A Commentary on Arrogance and Oblivion Combined - A Union Dangerous to Freedom

The "Voter Protection Program"
The Stolen Election

The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election

Proudly Published by TIME Magazine

The Link to the original article is HERE 

Let me know when they remove the link so I can publish the article, which I copied to forestall that eventuality.

My response to this outrageous crime can be read below

 

We should have elected Seven, the Dog

(We could have except for the MSM blackout) 

Melinda Pillsbury-Foster

The bland inaccuracies rolled out as justification for manipulating the 2020 Presidential Election by the self-described Voter Protection Program were startling, at best.  

I have despised Donald Trump since I first read an article about his use of government to steal the long-owned home of an elderly woman, her private property, to enhance the value of one of his multitude of casinos.  Eminent Domain, I had supposed, was limited to  proven needs for public improvements.  It was Donald who sent me back to look at the law on this, resulting in my rejecting there was any justifiable excuse for this.  And for a casino?  

I dismissed Donald from my mind and skipped over the articles outlining his irregular marital activities.  I was, therefore, astounded at the idea he was running for president in 2016.  Surely, I reasoned, this is some kind of publicity ploy.  And so I ignored the election entirely after it proved impossible to extract any comment from Bernie Sanders on the material my partner and I sent to him about the toxic conditions in the lake near his home in Vermont.  Apparently, he was not concerned.  Bernie lost, of course and then Trump again surfaced.  

People were taking him seriously as a candidate. It was one of those horrible moments when you are sure this must be a bad dream. 

And then Trump won.  Children were being retained in cages at the border and Betsy DeVos, the sister of the Eric, Black Prince of Death, formerly associated with the bland and unexceptional Amway products, had clearly found very unsavory associations.  

My partners and I started a 2-Way Interactive Mass Audience Participation TV Network, Freedom Interactive TV Networks, Association

In the mean time I had realized I was not alone in my dissatisfaction with the kind of people who had inserted themselves into the hierarchy of politics.  The one characteristic they seemed to share was an avaricious appetite for money (ours) and power and was surprised to learn the present trajectory for greed and the likelihood of psychopathy was apparently building a hopeful level of frustration in my fellow Americans from all political viewpoints.  

The number of individuals filing to run for President had been steadily increasing since 1992, when there had been 65 candidates.  Note for future reference you likely remember only one of those not running as a Dem. or Rep. in '92. H. Ross Perot. 

The Perot Campaign shook things up, which was delightful to see.  Of course, it did not last - and it was not until 2017 when I was handed some slightly musty folders which explained what had happened in '92 and how Bill Clinton had managed to overturn a sitting president, George H. W. Bush, with a 89% popularity.  

It had taken several days to read through the documents and the documents owner, one of my partners, happily answered questions when he could.  But as I dug down it became increasingly clear he had no idea why this curious event had taken place.  And more, he did not see the correlation between that event, the nomination of Dull Bob Dole as the nominee of the Republican Party in 1996 or other curious events you can find on the site. 

I have occasionally been accused of being cynical, but I prefer to think of this as simply being unhampered by illusions about the character and ethics of those in politics.  

The Commission for Presidential Debates was incorporated jointly by the Dems. and Reps. soon after the 1992 election.  According to the records handed over to me, now scanned and ready to be uploaded to a website, PhoneVoter.us, where I assembled the pieces of the story.

There had been plans to start the Commission for Presidential Debates earlier because the League of Women Voters had notions about asking hardball questions.  The D & R candidates wanted only softball questions.  So, after having Ross on the program a deal was cut between the Clintons and BushCo; no more independent or 3rd party candidates allowed and no more League of Women Voters.  STORY  

The link at the bottom of the page leads to Haley Barbour, appointed as Chairman of the RNC and his orders no satellite or services by PhoneVoter be used.  

When researching a subject I always use a time line; these can be very revealing.  I knew from a friend of mine, whose family was chummy with the Bush Family in Texas that Daddy Bush was already planning for his namesake to follow him into the presidency.  Therefore, they did not want a GOP Incumbent and allotted Bill a second term.  Bill did use satellite.  In fact, he used a full year of it, paid for the DNC.  I wonder if Bill shared with other Democratic candidates?  Anyone know?

