Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Prager Confused about Low Jobless Rate

Prager's article about the low jobless rate (below) is good, but it misses the point. People have to work because their savings have disintegrated and their paychecks have dropped in value as a result of our corrupt congress’s hidden tax – inflation, and because our president refuses to lop off OPEC’s balls.

I have written for several years about the manner in which oil became the de facto backing for our currency, and you have seen some of those articles on your list, so I won’t rehash that now.

Here’s the upshot: when Saddam and Hugo began selling oil for Euros in 1999, the worldwide demand for US dollars plummeted, thereby devaluing the dollar. That combined with our staggering annual budget deficits to make our currency ever less valuable as the days roll by. If you don’t believe me, look at the price of gasoline. Expect it to hit $4 to $5 per gallon within a year. The collapse of the US dollar is in full bloom, right before our eyes, this very day.

Runaway deficit spending by the government always gives the apparency of plenty of money to go around. Employers can hire now because they know the dollars they pay their employees will drop in value fairly quickly, making the employees cheaper to have as months roll on. People know intuitively that they must buy houses NOW (if they can find fixed rate mortgages) because the house payments drop in value as inflation soars to double digits, even out of the teens.

Sure the economy is booming and employment is low. This is one of the best times in America’s history to mortgage yourself to the hilt and buy everything you can on credit.

Take my advice and buy precious metals or real estate. And if you work for a living, start demanding a bigger paycheck (low unemployment means your boss will have a harder time replacing you). Do anything you can to get rid of your increasingly less worthful dollars by exchanging them for something of intrinsic value.

By the way, if America contained no illegal aliens, it might enjoy a jobless of only 2%, and wages would hit all-time highs. Dennis Prager doesn’t seem to have a clue about the negative impact of illegal aliens on our country, and on Europe. He fails to mention of the main reasons for Europe’s failing socialism: the rate of immigration of low-IQ or criminal people from third world countries since the formation of the European Union and the dropping of border controls between the countries of Western Europe. Europe now receives floods of illegal immigrants from Africa and the Mideast, just as the USA does from Mexico.

Do you see the real issue here? We’re not talking about the mystery of the unemployment rate. We’re talking about the factors that KILL civilizations. Civilizations either grow or they die. It’s that simple. When we see illegal aliens streaming into the USA from Mexico or into Europe from Africa, we don’t see an enlightened civilization helping an unenlightened one. We see members of a depraved civilization wittingly (in the case of Muslims terrorists) or unwittingly (in the case of people looking for a better life) working to KILL an enlightened civilization by importing to it their corrupt cultures and gene pools. And we really shouldn’t care whether such interlopers do it wittingly or not. When somebody tries to kill that which you hold dear, you’d better take it seriously and do something to stop it dead in its tracks.

Before I get to the point of how to stop efforts to kill our enlightened civilizations, I want to address the problems of socialism. Philosophers devised socialism (government control of the means of production) in an effort to reconcile their consciences with the reality of mixed gene type pools in a society. It’s hard to see inferior people struggle to get by and not feel some pangs of conscience. Socialism intends to help those people. Unfortunately, such philosophers didn’t give much thought merely to moving the unproductive people outside of their society. Socialism depends upon the notion that at least some percentage of the population produces enough to feed those who can’t care for themselves. Thus, socialism like that of Europe, can only work if a huge percentage of the population produces high-value work. What big clues to this reality do you have? Consider these:

  1. The USA’s social infrastructures are swamped by illegal aliens and low-IQ people. The government cannot pay for social security, Medicare, Medicade, and all of the entitlement programs because the nation contains too many indigent, incarcerated, and non-productive people.
  2. Mexico – the reason low IQ people stream across the border: Mexico’s welfare system sucks.
  3. Sub-Saharan Africa – the reason so many Africans stream into Europe: African nations offer no welfare systems.

You see? The dwindling spiral of socialism works like this:

  • The more personal liberties people have,
  • The more the government spends what it does not have,
  • The higher the incentive to retain wealth,
  • The fewer the wealthy procreate,
  • The more the indigent procreate,
  • The more politicians pander to the indigent and stupid,
  • The lower the average national IQ,
  • The lower the productivity,
  • The poorer the people,
  • The lower the value of their work product,
  • The lower the tax base,
  • The less money available for socialist projects (like welfare checks, free medical care, free housing, food stamps),
  • The higher the crime rate for non-productive people,
  • The greater the loss of life and property for productive people,
  • The greater the infrastructure costs (prisons, medicine), and
  • The more people want to leave the land for a better life (and a free ride or socialist safety net) elsewhere.

