From Alex Jones, infowars.com!

Charging private citizens seems to be a growing trend by public police forces, apparently to cover their budget shortfalls. Anchorage police have begun sending bills to people if officers have to make more than eight trips per year to their homes. In the UK, police sent a man a bill when their car was damaged pursuing the victim’s stolen vehicle. These are extreme cases but the precedents threaten to turn the police into a “private” security force.

Consequently, as police and sheriff departments face more cutbacks, they are also increasingly telling citizens (and criminals) what types of crimes they’ll respond to. In a recent article titled Third World America, Macleans reported:

In February, the board of commissioners of Ohio’s Ashtabula County faced a scene familiar to local governments across America: a budget shortfall. They began to cut spending and reduced the sheriff’s budget by 20 per cent. A law enforcement agency staff that only a few years ago numbered 112, and had subsequently been pared down to 70, was cut again to 49 people and just one squad car for a county of 1,900 sq. km along the shore of Lake Erie. The sheriff’s department adapted. “We have no patrol units. There is no one on the streets. We respond to only crimes in progress. We don’t respond to property crimes,” deputy sheriff Ron Fenton told Maclean’s. The county once had a “very proactive” detective division in narcotics. Now, there is no detective division. “We are down to one evidence officer and he just runs the evidence room in case someone wants to claim property,” said Fenton. “People are getting property stolen, their houses broken into, and there is no one investigating. We are basically just writing up a report for the insurance company.”

Coincidentally, governments are being forced into more cutbacks just as police units are introducing the idea of charging victims for their security services. In other words, as local and state economies worsen by design, we can expect to see more cutbacks and more “billing” for public security. Some experts have predicted ”IMF riots” to take place in America if the economic collapse continues.

We know that big corporations like Monsanto and Disney can afford private mercenaries such as Blackwater — fully equipped for high-level espionage, with a full-blown private air force, and even tactical weapons. But who will protect average American citizens against such corporate-government thuggery, let alone desperate petty thieves, if not the local public servants?

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As America continues to implode, it appears that security will go to the highest bidder, leaving average citizens to fend for themselves. Perhaps we should have seen it coming with the start of the privatization boom of security and intelligence gathering since the War on Terror was declared, which resulted in a massive “Top Secret” Surveillance-Industrial Complex. The ramifications of this privatization are only now becoming clear, as it was reported that an Israeli-owned organization was in charge of tracking, tracing, and databasing peaceful American activists on behalf of the oil and gas industry in Pennsylvania. It’s already obvious that property taxes are no longer sufficient to pay the security bills.

Are happiier days returning to America?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/09/22/larry-summers-replacements_n_734442.html

Unions have helped to give us a middle class but unions are not without their faults. The Teanster Union has been corrupt for years and they have even encouraged their union members to vote for Republicans. They were embedded with Nixon.

Can unions legally run co-ops? If so why don't we see more unions moving that direction. If not, well that would be what I expect of our status quo.

N

Sounds like a good idea to me Jeanie, fight fire with fire. Stop letting the Republicans use underhanded tricks carte blanche. I'm sure they will make far more fuss about Liberals caging Conservatives, and perhaps we'll get decent stategies from them on how to enforce such laws.

Of course we shouldn't be naive either, there are a lot of conservative Judges put in place over the years, so enforcement may just be nothing more than one sided.

N

Let us all cheer!!!

http://www.salon.com/news/us_military/index.html?story=/news/feature/2010/09/21/america_decline_afghanistan&source=newsletter&utm_source=contactology&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Salon_Daily%20Newsletter%20%28Not%20Premium%29_7_30_110

Give them hell, Jimmy!!!

**Reflection of the Week**

"We’re willing to step forward and take up a fight even if the odds appear stacked against us. We recognize the risk of failure and accept it, believing we have a chance to make a difference, no matter how long it may take."- Jimmy Carter (in a letter about the work of the Carter Center)

It's called the DLC (Democratic Leadership Council) http://www.dlc.org/

It's simply the well-to-do masquarading as democrats. If you don't know about them, take the time to, and then spread the word.

My wife and her sisters went out to eat in Old Town Port Huron for the twins' birthday. One of my wife's conservative crazy sisters said that she could not judge Israel because Israel is a Jewish state and Jesus was Jewish. She makes no sense. It is the same as for me to say that I cannot offer my perceptual opinion that Bush II and Obama are mass muderers because they are human beings and Jesus was a human being.

When will the United States of Mortal Sin end her lust in the killing of God's children???

http://news.antiwar.com/2010/09/21/at-least-28-killed-in-latest-series-of-us-drone-strikes-against-pakistan/