by Tom Baugh

Warning: This is probably the most disturbing article I have written. If you have been upset by simple statements from me such as “the upcoming election (whichever) won’t matter” or “The Constitution is about power, not freedom”, then this one won’t help your stress level much. If this describes you, turn back now.

Think you know about radiological dirty bombs? You know, the usual: easily-detected, a suicide mission for the operator, etc. All of these are comforting things that we are told to believe (usually by some perky blonde after talking about what star is in jail for what). Think again. I’ve sat on the idea in this article for over two years now since stumbling across hints of it while researching Starving the Monkeys. Recently I’ve come across confirmations from multiple sources that, yes, the idea is relatively widespread. It is a well-kept secret, but only from you. Rest uneasy, the bad guys already know about this idea.

As the twenty-eight foot rental truck emerged from the east side of the Holland Tunnel, the driver flipped the switch flopping around on the seat behind him. This signal traveled along the pair of twisted wires leading to a small, neat hole drilled from the cab through to the spacious cargo area behind him. But, instead of an explosion, this signal triggered the operation of a handful of electric motors and a heater in the apparatus behind him. Tied to the electrical power system of the truck’s engine, this equipment hardly caused any effect on the vehicle’s power as it climbed the grade from under the Hudson River toward Manhattan. By the time the driver reached Canal Street, the weapon had already started its slow operation.

So far, not bad, right? A simple truck bomb with some kind of delay thingy? Hardly. Now, what you are about to read is possible, but requires the resources of a small nation, or very large company. Fortunately, simply publishing this makes the latter less likely. The former is up to us, and how willing we are to let the bad actors among us continue to wage economic war around the world. On a practical level, this may read like a recipe, but several details have been changed to protect your innocence. No one who doesn’t already know how to do this isn’t going to put one of these together in a storage unit somewhere after reading this article, not even if they follow some of the rabbit trails I mention.

Had anyone bothered to inspect the vehicle, they would have found most of the cargo area occupied by pairs of large, inverted, conical bins arranged throughout the length of the truck. These bins, appropriately enough, struck their designer as resembling miniature missile silos. One bin of each pair contained a liquid substance, the other a granular solid. Piping above the liquid bins had delivered a freshly prepared load of the active ingredient (we’ll call it “A”) from a garage specially equipped for the manufacture and purification of this substance out in New Jersey less than an hour before. Soon, the area immediately around that foreclosed garage would be declared uninhabitable, but no one would notice this in the media frenzy which would soon embroil the island fortress from which economic terrorism is waged on the world’s economies.

I’m not going to tell you what substance A is. Think of this as my contribution to non-proliferation. Unfortunately, most of the actual bad guys (not the ones we are fighting) already know how to do this. And there isn’t just one simple choice for substance A. No, there’s lots of options. And there’s gobs (technical term) of raw material, or feedstock for this stuff, just lying around. You can even see big piles of the feedstock from space in certain states.

The second substance (we’ll call it “B”), a dirty-tan granular material the appearance and consistency of cheap brown sugar, was indefinitely inert, and so required no special handling or precautions. This material had been prepared first, and had sat in a grain silo in Eastern Pennsylvania for two years waiting for its mate.

I’m not going to tell you what this one is, either, but again, the actual bad guys already know. I’ve also changed a few technical details to further cloud things. But, it wouldn’t take a motivated someone of the right background more than a couple of months of intense study to figure out the details. Science is like that: a powerful weapon in the hands of those who know. This is why Johnny lags children from all the other countries in the world in math and science. Our own crop of domestic bad guys fear a smart Johnny more than they fear made-up bad guys abroad.

And no, for those readers of “Starving the Monkeys”, these substances aren’t one of those black holes of knowledge I mention about halfway through that book. Those are even more, uh, interesting than what we’re talking about here.

