LibertyForge

The 2012 legislative session is going to focus on water issues. This is a very serious topic, especially for rural Oklahomans. Some preliminary investigation on the issues reveal frightening government oversight of the most important resource for survival. The OWRB (Oklahoma Water Resources Board) is one of the many boards, authorities and commissions set up by our legislators to shield issues from public scrutiny and put power in the hands of an unelected few.

There are really three distinct issues that may or may not have common roots that I think are very important to Oklahomans.

First, Texas wants access to Oklahoma water. This causes a conflict between state and indian governments over water rights. The Indians have rights by treaty to Oklahoma water, however, some have said that the treaty became void with statehood. West Texas is by definition a desert and has been compensating for over a century to irrigate with water drawn from wells. They have known for decades that the aquifers were drying up but continued to increase production with limited conservation measures. Now that the wells are tapping out, Texas is looking North to find more water. They are willing to pay for water and for the project to pipe water across the state, which would bring some temporary jobs. Once we agree to this we would be obligated to continue selling water to Texas.

Second, FEMA is remapping flood zones. Many instances of absurd flood zone designations exist, but people have little or no recourse to oppose FEMA. Also it is possible that FEMA is incorrectly increasing flood zone territories simply to add more flood insurance payers to to the roles to replenish their coffers after Katrina. The OWRB currently acts as an agent of FEMA for flood zone remapping. While flood zones are real, FEMA does not seem to consistently apply standards. Because a flood zone designation is detrimental to property values, property rights, mortgage availability and insurance rates, we need to get a handle on what they are up to and why.

Third, rural Oklahoma is dependent upon the right to use our own water. There are lots of instances in other states where the government has declared that water on your property is not yours. For example, in Colorado, you are not even allowed to collect the water that falls on your roof to water your garden. There are instances where the government forces you to have meters on your well or pay a fee for using a well. Do you consider a pond a dam? The government does, and as such, the water in the pond is public property. Do you have running water on your property – even 6 inches wide, even occasionally? The government considers this a watershed and demands control of several hundred feet on each side!

Contact Margaret Snow, msnow14@netzero.com or Keith Shankle, kshankle@gmail.com for more information.

Below are spreadsheets to help you find out what bills your senator and representative are Authoring. It goes by name rather than bill number. If you have time, make a forum post in your OK Senate District Group and OK House District group for each of these bills. Use Senate District 10 and House District 36 as a model. As the year progresses we can track them, post discussion and provide voting records for each.

SenateBills2011

HouseBills2011

Click here for the Oklahoma State Election Board

Legislative Rules Change

Monday Feb 7, 2011 is supposed to be the day when the state legislature adopts the rules they will use for this session. On the LibertyForge Agenda is the proposed rule change that all bills must be allowed to be voted on, at least in committee.

Currently, the Speaker of the House and Senate Pro Tempore sets the agenda and decides what bills are even allowed to be put up for a vote. Currently these two people kill any bill they want simply by withholding the opportunity for a vote. To a very large degree the House and Senate leaders choose what laws are passed. Call your Senator and Legislator Monday morning Feb 7 and encourage them to support the rules change that requires all bills get an up or down vote! I plan to drive, snow or not, to stand witness to this important vote. Anyone from the Skiatook area that wants to ride along, let me know – shankle@libertyforge.us

School District Elections

With the terrible weather this is a great opportunity to get Liberty minded candidates elected. If you live in Broken Arrow, check out Harold Vermillion – he is an impressive young man who our founding fathers would be proud of.

Precinct Chair Elections

The date may have changed for the Republican Precinct Chair elections due to weather. This is the opportunity to change the Party policy to match it’s stated principles – find out who your precinct chair is, when the meeting is and become a delegate and maybe chair or vice chair. This gives your opinion a seat at the table.

As an independent my vote doesn’t weigh as much because I get to pick between what Republicans and Democrats have already decided. So here are a few things that might help you to maximize your vote. These things all happen way before an election and the most important happen next week – Precinct Chair Elections. These are the base of the pyramid for the Republican Party. Voter Delegates begin here, party policy begins here. Everything that defines – or redefines – the Republican Party begins with the precinct elections.