The voting machine machinations began in 2000, contracts allotted to BushCo friends.  

I was startled to read in the article that previous elections had been honest.  In fact, it does not appear we have had an honest election is decades, just one reliable elite pick after another.  Not that there was any intention John McCain would win in 2008. 

So the War for Oil was going well in Iraq and war went on, and on and on.  And as this continued, not surprisingly, Americans started to become restless.  There was the 2008 Meltdown and other events which caused disruptions in their lives and so every election, sometimes starting right after Election Day, more people decided, "What the heck, I'll run for president myself."  

In 2016 there were 1,775 candidates but, naturally, the MSM did not mention them.  And something else was happening.  The Democratic and Republican Parties were shrinking, shrinking, shrinking.  And Americans, very unhappy with the direction politics were taking began starting new parties like a mother bunny turning out babies. 

And this leads us back to the question of the curious cabal of self-anointed elites who decided Americans needed to be protected from four more years of Donald Trump and instead have Biden as president instead of one of the 1,151 candidates who were also running.  

Note how the MSM drove out Howard Schultz of Starbucks, a Billionaire but not acceptable to these folks.  And Howard was not the only billionaire dissed.  So was Rocky De La Fuente, who came in second or third to Hillary in 28 state primaries in 2016.   Curiously, the MSM never mentioned him.  

So, I was not surprised at the arrogance demonstrated, this is consistent with their behavior in the past.  And this has nothing to do with politics or ideology; it is a bald attempt to eliminate the control Americans should have over who they elect to office.  This is just the most recent chapter in the story.   

Thomas Jefferson referred to this kind of thing as a "long train of abuses,' but you have to give these folks credit, they are far sneakier than the British were.  

So, what will Americans do when they have a chance to debate the real issues?  Stop by DebateTourney.com and find out.

 

 

The Self-Fulfilling Prophesy....................

 “I don’t believe it is possible for the Libertarian Party to use TV”.  

 

 

By Melinda Pillsbury-Foster, Chair

Freedom Interactive TV Networks Association, Inc.

There are probably numerous reasons the Libertarian National Committee and Libertarian candidates from local to presidential do not have their own TV shows.  Strangely enough, however, we don’t know what these perceived reasons are because not one Libertarian has returned a call to us in thirty-eight years. 

Libertarians could believe, “TV is too Expensive”; “the liberals who dominate the airways won’t let us on”; “corporate fascist media won’t let us on”; or, “there are no libertarians in media.”  We can’t say because all we ever got was a shuffle off to a functionary who did not return calls or emails. 

 We have a list of their names, however.  These are supposed advocates of the free market, who don’t understand competition.

So how did Bill Clinton overturn the most popular (89%) sitting president in history on a budget of $50,000 starting in late March 1992?   Curious?  You are about to find out.

Sometimes these wrinkles in history hold amazing insights.  This is such a wrinkle. 

1992 was the year the most likely Democratic candidates hung back from running because of the awe-inspiring popularity President George H. W. Bush then enjoyed. 

 Bill Clinton was a small-time Southern governor with little to recommend him and scandals a plenty back in Arkansas.  One of these had smacked him hard in January, Gennifer Flowers.

The Emmy-worthy performance of Hillary on 60 minutes, as good as that was, was not good enough to stem the flow of questions and the drop in donations to the Clinton Campaign.    It was looking grim, with Jerry Brown, a late entry, coming up fast. SEE The Real Story (bottom of the page)

 Desperate, Clinton’s Media Consultant Frank Greer, received an offer for free satellite time which had come in to the campaign from PhoneVoter TV Network.

 Clearly, what Clinton needed was to evade the offer of FREE Satellite Time, which would allow all sorts of embarrassing and fatal comments from those gathered to hear him and respond with phone tallies and interactive voice messages.  So, Bill, pretending to be a fellow named Charles Marcus, who was not involved in politics in any way, but whose name was familiar to everyone, and Greer pumped Brock for information on how to obtain satellite time when their campaign war chest was down to $50,000.