Once the switch had been engaged, several events happened simultaneously. First, valves opened allowing metered amounts of the liquid to splash onto an augured quantity of the solid leaving its bins like so much chicken feed. This wet mixture passed through an additional auger section where it was mixed thoroughly, and then entered a screw press similar to that used for making wood fuel pellets. Instead of pellets, though, a thick wet spaghetti emerged from the dies then passed over a screened roller which blew hot air over it. Mostly dry now, the brittle extrusion rattled apart, with clumps of the now intimately mixed materials falling through a specially prepared chute, along with the waste hot air stream, just behind the rear axle of the vehicle. No one watching the truck pass by would even notice the tan material falling from the cargo area. The few who might would simply dismiss it as dried mud falling from the axle and wheel wells.

Not all bad things go boom or have the sniffles. Yep, keep seizing those bottles of water before people get on airplanes. And stealing almost full cans of toiletries from passengers.

Once mixed, the material did nothing at all. At least not to the naked eye.

Much like the weapons of economic mass terror launched by financial wizards in New York and elsewhere. Simple plundering profit at first, until the devastating effects are felt by the innocent months and years later.

But at the atomic level, something very interesting was happening. The material began to come alive. First, at totally random intervals, the nuclei of substance A began to emit high-energy alpha particles. Alpha particles are merely helium nuclei stripped of their electrons. This simple material is harmless, except at the energies the substance began to vomit them. At those energies, these lighter-than-air particles are deadly if ingested. This is what killed Alexander Litvinenko in 2006, high-energy alpha particles streaming from the well-known Polonium-210 poison he had ingested. Polonium-210 is also well-known as an initiator material in primitive atomic bomb designs, a radioactive power source for space vehicles, and a subject of study for weapons labs worldwide, including the Weizmann Institute in Israel, where a couple of oopsies killed a half-dozen or so scientists by accident a few decades back before they learned how to handle this deadly poison.

This isn’t to imply that Mossad assassinated Livinenko with Polonium-210, or that they have in the past assassinated even our own government officials who opposed Israel. If they wanted to do that, simple guns and bullets suffice. Along with a willing media to help propagandize the outcome. Based where, I wonder?

But this liquid, consisting of a solution of substance A compounded in a simple, yet uncommon, salt, doesn’t contain Polonium-210. That isotope would be far too expensive, too detectable, and much too fast-acting for the dried mud which had by now been scattered along the southern half of Broadway as the truck neared the raging bull. No, this material released the deadly yet secretive alphas much more slowly than Polonium-210, and is unfathomably cheaper (and abundant worldwide). But these alphas alone aren’t a problem unless swallowed or inhaled. No, despite their high energies, they can’t even escape an aluminum can, or a small air gap. The driver of the vehicle is perfectly safe, as is the equipment inside the cargo area. No suicide missions here.

Alphas, unlike x-rayish gammas, also can’t be detected from outside the truck, or at a distance in the open, in other words. And did I mention there were big piles of the feedstock for this stuff in lots of places? Besides that, you can buy Polonium-210, or a convenient substitute, if you know where to look and aren’t easily alarmed. But again, the actual bad guys already know this. And probably laughed at the private little joke in what I just said.

An alpha-emitter, even one as deadly as Polonium-210, has to be ingested or in intimate contact with some other material before that target material could be affected. Intimately mixed with the granules by first wetting and then being augured through a die, that is exactly what happened. Now our alphas come slamming into the nuclei of substance B, spalling neutrons off of them like splinters from a sheet of plywood hit with a twelve-gauge shotgun. There isn’t a one-to-one conversion, of course, since almost all of the alphas miss their targets; our shotgun marksman is blindfolded and standing in the mostly empty space at the subatomic level. Plus, the target nuclei wear electron Kevlar which turns glancing blows into complete misses. Never fear, though, the few hits that do barrel straight in are enough. Shortly after the machinery began to operate, neutrons begin pouring out of the dried mud by the millions, but even this is still undetectable at street level, for even a tiny BB still contains trillions upon trillions of iron nuclei.

A good-sized plutonium bomb wipes out a city by burning through less than a kilogram of its own mass. Its neutron yield is stupendously higher, but there’s a lot more nuclei in the tons of material we’re talking about here. Imagine a really big plutonium bomb on the slow cycle.

