A New Take on The End of America


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A New Take on The End of America

I never knew much about Naomi Wolf. Whenever I had seen her talk in the past, I found myself agreeing with a lot of what she said, but lots of people I respect say really bad things about her.

I just started watching the following video called "Naomi Wolf - The End of America revisited - New Hampshire Liberty Forum 2014." I have only seen a half an hour so far, but I swear, I don't see anything to disagree with yet except maybe her friendliness to the Occupy Wall Street movement. And even then, I don't have any objection to her reasons (First Amendment and so on).

The things she said she was concerned about with The Patriot Act, I was already writing to friends about when I was in Brazil. So no objection there. Naomi even came out in favor of the Second Amendment in this particular talk. And if I didn't mistake what I heard, it seems she has not only been palling around with Lew Rockwell, she has changed her mind on a few issues because of it.

See what you think. It's a long video, but I think it promises to be a very good discussion.

For those who are interested in the documentary made from her 2007 book, The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot, here it is:

http://youtu.be/oqRyUQzokYs

I admit, as of this post, I need to finish the first video and see the second.

But I fully intend to.

Even if I don't end up agreeing with everything she says, she is spreading the message of liberty and that is a good thing.

btw - Here are the Wikipedia articles on The End of America: book and movie.

Michael

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I just finished listening to "Naomi Wolf - The End of America revisited - New Hampshire Liberty Forum 2014," the first video above.

I got a case of déjà vu. I swear, with the exception of a point or other, I thought I was listening to Glenn Beck back when he started sliding toward libertarianism.

Wolf is getting it. Big time. And she has an open mind to try to understand more.

There were a few times when her talk almost rose to the level of poetry, like, for instance, her discussion of the right to privacy. Wolf not only covered the part that privacy means privacy and has nothing to do with doing something right or wrong. Privacy is a basic human need at the root. She mentioned that the state does not want people who will question the state, but wants those who are obedient.

Also, people have to learn to love liberty--this is not innate--because they tend to grow and settle into patterns. She is worried people are losing their ability to love freedom. And the only place for a person to develop this love is in privacy, where the person can do or say whatever comes to mind, to be wrong or right at will, to develop in his or her own personal direction, and nobody but the person has any say in the matter.

If there is a government monitoring all privacy, even if the person is doing nothing wrong and does not intend to, just the presence of an outside set of eyes and ears stifles this growth, this learning. Ultimately, that makes it easier for the state to take over liberty without opposition. People stop loving their freedom. That is one reason the government is so invested in NSA surveillance.

I highly recommend going through this video. Several of the examples she uses come from the left, but not the principles underlying those examples. So that's no biggie. I suppose this is to be expected when a person changes as drastically as she has done.

At the end of the talk, one lady who addressed Wolf as "one New York Jew to another New York Jew," invited Wolf to go to her property for a visit and she would teach her how to shoot. Wolf laughed and was pleased. I think there are good odds she might even do that.

Michael

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If you are busy and don't have time to go through these long videos, here is a bird's eye view. From the Wikipedia article about the book:

Wolf outlines ten steps that "closing societies" — such as Hitler's Germany, Mussolini's Italy, and Stalin's Russia — have historically followed. These steps, Wolf claims, are being observed in America now.

The steps are:

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy.

2. Create secret prisons where torture takes place.

3. Develop a thug caste or paramilitary force not answerable to citizens.

4. Set up an internal surveillance system.

5. Harass citizens' groups.

6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release.

7. Target key individuals.

8. Control the press.

9. Cast criticism as espionage and dissent as treason.

10. Subvert the rule of law.


Wolf became somewhat the darling of the left back in 2007 because she put out this analysis and used examples from George Bush's administration to back up her claim that it is happening in America.

But now she says the bad situation under Bush has gotten worse under Obama and gives examples from the Obama administration.

The left is not amused and Naomi is drifting right into the arms of libertarians and love of the Founding Fathers. She is still working through some of the ideas, but she is getting there in a big way.

