South Carolina Pushes for Medicaid Overhaul After Man Denied Breast Cancer Coverage

Via The Bonnie Blue Blog

South Carolina health officials are petitioning the federal government to overhaul its "discriminatory" Medicaid rules after a local construction worker was denied coverage for breast cancer treatments because he is a man.

Raymond Johnson, 26, found out about his cancer last month. He visited the emergency room after a pain in his chest became unbearable. He already knew he had a lump there but, "being a male," assumed it was a cyst.

When the tests came back, "I found out I had cancer."

Thoughts flashed through his head, he told FoxNews.com. "Is this gonna be it for me? Am I gonna die?"

He stepped outside, he said, and "talked to the Lord." He resolved to do what had to be done to deal with the disease.

But when Johnson, who is uninsured, applied for Medicaid, he was swiftly rejected. The reason? He is a man.

"To me it's really dumb. ... It's not as common as a woman having breast cancer, but we do have it," Johnson said.

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Free Blacks by state from the 1790-1860 census

(Reminiscences Of My Great, Great Grandfather's Slaves)
Though freed before the War

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Free Blacks in Antebellum North Carolina

HERE

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Also

Free African Americans in North Carolina Before the Civil War

One from here: Jacksonville SEAL Killed In Helicopter Attack

WCTI12.com
VERBATIM POST
===========================

ONSLOW COUNTY -- A man from Jacksonville was among the Navy SEALs killed in a Saturday attack in Afghanistan.Chris Campbell, 36, was among 30 who died after an attack on a helicopter.

He was a White Oak High School graduate.Many of Campbell's Jacksonville friends are remembering him this week. One of his classmates went on to become an officer in the U.S. Army."I guarantee you he would not want us to mourn for his death but celebrate his life of service to others and his fellow man," said Chief Warrant Officer John Fleshman, a classmate of Campbell's and a 1993 graduate of White Oak High School. "That is the least we can do for Chris and the other Americans in his chosen profession who have given so much and never asked a thing in return."

Jack Baile was Campbell's varsity football coach when he started to play his Junior year, even though he was small for football."He didn't have a whole lot of fear of anything," Jack said.Jack's son, Joe, was a teammate and close friend of Campbell's."Chris was one of the first guys that kind of approached me, he was just real easy going, fun-loving guy, great personality, but you know, he kind of reached out to me," said Joe, "I think he knew I was struggling a little at White Oak."They took classes together and played ball, building a friendship that was hard to keep up over the past 10 years, because of Campbell's career."It would be three or four years in a row without seeing him and then we'd be at somebody's house and they'd stop by when everyone was home for Christmas or something like that and play basketball together," Joe said.

Anytime they heard something about Navy SEALs, like when the news of Bin Laden's death came out, they wondered if Campbell had been a part of that. And then they heard about the Chinook crash."When you sign up, you know, I'm sure that's always in the back of your mind somewhere," Jack said.The news of Campbell's death was their worst fear for their friend come true."Stuff started just popping up on Facebook and friends started talking to each other and stuff like that, you know, word got around pretty quick," Joe said.The Bailes can't imagine what Campbell's family is going through."As hard as it is for us, I can't imagine what it is for them," Joe said.

Obama Dismisses S&P Downgrade, Gives USA AAAA Rating – Blames Republicans in Congress

Madness is often found in tyrannical despotic leaders with a god-complex. They become obsessed with their own hubris and fantasy world that they create and dismiss reality – often blaming others for their failures that results in genocides.

In Biblical times, Nebuchadnezzer King of Babylon ordered a golden statue of himself made - and ordered his entire realm to fall down and worship his image when a bell was sounded. He became enraged when three Israelites, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego refused to worship the statue – and he threw them alive into a furnace as punishment.

There are the tales of the insane spectacles of Caligula, and the madness and slaughter Nero perpetrated.

In our own time, despots from Mussolini to Mao were filled with their own narcissistic petulance that had zero-tolerance for anyone daring to explain reality. King George the III went mad. Oftentimes, such a mindset infects an entire regime, because few to none dare raise the ruler’s wrath by pointing out the truth – so incredible acrobatics of truth are manufactured to explain away what the real world is dishing out – and/or – they ignore it wholesale – blaming those who attempt to state the truth for the woe and misery reality brings.