I say it’s time to stop pussy-footing and dancing around this issue. It's time to stop conjecturing wildly about what scheme of social tolerance might or might not be the problem or solution. Our world has only two possible ways to terminate this horrible death-spiral of civilization:

  1. Eugenics programs to reduce the percentage of low-IQ people in the world’s population (yes, we need a form of benign genocide).
  2. Government mandated organization of all indigent, criminal, and low IQ people for controlled menial labor in both private and public enterprise.

Until then, we should throw every possible illegal alien out of our country, and slam the door against the entry of any more low-IQ people. Why? Because they are KILLING our civilization.

# # #




Why the low jobless rate challenges Left and Right
Apr 11, 2006
by Dennis Prager

The latest jobless rate -- 4.7 percent -- is at a
five-year low.

Yet, despite this and other good economic news, the
Left is frantic to repeal the Bush administration's
tax cuts. In fact, even if every single economic
indicator were better than at any time in American
history, the Left would still want to repeal the tax
cuts.

The reason is that the essence of the Left is ever
bigger government for the purpose of controlling ever
more of the economic and social life of society. That
America is so much more economically efficient than
the major socialist countries of Europe, such as
France and Germany, is of no concern to Democrats and
others on the Left.

Even a child would readily understand that the more
of their money citizens are allowed to keep, the more
money they will spend and the more workers they will
hire. But liberals want high taxes not in order to
improve the economy, but in order to expand government
and reduce economic inequality. Therefore, the obvious
economic benefits of lower taxes do not much interest
liberals.

The socialist economies of the major European
countries are failing -- the French and German
economies are stalled, and the entire socialist system
is unsustainable -- but this, too, has no impact on
the Left in America. The future they want for America
has actually been tried in fellow Western democracies
and is failing. To invert the famous statement of
Westerners who praised communism, "We have seen the
future and it doesn't work." One wonders if ever
before in history such a large number of people had
such a clear view of the consequences of their
policies, and despite the failure of those policies,
continued to devote their lives to enacting them.

And the Left thinks religious Americans are
irrational.

That is why the language of liberal condemnation of
tax cuts is that they are "tax cuts for the rich"
rather than that they are "bad for the economy." It is
resentment of the wealthier -- and most productive --
sector of America that animates liberal opposition to
tax cuts, not concern about unemployment.

But the unemployment data not only challenge the
Left. The record low jobless rate also challenges a
widely held belief of many on the right -- that
illegal immigrants have been taking jobs away from
Americans.

There are excellent reasons to be concerned about the
vast number of illegal immigrants in our society. But
their taking jobs from Americans is not one of them.
If we have historically low unemployment rates while
at least 11 million illegal immigrants are here, how
many jobs have these people really taken away from
Americans? What would our unemployment rate be if we
had no illegal workers here? One percent? And wouldn't
our inflation rate be higher without millions of
people working at such low wages helping to keep
consumer prices low?

It must be emphasized that while just about everyone
on the left is opposed to what they describe as "tax
cuts for the rich," many on the right do not argue
that illegal immigrants have taken jobs away from
Americans. But an energetic segment of the Right does.


And they do so despite what the conservative
Washington Times reports: "The economy appears to have
achieved what analysts call 'full employment' -- a
state where nearly every worker who wants a job can
get one fairly easily."

How, then, does the whole Left and a significant part
of the Right argue things that just aren't so -- that
tax cuts are bad for the nation and that illegal
immigrants have taken millions of jobs from Americans?


The answer is that passion often trumps reason. The
Left is passionate about inequality and ever larger
government. And the Right is passionate about America
remaining American.

I share the Right's passion and agree with the
conservative voices that argue for (1) building a
fence to prevent millions more from illegally entering
America, (2) creating a national ID card, (3) making
English the official language of the United States
(thereby ending, for example, ballots being printed in
myriad languages), and (4) ensuring that American
schools Americanize foreigners rather than celebrate
multiculturalism (if all cultures were equally
wonderful, millions of Mexicans wouldn't be leaving
theirs to live in ours).

But those of us who are very worried about the demise
of American national unity, identity and security need
to argue about those things, not about illegal
immigrants taking millions of jobs from Americans.

And those on the left need to cheer the unemployment
data. But they can't do that until they love the low
unemployment figures even more than they hate George
Bush and his tax cuts.

Dennis Prager is a radio talk show host, author, and
contributing columnist for Townhall.com.