Give them time, though, because proper selection of substance A allowed the driver of the truck to complete his circuit through every street on Manhattan Island south of Central Park with plenty of time to escape before real damage began. Plenty of time, meaning weeks, or months. A few days or weeks after the attack the symptoms were detectable, if anyone knew what to look for. By then, the apparatus had been removed from the truck, the cargo area pressure-washed to remove any spilled traces, and then returned to the dealer. No tell-tale axles here. No, by the time anyone realized an attack had happened, the perps had simply vanished, along with any leads that might have been gathered. A trick of math allowed investigators to track the mud back approximately to the attack date, but even that was off by a couple of days. An alert traffic pattern analysis might have revealed a truck that covered each street on southern Manhattan Island, but that could apply to hundreds, or thousands, of delivery trucks among the uncountable numbers that visit there each day. Besides, this attack could have been carried out by twenty trucks just as easily as one. No, this attack was as silent and as mysterious as a whisper in the wind.

Planes crashing into buildings, or truck bombs pretending to blow up federal buildings look great on TV, but sometimes the best ways to kill lots of people is like an investment gone bad, silent but deadly. What I’m describing here is nothing compared to the mass starvation that will ultimately kill up to a billion people once New York and pals are done raping the world’s economies while recruiting billions more to the ways of Marxism and radical Islam in desperate response. Rush Limbaugh and gang like to talk about unintended consequences of liberal policies, while ignoring those of their paymasters.

Each of these granules of mud, discharging their supply of neutrons over time like a time-release medication, became detectable only after enough atoms of substance A had decayed to allow the gammas of its daughter- and granddaughter-products to uniquely identify the mother substance. A few weeks after the attack one street-level gamma radiation sensor triggered, then hours later a few more, until by the end of the second day of triggering the entire southern half of the island was ablaze with warning signals. As if this wasn’t bad enough, had the designers of the mud weapon bothered, they could have easily salted substance B with substance C. This third material, when exposed to the neutrons streaming out of the dried mud, converts into another isotope which can be used to irradiate food, removing all traces of living organisms. Or for that matter, remove all trace of living organisms such as people when exposed directly.

Oh, there’s lots of options. Kind-of like designer death. Or think of it as a portfolio of highly-leveraged subprime bonds for your organs. Pick one. It doesn’t matter which.

No, the designers left that little detail alone, opting for more juicy targets for their neutrons, like the legs of the millions of people who walk those streets each day, which also happen to contain critical moderating substances needed to slow those neutrons down into the more deadly so-called thermal variety. Neutron by thermal neutron, day after day, trillions of nuclei of all sorts are converted into dangerous irradiators such as substance C. Why bother to reduce the dose that the truck can carry when all of those people carry sufficient quantities of good-enough in the minerals in their bones? Beyond people being converted into their own walking death chambers, the minerals in the streets, walls and windows also became activated by this constant wash of thermal neutrons. By the time the activity had increased enough to trigger all those alarms, the damage was increasing at rates too fast to stop. And who was going to go into those streets to clean all this up? Hardly anyone cared to volunteer. Not that they could get past the mad rush of those millions who, too late, decided to leave, clogging the bridges and tunnels in their escape.

And of course, that would be the whole point of any dirty bomb, which is to cause mass panic and stampede the masses into killing themselves and each other. The actual radiological damage would be very small, although it would be undeniably deadly to many. Plus, unlike a “normal” atomic bomb or dirty bomb, the thermal neutron radiation can convert exposed people into walking dirty bombs themselves. These people, we can call them “fallouts”, will be able to sicken others exposed to them, but without the ability to further convert those others (unlike zombies). Would you take one in? I didn’t think so.

But what about countermeasures? Surely there must be something that can detect these substances. Hardly. One approach would be the backscatter scanners coming soon to an airport or government building (or highway, in its mobile form) near you. Ironically, these purportedly protect you from dirty bombs by irradiating you today (and tomorrow, and the next day, and so on). But then again, these are defeated, or confused, by simply packing the sides, bottom and top of the cargo area with cases of innocuous “low-Z” substances. Like sugar. Or flour. Or drugs, assuming the right payoffs have been made. Again, all the actual bad guys already know these things.