This fella comes to mind:

Today – we saw the specter of an angry, petulant narcissistic madman, The President of the United States – totally dismiss reality in a disjointed rant that he was nearly an hour late for. His anger was apparent as was his total disconnection with reality – as he seeks to construct his own, by actually stating that the S&P Credit downgrade was not legitimate. He cited Warren Buffet, who himself was downgraded by S&P – as saying that “he would give the US a AAAA credit rating”. So in the hubris mind of NerObama – HE, like all emperors can decide on his own authority – what kind of credit rating to give the country. And – he will make up a new rating – and call it Quadruple A – and say that is the rating we deserve.

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American Tinderbox

Via Sipsey Street Irregulars

For some time now, residents of some US cities have noted occasional incidents of seemingly random, racially motivated violence in which young Black males are involved. The hot weather and bad economy seem to be combining to generate a small but possibly significant uptick this year. The national media are doing their best to avoid looking too closely at this disturbing phenomenon, and perhaps for good reason. What the United States doesn’t need is a media firestorm that triggers copycat violence.

Nevertheless some attention should be paid. Journalist Eugene Kane has the bare bones in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Philadelphia – While out of town last week, I suddenly started receiving urgent long-distance messages about young black people in Milwaukee acting crazy.

Again.

Last time it happened, I was on vacation during the Fourth of July weekend when a bunch of misbehaving young black people ransacked a gas station convenience store and attacked residents in a park.

This time, I was in my hometown of Philadelphia attending the National Association of Black Journalists convention when my BlackBerry started blowing up with news about what happened Thursday night at the Wisconsin State Fair.

According to reports, it was similar to what happened in Riverwest last month, but on a much more brutal – and scarier – scale.

When people start reporting they were being beaten by black people for no other reason than being white people at the State Fair, that’s pretty disturbing.

Here is a news account of the violence. As Kane points out, Milwaukee isn’t the only city to have seen problems like this.

For most of the summer, Philadelphia cops have dealt with a series of so-called flash mobs that turned violent, scores of young blacks roaming the center city area and attacking mostly white pedestrians and shoppers.

It’s so bad, Mayor Michael Nutter and Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey recently announced a coordinated response to the problem, which involves law enforcement measures, social responses and neighborhood outreach. They’re relying on a network of African-American professionals, community leaders and officials in the city to step up to the plate.

On Friday, Nutter said he would increase police street patrols and enforce curfews for young people. The city’s curfew ordinance says children under the age of 13 must be home by 10 p.m., and young people between the ages of 13 and 18 must be home by midnight.

Yale sociologist Elijah has described Philadelphia flash mobs for the Philadelphia Inquirer like this:

Flash mobs have reappeared on the streets of Center City. These groups of mostly black youths gravitate to a designated location at an appointed time. Once there, they become a mob that gathers force as it roams the streets, wreaking havoc on businesses while terrifying and sometimes attacking pedestrians.

Dick Simpson of the Chicago Journal describes the situation in his city:

These well-known social conditions breed anger and lawlessness. And so we now have black “flash mobs” attacking whites in the Loop, on public beaches along the North Side, as well as throughout the River North and Lakeview neighborhoods.

The term “flash mob” originated when college-aged kids would converge on a spot like Grand Central Station in New York

and do seemingly-impromptu performance art.

But now, the term is being applied to violent groups. For several years, roving groups of black teenagers have attacked folks on the South and West sides of Chicago as far out as Oak Park.

These young folks in gangs and flash mobs are not afraid of the police. They attack and steal quickly — they are gone long before the police arrive. They just move on to another spot for their next attack. The beatings of victims can be brutal.

In a piece on the Black underclass in Chicago for In These Times, Salim Muwakkil interviews a participant.

Jamal Foster’s story is an example… Foster says he and his friends often travel to North Avenue and Oak Street Beach—two popular lakefront locations along the Gold Coast—to intimidate people and steal whatever they can. “We can get some good stuff down there,” the 17-year-old says. “You can’t get no iPods or nothing like that on the West Side. So we go to where you can and when we mob up, even the cops can’t stop us.”