No Immigration Solutions from Sowell

Thomas Sowell is a good economist, gifted writer, and clear thinker, but as his Immigration Solutions article shows, he's woefully short on solutions.

Sowell pointed out the obvious realities about immigration and the demonstrations, plus the efforts of organizers to keep Mexican culture separate from mainstream American culture so as to manipulate it as a political tool and voting block. Numerous other pundits have made these same points. Then he went on to say, effectively that we might as well kiss your dreams of America good-bye, because Congress is going to push through the president’s phony substitute for amnesty that will end up being amnesty anyway. That seems to me like an under-the-table way of gloating over the joke of the Senate’s effete immigration reform efforts.

But, what does Sowell claim as his real position on this issue?

Well, he seems kind of Americanist, doesn’t he? But he actually adopts NO position, and proposes NO solution, in spite of the misleading title of his article: Imigrant “solutions”. In my opinion, Sowell should not have bothered to come into the office to write that article.

Why should I expect better from him? Sowell serves as a kind of pedagogical, quasi-conservative, sub-rosa apologist for American Blacks. For example, in his book Black Rednecks and White Liberals he asserted, as Steve Sailer pointed out, that Blacks have absorbed too much self-defeating culture of poor Southern whites.

Yeah, sure. Southern White trash made Blacks invent disgusting jailhouse poetry called rap, refuse to speak proper English, impose nearly 8 times the incarceration rate of Caucasians on America’s criminal justice system, commit 3 times more violent crimes than Caucasians, commit crimes at more than double the rate of non-White Hispanics, fail massively (50%) to graduate from high school, and fail massively (70%) to provide live-at-home fathers their children. That’s the fault of Southern White trash? I don’t think so. That’s Africa, right here in America. And, since most American Blacks have enjoyed zero direct influence from modern-day Africa, we can only conclude that most of their problems have a genetic cause.

Sowell seems unaware of the number Blacks populating America’s inner cities who have never experienced a self-defeating Southern white culture, and in fact who seem to loathe and do their very best to avoid any semblance of absorbing the best white culture has to offer. For some strange reason, Sowell refuses to admit that the decrepit general condition of African-Americans comes more from their African genetic endowment and cultural heritage than from American culture. He seems to think American Blacks’ African characteristics contributed nothing to their problems.

In spite of his stature and pedagogical manner, Sowell still wants to “blame Whitey.”

He also seems powerfully reluctant to analyze situations to their logical conclusions.

For example, he refuses to discuss low IQ, low value of production, and corrupt homeland cultures as the root of America’s immigrant problems. Those seem to me to be the lowest common denominator of both Ibero-America and Sub-Saharan Africa. In general, the countries whose natives suffer most miserably in the world today have large low-IQ, low-productivity populations, and corrupt governments. For some clues about this, refer to the book IQ and the Wealth of Nations, as well as La Griffe du Lion’s incisive statistical analyses of the matter here and here.

What else should we expect when the average IQ of America’s Blacks and Mexicans average nearly a full standard deviation lower than America’s Caucasians? Bottom line, third world immigrants cause problems for America because they are not very smart, and not very productive, and that allows crooked politicians to pander to them effectively, just as we see today in the USA. Stupid people result in low GDP and corrupt government. Sowell should have pointed this out in his analysis.

Furthermore, Sowell generally shows little aptitude for proposing workable solutions to problems. The subject article provides a striking example.

You won’t find that problem in my writing. I always try to propose sensible solutions. For example, try this proposal: when it comes to immigration issues, you’d be far better off subscribing to this source of information, rather than to Thomas Sowell’s do-nothing analyses.

We cannot get rid of the 65+ million American citizens who have IQs below 85, and cannot even graduate from high school. We will have to deal with that the best we can, and just suffer through it while they procreate in record numbers. However, we can do something to prevent millions upon millions of low-IQ Ibero-American illegal immigrants from joining their ranks. My solution to the illegal immigrant problem begins with this:

  1. Round up and deport all of them, and don’t bother apologizing for it because they won’t appreciate it or understand it.
  2. Slam the door shut on further immigration of low-achievement, low-IQ people from third world countries, especially from Africa and Ibero-America.

Yes, I know Sowell is less fractious than I, but then he sells his articles, doesn’t he? They must appeal to his black, Jewish, and liberal supporters, and to his family, or he’ll catch all kinds of hell, and they’ll call him an Uncle Tom the way they do Bill Cosby. That’s why his essays are so namby-pamby when it comes to solutions. As you know, I am not similarly hamstrung.

