Let me start with your car. You went to the dealer( or where ever you purchased the thing) and paid for the car with either cash, or a loan from some bank. Either way once you have paid off the car you feel like it is yours to do with as you please. I would suggest that you wrong. When you bought that car you had to put a license plate on it right. In the process of getting that license plate you registered the car with the government. Now they what car you have and way to track you if you break a law. Of course, do not forget that you must an operators license to drive it. That’s right another state mandated thing that you must have, if don’t have you are not supposed to drive. Heck even if you have license and do not have it on your person that too is a crime. After you have had that car for a year you have to renew that license plate or again you can not drive the car. Further suppose you live in an area with emissions standards and have get the car inspected to renew your license plate. If they find something wrong with car you have to fix before they will let renew your plate. Some of these things are subjective and can be as simple a cracked windshield which you feel does not affect you ability to see clearly, but the official inspecting the car thinks otherwise. I am sure there are example other than this but, based on the above if you buy a car and do not follow their rules you are not supposed to drive. I suppose that could disregard all of these things, but then will get at least one ticket and if you refuse to pay the ticket we all know what happens then. So you if essentially have to ask permission to drive something that you own is that really ownership, I think not.

Now on to your home. Most us own our home with the bank that holds our mortgage. Suppose that you want to add on to the house. Do you ask the bank for permission? In most case the answer is no, they just want to make sure that you continue to pay your mortgage. However, you have go to some government official and ask for the appropriate permits, which usually cost money. This process can be painful and not logical. The government may want oversite on your plans and architectural drawings for your proposed add on. They may not like it and will tell that you are not permitted to do whatever is because it does not follow some code. Add a draconian homeowners association into the mix and things become even worse. At that point you have beg two parties who have no stake in your home for permission to change your property. Does something seem wrong with this to any one else out there? Lest we not forget that you HOA has the right to put a lien on your home or even foreclose on it if you own them money and can not pay it for whatever reason. Does that make you feel safe in you home ownership? How about the government abuse of eminent domain. The concept that they can take you land for public use. Of course, unless like under a rock you know that the definition of public use have been expanded by the not so wonderful US Supreme Court. If will recall the Kelo vs New London,CT case where public use defined as giving the land to private developer to build and office building(actually I think it was more than one) was okay as for the public good because it would create jobs. Except that honest people were thrown out of their homes by the government. Also if you don’t allow them to buy out, they can just condemn the property and take it anyway. Either way you are screwed and have little recourse.

All the above factors have led me to one conclusion, and it is the only logical one. You are not really the owner of your property, you are simply paying for the usage of the property until some bureaucrat decides that they need it more than you do. If you and every other person in the US would stand up to these abuses we could make a change for the better, but until that happens we all at the mercy of the goverment.

Likewise why should I pay for bad business. If GM and Chrysler are that bad off then so be it, let them go. Ford claims they will only have a problem if GM or Chrysler goes down. Great let them all go. Some will decide to open a plant somewhere, and just maybe they will smart enough to open up in place the UAW cannot hurt them. Do not forget about that on folks. I am paying the salary of these workers if they get bail out money from the state. Wait there is more than that, did you know that the UAW has a auto industry funded plan to pay people who are laid off most of their salary. What does it gain GM to lay off an employee if they keep paying them? I have been wondering for years why the price of cars has gone up some fast. I understand that unions are part of the problem, but come on how many of you can truly say that $400 a mouth for a car works for you? I, for one, cannot. Oh and that $400 a month is a $20,000 car over four years with no interest. So did they begin to price themselves out of their own market? $20,000 is for one of the cheap cars. They made no plans for the bad times in the business model. $4 gas sort of ended the bug SUV era for a while. Yet the big 3 had no way to respond to that. The plants we exclusively setup to make large trucks and SUV’s. See the trend here. One upon a time all of the big 3, and the foreign manufacturers too, had a few lines of cars and that was it. Now there are way to many to sustain. Ford makes trucks in 4 or 5 sizes, SUV’s in 3, I could go on but you get the picture. Yet despite the bad decisions they refuse to take responsibility for the bad decisions and actions.

Everyone is in great hurry to say I did it, when something good is going on, but the minute something bad happens no one wants the problem laid at their doorstep. I have made some very bad decisions in my life and I have had to live with them, there was no one to bail me out. I have also learned from them because of the consequences. If some one gets you out of trouble every time that you are wrong then odds are you will not learn from the mistake. If congress gives money to the big 3, then we will have to wait and see what happens, but suspect that some where along the line, they will all repeat the sins of the past and will end begging for more money.