Law enforcement’s impotence in halting such crimes—more than a dozen incidents in the first weeks of June alone—is the probable reason Chicago police took the unprecedented action of closing the densely crowded North Avenue Beach on Memorial Day. (The official reason given for the shutdown was to allow medical vehicles access to treat several heat-related injuries.)

The Christian Science Monitor adds Washington and Las Vegas to the list of cities experiencing this phenomenon and discusses another pastime: “a game called ‘Knockout King,’ played primarily by black teenagers, where the point is to approach and quickly strike a stranger, often whites or immigrants, in an attempt to knock them unconscious with the first punch.”

Sounds like fun. A twist that is also gaining popularity is the “flash rob” where a large group of young people descends on a store and loots it. As responsible journalists are always careful to say, the overall trend of youth crime in the US remains headed down, but this particular form of crime seems to be gaining steam.

There are many observations one can make — both about the phenomenon itself and about the gingerly way the press wants to handle it.

As to the phenomenon, it points to an important trend I’ve been reviewing in a series of posts on the state of Black America. What was once a cohesive community is fragmenting in several directions. Immigrants from Africa and from the African diaspora in Central America and the Caribbean are changing the definition of what it means to be an African American, and neither the interests nor the experiences of the new immigrants always fit comfortably into African American culture and ideology. Beyond that, the three main groups of native-born African Americans are growing apart. There is an increasingly well connected and successful African American elite who negotiate the upper reaches of American society on reasonably satisfactory terms, and life for them just keeps getting better. Oprah, President Obama, and a host of others are doing just fine.

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Reap the harvest

Via Liam

VERBATIM POST
Old Holborn
=======================

Libertarians respect private property, so you won’t hear any cheering from me at the weekends “riots”. What we witnessed was not a political protest by a community frustrated at Police corruption and victimisation. That happened on Saturday afternoon outside Tottenham Police station. We witnessed the rewards of decades of “radical” “progressive” politics by those who will never have to face the consequences of their actions.

I’ll be blunt. We have tolerated the expansion of a feral class of youth. We have celebrated “diversity” whilst they have celebrated the freedom under the auspices of “equality” to turn parts of London into gang run shooting alleys. Whilst we chuckled at Ali G, life was imitating art. The result? An entire generation that is not educated enough to earn a living from anything other than drug dealing and crime. A dangerous generation that values “status” above morals, materialism above society and has no concept of “improvement”

I saw a tweet yesterday that blamed inner London poverty on people “trapped by long term mobile phone contracts”. It is just the beginning. The usual suspects of community leaders will be dragged out, the left will blame “cuts” and “poverty”, the right will demand more restrictions to immigration and nobody will speak of the elephant in the room.

WE created this. WE told black kids it was OK to be a gangsta. We protected them from the consequences of their actions under the banner of equality and diversity. We told them it was fine to act and behave as a lawless thugs as if challenging that behaviour would somehow offend them.

I’m in court next week as the 16 year old Nigerian thug who assaulted my daughter, innocently sitting on a train, has decided to plead not guilty, even though the evidence against him is overwhelming. I explained to the Police that I will not tolerate inaction on this because he needs to understand that his behaviour is not just unacceptable to me, but unacceptable to the society he is part of. If I don’t stop him now, he won’t be stopped. It is my duty to people I have never met to make sure he does not attack them by forcing him to take the consequences of his actions. He does not need a “community leader” condemning his actions, or a diversity coordinator creating excuses for his “culture”. He needs to know that his actions will not be tolerated.

Whilst “da bruvvers” are celebrating an intake of free widescreen TVs, those who defend them by inaction against their lawlessness are preparing to complain to me that no businesses or jobs will come to the areas they trashed. And it will be my fault. Again.

None of the looters over the weekend is “trapped”. All of them make a choice, as we all do. Live your life as you see fit. If you choose drug dealing, theft and violence as a career choice, don’t you dare call me a bigot when I refuse to support your “diversity”

MGM's Golden Anniversary: Their stars all together!

Via Sister Anne

Roll Top Computer

Via Glenn

Hood’s Army Predictably Destroyed

The enemy of Southern independence was not only time and opposing armies increasingly filled with foreigners, substitutes and bounty-enriched volunteers, but also Napoleonic-era tactics that wasted precious few soldiers in obsolete frontal assaults. General Joseph E. Johnston wisely allowed his opponent to make the costly frontal attacks while he remained behind strong defensive positions.

Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
www.ncwbts150.com
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"
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Hood’s Army Predictably Destroyed:

“The engine of change was technological modification. An advance of weaponry overthrew the efficacy and then the moral meaning of the tactics soldiers wished to employ, robbing of significance the gestures they had been determined to make. Civil War muzzle-loaders…were no longer smoothbore but rifled – [and] Charging columns could be brought under fire much earlier, at a half-mile’s distance, and a much higher toll exacted. Even with the persistence of poor firing instruction and wretched firing discipline, rifling strengthened the hand of the defense decisively.

The futility of the frontal attack, with each regiment advancing on a two-company front, should have been apparent as early as [Sharpsburg], (September 17, 1862) in those ranks of dead ranged as neatly as if on parade. Three months later Burnside attacked Lee’s men on the heights of Fredericksburg at a cost of 12,653 casualties against their opponents 5,309. At Gettysburg it was Lee who sent…15,000 in Pickett’s charge, perhaps half returned. At Cold Harbor on June 3, 1864…Grant ordered frontal attacks that in less than sixty minutes cost the Army of the Potomac 7,000 killed and wounded against the Confederates’ 1,300 casualties. There the principal charges could be sustained only twelve to twenty minutes.

Ironically, Sherman’s first opponent, Joseph E. Johnston, was perhaps the only defensive-adept in either army, and it was he who repulsed Sherman’s charges while yielding ground before Sherman’s otherwise masterly campaign of probing operations and flanking movements. But on July 17, 1864, Jefferson Davis relieved Johnston of his command and installed in his place, John Bell Hood, whose devotion to the attack was unsurpassed in either army. Sherman was pleased: “I inferred that the change of command means “fight.” This is just what he wanted. As [Northern officer Jacob D.] Cox put it:

“We of the National Army in Georgia regarded the removal of Johnston as equivalent to a victory for us. Three months of sharp work convinced us that a change from Johnston’s methods to those which Hood was likely to employ was…to have our enemy grasp the hot end of the poker….we were confident that…a succession of attacks would soon destroy the Confederate army.”

Sherman was willing to wait for those attacks. At Peachtree Creek Hood lost between 5,000 and 6,000 in killed, wounded and missing to Sherman’s 1,800; at Decatur, as many as 10,000, against Union losses of 3,700; at Ezra Church 5,000 against 600. Describing for Sherman that last combat, soldiers of the 15th Corps assured him it had been “the easiest thing in the world; that, in fact, it was a common slaughter of the enemy.” [Sherman] saw more clearly than others that the charge had become defeat.”

(Embattled Courage, the Experience of Combat in the Civil War, Gerald F. Linderman, Free Press, 1987, pp. 135-137)
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Hood’s Army Predictably Destroyed

The REAL Problem With The Downgrade & BofA collapses

VERBATIM POST

The Market Ticker
====================

I've not heard this yet in the MSM, and it's a serious miscalculation.

Note that since the "downgrade" rumors started the ten year treasury yield has dove. You'd think it would do the opposite. You'd be wrong.

The issue with the downgrade is not the fundamental risk of holding Treasuries. The difference between "AAA" and "AA+" is nearly immaterial.

Rather, the problem is the capital calls it may generate within the banks and the impairment against the ability to raise capital from stock price declines.

We're now back to stock prices last seen in October - in less than two weeks.

The real problem though is in bank stocks like this:

Note that given the utter fraud of allowing a bank to count "Shareholder's Common Equity" as capital, when it cannot be spent, means that precipitous stock price drops like this can instantly render a bank insolvent. Why? Because paid-in capital isn't being held in reserve, that's why, and when the price declines like this the company can't issue more stock into the market.

This leaves you with only one real choice - a firesale of assets so as to bring your coverage of liabilities back within assets. What happens if your assets are being held on the balance sheet at fantasy prices?

We could have fixed that in 2008 and 2009 but of course that would have meant that banks would have had to actually go find capital from real people to make loans with, and that was unacceptable - so in addition to allowing them to "mark assets to fantasy" we also allow them to count as "capital" things you can't spend, thereby allowing them to generate profits from that phantom "capital" - and huge losses when things go wrong.