Your LibertyForge homework for next week is to: find out who your precinct chairman is. If there is no precinct chairman then nominate yourself. If there is a Precinct Chairman, contact them and find out when and where the precinct meeting is going to be. If you think the current precinct chairman is an establishment Republican then bring some precinct friends to the meeting and run for that position. Either way nominate yourself to become a delegate to vote at the County meeting where policy and state delegates are further narrowed down.

Step 1: Find your precinct number.

Here is the address for the state election board:  http://www.ok.gov/elections/ppl/index.php   You can click here and enter your name and other info to bring up your Voter ID #. Click on this number and it will bring up your District numbers. Also it will tell you your precinct #. This is the number you need to find out your current precinct chair.

Step 2: Find out your precinct chair.

Go to the OKGOP website. And look up your county Chairpeople. Contact them to find out more about your precinct election meeting Tues., Feb 1.

Here are some tips and links from a Jenni White email to help you in your homework:

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From Jenni White:

We need you to join a grassroots effort to end Elite control of the Republican party and to restore real Representative Government to Oklahoma.

Those who control the Oklahoma GOP are sparing no effort to minimize grassroots Tea Party influence. We can change all that by taking control of the Precincts. (Read why “The Precinct is the Most Powerful Political Office in America.” Just 3 or 4 people at your meeting should be sufficient! But,the more the merrier!!

Here are a few easy, but very important ways YOU can help:

1. Show up with your friends at your local Precinct meeting on Tuesday, February 1. Most of them will be held by House Districts, so contact your County Party to find out the place and time. Most start at 6 or 7 p.m. (Many County Chairs are withholding vital information.) Look up County Officers here. You can look up your precinct or house district at the state election board . For Oklahoma County locations, check the County website here. Your precinct number is written on your voter identification card as well.

2. Elect your group as Precinct Officers. Don’t be shy. This is politics. If you don’t control your Precinct, the old guard will.

3. Register to be a Delegate to the County Convention (before March 12). Choose to have an Open Delegation. .

4. Email contact information for all precinct officers and delegates to Al Gerhart at al@thecarpentershop.net. This will help us to contact them with information later. Indicate which are grassroots and Tea Party, or if part of the political establishment.

5. Introduce one or more Resolutions to be voted on at the meeting. Resolutions start a discussions, as well as measure the sentiments of attendees. Oklahoma Grassroots has some samples that are available for download. Feel free to offer any of them, or to make your own. This is a great way to send a message to the establishment. Bring 2 copies to the meeting.

6. Contact your legislators and ask them to support the Open Government Rule. Rep. Charles Key says: “The Open Government Rule is the single most important thing we can do to restore representative government to Oklahoma.” That simply means that legislative committee chairmen will no longer be able to arbitrarily kill and legislation they don’t like. There is an Open Government Resolution in the downloads above. Visit The Open Government Project website for more information. Dictatorial power to kill legislation is the KEY to their power to thwart truly representative government.

7. For Extra Credit and a lot of Fun – learn how to lobby your elected officials to support good legislation and defeat bad legislation. OK-SAFE and Campaign for Liberty both offer excellent training schools.

8. Plan to join the Tea Party Rally and legislator visitation at the Capitol at 10 am, Monday, February 7. We will let the legislature know we are watching and will hold them accountable for doing the right thing. We’ll show you how to talk to your legislator if you’ve never done it.

The Political Elites have done everything they can to make us feel powerless and divorced from our government. That is plain un-American! Now is the time to put a stop to this and restore government at all levels to the People.