 Brock agreed to help them, assuming they intended to use PhoneVoter’s Unedited Presidential Speeches, and taught the two, both entirely ignorant of the realities of TV scheduling, costs, production and using this in conjunction with other technologies everything they needed to know. Clinton learned how to be his own host in a Road Show format in diners across America.  Brock generously told them and went off to find what he learned was the last available Satellite Uplink Truck in the country. 

 Brock would receive the contract arrangement fee, through Keystone Satellite Communication, the company also providing the free satellite time to all candidates.  Soon afterward, the truck was toddling along with the Clinton Road Show, the clips sent on to News Directors carefully edited in advance reaching 10-million people per day.  No Interactivity was used. 

 The next article will be on the Libertarian Party’s presidential candidates and the LNC.

Real Affordable Health Care for All Americans

by Melinda Pillsbury-Foster 

Dear D. Pratt Demarest,

Enjoyed your article of March 19, 2020.  We have solutions to the multiple problems you outlined, and we are implementing them and making them available to Americans so they can solve multiple problems in the free market.  You named some of these, others not.

Health Portal begins with the charging method used, taking into account the advice of Milton Friedman, who said, “If the only thing in business which is certain is uncertainty, then we should base our financial systems on uncertainty”.

Our charging method takes into account ‘uncertainty’, also known as erratic incomes, such as so many Americans are now experiencing en mass. 

Other problems with the present system of Rigid Installment Premiums, include:

·        Severage of coverage if a payment is not made on a required, fixed schedule, right when you likely need the services. For 300 years, American doctors and midwives in the free market charged a percentage of income, often in produce or cash, for universal comprehensive medical care for everyone. 

·        Medical providers who make their living from earners, have genuine economic incentives to provide epidemiology, wellness, and preventative care, in addition to rapid yet long lasting curative care. 

·        Lack of a reliable means for people to do comparison shopping on medical treatments and drugs. 

·        Failure to provide information on all possible alternatives, this mandated and enforced by government, which listens most clearly to the medical industry and the pharmaceutical industry. 

·        Removing the control of choosing from those who pay for these services and products.

·        Investing unjustified trust and power in the American Medical Association.  The power the AMA exercised today is enforced by the government monopoly given to them in several increments from 1902 until 1910, achieved this power after a half century of effort to drive other approaches to health out of the marketplace. 

·        Government displacement of long-existing organizations and churches which have a proven record for maintaining their relationship with their members. 

·        “Who do you trust?”, becomes a question people answer for themselves. 

Americans are well able to determine what works for them IF they are provided with the facts and can check these for themselves. 

Ensuring contingencies, such as the coronavirus, would be taken into account by a Mutual Finansurance Mutual.

Think of this as an exercise in returning to self-government. 

Now, let’s talk about facts and government. 

When FDR started Social Security, a dark day for Americans, he took the list of services provided by the Improved Order of Redmen (IORM), the oldest fraternal order in America, and made elaborate promises on the ‘trust’ he was beginning.  The original organization reconstituted itself as the Redmen in 1812.  Before then, you knew them as the Sons of Liberty. Today, I would add Daughter of Liberty. 

Now we know Congress stole all but three years of the income from the Social Security Trust and, with other programs sold to Americans, are bankrupt.  In France, the government also extracts a percentage of income for its version of social security retirement.  These funds are invested in French stocks and bonds as mutual funds, and return profits.  Retirees in France are well off and have funds to enjoy the rest of their lives. 

In America, those who paid into Social Security all of their lives are told what they receive as a tiny stipend each month, is charity, not a proud return on investment.    

Can Americans trust government?   No.  Should they trust Congress to foist another ‘program’ on them for their own ‘good’?   No.  Congress has earned a reputation for unreliability and failure to tell the truth, which stands on its own as a measure best expressed in negative numbers. 

Americans need to organize for their health care outside of government using organizations, including churches, they know they can trust from long experience. 

