Libertarian @dcjogger@gameliberty.club

Men of principle are always bold, but those who are bold are not always men of principle.

http://www.gilmermirror.com/view/full_story/27659589/article-Who-Inflicts-the-Most-Gun-Violence-in-America--The-U-S--Government-and-Its-Police-Forces?

https://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/walter-e-williams/us-not-democracy

@dcjogger Me, at this gab:

“Do you have $30,000 lying around?!” he asked me.

“The city has gone nuclear!” complains his lawyer, Ari Bargil. ”$500 per day for the violation of having tall grass. ... They could have done what their own ordinances permit them to do: hire a lawn service to come out and mow the grass. Then send Jim a bill for 150 bucks. But they didn’t do that.”

Why not? Bargil and Ficken say it’s because Dunedin’s officials just want money.

Dunedin’s politicians wouldn’t talk to us. Instead, they spent $25,000 on a public relations firm that told reporters, “Dunedin has no desire to impose large fines... (only to) ensure that Dunedin is a high-quality community.”

The cost of “high quality” keeps going up.

Eleven years ago, Dunedin fined people $34,000. Today, they want about that much from Ficken alone. Last year Dunedin collected $1.3 million in fines from residents.

“It’s pretty apparent that code enforcement is a major cash cow for the city,” says Bargil.

“I got violated for a lawn mower in my yard!” says one resident who has been fined $32,000. “They violated me for a hole the size of a quarter in my stucco ... They find people they can pick on ... and they keep picking on them.”

She started crying as she recounted: “I can’t tell you how many sleepless nights I’ve had because of the city of Dunedin. Just try to think of what to say to them, just to have them leave me alone.”

“The city is just a bunch of bullies, and they expect people not to stand up to ’em because to stand up to ’em requires expensive legal help,” says Ficken.

Ficken managed to get expensive legal help for free from the Institute for Justice, a law firm that defends individuals abused by governments.

All across the country, “private citizens are being essentially extorted by their governments and fined incredible amounts of money for really, really small violations,” says Bargil.

You can be fined for not trimming plants, the way Ficken was, but you can also be fined for trimming too much. A city in North Carolina fined a local church $100 per branch ($4,000) for excessive tree-pruning.

And in places such as Dunedin, if you can’t pay a fine, they’ll take your home.

“The city attorney of Dunedin last year sought permission to foreclose on 18 properties,” says Bargil.

That violates the Eighth Amendment, says the Institute for Justice. The Amendment not only protects us from “cruel and unusual punishment” but also from “excessive fines.”

The Founding Fathers, says Bargil, “recognized that the ability to fine is the ability to cripple. It’s one of the ways, other than incarceration, that government can really oppress.”

If governments can oppress, they usually will.

We should be grateful for the Eighth Amendment’s protection against excessive fines.

And what’s more excessive than politicians taking your home because you didn’t cut your grass?

Four years ago I awoke on a Sunday morning where I was visiting family, a ray of light coming through the window. The window view showed side-by-side symbols; one of liberty, as represented by a small community of multi-colored and multi-shaped living structures with residents going about their business oblivious to the second symbol, represented by large, gray, ugly, windowless government buildings spying on and recording everyone’s communication. The contrast of liberty and totalitarian intent was startling and breathtaking. I was in Bluffdale, Utah viewing the NSA’s top spy facility in the world named the Intelligence Community Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative Data Center.

To the far left of the window view was a new housing development intruding into largely undeveloped land, like an extending finger, with brown hills above it and a large hay farm in front and below stretching far forward and to the right of my view. Here residents made choices that enhanced the quality and comfort of their lives largely free from total government spying and restriction – or so they thought.

The number of churches to the population seemed unusually high, five church steeples reaching skyward, as if begging for the influence of God in their community, in what looked to be no more than 300 structures, mostly apartments, as seen from my window – all within a mile of where I was. I attended one of the churches and was greeted with the opening song “America the Beautiful,” the classic patriotic tune words written by Katherine Lee Bates and music by Samuel A. Ward. It housed the favorite words “America! America!” followed by four phrases in four verses “God shed his grace on thee,” and, “God mend thine every flaw,” and, “May God thy gold refine,” and again, “God shed his grace on thee.” Obviously, these Christians loved their liberty. A similar tune representing a relationship between God, country and liberty could have been found throughout most of the country the Sunday before the 4th of July.

In stark contrast, off in the distance about two miles but still clearly visible from the left side of the same window, was the most profound symbol of big government ever – the new NSA spy center, the largest in the world, capable of holding a yottabyte of information collected from every person on earth, with space enough for generations to come. These enormous, ugly, gray, windowless, buildings perched on a hill with intimidating guard-houses restricting entrance, represented potential total control of the actions and thoughts of every human.

Much was published on NSA government spying of its own people including LibertyUnderFire.org columns, so nothing new is found in this one.

A project began under George W. Bush and accelerated under Barack Obama, Bluffdale “is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade and a half. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks. Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter” (”The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center. Watch What You Say.”) The project was code named “Stellar Wind.”

Monday morning the same light flooded the room. The same symbols of liberty and oppression lay in stark contrast below. The same five church steeples reach for the sky as though to appeal to God for His influence. The same residents drive by, perhaps the greatest symbol of totalitarianism of all time, on their way to work, as though it does not exist. Some may even work at this place to help give the government details on their neighbor. Everything about these ugly, windowless, gray structures violates the Constitution.

Chances are those of the community next door that sing of freedom will reelect the same Democrats and Republicans that authorized and funded their surveillance. I closed the window. If I too ignore what it shows, it will go away. Right?

Stellar wind needs copious amounts of water to function and is located in the desert. Hmmmm, what could go wrong?
@dcjogger