The earlier video (the second one in the opening post) goes through these points and talks about Bush. The video from last February goes through the points and talks about Obama.

Michael

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She was arrested a few years ago in some type of protest in NY City I believe.

I am constantly confounded by folks on the left who are surprised by the fascism within their base...

Better late than never Naomi...I still do not trust her.

A...

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The left is not amused and Naomi is drifting right into the arms of libertarians and love of the Founding Fathers.

Half of the "founding fathers" owned Negroes kidnapped from Africa, worked them hard and had them whupped.

Thomas Jefferson was the worst of that lot. He knew better but he did not free a single slave until he was on his death bed. And then he only set five slaves free.

Most of our Founders were NOT libertarians. They wanted their own Crony Kingdom.

The Head of the Cronies was that son of a bitch Alexander Hamilton who marched at George Washington's side at the head of a column of 13,000 Federales to collect their loot from the wheat farmers of Pennsylvania in 1794. Guess who won?

Those freedom loving Founders allow slavery to persist until 1865. And it was the Fascist Abe Lincoln who finally supervised the ending of chattel slavery in the U.S. About 35 years after the Brits got rid of slavery.

I am a bit touchy on the matter of slavery and forced labor. I suppose I inherited this dislike from my ancestors who were slaves unto to Pharo in Egypt about 3000 years ago. I detest slavery unconditionally and will make no exception and screw "context".

Ba'al Chatzaf

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Bob,

Some of your arguments suffer greatly from presentism.

This kind of argument makes for great propaganda (mostly for the left), but not good understanding of what actually happened.

The current example is the Founding Fathers. What was life like for them? They built their ideas out of that, not out of a 20th/21st century history and education, like what you constantly blame them for not having.

Who else back then was talking about freedom, individual rights, etc., and had the power to implement it?

Who?

Anyone?

Answer that one because all I hear are crickets chirping.

The idea is to keep what they did good for our lives and reject what was bad about that society. Which is what mankind is trying to do. Ask yourself, who gains when we blame the Founding Fathers for not being us?

Jeez, you would think a Jew would be tired of being blamed for not being someone else...

:smile:

In other words, the Founding Fathers rose. You do not want them to have risen. You want them to have been perfect right at the start.

You essentially blame them for not being 20th/21st century. That's a misidentification at root. Based on time travel syllogisms...

:smile:

Michael

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Speaking of the end of America, for people that have stocks or mutual funds or 401k's, the stock market is about to crash again. I might say more about that if I have the time. Just a friendly, heads up.

I'll watch the videos if I have the time too. They look interesting.

Have you ever read Mark's Steyn's books, e.g., "America Alone" or "After America"? Many of the same themes are in his books and columns.

Darrell

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Jeez, you would think a Jew would be tired of being blamed for not being someone else...

Michael:

I am proud to have known you.

You are a hell of a lot more diplomatic than I am...must be that orchestra leader in your persona...

I was just a clarinetist [sp?] and I could make that "licorice stick" sing beautiful notes.

Bob is a unique person.

I do not "get his repetitions of history," through to how he wants to fry our enemies [which I am certainly willing to listen to as a policy decision...worked pretty well for the 500,000 purple hearts that we did not have to pin on wounded bodies by not having to invade those four (4) islands].

However, his "story" just kinda bounces off my ears becuse of the repetition.

I am glad you pointed out the following:

Some of your arguments suffer greatly from presentism.

This kind of argument makes for great propaganda (mostly for the left), but not good understanding of what actually happened.

The current example is the Founding Fathers. What was life like for them? They built their ideas out of that, not out of a 20th/21st century history and education, like what you constantly blame them for not having.

Who else back then was talking about freedom, individual rights, etc., and had the power to implement it?

Those ideas are being advanced by the Rush Revere books and they are eluding the supression of the public schools "common," enough said.

I want my child's education to be completely un-common. However, that takes a community, a neighborhood and a civil society that respects every individual.

You are actually re-instructing me on being patient...not an easy task.

Thks.

A...

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Who else back then was talking about freedom, individual rights, etc., and had the power to implement it?