Incidentally that very scheme - counting as "money" things that aren't (in the original case capitalized interest on OptionARMs) was what set off my alarm bells on WaMu in early 2007. If you remember they were paying out dividends (that's real cash!) with "money" that didn't actually exist (their cash earnings were insufficient; the rest of their "earnings" from which dividends were being paid was that capitalized interest.) Of course we know how that turned out, right? Yes, it took a while, but the outcome, given the behavior and enough time, was obvious more than a year before it all went to hell for them.

Oh yeah, check this out: 13/34 EMA on the SPX weekly is about to cross negative - a fairly reliable long-term BEAR MARKET timing signal.

Stock prices in general don't bother me much - you can trade either way.

But if the banks threaten to blow again due to capital problems there is no ability to save them this time and you will lose your deposit money as the FDIC has no money and Treasury cannot borrow enough with the debt limits in the way to save even one of these monster banks, say much less all of them.

&

Tepper Dumps Financials, BAC Collapses

Alan West slams John Kerry's Tea Party Remark as 'INSIDIOUS'

Via PUMABydesign001's Blog

The Radical Cop looks at Oathkeepers

Via OATH KEEPERS

If you meant what you said when stating your Oath of Office then you could be viewed as an extremist.

“The end of law is, not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom. For in all the states of created beings capable of law, where there is not law there is no freedom.” - John Locke

Brakes Rotors

Last week I sat in a local auto shop getting my brakes fixed when I saw that all to familiar “Ranger Tab” on a business card hanging on the wall. It was next to the Lords Prayer, and other patriotic memorabilia. Being a veteran my eyes immediately notice “army stuff” no matter where I find myself. The owner, in his late-50’s, still wears his former Navy rank insignia (Petty Officer Second Class) on his work cap. Without saying a word, except, “You owe us $178.00,” he expressed non-verbally that he is a Proud American, devoted Christian, Vet, and law-abiding citizen. Who wouldn’t love this guy as a neighbor?

Before leaving I took closer inspection of the “Ranger Tab” and noticed it never said “RANGER”, which is what I always knew the tab to say, but instead said “OATH KEEPERS” along with the website underneath of www.oathkeepers.org - “huh?” My interest was peaked.

Antenna’s Up

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She is good! Small Businesswoman to Obama: 'Apologize' for Economy

Via PUMABydesign001's Blog

Police Misconduct NewsFeed Weekend Recap 08-06-11 to 08-07-11

VERBATIM POST
Injustice Everywhere
========================

• Westerly RI police accused of excessive force a man officers hit with a baton & peppersprayed died 16 hours after arrested for disorderly conduct. [3] http://ow.ly/1vpX7X

• Norway SC police refuse to disclose information about why an officer fatally shot a minister to death after an alleged chase that only lasted a couple of minutes. [3] http://ow.ly/1vpk3R

• Toronto ON cops are under investigation after a mute man who was well-liked by neighbors died when he was thrown to the ground and cuffed for unknown reasons. [4] http://ow.ly/1vpe1X

• New York NY police are being sued by a man who survived anywhere from 15 to 27 gunshot wounds when several officers unleashed a volley of gunfire that left 1 dead & 6 injured while he was struggling with a man who pulled a gun. [3] http://ow.ly/1vpAcM

• Toronto ON police are the subject of an SIU investigation but neither agency will say why undercover cops attempted to stop a car, why the driver was shot in the arm, or what he was charged with along with his passenger after the incident. [4] http://ow.ly/1vsoUg

• Fort Dodge IA cop arrested on sexual abuse & extortion charges after accused of sexually assaulting woman in April [1] http://ow.ly/1vpfrB

• Henrico County VA deputy was arrested on possession & production of child porn charges after his home raided back in May [1] http://ow.ly/1vpeR7

• Juneau AK cop gets deal dropping sexual abuse of a minor charges in exchange for a plea to an interference charge [0] http://ow.ly/1vqmfe

• New York NY cops owe $1,000,000 in unpaid tickets according to a report on parking placard abuses, cops blame finance dept [0] http://ow.ly/1vpsxs