Mutual Finansurance Cooperatives (MFC) will have little need for infrastructure as signups can be handled by apps with minor variation from the original programming auto-deposit/auto-%PAYEment, and the membership website for interaction.  The template for all banks in the USA will cost only $1.6 million.  The cost of running a single MFC is low and funds are invested as the membership decides by the rules of their own rules.

10,000 individuals can get whatever they want; this is a well-known fact. An insurance mutual with 10,000 individuals have the same statistics as the entire nation. 

America has a long list of beneficial organizations dedicated to an enormous range of causes, and most Americans already belong to at least one of them.  The template for these MFCs is a mutual finansurance company of at least 10,000 individuals who pledge a percentage of income and can choose the health improvement options they want.  No one tells them what they can, or cannot have.  Members are responsible for reviewing the options they have used.  This is made available, without their name or identifiers, to the entire membership.

Because payment is on a percentage of income basis, the loss of a job or other circumstances, do not impact access to health care and the long term contract remains in effect from having financed treatment of pre-existing conditions, insurance probabilities, and preferred human investments.    

Members can decide to add to the percentage they pay so dental, longevity, and other options are also finansured and so included. 

Americans learn about these options on Health Portal, an Interactive TV show which features people who want to talk about their satisfaction level with the health care option they used.  Good or bad evaluations, and the rebuttals, makes good, credible content and attracts more participants to weigh in. 

Mutual Finansurance Cooperatives are not difficult to start, and have a good history for serving their members.  This is the way out of a system which makes its profits currently by extracting money from the slow deaths by drugging and chopping until the patient is dead; an approach so destructive it fits the definition of psychopathic.  Call is socialist or fascist, either term works and fits into the definition of psychopathy. 

This is a clear choice.  Either a Medical Soviet or the choice to choose.       

An Explanatory Post on Health Care, Part 1, Part 2 will be the Solution - Health Portal

by Melinda Pillsbury-Foster

In this post, which will also be an article on FreedomFems, the newsletter for Women’s Institute for Individual and Political Justice, we delve into the issue of Health Care, how to pay for it, how to get what you want, and how to guarantee you will continue to have access to what you have determined works for you.

Today, health care includes anxious waits to find out if your 'insurance' will cover what you need or want. The 'Health Care' provided through government OR mandated by government regulations, keeps those who are early adopters of new technologies and practices from proving what does or does not work. The protocols the medical industry, and that is a huge industry, restricts our choices to those for which they are trained even if they know these are painful, costly, and have a high failure rate. Doctors are people, and people do not change.

Always alive to their own profits, the pharmaceutical industry seeks to justify the creation of ‘drugs’ which, all too often, are based on natural herbs and other resources which work well as they are. 

At the end of this narrative I’ll tell you how I came to the conclusion the Medical and Pharmaceutical Industries are about power and profits and not about healing, even though many working in it are good people, frustrated with what they see but helpless to change it.

The first issue is the inability of most people in professions to accept changes in their mental and emotional paradigm and the fact we are looking at huge industries which are enriching those involved as investors and practitioners.    

First -

A flawed theory which impacted us for two thousand years. 

The Myths of Science and Their Agenda 

The All Powerful and Omni-Potent Cult of the Sperm ...and other emotionally satisfying myths

Aristotle was a respected intellectual in a world based on supposition and theories which were not subjected to the illuminating impact of fact. I call this ‘arrested paradigm’ and it persists today in most hierarchies.   

Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks Will Endanger Your Career – The Ignaz Semmelweis Story

The next story is from my own life and research.  This began before the birth of my first child at age 18.  By the birth of the second child I was looking for a way to give birth at home, and then teaching natural childbirth, Bradley Method. 

During my first pregnancy the usual medical practice was to knock out the mother and take the baby with forceps.  I learned this to my shock and horror by talking to my obstetrician and by reading everything available on the subject.  It immediately occurred to me any medication administered to me would impact the baby.  I discussed this with my OB and he agreed not to knock me out and allow me to give birth without forceps and with no medication.  He lied without even blinking.  The baby was actually crowning, leaving my body when he insisted I be given a spinal.  I was outraged but helpless since neither he or the nurses would pay any attention to my objections. 