# # #

Guitar Picker Blues and Bringing the Dead Pinky to Life

I bought a klunker guitar from John Proios, my guitar buddy, so I could carry it around without a case and not worry about damage. It’s in the case while my Ramirez Flamenco sits on its little store-stand, just daring me to pick it up every time I walk by. I plan to buy a cardboard box for the klunker and send it to Carla, my ex wife Cheryl’s sister who put me up and gave me TLC while I was in Virginia for my son Robbie’s funeral back in October or whenever. Carla always had a crush on me, and probably still does, but seems to have sworn off men and sworn an oath to celibacy, poor woman. I should have married her instead of her sister way back when, but she was only 12 and I couldn’t wait.

And, I did pick up the Ramirez today, and spent an hour and a half stroking its sonorous strings, the base of which are silver-coated bronze wrapped around a composite fiber core so they don’t lose tuning. They’re new, so I’ve been tweaking them for the past few days, and they sound brilliant.

Speaking of stroking, I feel as though I’ve been hit with a stroke. The little fingers of both hands turn spastic on me when I try to play guitar with them. I’ve neglected most activities with them most of my life, so they are not as flexible and accurate as the others. That means I might as well have been hit with a stroke for all the good they do. I am going through something remotely similar to what a stroke victim goes through, trying to build neural pathways between my thoughts and my pinky fingers.

I once thought I could go a whole lifetime without ever really needing my right pinky, the one I stroke the strings with. Then I ran across the music of Heitor Villa Lobos, a Brazilian composer who died of lung cancer in 1959. Several years before he died, he wrote twelve Etudes, so called because each one demonstrates a different kind of mastery one must achieve in order to play it correctly.

Etude 1 became my challenge when I heard it. I plan to learn it, and I practiced on it today. Basically, it requires a kind of arpeggio plucking pattern while holding chords down with the left hand, and it has a haunting appeal to it.

Most arpeggios require TIMAMI – thumb-index-middle-annular(ring)-middle-index, or something like that, played quickly, and each finger plucks a different string. I can do that fairly easily. Why? Because I’m plucking only 4 stirings.

Etud 1’s arpeggio, however, requires you to pluck all 6 strings, and not in purely sequential order. The pattern: TITMIAMLALMAIMTI. I can’t even say it, let alone play it. And notice the Ls in the sequence? That’s the little finger, the pinky, the one I use only for boogers and ear wax.

The arpeggio calls upon it only twice, and it might as well call upon me to put my pinky toe on the string. I have to look at my pinky finger and will it to move independently of all other fingers, then watch it like it’s a stubborn, recalcitrant child to make sure it lands on that string and plucks it clearly.

A couple of weeks ago I got sick of my fingernails breaking, so I went to the Vietnamese nail salon outside my community and got the nails “wrapped” on my right hand fingers. The little man dipped his brush into a solvent, then into a powder, and daubed it on my fingernails, then smoothed it out. They dried fairly quickly and he sanded them down with his Dremel tool. No, he didn’t paint them. Now I have long, strong nails, particularly the pinky nail. So, now at least I have something on that pinky with which to pluck the string.

After an hour and a half of drudgery, the pinky began to do its job. I figure I’ll have to spend 20 or 30 hours of practice just to play Etude 1 smoothly, and another 20 to 30 hours to play it fast. Imagine spending a solid week, 10 hours a day, learning to play one little tune. Oh, well, it’s a beautiful piece and I’ll be proud of myself if I actually stick to it. We’ll see.

While I was doing all that boring practice, Maria lay quietly on the futon in the other room and watched TV, letting her mind drift to the tones coming from my Ramirez. She loves the sound of that instrument. So do I.

Saturday, April 01, 2006

What We Should Say to Oligarchies that Abuse Us

How does one nation say something like the below to another?


“You have violated our rights and we don’t like it. We do not like your hostile rhetoric and financial support to terrorists who intend to kill us. We believe your national behavior has resulted from your oligarchy government. We’re going to give you 2 years to change it into something more benign, not only to outsiders, but also to your own people.