What makes America so deeply divided? What happened to the God given right of Life, Liberty, and Property as penned by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence? Where has the principle of a government of the people, by the people, and for the people gone? Why are americans losing the American dream? During much of the twentieth century, America increasingly replaced Constitutional governance with another form of governance. One that has systematically destroyed the very principle that has made America the greatest nation in the history of the world. The Founders did not establish the Constitution to grant rights. Rather, they established this government of laws (not of men) in order to secure each person’s Creator endowed rights to Life, Liberty,& Property. These rights are not granted by government, which can take away what it grants. Instead they are granted by God, which makes them eternal and not subject to change. Even so, the Founders recognized that rights, though endowed by the Creator as unalienable and eternal, could not be sustained in society unless they were protected under a code of laws which was itself in harmony with a higher law. They called it “natural law” or ” Natures Law” or “God’s Law”. The drafters of the Declaration used Natural Law instead of natural-rights theory, substituting “the pursuit of happiness” for “Property in the trinity of unalienable rights. There are several reasons for the substitution. to many people, the term property means an object like land and goods that can be bought or sold. Property as John Locke used it (Ref: John Locke “1632-1704″ in his Two treaties on Government 1689) meant far more; such as the sovereignty of one’s self and the right to personal well being that tangible property can bring. Life, Liberty,& Property is still used in the 5th and 14th amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

With globalization the whole world is now competing, nation by nation, by the Law of Supply and Demand – Capitalism. It is critical for all to understand the difference between Capitalism in a socialist country and and Free Market Capitalism because it will greatly affect your life – and death.

The standard definition of capital is “the means of production” but what does this mean? Everyone needs things to survive whether it be shoes, a sandwich or a doctor. Capital is tools, machinery, money or other resources used to produce the necessities of life or things you want, not the necessities themselves but the means to acquire those necessities. If you invest some of your time and effort to make a plow to grow more food, the plow is capital and you may benefit from it by growing more food.

In Free Market Capitalism each individual is responsible to succeed or fail on their own and the fruits of their labor are theirs to keep for their families and whatever charity they decide to bestow on others. In a free market system a wise person may save a portion of their capital over the course of their more productive years to use in lean times and later years. They can use their capital to care for their offspring who get sick and they can invest in healing themselves as their productive years come to a close.

In a capitalist system under socialism, the government owns or controls the capital and the government decides how much of the fruits of your labor you get and how much to give to someone else. Ultimately even the people are considered capital – tools of production to be used by the state.

How does this relate to Obamacare? Well, every tool has a useful lifespan. A tool is useless before it is productive and it is useless when it wears out. It just doesn’t make economic sense for a socialized capitalist country to maintain a useless tool.

Once you tip the scales to socialism, you literally hand the government your Life, Liberty and Property and our Republic is effectively gone, probably never to return.

So the next time you meet someone who supports socialized medicine, ask them, “Are you a tool?”

Don’t hear that very often, do You? Well it always has and always will be the deciding factor in most aspects of your life. I am referring to the few and the many. The most common form of government, both large and small, the world has ever seen. Oligarchy, it’s sweet if you are one of the few in control. It stinks if you are among the many.

The Choice
From time immemorial men have formed groups. It is natural and necessary to form groups to provide for trade in the specialization of skills, like doctors, or farmers, or blacksmiths. The doctor, farmer, and smith can each get more accomplished if they elect a sheriff to provide a common defense to protect their life, liberty and property. It is only natural that a sheriff be the best fighter, after all it is their job to protect everyone else. From this point there are several options in both trade and common defense but ultimately only two stable results of government: Oligarchy – the law of the few over the many or a Republic of everyone under the law.

Dictatorship
The sheriff or doctor or blacksmith can decide they are indispensable and try to control everyone else. The only one of these who has a chance of taking control is the expert at exerting force – the sheriff. A Dictatorship or Tyranny is only as resilient as it’s leader and rarely lasts long.

Oligarchy
Unfortunately for the sheriff, he has to get the doctor on his side because he may still get sick. He also needs at least one blacksmith and one farmer. So a small group of people with the sheriff as their leader can sustain control over everyone else. This is an Oligarchy, the most common form of government. If the sheriff and his cronies don’t take too much or cause too much grief then it is not worth the fight to displace them.