I also encountered books on preparing formula as an alternative to breast feeding.  After due consideration and a detailed study of the reasons formula had come into ordinary usage, I decided I wanted to breast feed.  When I asked my baby be brought to me in the hospital, St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica, the nurse made me clean my nipples, very thoroughly with alcohol.  Since I was nursing several times a day, every time the baby wanted, my nipples swelled and bled.  The nurses said I should quit and use formula.  I persisted, nursing through the pain. 

Later, I began reading more about the process of birth and all related subjects.  I had realized doctors routinely lie to their patients who are paying them to perform a service, much like any other professional service.  This violated every tenet I then held, age 18, when this first experience took place. 

The next OB again lied to me and forced me to have a spinal.  I vowed never to go to the hospital for birthing again.  Number three and four were born at home, unassisted.  My prenatal care was provided by an OB who was also on call if problems arose. 

Politically, I was shocked when I realized Libertarians thought a woman’s right to give birth where and how she chooses, and if she breastfed her child, was Not a freedom issue.  This raised my first questions about the philosophy of ‘Libertarianism’. 

At this time, fathers were chaining themselves to their wives to prevent their being ejected from the delivery room even when they were trained as their wife’s support. 

Another direct experience with the medical community took place when I fell during my third pregnancy and hurt my back.  The specialist I was directed to see insisted I needed back surgery.  I refused, hearing the probably impact on my ability to function normally. 

After 18 months of extreme discomfort and struggle, a solution presented itself.  At the time I was working on placing volunteer signature collectors for a Libertarian campaign, I think it was Ed Clark’s gubernatorial campaign around 1977 – 1978.  The group of us working on this for Los Angeles were meeting at my home.  One of our collector hosts walked in, took one look at me and took out what looked like a small gun.  Others already gathered stopped talking to watch.  Gary said, “lay down on your stomach, arms to the side.”  I did.  Using the activator gun Gary, a chiropractic student spent about one minute impacting several points on my back.  When I got up there was no pain and it never returned. 

My older sister, Carol Sylvia Pillsbury had died of a heart attack suddenly in 1974.  We went through shock and grief.  Carol was 36 years old, but assumed this had taken place because she smoked and drank alcohol. 

In the years intervening between 1978 and 1994 I lost two siblings more siblings to heart attacks; Anne Pillsbury Gripp died suddenly standing on the sidewalk in Tokyo where she was putting on the exhibit for her business, the Santa Barbara Orchid Estate, at an International Orchid Show.  Anne was the oldest of my parents five children. 

In 2004 my older brother, the third of my parent’s children, had a heart attack and stroke from which he would never recover. 

My younger brother, Stephen Martin Pillsbury had mitralvalve repair on his heart.  Five out of five children is a depressing statistic.

I had two heart attacks by 1999.  At the same time, I had storm migraines due to other circumstances in my life.  My cardiologist could find nothing to stabilize my heart which did not conflict with the Vicodin I had to take to function and care for my disabled son.   

Sitting across the desk from him he was obviously at a failure for words.  Instead, he opened his drawer and handed me a business card, saying not to tell anyone where I had gotten it.  The card was for an acupuncturist practicing in the area.  I made an appointment that day.  After six months my heart irregularity was gone. 

My life and experiences made me skeptical of both big pharma and big medicine and so motivated me to look for a solution.  Part 2 coming 

Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks Will Endanger Your Career – The Ignaz Semmelweis Story.

by Melinda Pillsbury-Foster

The persistence of the avoidance of facts in medicine must include the experience of Ignaz Philipp Semmelweis, a Hungarian physician whose first job was in obstetrics as appointed assistant to Professor Johann Klein, work which was carried out at the First Obstetrical Clinic of the Vienna General Hospital beginning on July 1, 1846. 

Semmelweis’s duties included examining patients every morning in anticipation of Professor Klein’s rounds.  He also provided supervision for difficult deliveries and performed other tasks assigned to him. 

There were two maternity clinics at the hospital. 