“If you don’t do it in that time frame, we’re going to declare war upon your country, destroy your military forces, remove and exterminate your bad leadership, install a government of our choosing, and nationalize your natural resources to pay the cost of policing and transforming your nation into something more suitable for a modern, peaceful world. Most likely our forces will occupy your country for the next hundred years or so, and millions of your people will die in the associated fighting. We shall impose a eugenics program that will eliminate the most inferior and troublesome elements from your gene pool. We shall destroy all institutions that teach it is good to kill others or destroy their property, even if those are religious institutions. We shall imprison and execute all religious and secular leaders that advocate any kind of oppression or violence to further an ideology. We shall ruthlessly hunt down and execute all who oppose us, including their immediate families. We shall hunt down and capture all financial assets of your nation’s wealthiest families, even if those assets sit in secret Swiss bank accounts. And we shall make you pay the entire cost of our subjugation and occupation efforts, even if it takes you a thousand years.


“During the next two years, we shall monitor your activities, and we shall undermine and destroy any and every effort of yours to support entities hostile to our nation, our people, and our property. We shall in the middle of the night lob destructive bombs at targets we deem deserving, and as we see fit we shall destroy your military capability, assassinate your leaders, foment civil war, freeze your assets, disrupt your infrastructures, and impose embargos and other oppressive conditions on you, as we must to minimize your threat to our security. That’s before we invade your land and take full control of it.


“If you prefer a more enjoyable solution, you may petition for our help right now, and promise to abide by certain rules of relationship. In exchange, we shall send our advisors into your country to help you gather data and analyze what you can do to bring your nation peaceably and lawfully into the modern era, and then we will help you implement it. You will pay for this service, but you will eventually see it as the cheapest of all options available to you, certainly much cheaper than the terrible loss of life and property if we harass and invade you.


“Here’s a proposed constitution and bill of rights for your new limited constitutional republic. We patterned it somewhat after ours, taking into consideration your country’s history and social customs. Look it over and think about our proposal. Get back to us in one month with your decision. We will interpret no answer as a “no” answer, and we shall respond accordingly. You will not get a second chance.”

I believe America must help people governed by primitive oligarchies exercise responsibility for their own governments. Look at the relationship between the USA and Mexico for an example. They manage self-government pretty well, given the average IQ of their nation, and at least they have pretty much learned not send full-scale military invasion forces into the USA. Other primitive peoples can learn the same, particularly if our advisors hang around to help them.

I believe the most significant way to help primitive countries is to provide them with contracts to provide goods and services to the USA, and make it possible for them to manufacture or do R&D work under contract for USA companies and the government. This will force higher quality, broader education upon the land, and that will result in an increase in the wage base and standard of living. Whenever people feel free to pursue business interests, they work to support a government that prevents others from destroying their business.

We cannot approach such a significant help level without having boots on the ground to eliminate insurrection and terrorism.

I feel profound disappointment over Bush’s refusal to do anything effective to eliminate Afghanistan’s opium production. They have been delivering about 5000 tons of opium a year to international illegal drug markets, and none of the money they receive goes into government coffers. If it did, the USA would have to wage war against the government it just installed. Our military should destroy the opium business in Afghanistan and work with our industrialists to set up factories and international agriculture operations there. Afghanistan contains plenty of people who can work in factories, and their wage base is probably sufficiently low to allow them to be competitive in textiles and other labor-intensive operations. The president is strangely silent about this. I wonder why.

A Travesty of American Justice

Judge and Prosecutor Conspire to Deny a Citizen his Rights in Clearwater’s Florida State Court.

By Bob Hurt, 30 March 2006. License granted hereby for broad distribution intact.

A few months ago I attended a meeting of a group of “Lawmen” for the purpose of associating with people who are fighting the IRS, to see whether I could find any practical recourse to being keelhauled with the unconstitutional collection of a direct and unapportioned tax by our nation’s tax authorities every time I turn around.

One of the members sent me an email inviting me to attend a hearing in Judge David Seth Walker’s 6th circuit Florida court in Clearwater (the Pinellas county seat) about 20 minutes from my home. The hearing involved Jesse Toca, a native-born American descended from Tampa’s Cuban cigar factory owners. Yesterday I showed up to sit in the peanut gallery with about a dozen people from the “Lawmen” group. And there I witnessed what appeared to me to be an utter travesty of justice and stomping of constitutional rights.

Here’s a little background to the case. In 1997 the State of Florida charged Jesse with “practicing law without a license” under Florida statute 454. Judge Crocket Farnell, having earlier promised to Jesse “If you ever show up in my court, I’ll bury you!”, found him guilty, even though Florida’s government has no apparent licensing procedure for attorneys (no attorney can show you a “license” to practice law) and no effective law regarding Practicing Law without a License*. Jesse did two years of jail time, during which his attorney abandoned the appeal effort after trying to convince Jesse’s elderly parents to give him Jesse’s car. Later, Jesse discovered the reason: his attorney, an officer of the court, was then, and had all along been, a crack cocaine addict. A new judge granted Jesse probation to care for his ill and aging mother, on the condition that he report to the Salvation Army and give financial information to them so as to determine his ability to pay restitution.