The amendment reads as follows:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Is some one else opinion of your housekeeping probable cause for a warrant. I think not. I hope that the citizens continue to fight this and get it off the table as a possibility. If they are unable to do then I believe they should challenge the legality in any court that will listen. That may not do any good, especially with the way our court systems work(see the post on Ian Bernard), but it should be considered.

Here is the link to the article in the St Pete Times. I also noted that one of the comments following the article claims that the city of St Petersberg and other cities in Pinellas County already have a similar ordinance on the books. I have not been able to confirm that information. The same poster also claims that law cannot be unconstitutional since it is on the book already in other places in Florida. This to me merely shows the writers ignorance. Just because a law is in place does not mean this it is correct or constitutional, it merely means to no one has challenged it yet. It is quite obvious by reading the comments that most feel that is an invasion of their privacy, but there are some people who feel that government should control the peoples home to protect property values.

I hope the people vote their elected officials out of office when they. The citizens need to show the politicians that they will not stand for this kind of thing.

He also said that the stock market dropped 90% during the depression. Are we done yet. The stock market is down 40-50% now and seems to be creeping lower. Oil is down from a high of $147 a barrel to $49 a barrel as of today. Today alone the tumble in the market wiped out the gains that happened last week. So again is the market stabilized at around 8000 or not?

Bernake also allude to bank failures. Well how many financial institutes have failed? How many that would have failed were bought out by other banks? How many are on the verge of failure that we have not even heard about yet? How many will take for the administration to acknowledge a depression. Will it take a complete collapse of the economy.

All the lock step politicians are saying that we need bold action to avoid a depression. Do they really think that they can buy their way out of this? How much inflation can we expect if they do buy their way out? In my opinion if you need to make a big purchase do it now. That $500 item, certainly will not be $500 in a year or two. $700 billion dollars or more of currency debasement will catch up will all of us eventually. The more they print the worse it will get and could bring around the very depression(wait we are already there) and collapse which they are trying to avoid.

Again, I am not a economy expert but a truly free market system need to be the order of the day. No matter what. The Dems say the the deregulation of the banking industry got us in to this. Don’t buy in to that. The banking industry is still very heavily regulated. Just because a few regs were removed does not mean that an industry was deregulated. If there was a free market banking system then banks would fail when they made stupid business decisions. Which is the way it should be with any business.

After watching the video tape again I agree that the whole court room was orchestrated to send a message to the activist. I don’t think that it worked. Also I noted that a gentleman from a local cable channel called into Free Talk Live and stated that the court proceedings were supposed to have broadcast quality audio and video, something everyone there said was not the case.

Now, I looked up the definition of contempt of court. Here is what I found:

Courts have inherent power to control courtroom behavior and to enforce court orders. Contempt of court occurs when someone disobeys a court order, shows disrespect for the judge, or disrupts judicial proceedings. There are two types of contempt–civil contempt and criminal contempt. In addition, contempt can be either direct (occurs in the judge’s presence and disrupts court’ proceedings) or indirect (occurs outside the immediate presence of the judge).

By this definition are not we all in contempt of court. Do you ever want to be there for anything? Heck traffic court is something we could all do without. We are told that standing when the judge enters the courtroom is a show of respect. Respect for what? I was taught that respect is earned, not given due position. If I do not know that judge personally then I nothing to base an opinion on do I. Do you have respect for some one else because you were told to, or do you form your own opinion on the person? Standing for the judge seems to me to be the same as being told you will respect me because of my authority.

Now it has also surfaced that individual who complained about the couch was a busybody city planner for the city of Keene.

All can say is that if this is justice then all of us are more trouble than I thought. I will try to keep up to date on this. Also you can find more info at 93days.com and jailedactivist.info.

UPDATE
According to freekeene.com Ian’s time for the contempt of court charges have been suspended and he has been released.

The UAW probably is guilty of helping this along. Union bosses want their money and the union members feel that they are entitle to some things that they are not. If were not members of the union they could be fired and replaced and probably at less cost.

I also think the car companies have priced themselves out of their own market. What does that mean? How many of you can afford a new car? I know that I can’t and I make a decent living. In looking at car prices, what I have seen is the fact that a low priced car is about $20,000. If you got a 4 year loan on that number, that is $416 dollars a month with out accounting for interest. I don’t have that laying around, do you. Even if you went to 5 years, it is still over $330 a month, again not accounting for interest. So my family has not bought a new car for 10 years now. To be honest the new car was before I was married and had 2 children.

So I would contend that we should not give cooperate welfare to company period. The automakers have done this to themselves, we should let them deal the results of their self created problems. If the U.S. automobile manufactures go under so be it. Some else will take their place and the foreign companies will take up some of the slack in the market