The First Clinic had an average maternal mortality rate from puerperal fever of approximately 10%.  There were two maternity clinics at the Viennese hospital. The First Clinic had an average maternal mortality rate due to puerperal fever of about 10%. The mortality rate at the Second Clinic rate averaged less than 4%. This fact was known beyond the bounds of the hospital.  Poor women being admitted would routinely give birth on the street rather than face being admitted to the First Clinic. 

This surprised and intrigued Semmelweis and he began looking for an answer.  He was quoted as saying this,  “made me so miserable that life seemed worthless”. The two clinics used nearly the same techniques – so where was the difference to be found? 

The First Clinic was part of the training regimen for medical students; the Second was used for the instruction of only midwives. 

Semmelweis systematically eliminated possible causes for the difference in outcome.  First, he eliminated “overcrowding’; the Second Clinic always experienced a higher volume of patients. 

In 1847 a breakthrough occurred for Semmelweis arising from the death of an associate and friend, Jakob Kolletschka.  Kolletschka had accidentally poked by a student’s scalpel as the student was performing a postmortem exam.  The postmortem on Kolletschka revealing a pathology similar to those from women who had died of puerperal fever. 

Semmelweis realized this could be the variable he had been seeking, material from contaminating cadavers which carried puerperal fever.  Medical students had contact only with the First Clinic patients, not those from the Second Clinic with its much lower mortality rate.     

A policy mandating the use of chlorinated lime, known today as calcium hypochlorite, ordinary household chlorine bleach for the First Clinic.  He chose the solution because it was known to eliminate the putrid smell of infected tissue studied during autopsies.    

The mortality rate in the First Clinic dropped 90%, becoming comparable to that in the Second Clinic. “The mortality rate in April 1847 was 18.3%. After hand washing was instituted in mid-May, the rates in June were 2.2%, July 1.2%, August 1.9% and, for the first time since the introduction of anatomical orientation, the death rate was zero in two months of the year following this discovery”, according to Source

Cases of puerperal fever, which was a form of septicemia, could be reduced to near zero if doctors washed their hands in the formula Semmelweis had identified. However, this conflicted with the Theory of diseases which was accepted as fact by the existing medical and scientific opinions of his time.  Semmelweis’ ideas were rejected. 

Semmelweis continued his work in 1848, despite having his ideas and the protocols for eliminating the persistence of puerperal fever; he and documented the outcome, which went far toward eliminating incidences of the puerperal fever all together from the hospital wards.

Disagreements with conservative physicians, including his immediate superior, Professor Klein, resulted in Semmelweis leaving the hospital to return to his native Pest in 1851.

There, he took on oversight of Pest’s obstetric ward at the small St. Rochus Hospital.  Semmelweis virtually, again, eliminated incidents of puerperal fever.  From 1851 – 1855 only 8 patients died from childbed fever from 933 births. 

In his 1861 book, The Etiology, Concept and Prophylaxis of Childbed Fever, Semmelweis lamented the slow adoption of his ideas saying,  “Most medical lecture halls continue to resound with lectures on epidemic childbed fever and with discourses against my theories. The medical literature for the last twelve years continues to swell with reports of puerperal epidemics, and in 1854 in Vienna, the birthplace of my theory, 400 maternity patients died from childbed fever. In published medical works, my teachings are either ignored or attacked. The medical faculty at Würzburg awarded a prize to a monograph written in 1859 in which my teachings were rejected.”

Hillsdale and its message to the World: The Truth Shall Set You Free

“Together we have built a beautiful dream;  We have proved that integrity, values, and courage can still triumph in a corrupt world.”

George Roche III, Hillsdale College

by Melinda Pillsbury-Foster

            And from dreams we must wake to consider the truth;  From truth we must glean the needed facts which make the future, as a reality, possible. 

            I met President Roche many times when my daughter, Ayn, was a student at Hillsdale.  I met Mr. Trowbridge and was inspired by the message and will that kept this small mid-west college alive with the philosophy of freedom.  When I dropped off my daughter, I was comforted by knowing that she was entering into an institution that would enable her to explore the greatness of the world while it kept her safe from the depredations that stalked so many other campuses in America.  Hillsdale offered this and delivered. 