Jesse took his probation, but refused to give any financial information. He said that would have constituted a yielding of his 5th amendment constitutional right to be free of self-incrimination. He knew the ruthless prosecutor might dig into his financial data and use the trail to find other information to use in contriving a criminal charge against him. The prosecutor is a 6-foot-something pin-striped Assistant State Attorney (ASA) named Frank Migliore who seems to me to look and behave like a henchman of Tony Soprano. Because of Jesse’s refusal to divulge financial information, Migliore charged Jesse with 4 counts of probation violation, intending to throw Jesse in jail for one year per count.

Since Jesse had no money to hire an attorney, the State made available two Public Defenders. Jesse consulted them to determine their ability to counsel and defend him effectively. Jesse concluded that both were incompetent. One of them created a conflict of interest by divulging Jesse’s confidential information to Migliore, information that was supposed to have been protected by the attorney-client privilege. Knowing that his Public Defender was colluding with the Prosecutor, Jesse rejected that counsel as “ineffective”. Meanwhile, Jesse was scheduled for a hearing on the state’s motion to quash Jesse’s subpoenas for hostile witnesses to prove his attorney was incompetent to represent him. Apparently the ASA had encouraged the witnesses to try to quash their subpoenas because he wanted to railroad Jesse into 4 years of prison. Why was this apparent? Because half a dozen submitted motions to quash. It seemed obvious that they intended to bury him.

29 March 2006, Jesse showed up in court without a defense counselor. In the court room, Jesse sat alone on the defendant’s side, and a gaggle of attorneys, including Migliore and his associate ASA Marie King, sat on the prosecutor’s side. Migliore presented his motion to quash. Jesse rose, stepped to the counsel lectern and presented his opposing arguments masterfully.

  1. He moved the court to permit a member of the news media to record the proceedings electronically. The judge denied the motion, in violation of Florida Rule of Judicial Administration 2.170.
  2. He pointed to the empty defense counsel’s chair, said he had no counsel, and submitted constitutional and case law proving he had the right to counsel. He demanded counsel. The judge denied the motion, violating Jesse’s 6th Amendment constitutional right to effective counsel.
  3. He moved to continue the proceedings so he could find suitable counsel. The judge denied the motion.
  4. He went back and forth with the judge and State Attorney through dozens of arguments, accusing the judge of conspiring with the State to throw him under the bus and run him over, of violating his constitutional right to counsel. Jesse even accused the judge of violating the law by calling a sidebar conference, going off the record, and advising Jesse to cop a plea. The State accused the judge of mollycoddling the defendant through nearly 10 years of similar courtroom drama. Throughout this process the judge rolled his eyes, held his head in his hands, sighed repeatedly, and still talked in a reasoned and moderated voice.
  5. During all this time, when Jesse was arguing his points, he often turned to the peanut gallery, and frequently referred to us as his supporters (all were taking copious notes).
  6. Eventually the judge admitted that he had no intention of putting Jesse in jail, and the State went ballistic. The judge told Migliore to sit down.
  7. Jesse told the judge he was willing to pay restitution through some kind of judgment, and the State vehemently protested, saying only probation had any chance of getting any money out of Jesse.
  8. The judge sided with Jesse, who copped a plea of guilty on the condition that restitution be worked out in another court, that Jesse would not go to jail, and that Jesse would not have to give up his 5th amendment rights.

Afterward, Jesse and four of us who been observing from the peanut gallery met Jesse at Wendy’s for a quick lunch. Jesse was in a hurry to get home to attend to his mother. I asked him what he thought might have happened had we not been there. Jesse admitted he would probably be in handcuffs. He believes the presence of a support group helped convince the judge to rule as he did.

The judge had admitted several times that he was mightily impressed with Jesse’s oratorical skills, which he claimed were better than 95% of the attorneys who had ever appeared before him during his 35 years on the bench. Nevertheless, without a peanut gallery of supporters who might make noise in the press or serve as witnesses to judicial malfeasance, the judge would have railroaded Jesse even more than he did, and Jesse would have had no opportunity to cop a plea with conditions in his favor. Sure, he’ll have to pay restitution, but at least he will be free.