• Indianapolis IN police car was videotaped by a motorist doing over 100mph on a highway without it’s lights or sirens on [0] http://ow.ly/1vsnOA

• New York NY police sgt suspended 30days w/o pay after arrested on DUI charge when stopped for running red light [0] http://ow.ly/1vrR4J

• Winooski VT cop charged w/drunk driving after found slumped over steering wheel in highway median while off duty [0] http://ow.ly/1vpktD

Indy 500 Winner Bobby Unser vs. the (Corrupt ) U.S. Government

Via JADED HAVEN

The Mighty Bore Boxlock Muzzleloader shoots 1/2 pound ball!

"Among other weapons, I had an extraordinary rifle that carried a half-pound percussion shell; this instrument of torture to the hunter was not sufficiently heavy for the weight of the projectile: it only weighted twenty pounds, thus with a charge of ten drachms of powder and a HALF-POUND shell, the recoil was so terrific, that I spun around like a weathercock in a hurricane. I really dreaded my own rifle, although I have been accustomed to heavy charges of powder and severe recoils for some years. None of my men could fire it, and it was looked upon as a species of awe, and it was name "Jenna-El-Mootfah" (Child of a Canon) by the Arabs, which being a far too long of a name for practice, I christened it the "Baby", and the scream of this "Baby" loaded with a half-pound shell was always fatal. It was too severe, and I seldom fired it, but it is a curious fact that I never shot a fire with that rifle without bagging. The entire practice, during several years, was confined to about twenty shots. I was afraid to use it, but now and then as it was absolutely necessary, it was cleaned after months of staying loaded. On such occasions my men had the gratification of firing it, and the explosion was always accompanied by two men falling on their backs (one having propped up the shooter) and the "Baby" flying some yards behind them. This rifle was made by Holland and Holland, of Bond Street, and I could highly recommend it for the Goliath of Gath, but not for the men of AD 1866. "

Sir Samuel Baker-The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin Of The Nile, 1866 pp.138

NOW DOESN'T THAT SOUND LIKE FUN??

The Finished Rifle

This is actually the final post to this build, I have finished building the rifle case and these are the finished pictures. This has been a very fun project to build and shoot. I hope everyone who has followed along has enjoyed this build. All I'm missing is the handle for the center of the rifle case, I haven't found exactly what I am looking for yet, it does have brass handles on each end of the case so it is easy to pick up and move around . Which is good because with the weight of the rifle at 24 pounds, the weight of the case and then the potential to hold 24 pounds of cast balls, it may take two people to carry it.

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BLACKCSA: 4th Tennessee Recruiting

Companies B and C of The 4th Tennessee Cavalry CSA is being formed. Looking for members in Mo, Iowa, Wis, Ind, and Ky. If you are willing to join, message me. If you in or around Alabama, Message Matthew Joe Mallory Commander of The 4th Tenn.

If your going to Galesburg Heritage Days and Jerseyville Illinois. Look me up, I'll be walking around in a Majors Uniform.

Im Maj. Gigane Tawodi
Leader of the War Party
gewi_redhawks@yahoo.com

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BLACKCSA: 4th Tennessee Recruiting

After Years Of Research, Confederate Daughter Arises

Via Jamey

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War. It's of particular importance to the United Daughters of the Confederacy, an organization for female descendants of Confederate soldiers.

The group includes 23 elderly women who are the last living daughters of those who served. One of them is black.

Mattie Clyburn Rice, 88, spent years searching through archives to prove her father was a black Confederate. As she leafs through a notebook filled with official-looking papers, Rice stops to read a faded photocopy with details of her father's military service.

"At Hilton Head while under fire of the enemy, he carried his master out of the field of fire on his shoulder, that he performed personal service for Robert E. Lee. That was his pension record," Rice says.

Rice's father, Weary Clyburn, applied for a Confederate pension in 1926, when he was about 85. Rice was 4 years old then, the daughter of a young mother and an elderly father who regaled her with stories of his time spent in South Carolina's 12th Volunteer Unit. But when Rice repeated those stories as an adult, she was accused of spreading tall tales.

"Nobody believed me. Nobody. Not even the children," she says. "They are just beginning to believe, 'cause now they see it in print."