Anarchy
Sometimes the Dictator or Oligarchy takes so much life, liberty or property that the rest of the group decides they must go. This government idea just didn’t pan out and no government is better than an oppressive Oligarchy. After a civil war the group collapses back to individuals that must each be a defender, a blacksmith, a farmer and doctor. No one can prosper if they have to be both defender and farmer. Anarchies have been tried many times throughout history and have always failed for lack of a common defense and they once again face The Choice.

Democracy
The group can decide that fairness is of utmost importance and assign each person a vote in the decision making. The law of the majority, or “majority rules”. This works out great until the majority decide that blacksmiths and doctors should work for free. The group quickly collapses as blacksmiths and doctors take up farming and no one is left to heal the sick and fix a plow. Democracies have been tried many times throughout history and have always failed from too much “fairness”. A Democracy is a Tyranny of whatever majority exists at the time.

A Republic

The group may look to be prosperous again and strike on a novel and rare approach to government. A government of defined laws, a public law that everyone including the sheriff agrees on and is obliged to obey. The sheriff is not the law, he enforces the law. As long as everyone knows and follows the laws then life, liberty and property are protected. Republics are the rarest form of government – and all have failed – including ours…

Trade

The most telling characteristic of success or failure of any government throughout history is the stable value of  its currency. Every time governments try to “stretch” their money whether by reducing the purity of gold coins or simply declaring paper money as having value, it is a hallmark of disaster. Oppositely, every successful government in history has had a currency with stable value. When everyone trusts the value of any particular currency, they will prefer it in trade and more trade always leads to more prosperity which always leads to more satisfaction with government.

In my opinion the most important concept for the American public to recognize is the basic understanding of how our dollar transitioned from being backed by gold, to being fiat money partially backed by gold, all the way to fiat money backed by less than nothing – debt! You are not carrying a dollar in your pocket, you are literally carrying a dollars worth of debt that someone else owes and has promised to pay.

The Federal Reserve was passed into law on December 23, 1913 by a 10 vote majority. When you understand the depth of betrayal perpetrated on the American people and the world by collusion between our government and the central banking establishment you will be horrified, terrified and angry enough to vote for Ron Paul.

Early in 2010 an overwhelming compulsion came over me to do something, that our country is spending its way over the edge of a cliff we can’t recover from as a free nation. We are a Republic and the people must change. I had to do something, but what? I believed myself fairly well informed on the big issues but, like most, apathetic and ignorant on the mechanics of politics.  I went to see the Tea Party Express and decided to start doing something by helping them take down the stage. I got a card with the OKforTEA website and found out about the April 15 rally in OKC. I took the day off to see what the Tea Parties were about and to maybe actually meet my representative Eddie Fields and senator Joe Sweeden. My naive thinking was that on a day like April 15, every rep and senator would expect drop in visitors and be excited to get the opportunity to schmooz their voters.

I stood outside and listened to Randy Brogdon and a few others speak, all the while feeling kind of intimidated by the huge Capitol Building behind them. I finally asked a guard if it was ok to go inside and how to get in.

To my naive surprise I found the capitol building virtually empty, a ghost town except for scattered visitors like myself. My representatives and yours as well, did not want to hear what you have to say, they only want to hear you on election day.

Since then I have done some exploring and found that the time consuming part is mostly already done, there are already watchdogs that point out the poison pills in our legislation, they just need a voice and the power of many other voices behind them to put the fear of voters in the hearts of politicians.

So after studying the problems in trying to get Randy Brogdon and David McLain elected, after listening to Eddie Huff allowing obvious planted callers to label Brogdon a militia nut 2 days before the election and after talking to a woman who was absolutely certain that Randy Brogdon wanted to keep her police officer husband from being able to verify peoples photo ID’s during traffic stops,  I decided that a totally separate communication network outside of the control of the media and political parties is vital to give watchdogs and voters a venue to vet candidates and issues to help voters make a truly informed opinion.

It is my dearest hope that the dialog and membership of LibertyForge will educate, identify and raise up a new breed of re-founding fathers that will cast aside establishment influence and run for office as a duty to restore our republic to liberty and founding principles. We desperately need some Madisons, Jeffersons, Franklins and Washingtons if we are going to survive.