Hmmm. For that matter, someone wishing to sell a nifty scanner technology, or cleanup robot, might do this just in the interest of demand creation. Huh. Instant bad guy, just add potentially lucrative government contracts.

As I said before, this mud weapon, unlike the aptly-named Manhattan Project, doesn’t take the resources of a superpower, but is well within the reach of a reasonably wealthy individual or company. Which makes it super-easy for even a modestly (or newly) poor nation. Such as one that had its currency manipulated by the same people who trapped you in your upside-down mortgaged home. Payback can be a biatch.

Ignorance isn’t the answer either (my regular readers know that I am firmly convinced that nuclear energy is the only way out, or back up, for civilization at this point). The only real defense to this mud weapon, though, is to stop the unholy trinity of the Wall Street banking interests, their revolving-door pals at the Federal Reserve, and their bootlicks in DC from waging economic warfare (and warfare warfare) around the world. Eventually someone who has had their currency destabilized and their economy drained by this evil force (masquerading as capitalism in your name) will have had enough, and won’t have kept their children deliberately ignorant of science and math as we delight in doing to our own.

But how can we stop this evil trinity of economic mayhem? Only by dismantling the levers of central government power guaranteed by the Constitution, a power which protects them (secession, anyone?) from you. Oops, that central power ensures that you won’t. Or can’t. So keep your head in the sand and imagine that the upcoming election (2010 as this was written, but take your pick) will make a difference, when so many before haven’t. Ultimately, your vote, or your rifle, don’t make one bit of difference. Never have, never will, because the rules are designed to keep you weak and them strong. Get ready for the rocket sled ride to the bottom of civilization as more and more economic wheels fall off. From there, we can rebuild without making this mistake again. Arguing over who should have their hands on the levers of centralized power totally ignores the point that those levers shouldn’t exist (to be eventually abused) in the first place.

But few of the people around the world who must live with the day-to-day fallout of the unholy financial trinity care about trifling details such as our elections. They only see the results. No matter who gets their hands on those levers of power, bad things tend to happen. And have for decades.

On the other hand, one of our “friends” might do this to us, maybe so we’ll fight on their behalf. Who knows? We certainly have a history of fighting over less.

I told you at the start of this article that this would be disturbing. I also obscured or changed important details to satisfy demands for self-censorship in this land of the free and Constitutional rights (LOL). Nonetheless, all the important bad guys know about this stuff already, as do thousands of experts in our own government, industry and academia. Many of those, if questioned about this article, will be dismissive and say something to the effect of “sure, it sounds scary, but knowing what I know about the science, I’m not concerned.” Almost like it was from a script. Watch their eyes while they are saying this, you can see the fear inside.

The only reason that you didn’t already know about this is that you are kept intentionally ignorant. Slaves can’t be trusted with any more knowledge than is absolutely necessary to be productive. You did know that from history, didn’t you? I’m guessing you didn’t, unless you were homeschooled.

But, if this mud weapon is common knowledge among the really bad guys worldwide, why hasn’t this happened yet? Perhaps they haven’t gotten sufficiently weary of the financial raping yet. I just hope that, when enough has become enough, the actual bad guys realize that there is a big difference (is there?) between the financial wizards in New York (and their lackeys in DC and the Fed), and the rest of us.

Tom Baugh is the author of Starving the Monkeys, Fight Back Smarter. He is also a former Marine, patented inventor, entrepreneur and professional irritant.

by Patrick Krey, NA

The “Principles of 98,” as they came to be known, are rarely discussed in modern history lectures even though these are integral to understanding how our federal Constitution was intended to function. These are the principles of state interposition or nullification that assert that if the federal government fails to check itself through one of its three branches, then it would be up to the states to rein in the feds.