Who?

Anyone?

Answer that one because all I hear are crickets chirping.

The idea is to keep what they did good for our lives and reject what was bad about that society. Which is what mankind is trying to do. Ask yourself, who gains when we blame the Founding Fathers for not being us?

Jeez, you would think a Jew would be tired of being blamed for not being someone else...

:smile:

I would have liked to see Thomas Jefferson act according to his premises. He -knew- slavery (and he said so **)was wrong and the country would one day pay for it. But he was trapped by it and could not figure a way out.

By the way, our founders borrowed from John Locke and the independence movement was sparked by a Brit, Thomas Paine who was later forgotten or rejected by the people he inspired.

** "God who gave us life gave us liberty. Can the liberties of a nation be secure when we have removed a conviction that these liberties are the gift of God? Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever. Commerce between master and slave is despotism. Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free. Establish a law for educating the common people. This it is the business of the state and on a general plan."

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Well, I watched part of the videos. I got about 52 minutes into the first one before I decided to take a break and ended up rebooting. Naomi Wolf is spot on about some things like police departments everywhere having military style equipment these days but in other respects she is just out in left field and too much of conspiracy theorist for me.

Example, Wolf talked about Dan Rather losing his job after criticizing Bush as if that were part the vast right-wing conspiracy. I guess she forgot about Rather promoting some phony story about Bush being AWOL from National Guard service based on a bogus tip CBS got from some flake down in Texas. She must have forgotten that Rather continued to assert the validity of his lead long after it became clear to everyone that he had been punked. I didn't dislike Rather. In fact, I used to watch CBS preferentially over the other lame-stream news channels, but I was happy to see a phony story blow up in the faces of the lefty press for once. Rather being booted wasn't an alarm bell warning of creeping tyranny --- far from it --- it was a reason to rejoice.

I'm glad Naomi Wolf is reading her copy of the Constitution and has come around on the 2nd Amendment. Maybe she'll reach some people that Libertarians can't reach, but I'm also afraid that she'll scare off a lot of people with her conspiracy talk.

Anyway, for another take on the creeping police state, here is a nice commentary by Mark Steyn.

Darrell

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I am constantly confounded by folks on the left who are surprised by the fascism within their base...

Better late than never Naomi...I still do not trust her.

Well said.

Note that she still promotes open immigration -- the darling of every leftist. This policy plays right into the hands of totalitarians. When minorities become a majority, what socialism we have will become permanent, then increase dramatically until either chaos or total fascism begins to reign.

Neither is viable. America will begin to break up, and future history books will show maps of the quaint sea-to-sea country that used to be America.

Mark

www.ARIwatch.com

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I believe in immigration. Very very SELECTIVE immigration. A country has the right to screen who they let into their system. You should pick and choose those people that will be an asset and will mesh well with your system. I also believe there should be stipulations like never being able to claim welfare. Doctors, professionals, engineers, QC/QCC, entrepreneurs etc. Successful people. People claiming refugee status really need to be investigated thoroughly before given a pass.

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Darrell,

We don't look to people like Naomi to see a prophet of freedom. We look to see how a person from a totally different orientation changes her mind--the process, so to speak.

These things take time and they are messy.

The good part with her is that she is a true witness. I do not believe she says things just because others want to hear them. (Oh... she is nice even to the weirdest zealot, like the guy in the Q&A who said the Constitution itself was an abomination, and says she is there to be educated and things like that, but that is relationship stuff, bonding stuff, not the ideas themselves.) I think she sincerely believes the ideas she presents, even when she knows she is examining them and might change.

At least that is the way I see her. I rejoice in her changing views and in the eloquence with which she presents them.

Also, I am pleased to see how certain principles she holds have not changed just because the administration changed. Her main thesis, that certain policies (the ten she enumerated like internal surveillance, creating a thug caste/paramilitary force, secret prisons, arbitrary detention and release, and so on) are generally implemented for safety of the citizens, but they always get turned against the citizens. She elevates this to a law of cause and effect. From what I have observed, she is right. And it is good she stayed on point with these with the Obama administration, even though her initial target was the Bush administration.