Multiply Jesse’s situation by the thousands of times such things happen every week day in American courts. Imagine if you were in Jesse’s shoes but did not possess his knowledge of your legal rights or his skill in thinking on his feet and combating both a ravenous State Attorney and a corrupt judge, both of whom were deadly intent on stomping your rights and either throwing you in jail or forcing you to pay outrageous and unjustified restitution. Jesse is surely one of the luckiest men alive to have faced such a dynamic duo of American injustice without doing jail time.

America’s judiciaries at all levels are hopelessly corrupt, and routinely exceed their authority and stomps our constitutional rights in cases just like Jesse’s. Aside from pounding on our legislators, the only possible thing we can do about it is just what I did. If you see or hear of court cases that interest you, take a day off from work now and then and join the defendant’s peanut gallery. Your little bit of support might do a world of good in the life of an everyday American.

Practicing Law without a License

Most people think you must be an attorney licensed by the state, and you must be a member of the Bar association in order to practice law in the state. I could not understand why an obviously very intelligent like Jesse Toca would knowingly break such a rule. So I set out to discover the truth by talking to knowledgeable people and reading the law for myself. First I spoke with ASA King, non-BAR member David Bosset (http://bosset.com/), and St. Petersburg attorney and Florida Bar member Frank Papa.

  • King directed me to Florida statute 454 under which Migliore charged Jesse. She admitted that the state does not license people to practice law. She harshly advocated the idea that a non-government, unregulated organization (the Florida Bar Association) rightly should permit and regulate the practice of law by people only it deems qualified, just as a state arm of the American Medical Association regulates the practice of medicine by medical doctors. She also told me that Judge Walker had given Jesse ample time to find counsel to represent him, but that Jesse had refused to do so.
  • Bosset told me that he practices law all the time without a license and it drives the Florida BAR crazy. They filed suit against him in Florida court, and Bosset seems to be enjoying his ongoing battle against them. He said he provides “limited assistance of counsel” to his clients under contract, and that the state government cannot limit his fulfillment of his obligations under the provisions of that contract. He cited the U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 10: “No State shall … pass any … Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts….”
  • Papa told me he does not have a license to practice law, but he showed me his Florida BAR Association membership card which declared him to be a member in good standing, and he claimed to have a Bar Membership certificate signed by the Florida Supreme Court.

I browsed the Florida statutes on line so that I could read and attempt to understand Statute 454. See my analysis below. After reading it and thinking about it, I understood why Jesse or anyone else would think it okay to sign a contract with someone, then under the terms of that agreement give the client legal advice or even act as counsel in a court of law. Florida law says people shall not practice law without a license or authorization, but it does not stipulate a means for being licensed. It indicates that the Supreme Court should be the proper entity to regulate that, but refers to no licensing or authorizing statutes or regulations, almost as though such rules should be taken for granted.

This leads me to believe that either the state legislature has ignored its responsibility to enact statutes any ordinary person can understand regarding authorization to practice law, or that it did enact understandable statutes in Title 454, and people may behave accordingly. I believe it is the latter. The Florida Bar Association is unregulated and could be manned by a pack of fools and charlatans with no accountability to the people or the government. Thus, it amounts to little more than a self-regulating “good old boys” network that the state legislature refuses to regulate or hold accountable for its harassment of citizens who lawfully give legal counsel under contract. And judging from the practices of Migliore and Walker that I witnessed, multiplied by thousands or millions in courtrooms across America, the Bar does a miserable job of regulating attorney behavior. Nothing in the family of Statute 454 entitles the Bar association to authorize the practice of law or to license attorneys. For all of these reasons, I have concluded that the judges and ASA Frank Migliore railroaded defendant Jesse Toca from the very beginning, over a period of nearly 10 years, colluding to have him thrown in jail and forced to pay restitution he did not owe.

I know that Jesse wants to put this whole episode behind him and get on with his life. And that is at the heart of this problem of a corrupt judiciary and corrupt government attorneys. Although some are really decent and competent professionals, many if not most seem insufferably arrogant and condescending elitists who consider the courtroom their domain and everyone else, even the jury, as their subjects, whom they can and do collude to deceive, manipulate, and strip of constitutional rights at their whim. Jesse is one of their victims, and judge-prosecutor conspiracies destroy the lives of millions of others like him across America. The conspirators do their best to imprison, fine, extort, and oppress their victims to death, while often letting violent criminals and rapists loose to have their way with innocent citizens. Afterward, defendants like Jesse wind up humiliated and shunned as felons, depressed, unable to feed their families, and too miserable and defeated to fight further. Were it not for that, perhaps more would file civil lawsuits and seek to have criminal charges filed against prosecutors and judges who conspire illegally to ruin their lives. As far as I am concerned, such conspirators deserve the worst of punishments they hand out to their innocent, hapless victims. But as it is, few people have the gumption to hold prosecutors and judges accountable for their inexcusable behavior.