The main basis for the theory is that the states created the national government when they joined the compact and not the other way around. The states therefore retained the power to judge for themselves the constitutionality of federal laws and reserved the right to refuse to enforce them if they went beyond their constitutionally delegated powers. As a matter of fact, nullification was used even before the implementation of the Constitution when the Colonists nullified laws made by the British Monarchy. The concept of a state nullifying a federal law simply means that a state refuses to comply with the law or permit its enforcement within state boundaries.

The man widely regarded as the “Father of the Constitution,” James Madison, described just how a federal system would work in his essay Federalist No. 51. Madison, encouraging his fellow countrymen to ratify the newly drafted Constitution, described a system of horizontal as well as vertical checks and balances between the federal and state governments — a system known as federalism. “Hence, a double security arises to the rights of the people. The different governments will control each other, at the same time that each will be controlled by itself.”

Madison, joined by Thomas Jefferson, would later go on to expand upon this in the famous Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798. The federal government had recently passed the blatantly unconstitutional and shameful Alien and Sedition Acts to silence and intimidate political enemies. Those despicable acts were instituted by advocates of unwritten constitutional power and a more robust central government. Both Jefferson and Madison argued that the states constitutionally had the right to refuse not only to comply with such unconstitutional actions of the federal government, but also to actively prevent the feds from enforcing them within their state boundaries.

These visionaries and their resolutions gave a voice to a peaceful revolution of constitutional principles that would govern this great nation for years to come. Many states have in fact utilized state nullification to check the federal government throughout the history of our Republic. From the Fugitive Slave Act to unpopular tariffs, states did indeed nullify federal laws they found to be unconstitutional.

Nullification has started to be mentioned in the news, as states have once more started to utilize the practice to resist federal overreaching. Many states have either passed or proposed legislation or amendments to their state constitutions that nullify federal laws in the areas of firearms, medical marijuana, and healthcare, to name just a few.

by Russell D. Longcore, DumpDC

The US Federal Government is a cancer that has affected nearly every organ and cell in the body of our nation. Trying to get rid of the cancer may very likely kill the host, just like chemotherapy or radiation do.

There is virtually no possibility of getting the citizens of any state to agree to secede in sufficient numbers that will move the lawmakers of that state to action. The biggest reason is that there are too many citizens of any state that feed at the Federal trough. If those folks saw that secession would mean the end of their jobs, benefits or incomes, they would fight secession with all their energy.

Here is a short list of people who are either Federal employees directly, or whose jobs are directly affected by Federal money:

• State government at every level, from Governor to dogcatcher, that receive and spend Federal money
• Federal bureaucracy personnel: there are tens of thousands of them in Federal offices including managers, IT personnel, secretaries, janitors, security guards, drivers, inspectors, etc.
• IRS personnel
• I.T. personnel
• Accountants: most accountants would not have work to do without the Federal tax code.
• Retirees: anyone who gets a Social Security check or Medicare benefits.
• Pensioners: see retirees. Most get both.
• Medicaid recipients: the poor who get their medical treatment from Uncle Sam.
• Military personnel: active duty would be unemployed. Retirees could lose pensions.
• Tax Attorneys
• Regulatory compliance attorneys
• Bankers: without the Federal Reserve and fractional banking, most people in banking would be out of a job.
• Post office workers: a seceding state would likely privatize this business.
• Law enforcement personnel: lots of Federal agencies have workers with badges and guns.
• College students with Federally backed loans or grants
• Mortgagees with Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae-backed loans
• Hospitals who accept Federal healthcare patients
• Doctors who accept Federal healthcare patients
• Nurses working for those doctors
• Hospital personnel: RNs, techs, orderlies, cafeteria workers, janitors.
• Federal Judges and their staffs
• Grant writers and grant recipients
• Colleges and universities: Huge staffs directly affected by college loans.
• Public schools
• Construction companies building and maintaining Federal structures
• Any company that gets Defense Department contracts of any kind
• Federal politicians and their staffs
• Social Security office workers: secretaries, inspectors, regulators, managers, executives
• Army Corps of Engineers
• Churches and non-profit organizations might lose their tax-exempt status and have to pay taxes.
• Farmers: some get Federal subsidies that would vanish.
• Manufacturers and suppliers of any product or service you can imagine that goes to the Federal government
• Lobbyists
• Property management companies that lease to Federal agencies
• Welfare office workers
• Media (radio, TV, internet, print media): all get advertising revenue from gov’t.
• And most of the workers above have families that rely on their incomes.
• And most of those workers and their families spend their incomes in businesses that rely on their incomes.