There is another subtle point she made I am sure passed over most listeners. She said living in a totalitarian dictatorship is very similar in ordinary life to a free country. People go about their daily affairs, working, buying a house, raising a family, etc. There are pop singers and other celebrities who wield a lot of power just like they do in a free country. And so on. The only difference is that when you get near the areas the government has set aside for itself, the government will crush you without mercy. This means there are things you dare not do or say in public.

I lived in a military dictatorship for several years (Brazil before it handed the government back to civil control) and it was exactly as she described. The image I generally see propagated here in the USA is almost like concentration camps and bread lines for everybody. Not true. It is closer to an enormous lower middle class with cars and TV's and microwave ovens and Internet and everything, with an elite ruling class that tries to stay more or less discreet. And there are some poor regions just like everywhere.

You are given a role (or fall into one), most often a comfortable role, but it is very hard to break through to a higher level like you can in a free country. There is lots of corruption, too, like to get required licenses, ID cards and so one, but it's manageable and you learn to deal with it. Just don't poke the wildcat with a short stick (to quote a Brazilian saying).

At the end of the first video, Naomi gave a warning to the New Hampshire libertarians that I think was sound advice. She said it was very easy to fall into an us-against-them mentality and that would undermine their efforts to persuade anyone or effect any real social change if it grows too big. She said beware of that. She definitely got that right, too. "Us-against-them" inherently comes with an internal power structure and from that point, the people promoting it become just another group in the cultural churn rather than a prime mover.

I think there is great value is watching the transformation of Naomi precisely because she is intelligent and sincere. If she did an instant 100% about face, I would not believe in her sincerity. This sometimes happens in religious conversions, but even there it is very rare. I know the instant 100% about faces I saw at AA and NA meetings was 0. And I sat in an awful lot of those. The ones who insisted they did always fell off the wagon.

I'm going to be keeping my eye on Naomi Wolf. I like the change I am seeing unfold in real time.

Michael

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Michael,

Thank you for relating your experiences in Brazil. I've never lived in a repressive dictatorship and don't really know what it's like. My wife is Chinese and grew up in China. She lived through Mao and Deng Xiao Ping. She lived through the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward. I guess her stories sound worse than what you're saying. Of course, life went on. She was able to buy wonderful ice cream from a push cart on the corner and they had a lot of other treats, but there was also a dark side. There was the political education, the drills, the mandatory "celebrations". There was the need to keep your mouth shut. Sometimes there was hunger. There was "learning from the workers and peasants" in the countryside for a couple of years. There was the guy that hanged himself from a door during the Cultural Revolution (if I remember correctly). There was the need to play the political game to get or keep a decent job. Joining the party gave you advantages, but she never did.

Personally, I've always spoken my mind and I think I'd have a hard time living that kind of life.

When I had a myspace account, I found myself friends with a 9/11 Truther. I'm sure she was sincere, but that didn't alter my opinion that she was a bit of a flake.

Naomi Wolf may be coming around. That's a good sign. And, if you want to make it your pet project to follow her personal development, be my guest. No offense, but I guess I'd rather not spend my time that way. I'm more interested in getting to the bottom of the real problems that are occurring right now.

Maybe I didn't listen to enough of her video, but did she say anything about the Romney campaign contributors that are being investigated by the IRS? Did she say anything about the guy who went on Fox News when he had a problem finding an insurance policy because of Obamacare and was subsequently investigated by the IRS? Did she talk about the insurance broker (or was it a lawyer) that offered to help him and found him a policy and then also found himself being investigated by the IRS? Did she mention the raid on Gibson Guitar after the owners made a contribution to the Republican party? Did she say anything about the how the Founder of True the Vote was investigated by the IRS, ATF, and FBI? Did she talk about how Dinesh D'Souza, the creator of the movie, 2016, is being investigated by Federal Election Commission? Did she talk about how scientists that doubt global warming lose their funding or the fact that Michael Mann is suing Mark Steyn, National Review, and the Competitive Enterprise Institute for having the temerity to suggest that the Hockey Stick is a fraud. Maybe she did. Maybe I just need to watch more. But, the signal to noise ratio just seemed a little low for me.