            But I have now reached a point of discontinuity with the powers that plot the course of Hillsdale’s progress into the future.  And the issue is not George Roche’s right to privacy regarding the death of his daughter-in-law. 

          George Roche has no right to privacy.  His son might claim that right; but not he.  And his son is speaking out and seeking justice for a beloved wife. 

            What is private is so because it has not become public.  This is painfully public.  And in this we find played over again, in a very different venue, the protestations of Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky Affair. 

            We must stop living in a world we divide neatly into public ethics and private ethics.  Because we live in only one world and the untidy detritus washes up on the shores of that world, visible in the lives of individuals damaged by sexual depredation, abuse, and all the kinds of theft, fraud, and violence, that we consign to the veil of the private.    Lives are shattered by private acts of wrong doing in ways that are more lasting and costly to individuals at least as often as they are by acts of public malfeasance and war.   Acts of private depredation consign more women to welfare than do public acts. 

            Bill Clinton had no right to privacy that enabled him to live one ethical life privately and another publicly;  Neither does George Roche III. 

            The freedom movement, a combination of Conservatives, Libertarians, and other individualists, have in this crisis, an opportunity to extend the vision of justice and sovereignty inherent in the individual into a vision which emancipates the human spirit, making a new understanding of the future not just possible, but immediate. 

            It is really very simple.  We must stop circling the wagons when our own fiefdoms are threatened.  We must open ourselves up for truth, thus creating clarity in understanding for ourselves and revealing to others that no crisis is more immediate or important than simple truth and the individual.   

            In truth, those damaged can find healing.  The victims of sexual abuse know this in their bones.  Without it their lives cannot begin that process.  Should we offer those at Hillsdale, including George Roche III, our support if the truth is told?  Of course.  But first, the truth. 

            Lissa Roche left a child.  He deserves to know the truth.  And that must include all the truths that these circumstances call into question.   He is owed answers.  George Roche IV, the maligned son of the dynamic and charismatic father, is also owed the truth, as is the wife he discarded after many years of marriage.  It is clear that depredations took place in the lives of these people, and it was a very personal kind of wrong doing.  George Roche III used his power, created in the public realm, to control those vulnerable to him, in the private. 

            If we adopted a code of ethics that asked from each of us the same level of honor that we expect in business we would have a schematic for personal behavior that would make this kind of wrong less common, but which, more importantly, would reduce the confusion when it is uncovered.  Such a formula, called Benevolent Individualism, exists.  These are the tenets:

1.  All human action to be appropriate to creating a world of increasing creativity, production, and trust must be based on exchanges between individuals which are made in the absence of force, coercion and fraud. 

2.  The more powerful party to any exchange is responsible for ensuring that the exchange is fair. 

            Lissa Roche was seduced by a powerful man who committed her to secrecy, thus cutting her off from help, beginning when she was still very young.  She was the victim of a sexual predator and it eventually killed her and devastated her family.  





I wrote this in 1999 and found it today while I was looking through old files.  It was true then and I stand by it today. MP-F 

Women, Rights, and the ERA

This article was written and published in 2003.  Today, the ERA remains unratified while the overwhelming majority of Americans think it is law.   This raises several issues we will be addressing here at the Women's Institute in the coming weeks.  

The first is confusion over the biological differences between men and women and why gender and these differences should be ignored by government.  

The second issue is the successful campaign to persuade Americans the ERA had been ratified, which was an expensive, and successful dis-information campaign.  

The third issue is the reframing of law and the appropriate functions of government.

The fourth issue is how we deliver real opportunity for all of us and put the issue gender to bed (so to speak) as we get on with realizing our full potential as individuals.  

by Melinda Pillsbury-Foster, ERA Campaign California Coordinator,

Wording of the Equal Rights Amendment 

Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.

You are a woman; you are living at the dawn of the third millennium and you think you are equal under the law. You are wrong, wrong because although the American people from both genders, every age group and part of the country have overwhelmingly believe in equal rights for male and female citizens, still, the Constitution, the highest law in the land, contains no wording that extends fully equal citizens' rights to women.