This list could go on and on if I thought about it some more. There are likely some obvious people I’ve omitted. But this list alone should give you a flavor of just how much the Federal government has infected America on every level.

Now…consider this wild card.

The inevitable economic collapse occurs. For some reason, the dollar begins its unavoidable hyperinflation because the worldwide economy collapses. The Dow Jones, Standard & Poors, and the NASDAQ all lose at least 50% of their value. The worldwide bond market collapses, and foreign/institutional boldholders refuse to accept dollars as payment. Banks close all over the USA en masse. Catastrophic layoffs begin at all levels of the economy. Unemployment soars to 40 or 50%.

The Federal Government panics…even more than they are panicking today…and starts laying off Federal workers. Their tax revenue is off by 50%.

OK…got the scenario? Now, at every level of society, from Washington to Walla Walla, every person has been affected by the collapse.

When the people on the list above aren’t getting paid anyway…or are getting paid with dollars that are becoming worthless…and the seriousness of the situation sinks in to their minds and stomachs…secession will finally make sense.

As I’ve said before, the number one job of the secessionist movements today it to educate the populace about the benefits of secession. The number two job of the secessionist movements is to begin to create a stable of the best people to occupy crucial positions in the state so it can secede. The politicians likely won’t help.

Albert Einstein said “We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” I say that we cannot solve our problems with the same PEOPLE that created them.

The politicians of today must be swept aside to make room for those who will bring the solutions to the table. What of politicians who have a change of heart, and join the movement? My opinion is that they should be “quarantined” and watched closely, and not allowed to participate in the solutions without constant supervision.

The secessionist movements all over the USA must acknowledge the near impossibility of pre-collapse secession, and devote themselves to the post-collapse secession model. Anything else is Tea-Party rah-rah hype just to raise money for their coffers.

Secession is the Hope for Mankind. Who will be first?

DumpDC. Six Letters That Can Change History.

© Copyright 2010, Russell D. Longcore. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.

by Brian Stanley, DumpDC

In the 1868 case of Texas v. White, 74 U.S. (7 Wall.) 700, a case dealing with the title to some U.S. bonds, the Supreme Court ruled that Texas’, and hence the South’s, attempted secession in 1861 was unconstitutional. But the opinion also contained some wording that might give secessionists a way around White.

It’s unfortunate that the Court used White as the vehicle to address the constitutionality of secession. The Court reached the constitutionality issue only because of a jurisdictional question; and it was virtually impossible for the Court not to hold secession unconstitutional a mere three years after the end of the War Between the States. A finding of constitutionality would have rendered unnecessary all the death and misery of that war. Of course, it was unnecessary. But the point is that the Court was under tremendous pressure to uphold the result of the war as if constitutional issues are settled on the battlefield. (For an excellent overview of why secession was constitutional, Lincoln’s arguments against it, and various other aspects of the secession issue, see “Was the Union Army’s Invasion of the Confederate States a Lawful Act?” by James Ostrowski.)

No, this was certainly not the optimum test, or a fair test, for a decision on such a vital constitutional matter. Nevertheless, the case, wrongly decided as it probably was, is out there and serves as a significant hurdle for secessionists if we hope to secede lawfully. If we look at secession as a matter of political will and are not concerned with secession’s constitutionality, White is not particularly important. But let’s assume for now that the goal is lawful, constitutional secession.