Darrell

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Darrell,

Regarding your last paragraph, from what I saw on the video, I get the impression Naomi would find practically all of that abhorrent right now.

They even fall under her points about the characteristics of a government sliding toward totalitarianism:

5. Harass citizens' groups.

7. Target key individuals.

Michael

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Michael:

Thank you for posting those. There is a kind of slow convergence going on, a realization that the two forever sides of the stands are battling the wrong foes. Since, at the very least, Eisenhower and JFK; this nation shattered when JFK was assassinated. This has been 50+ years of circular firing squad rot, while LBJ and Nixon and a parade of clowns did little to defend the idea of freedom in the world. Naomi's argument has changed somewhat since (rightfully) criticizing Bush for being the latest in generations of presidents to sell out freedom. Now that she has witnessed this trend doing nothing to reverse itself under Obama, she is appealing to 'not blame the US President' and 'we need the US Government to fight this ..." her favorite political symbol of evil in the world.

The GOP is not the exclusive enemy, and the Democrats are not the answer. The Democrats are not the exclusive enemy, and the GOP is not the answer. A pox on both their houses. It is the exclusive choice between those non-choice choices that has neutered American politics for well over 50 years. What and how DC does what it does has little to do with the now endless pony show fed to us by CNN, Fox, MSNBC, the networks. That is the circus.

Her "ten things" is important testimony to the gross signs of the unfettering of our state. But Peikoff wrote "The Ominous Parallels" at the beginning of the Reagan Era, and provided far deeper detail and analysis. I don't fault Peikoff for the optimism with which he ended his book, perhaps he was responding to Reagan's charisma, which he was loaded with. I wonder, if Peikoff had written the same scholarly work today, would he have ended the book with the same optimism, especially given Naomi's 'ten things' testimony? (He basically ended his book with something like 'probably not in this America, the urge for freedom is too strong.')

The Teaparty movement is an upswelling of awareness that there is something rotten in the state. It has a decidedly anti-government/minimalist government bent to it. It wants to carry an axe to DC, not a scalpal. It wants to build a new smoking crater in DC, not polish a few dusty monuments. It is as reviled by the GOP as it is the Democrats.

And so, when Naomi in her red dress and cleavage courts the Teaparty in NH, and argues that 'we need the US government' to 'fight the multinationals' after all but choking out a throw away endorsement of the 2nd Amendment, after seemingly about facing from 'Bush is Hitler' to "don't blame Obama/the US President', it makes me wonder if a red Wolf in Wolf's red clothing has really turned her Manhattan-ite fear and loathing into a false flag visit to the enemy,

But hey...cleavage. So why not? Maybe not. When she realizes that it was exactly the polite enabling cheerleader Social Democrats in Germany who wooed the unfettering of the state that brought on the inevitable meat eating statists, I'll applaud her change of heart.

I see the same things she sees, and agree with most of her conclusions. Except her sudden new found faith in the US Government and the cancer in DC that has brought the nation to its knees. What unites us is our freedom from each other, except under rules of free association. Polite human interaction, not -any- form of forced association. What should unite is our freedom from each other. It is an idea worth mobbing up to defend, including, with folks who we don't like or agree with but who we politely share our joint freedom from each other with, but unlike fighting and waging WWII, let's not forget why we are mobbing up; to defend our right to be free of the mob. Not to establish a new mob by way of a new forced association, no matter what the endless remarketers call it after the latest human tribal catastrophe.

We didn't win the Cold War, we caught the Cold. We are currently coughing up phlegm. Taking only half our antibiotics is not going to cure the nation.

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Fred,

I like your stream of consciousness manner here.

Mixing cleavage with freedom and suspicions and observations and opinions, etc., (then more cleavage) is always welcome.