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Jetman Flight at Grand Canyon West

Via Cousin Colby

National Currency Factories to Benefit New England

The predecessor of the Federal Reserve was Lincoln’s Hamiltonian measures to finance his war upon the South through issuing paper money and a national banking system. Author Thomas DiLorenzo (The Real Lincoln) states that “Ohio Senator John Sherman was a top spokesman for the nationalized banking system. It would centralize power in Washington…[and his] Republican party colleagues. He urged his congressional colleagues to “nationalize as much as possible,” even the currency, so as to “make men love their country before their States.” All private interests, all local interests, all banking interests, the interests of individuals, everything, should be subordinate now to the interest of the Government.”

Bernhard Thuersam, Chairman
North Carolina War Between the States Sesquicentennial Commission
www.ncwbts150.com
"The Official Website of the North Carolina WBTS Sesquicentennial"
========
“[Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase] had early seen the need of reform [toward a uniform national banking system] in this field; and in his report of December, 1862, he outlined his plan for national banks and national bank currency. What Chase proposed was a system of national banking associations under Federal supervision, which would issue bank notes based upon United States bonds and guaranteed by the Federal government.

It became law on February 25, 1863; but this law had certain defects, so that Congress faced the whole problem afresh and reframed the statute. It is therefore to the law of June 3, 1864, that one must turn for the legislative basis of the national banking system as it emerged from the Civil War. Other provisions of the act were concerned with the maintenance of a required reserve against both banknotes and deposits; the depositing of such reserve in “reserve cities” (which permitted the concentration of bankers’ funds in New York City);…and the use of banks as depositaries and financial agents for the government.

As a method of stimulating, or rather forcing, the sale of United States bonds, the national bank act became an essential feature of Civil War finance. After the war (1866) a tax was placed on State banknotes in order to tax them out of existence, so that national banks possessed a monopoly of banknote currency.

To think of the national banking system as a purely fiscal measure innocent of politics and free from exploitation would indeed be a naïve assumption. Investigation shows that it soon “developed into something that was neither national nor a banking system. Instead it was a loose organization of currency factories designed to…[serve] commercial communities and confined…almost entirely to the New England and middle Atlantic States.” One of the chief injustices of the system as actually administered was the favoritism shown after the war to the eastern States which received the lion’s share of the $300,000,000 of banknote circulation assigned by law as the maximum for the whole country.

As explained by George LaVerne Anderson, each State in the New England and Middle Atlantic regions obtained an amount of banknotes in excess of its quota, while not a State in the South received an amount equal to its quota. “Massachusetts (write Anderson) received the circulation which would have been necessary to raise Virginia, West Virginia, North and South Carolina, Louisiana, Florida and Arkansas to their legal quotas….The little State of Connecticut had more national bank circulation than Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, Kansas, Missouri, Kentucky and Tennessee…Massachusetts had more than the rest of the Union exclusive of New England and Middle Atlantic States.

An interesting comparison [he continues] can be made between comparatively small New England towns and the Southern States. Thus Woonsocket, Rhode Island, had more national bank circulation than North and South Carolina, Mississippi and Arkansas; Waterville, Maine, had nearly as much as Alabama; New Haven, Connecticut, had more than any single Southern State. If it be said in answer to these facts that distributing according to population is absurd…it should be kept in mind that not a single Southern State had obtained, by October 1869, its legal share of the $150,000,000 which was to have been apportioned according to existing banking capital, wealth and resources.”

Though [the national banking system] had some merit, it created an inelastic currency, tended toward the concentration of bank resources in New York, opened the way for serious abuse in the speculative exploitation of bank funds, and contributed to the sharp financial flurry of 1907. Proving inadequate as a nationwide control of currency and banking, it was tardily superseded by an improved plan in the federal reserve act of 1913.”

The Civil War and Reconstruction, J.G. Randall, D.C. Heath and Company, 1937, pp. 455-458)

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National Currency Factories to Benefit New England

Liberty: With or Without Federal “Permission”

We don’t need no stinkin’ permission to exercise our rights. We need to exercise our rights whether the government wants us to or not.