So what is the potentially helpful language the Court used? After noting that it was “needless to discuss at length whether the right of a State to withdraw from the Union for any cause, regarded by herself as sufficient, is consistent with the Constitution of the United States[,]” the Court then determined that the Union was intended to be perpetual and then stated that after Texas entered into “an indissoluble relation” with the Union: “There was no place for reconsideration, or revocation, except through revolution or through the consent of the States.” (Emphasis added.)

Consent of the states. What does that mean? We know it doesn’t mean a constitutional amendment. That is a term of art, and there is no logical explanation as to why learned justices would use the phrase “consent of the states” if they meant constitutional amendment. Does this phrase tell secessionists that there is another way to secede other than constitutional amendment? Does it mean the consent of a majority of states?

Opponents of secession will no doubt say that the phrase is mere dicta and has no controlling effect. Dicta are, basically, a comment that isn’t essential to the case’s outcome. (The full term is obiter dicta: dead words. Dictum is singular.) Dicta aren’t part of the holding. But lawyers and judges argue all the time about whether a phrase is dicta or holding. Richard Posner, judge and legal scholar, once noted that the distinction between the two concepts “is fuzzy not only at the level of application but also at the conceptual level.” Posner, “The Federal Courts: Crisis and Reform” (1985). Some have said calling something dicta merely means: I don’t want to follow this decision. So dismissing the phrase as dicta, while a predictable tactic, isn’t necessarily fatal to the use of the phrase by secessionists.

Complicating matters more there’s a concept called judicial dicta. These are dicta that deal with an issue that was briefed and argued and was directly involved in the decision but isn’t essential to the decision in the case. Judicial dicta, also difficult to define, are given more weight than dicta.

The “consent of the states” phrase is, at worst, judicial dicta, as the issue of constitutionality was briefed and argued. The Court’s comment must be given some weight. It has some meaning. And it helps secessionists. Constitutional amendment requires 38 states. And getting the Court to overturn White is highly unlikely. So this consent concept provides a third, possibly somewhat easier, option than either amendment or overturning of the case.

Michael C. Dorf, a law professor at Columbia and a constitutional scholar, is one of the few commentators who has addressed this language in White. In an article about secession, Dorf, after saying that White held secession unconstitutional, looked to the “consent of the states” language and said, essentially, that we don’t know what it means but it may provide an argument for states that want to secede. The article, interestingly, was addressed to a question about whether blue states could secede after the 2004 election. The title of the article, in fact, was “Does the Constitution Permit the Blue States to Secede? With Permission, Perhaps; Unilaterally, No” FindLaw (Wednesday Nov. 24, 2004).

If the White language does allow secession on the approval of the states (however that approval is given), how likely is it that secessionists could get 26 states? Well, the original 11 Confederate states would be a good start. Vermont has one of the most active secessionists movements in the U.S., so it might join in. North and South Dakota, Montana and Idaho are possibilities. Oklahoma is a likely candidate. Missouri and Kentucky are possibilities. That’s a total of 19. Approval by these states won’t happen immediately, but if the federal government continues to trample on the rights of the people who thinks it won’t? And if the secessionist movement can effectively educate the public, especially in states that might agree to secede, maybe getting 26 states isn’t out of the question in the foreseeable future. And it’s always possible that a few blue states will approve of secession just to get rid of us.

by Russell D. Longcore, DumpDC

Ever heard of the “Third Rail” of politics?

The concept of a “third rail” comes from electric trains…the big kind that people travel on. The wheels of the train run on the normal rails, and a third rail is the electric power source for the train’s electric motors. Touch the rails for the wheels and you have no problems. But touch the third rail, usually electrified with hundreds of volts, and you die.

In politics, the Social Security system became known as the “third rail” of politics. The system became sacrosanct over time, and politicians who wanted to reform Social Security came to find out that touching the system meant certain political death.

But there is a new political “Third Rail” in America today…Secession. It evokes fear and dread in most politicians, no matter if those politicians are at the state or federal level. Even the lone Congressman leading a revolution in Washington for liberty…Dr. Ron Paul of Texas…won’t speak of secession as a solution to end Federal tyranny.