:smile:

I wouldn't equate The End of America with The Ominous Parallels, though. Not because both deal with what is wrong in America. But because of the mainstream impact. Vastly different target audiences and vastly different number of readers.

Michael

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Fred,

I like your stream of consciousness manner here.

Mixing cleavage with freedom and suspicions and observations and opinions, etc., (then more cleavage) is always welcome.

:smile:

I wouldn't equate The End of America with The Ominous Parallels, though. Not because both deal with what is wrong in America. But because of the mainstream impact. Vastly different target audiences and vastly different number of readers.

Michael

Opposite ends, even. But they kind of come full circle, don't they? And yes, Peikoff's work drew comparisons, but looked ahead with optimism and concluded 'but not likely here', whereas Naomi observes 30 years later 'already well established here.'

To me, even as she observes the results, she still clings to the same agenda that empowered it; unfettering the state for a really good cause. Her appeal in her talk -- I don't think I misunderstood her -- was that now the good cause was to 'save' us all from an even larger murky uber- state that poor Obama just could not deal with. And what gas rendered Obama impotent? If you listen to her closely, it is some cabal that has taken over the NSA, that has absolute knowledge of every private act of every citizen, like poor Switzer or Wiener, and no doubt Obama, too, because we are all human. The NSA is 'controlling' via that information -- can take down even secret service agents. And yet, let's distinguish that from a national media that 'controls' dissemination of information unfavorable to whoever their candidate du jour is and leads a nation around by the nose. As if we should all have a preference of one group of elitist Ivy league pricks over another when it comes to serving their paternalistic megalomania.

See, in WWII, in order to fight totalitarian statists, America had to unleash corporatism/fascism in the form of a fast tracked 'Arsenal of Democracy.' It was an existential necessity. And the result ever since has been, corporatism/fascism in America. For a really good cause; the state uber alles.

But cleavage....the male mind will always be befuddled by cleavage. You know, when you flirt with a contractor, they will tell you anything.

See, there is this separate species of mankind; they are 'contractors' and 'bureacrats' who run government spy agencies and multinational corporations. And then, there are the virtuous rest of us, who just want to raise our families and live our lives. So, if only we peopled things like governments and contractors and businesses with the right species of mankind, then it would be OK to unfetter government and encourage cozy relationships between the guns of government and businesses -- because it is only the bad species that messes that idea up, not the good species. See, we just need to get the good species into those positions of absolute power over others, and then all will be fine.

Bush in wake of 9/11? Ha. She thinks all of us are Mr. Amazing No Short Term Memory Man. What about Clinton and especially Schumer in wake of Oklahoma City? I still have Schumer's piece sround here from the Times in the wake of Oklahoma City. Incredible. All kinds of power being advocated by the left to empower the surveillance of American citizens; the Schumer's of the world, including many of Naomi's 'multinational' battling friends in Manhattan, were not nearly as Nazi fearing when they thought all that power was going to be aimed at reigning in the folks struggling to conduct international business with those Cayman's Corps, in spite of the hostility in the US to Americans doing international business.

Naomi and friends are a little late to the 'maybe unfettering the state is not such a hot idea/limited government' party. But perhaps there is not quite such a zealot as a convert. Or not. Because she is still singing the government is the solution song, in even the wake of what she has seen.

There are converts, and then, there are converts.

Fred

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And not to be outdone, check out this hot mess from 1970, in response to a recession in which unemployment -peaked- at 6.1%, caused by economies with insufficient workers needed to grow fast enough to meet the hurried demand of trying to market and sell to a young Boomer demographic that had not quite fully entered the workforce, but who represented a much sought after target demographic.

And that 6.1% wasn't the same 6.1% reported today; the government has since redefined the definition of unemployment.

Michael, since long before you and I were born, this rot has advanced beyond simple remedy.

Fred

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Michael:

Here is another example from the 90s. I don't remember the Naomi Wolf's of the world much complaining about such tactics. The following is an excerpt from a discussion of an ex Navy Seal named 'Smith' who claims that the current administration is deliberately shaping the officer corps of the current military by asking candidates if they would accept an order to disarm American citizens on American soil. Answer wrong, he claims, and careers go down the tubes. (Such a policy, in advance of such an order being given, would result in only one thing, I am certain: History's biggest rash of fraggings, because they aren't asking the same question to those E1s who would actually need to execute the order. And deservedly so.)