I’m grateful for the opportunity to share my views with readers of the Personal Liberty Digest™, and am looking forward to doing so as often as possible. So I figured we should start out with a quick introduction.

I’m a proud Tenther.

Rachel Maddow and her ilk would have you believe that this is dangerous. But, I’ll leave that up to you to decide. To me, being aTenther means I believe the Federal government is authorized to exercise only those powers that we the people delegated to it in the constitution — and nothing more.

Unfortunately, though, for a long time, things have been completely opposite. It’s gotten so bad in recent decades that I believe there’s very little the Federal government does that actually is authorized by the Constitution.

What Do We Do About It?

Do we march on D.C. and demand that the Federal politicians limit their own power?

Do we sue them in court in the hopes that the Federal judges will limit Federal power?

Do we “vote the bums out” and hope that the new bums will reject all that power left to them on a silver platter?

Power, And Some Warnings

Thomas Jefferson and James Madison both warned us that if the Federal government ever became the sole and exclusive arbiter of the extent of its own powers, that power would grow endlessly, regardless of elections, separation of powers, courts or other vaunted parts of our system.

Surprise, surprise. They were right. For more than a century, we the people have been suing, marching, lobbying and voting bums out. Yet year in and year out, government continues to grow, and your liberty continues to diminish. And it doesn’t matter what political party is in power, the Federal beast keeps growing.

Power. The problem we face today is about power. And until we address the absolute fact that the Federal government has too much power, things will never change. Then, we’ll need to take the next step and acknowledge that going to the Federal government to fix problems created by the Federal government is not just absurd, but it never works.

John Adams also gave us a warning that “liberty once lost, is lost forever.” He wasn’t necessarily saying that there’s no hope whatsoever in a situation like ours. Instead, it was an important lesson on what we must face going forward. Whenever government tells us it needs more power to deal with an “emergency” — and it always seems to have them for both foreign and domestic issues — that same government will never voluntarily give that power back to the people. It will never just decide that the newfound power is something it doesn’t want. The result? Adams was trying to tell us that liberty is never regained without a long, difficult struggle by the people.

What Would Jefferson Do?

How do we fix this mess? Well, Thomas Jefferson was a pretty smart dude. In 1798, he gave a little advice on what to do when government won’t follow the limits given to it. In response to Federal violations of the 1st amendment that year he wrote that “whensoever” the Federal government exercises “undelegated powers… a nullification of the act is the rightful remedy.”

Reading this, you’ll notice that Jefferson didn’t say that a nullification of the act is a pretty decent remedy. He didn’t say that nullification is just a rightful remedy, or even a good idea to try after voting bums out or going to court. He told us that any time (whensoever) the Federal government exercises powers it isn’t supposed to exercise (undelegated powers), a nullification is the rightful remedy (our proper course of action right now).

What does that mean? Well, we’re not supposed to wait for the Federal government to correct itself. We’re not supposed to wait two or four or six years for some new bums to fix things for us. We’re not supposed to wait years for the politically connected lawyers on the Supreme Court to give us permission to be free. We’re supposed to exercise our rights whether the government wants us to our not.

Nullification?

Around the country, there’s a lot of talk about nullification; but what is it, really? I can think of no better way to define it than how Tenth Amendment Center research analyst Derek Sheriff has done — by describing what it is not:

Nullification is not secession or insurrection, but neither is it unconditional or unlimited submission. Nullification is not something that requires any decision, statement or action from any branch of the federal government. Nullification is not the result of obtaining a favorable court ruling. Nullification is not the petitioning of the federal government to start doing or to stop doing anything. Nullification doesn’t depend on any federal law being repealed. Nullification does not require permission from any person or institution outside of one’s own state.

Nullification is something that’s already happening around the country – and Derek explains the process:

Nullification begins with a decision made in your state legislature to resist a federal law deemed to be unconstitutional. It usually involves a bill, which is passed by both houses and is signed by your governor. In some cases, it might be approved by the voters of your state directly, in a referendum. It may change your state’s statutory law or it might even amend your state constitution. It is a refusal on the part of your state government to cooperate with, or enforce any federal law it deems to be unconstitutional.

At its very core, nullification is any action or set of actions on a State level which results in some Federal law being rendered, in practice, null and void or unenforceable.

Hempcon

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