase.

Ditto the seventh- jury trials are supposed to be guaranteed, and I can find no provision by the Framers for the insertion of Hellfire missiles into the judicial process.

The Eighth? Ah, come on. What is cruel or unusual about being subject to summary execution?

The Ninth and Tenth? Neutered long ago, I am afraid. Both on their face were supposed to reign in the powers of the Central Government, which is supposed to have only specifically enumerated powers, the rest of them reserved to the States and the People, respectively. Thank goodness the courts settled that long ago- based on the interstate commerce clause, our benevolent government can pretty much do what it wants.

(Insert the usual caveat here.)

Thus was it ever in the course of human affairs- power tends to grow naturally and inexorably. The Framers knew that, and the Constitution was there to protect us in unambiguous terms.

Thank goodness the Government is there to protect us, since we the people have permitted the social contract to be undermined by the numbers, one through ten. It is in the interest of a Greater Good, after all. Pretty soon we will be just as civilized as Europe.

Well, gotta go. I need to fold up a new aluminum foil helmet and get ready for the day. And I need to stop at the gun store tomorrow on the way down to the farm. Some of the inventory there is not likely to be available after next Tuesday.

(Insert caveat here.)

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com