A similar thing happened in the IRS in Clinton administration 90's, and without an adequately politically shaped IRS, resulted in something quietly called 'The IRS Street Revolt.' I saw this first hand, not something that was told to me. Shorty Reich as head of the Department of Labor was in charge of overseeing all regulated pension plans, including, small business self-employed business plans. As part of Gore's 'Reinventing Government' initiative, all cabinet level departments had to come up with 'metrics' which described what a good job they were doing for taxpayers.

The metrics that Shorty Reich chose for the DoL included the dollar amount of all small business self-employed pension plans that were declared 'non-confroming' that were clawed back as taxes and penalties and interest, even if same put the small businesses out of business. The 'infractions' were bogus technicalities on 'information only' returns -- the 'non-tax' 5500s that all pension plan administrators must file. Hidden in the inscrutable 'when to file' rules was a trap over 'Top Heavy Plans' -- defined as, more that 50% of assets in the name of corporate officers only and not employees. The IRS -- and only the IRS -- interpreted the self-employed -- who were both sole corporate officers and also sole employee -- as running 'Top Heavy Plans.' Non Top Heavy Plans were required to file the first 'information only' 5500 in the year that plan assets exceeded $100,000...while Top Heavy Plans had to file the 'information only' return starting in year one. There was no tax associated with the 5500...it was just a disclosure of plan assets and activity during the year, period.

So Shorty sends IRS Agents(IRS is in Treasury, not DoL, but IRS enforces the plan requirements)out to 'expose' all these technical filing violations. What IRS agents were supposed to do was say "You filed in year 2, but needed to file in year 1. This is year 5. Your first return is over 1800 days late, and your plan is non-conforming. You owe $X for every day the report is filed late, plus since your plan is now non-conforming, you must redo 5 years of corporate and personal tax returns, declaring those assets as income. You owe back taxes, penalties, and interest. X: The IRS penalty for late filing of a return is $25 per day, up to a maximum of $15,000. The DOL penalty for late filing can run up to $1,100 per day, with no maximum. 1800 days would be about two millions dollars in late filing fees alone, never mind the taxes and penalties due for the five years of reclassified contributions now classified as income. Not satisfied with just clawing back the contributions into the plan, the DoL was just asking some poor schmuck trying to provide for himself independent of SS with under half a million in a pension plan to cough up 2.5 million in penalties for doing so, even if it meant losing his pension, business, and other assets.

So, because of a spurrious interpretation of 'Top Heavy' that no sane CPA would apply to the self-employed, the Clintonista/Shorty Reich run DoL was tooling around in '95 trying to put every self-employed person in business with a pension plan out of business. NOBODY interpreted 'self-emploed' as 'Top Heavy' ... except the IRS and DoL, but they were judge and jury and appeal court. The IRS field agent who explained all this to me in '95, two days before Xmas when I was audited, also ended it by saying "And you and I both know this is total b.s. so we aren't enforcing it. But management is pissed, is insisting we go out and do this. The field agents are refusing. There is no way I'm going to look at some self-employed business man trying to provide for himself and his family and tell him he is ruined over a strange interpretation of 'Top Heavy' on an 'information only' return." IRS Street Revolt, 1995.

Unfortunately, I think this latest left wing infestation learned its lesson from that. Todays IRS appears to be much more highly politicized and 'right thinking' on these issues. Germany's military took orders that were unfathomable. There is no magic talisman safe from all abuse that is protecting America from the state run amok insanity that almost destroyed the world last century. Why wouldn't his claims be investigated by a press doing its job, either way? Because 90% of the press is OK with the idea. In fact, thinks its a good idea; use the military to sweep the nation and defang the 2nd Amendment by Executive Order enforcing some half-cooked emegency powers act. We are very close to that nation today. Look at our poliical discourse. A someday 51% could readily sign off on that, and that is all it would take in this out of all control environment. A left wing infestation that could do what they attempted to do in '95 would have no compunction about shaping the military to the cause. You and I might not like to believe this is possible in this America, but it clearly is possible in this America.