For equality to be more than a provisional privilege there must be an amendment to the existing Constitution that is ratified by 3/4 of the state legislatures.

It has not happened.

The newly passed ERA was sent to the states from Congress in 1972 and everyone believed that it would be ratified by the required 38 states quickly but instead it became a political football linked to issues that have nothing to do with simple equality. Women like Phyllis Schlafly have made careers of opposing an equality that is essential to women – and to our culture as a whole.

What happened instead was a series of laws that assert 'fairness', many passed on the state level. On these women hang their trust that their rights are protected – but each of these laws can be overturned through the actions of the Supreme Court; Without the clear and specific backing of the federal Constitution, even the best laws improving women's rights and opportunities can (and often are) weakened, poorly (or never) enforced, or even overturned.

Now that you understand this, consider the future make up of the Supreme Court. Do you feel safe?

This is how it is, but it is not the whole story. There is hope.

In 2000 a retired research psychologist in Central New Jersey, was asked to speak to a group of Girl Scouts on equality for women. Jennifer Macleod, the speaker, was still active in the local chapter of NOW she cofounded in 1969. She spoke to the troop and, enthused and ready for more, the girls asked for a project they could undertake related to the ERA. Jennifer, an expert in survey research, made up a short questionnaire and showed the girls how polling must be done to accurately reflect the opinions of those polled.

There were three questions. Jennifer expected the Girl Scouts, polling their classmates, teachers, and parents, to find a range of opinions on equality for women. Instead, they found close to unanimous support for the concept.

Buoyed by the potential importance of such findings, Jennifer and a group of associates raised the money to have a national survey professionally conducted in July 2001, among American adults all across the country. The findings? 96% answered "yes" to the question, "In your opinion, should male and female citizens of the United States have equal rights?"; 88% answered "yes" to the question, "In your opinion, should the Constitution make it clear that male and female citizens are supposed to have equal rights?"; and, demonstrating a public lack of knowledge, 72% mistakenly answered "yes" to the question, "As far as you know, does the Constitution of the United States make it clear that male and female citizens are supposed to have equal rights?" The results were similar for both men and women, and in all age groups, educational levels, regions of the country, racial categories, and household composition.

That was the beginning of the ERA Campaign Network and their campaigning for the Equal Rights Amendment on the basis of what is called the Three State Strategy.

Three State Strategy

 The Constitution, in setting forth how amendments can be made, said NOTHING about any time limits -- although, as was the case for several amendments, a time limit can if desired be included in the body of a proposed amendment. The 1972 Congress, in passing the ERA -- which, fully intentionally, contains no mention of any time limit -- chose to attach a 7-year ratification time limit separate from the amendment itself. Then, when the 1979 Congress extended the time limit by 3 years, that set the precedent such that any Congress can legitimately vote to change such a time limit.

How could equality ever fail to be relevant? In an era when women are serving in the military in roles that expose them to combat the arguments that they are frail and must be protected fail to persuade 

Americans.

So the ERA Campaign Network went to work to help obtain ratification in at least three more not-yet-ratified states.

Vigorous ratification drives are well underway in Illinois (which came very close to ratification in 2004), Florida and Missouri, with many of the other not-yet-ratified states, including Arkansas, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, and Oklahoma, building support for their own ratification 

drives.

Additionally, awareness is growing of the need to affirm equality for women in the face of the interests who prefer women in the status of second class citizens.  Protection not internal to the Constitution is meaningless and temporary, open to the whims of legislatures and the courts.

It needs to happen and, startled that it has not, Americans are working to see that it does.

The states that are not yet ratified are:

Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah, and Virginia.

The states that have failed to ratify are nearly all Southern. To help jump start efforts in these states the ERA Campaign Network has formed caucuses for each unratified state. These are to promote communication and activism from ERA supporters who are now living in states that have 

ratified but came from states that have still to do so.

We may leave our state but we keep our friends, school chums and family. With help from the Internet former southerners are creating a network to build understanding and support for the ongoing effort. The threads of connection are weaving new patterns for women across the nation, connections that will ensure that girls growing up now will have their rights secured to them as individuals.