“Linda Hunnicutt, the Granny Warrior, met Ron Paul for the first time in 2005 when she was on a personal crusade to stop the busibodiness of government. Linda had become aware that the U. S. Department of Agriculture was interfering with the right of individuals to own exotic animals and become active on the issue.”
But positioning itself to avoid the problem of being on the wrong side is only one motivation for the Cato Crew. Also worrying them is the indictment, with more to come, of one of their most trusted and central members. Paul Jacob was indicted in Oklahoma. Paul is a long time associate of the Crane Machine, working through the Howie Cogs in New York, now spread out across the country.
That story, which has long legs, and will eventually result in more indictments, began with a blogger, Hart Williams, of Oregon. Williams, a local activist who had been a working journalist for 30 years with various prestigious magazines and papers, noticed that the initiatives that would take control away from local people were coming from out of state sources who obviously did not want to be identified.
He started digging.
Eventually, he had the whole story which others, associated with more formal institutions, used to bring the Crane-Howie conspiracy to light. He was featured in a segment from PBS's NOW early in the process.
The story that came to light involved a long time courtship of John Walton, who at his death donated $300,000,000.00 to the excited and ambitious Howie Cogs to further their profitable work on behalf of GRID Corporations. The original corporate structure and its assets were donated by the Kochs for the use of Howie and Cogs. That became Americans for Limited Government. That transaction took place in the early 90s. The 'branch office' near Walton's home was immediately closed, its purpose fulfilled.
The issue that concerns those who are working for freedom is that of defederalizing government to bring it back into alignment with the Constitution and ensure transparency. Despite the following attempt to reposition himself Jacobs' work had nothing to do with freedom. The bald fact is that GRID corporations such as Koch Industries are not heroes in the Objectivist model; they are the problem. It is local residents of states who have the Constitutional right to determine their form of government. Reason promptly weighed in with support for Jacobs this morning, running this self-serving interview. Reason has also ignored the Paul Campaign until now.
“The difficulty of keeping a free country is involved in both cases. I’ve got a 7-year-old, I’ve got a 15-year-old, and a 23-year-old with an almost two-year-old son, and a wife who I like to think needs me. I don’t want to be going through this, but we have got to stop government from rolling over us. I didn’t choose this fight, but I’m going to fight these guys and we have to band together as a people. I have been moved in the last two days by the amount of good wishes and help pouring out from people left, right, and in between. I’m not going to let this politician in Oklahoma roll over our initiative rights, so I plan to fight with everything I got. I hope in the end we win and I think we will.”
The money that Jacobs and such other activists as Eric Dondaro, Leslie Keyes, and others have been 'making' was fed through the hands of Howie Cogs in lavish stipends and on to 'initiatives' that all work to the advantage of GRID corporations and to the detriment of ordinary people at the local level. That has always been the strategy they followed. The campaign to get ballot status for the Libertarian Party in California to benefit Crane candidate Ed Clark was known by activists to be using phony registrations but managed, barely, to avoid prosecution.
This was carefully concealed from Clark, who became alienated from the Crane Machine in the aftermath of the 1980 campaign as did most Libertarians.
Ron Paul is an honest, straight forward man, very unlike those associated with Cato. The Ron Paul Campaign is about getting local communities out of the grasp of federal control. Ironically, it was just yesterday that the Browns, IRS resisters in New Hampshire, were arrested by agents that the local sheriff could have told to get out. Sheriff Richard Mack, one of the proponents for the Mack – Printz Decision that in 1997 affirmed the sheriff of a county as having standing to order the Feds out has taken up the work of educating sheriffs across the country. That is an essential in the campaign for renewing local control.
Ron Paul Activists know that they in parallel with their Paul Campaign work need to provide local solutions in their own communities; a lack of transparency and control from GRID corporations only makes that more difficult.
Understanding how corporate money has worked to corrupt the Constitution, the rights of individuals and erase the borders between Federal control and local government that should be in the hands of the people needs to continue. The enemy you face is all too often someone you thought you could trust.
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