Fred

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When it comes to Mr. Amazing No Short Term Memory Man-Itis, what is a cause for a bigger headslapper than going back to Oct 2008, a month before the election, and listening to Naomi Wolf go on about the armed military coup that George Bush had just pulled off, taking control of the US Military with the intent of ignoring any transfer of government order that would result from a loss by McCain in the 2008 election?

I totally missed that coup. Hell, I wish it would have happened, at this rate. Gee, that was some timing. Makes me wonder if another election is coming up soon. Here she comes, right on schedule with her 'don't blame the President, we need the US Government to fight the real cabal." God, these commie Ivy League cupcakes can be insulting, especially when dressed in red and flashing cleavage. She should tagged team up there in the woods with Katrina Van Dan Clueless. Katrina could have worn the ref scarf and black leather.

I didn't miss her characterization of Sarah Palin's political argument that the nation was in 'crisis.' Apparently, Palin's criticism of a government out of control was not as politically pure as Miss Manattanite's newly found criticism of government out of control. See, Palin was doing all that in support of some global cabal run by shadowy business types, while Naomi is now speaking out for decent folks.

Hey Naomi; fuck you and your transparent as Hell late to the party frantic repackaging. I am not Mr. Amazing No Short Term Memory Man. You know what we need to get over real quick, like yesterday? Falling for your bullshit. It is exactly you and your social democrat-ish chearleaders for ever expanded government that enabled this bullshit for generations.. Don't need you screwing the pooch any more, it is long screwed.

So what is this tour of the NH TeaParty? Is Naomi Wolf making a bid for the new, improved Brunette claiming this nation is in crisis? Is this a campaign to make us all ignore the nature of her frantic claims in Oct 2008, with GOP fascism imminently about to take over the nation, but now, in 2014, with Obama in office, we suddenly 'need the US GOvernment and don't blame the US President' aimed at the NH TeaParty?

Did the yahoos at that meeting actually swallow that shit? Over a 'beer' no doubt. Appropriate, because at the very least, she's up there pissing on whatever embers of revolt against a government out of all control there might exist in the nation.

Has now six years of absolutely nothing changed under Obama resulted in anything more than a sudden "We can't blame the US President" for the sad state of a government run amok?

Not enough mea culpa, way too much repackaging and hit the reset button on the credibility meter going on.

She got what she was campaiging so heavily for; Obama in office. Now what? And why should she be suddenly found credible on this or any issue?

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She loves to whip out the 'children of Holocaust survivers' card as the only visionaries of peril in the world.

Please. I'm a child of a man who at the prime of his young life, lived in a trench filled with his own piss and shit for weeks in the Heurtgen forest risking his life and watching friends get blown to pink frothy mists because her dumbass social democrat parents were too fucking stupid not to court the unfettering of their state and visit the horrors of the state uber alles on the world. I would have preferred he didn't have to do that. I would prefer that the same abject stupidity loose in this nation for decades wouldn't succeed in unfetterng our own state for the latest really, really good cause, but apparently, some of their jackass children have been pushing the same bullshit here for decades, not having learned a fucking thing from Nazi Germany or the USSR or any of the state uber alles 'we really need the government' experiments in murdering millions over really stupid ideas.

So there's me whipping out my card in return -- my "chidren of survivers who cleaned up the inevitable mess of state unfettering social democrats and their 'we really need government to ... ' sensibilities, who ended up in concentration camps as a reward for their abject stupidity in courting an unfettered state for any reason at all, requirung others once living in freedom to rush in from far over the horizon and futily attempt to put out the fire before it ate freedom everywhere in the world, nice try, but didn't happen' card. Smaller print, but it trumps the 'we brought it on once and we can sure as Hell bring it on again if you'll let us' card.

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