I had opportunity to speak to Dr. Paul in person at the Campaign for Liberty’s regional conference in Atlanta a week ago. When I asked specifically about secession, he said that states had no chance for secession at the present time. Rather, he stated that as the Federal government implodes, the states would be able to nullify or simply ignore Washington…a “de facto secession” is what he called it.

Doctor Paul is privy to a vast breadth of information to which I have no access. So, I cannot simply dismiss his opinion about secession. And perhaps his opinion about secession will change as circumstances change in America. But it appears to me that Ron Paul is not yet willing to support the concept of state secession as the solution to DC tyranny. He will not touch the Third Rail.

In his recent“State of the Republic” Address, he outlined all of the reasons that America is in such deep, unavoidable trouble as a nation. Here is the summation that Congressman Paul offered:

The only way that we can prevent blood from running in the streets is to offer a better idea of the proper role of government in a society that desires first and foremost -liberty.
And that is impossible without a firm commitment by our thought leaders to the ideas of freedom, the source of all creative energy and prosperity. An all-powerful state is the threat to that ideal.
The prevailing attitude of the people-as it once was in early America-must be that of liberty and self reliance, rather than the nanny state and dependency relying on government force to mold all private choices.
If this is understood, a smooth-although not painless-transition to a free society is achievable. Ignoring this option will be very destructive to everything that is dear to the hearts of most Americans.
What is it that we must do? We must immediately:

• Balance the budget by reducing spending
• Change our foreign policy to that of non-intervention
• A full audit and more supervision of the Federal Reserve leading to abolishing the Federal Reserve
• Legalize competition to the Federal Reserve with competing currencies
• Regain respect for civil liberties and privacy while reigning in the CIA
• Wean ourselves off the dependence of wealth transfers by government
• Abolish crony capitalism-no subsidies, no bailouts, no regulatory or tax privileges to protect the powerful elite, especially the military industrial complex
• Eliminate the income tax, inheritance tax and taxes on savings and dividends.
None of this can happen without the restoration of Congress to its dominant position of the three Branches of Government as was originally intended by the Constitution. The Executive and Judicial must be reined in, and Congress must assert its prerogatives over all legislation curtailing all unconstitutional agendae through budgetary controls.

Signs abound that angry Americans are now more ready than ever before for a change in direction that is indeed real. If this program were improvised-even suddenly and dramatically-the adjustment, though significant and to a degree somewhat painful, would be much shorter and of minor consequence compared to the chaos and poverty that will result if we refuse to change our gluttonous appetite for a free lunch.

While I agree with Dr. Paul’s analysis, no amount of videotape…no amount of ink on a page…not even the complete agreement of all pundits will convince me that Washington will EVER contemplate any one of the eight bullet point actions listed above. And if they won’t contemplate them, Congress will most assuredly NOT enact any of them. Actions speak louder than words.

Rep. Paul stated openly at the conference that, even with 315 co-sponsors to HR 1207, the bill to audit the Federal Reserve, he does not anticipate that a vote on this bill will be allowed in the year 2010.

So, in the obvious absence of ACTION by Congress on the eight recommend-ations by Rep. Paul, what practical solution is left to solve the empire-ending problems coming from DC and affecting every American?

There remains only one solution.

Secession.

I disagree with Doctor Paul. I do not believe that we can prevent “blood from running in the streets.” State secession would not prevent the economic collapse of the Dollar. And when the dollar melts down, crime, hunger, poverty and death are still going to happen widely in America. I also believe that the President will invoke nationwide martial law as soon as the economic collapse occurs. At that moment, governors and state legislatures are going to have to make a hard decision who is finally in charge.

But if a state will secede and immediately adopt a gold/silver monetary policy combined with the freedom of currency competition (just like Paul wrote in the Free Competition in Currency Act, HR 4248), that state or states will have the ONLY chance on the North American continent to shorten the suffering of its citizens and create a new nation based upon individual liberty and sound money.

Secession is the Hope For Mankind. Who will be first?

DumpDC. Six Letters That Can Change History.

© Copyright 2010, Russell D. Longcore. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit is given.