The 5th and 14th amendments mandate due process for all judicial proceedings, and I witnessed that process being ignored in Judge Walker’s court room by both the judge and the prosecutor. All judges and prosecutors take an Oath of Office to uphold the Constitution, and the Supreme Court has additionally held that government employees who violate any law in the performance of duties do not represent the government.

Therefore, we can rightly conclude that adjudication not within constitutional requirements nullifies any claim to jurisdiction. Only this guarantees that a court of admiralty, a star chamber proceeding, a kangaroo court, or an arbitrary proceeding by whatever name does not occur. The Supreme Court forcefully established that court proceedings must be within constitutional provisions (Muskrat v. United States (1911) 219 US 346; Smith v. U.S, (1959) 360 US.)

But apparently, Supreme Court rulings don’t make a dent in the armor of conspiratorial prosecutors and judges. Americans need a new branch of government charged with the responsibility of bringing corrupt politicians, judges, government attorneys, and other public servants to justice. That new branch would enforce rulings like the following:

  • “Officers of the court have no immunity, when violating a constitutional right, from liability for they are deemed to know the law." Owen v. Independence, 100 S. Ct. 1398.
  • "Where Rights secured by the Constitution are involved there can be no rule-making or legislation, which would abrogate [abolish] them" Miranda v. Arizona (1966) 384 U.S. 436, 86 S. Ct. 1602, 16 L. Ed. 2d 694, 10 ALR 3rd 974 and 59 other ALR treatises.
  • "If the state converts a liberty into a privilege the citizen can engage in the right with impunity." - Shuttlesworth v. Birmingham 373 U.S. 262
  • "There can be no sanction or penalty imposed upon one because of his exercise of constitutional Rights." Sherar v. Cullen 481 F. 945.
  • "The court is to protect against encroachment of constitutionally secured liberty." Boyd v. U.S. (1886) 116 U.S. 616.
  • "An unconstitutional act is not law; it confers no rights; it imposes no duties; affords no protection' it creates no office; it is in legal contemplation, as inoperative as though it had never been passed." Norton v. Shelby County, 118 U.S. 425, Quoting from Marbury v Madison (1803)
  • "The exercise of a constitutional right cannot be the basis of a crime." Marchetti v. U.S., 390 US 39,57; See v Seattle, 387 US 541.

But we have no such fourth branch of government, and so it is up to you, the reader of this article, to attack the corruption in our courts when and as you can, and to support defendants who are being hammered into oblivion by corrupt and collusive judges and prosecutors.


Note: You can reach Jesse Toca for comments or an interview at:


Jesse Toca
7937 Woodglen Circle
Tampa, FL 33615
206-350 6441


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Bob Hurt’s Layman’s Analysis of Florida Statute 454

Fuzzy Law seems not to prohibit citizens from giving legal advice or acting as counsel in courts of law.

The Florida Constitution gives the state Supreme court full authority over the judicial branch of government and the regulation of attorneys. It lets the governor appoint justices to the Supreme Court, and it guarantees the people's right to determine (through the election process) who gets to serve as judges in the lower courts. It gives the legislature only one power over the judicial branch: the power to impeach judges. Otherwise, the judicial branch is "self-regulating."

The Supreme Court established an array of regulations describing procedures that must be followed in judicial proceedings and the qualifications and conduct of judicial officers, including both judges and attorneys. It authorized the Florida Bar to manage the qualification and selection of attorneys, and based on those qualifications, the Supreme Court "licenses" people to serve in state courts as attorneys and counselors at law. That big certificate on a lawyer's wall is a license to practice law, and it is signed by the Clerk of the Supreme Court.

The Bar regulations require a prospective attorney to graduate from an accredited college of law, pass a bar examination, be of good moral character, be a member of good standing of the state bar association, and swear to the following oath (required of all judicial officers by Article VI of the U.S. Constitution and Article II Section 5(b) of the Florida Constitution):

"I do solemnly swear: I will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of Florida; I will maintain the respect due to courts of justice and judicial officers; I will not counsel or maintain any suit or proceedings which shall appear to me to be unjust, nor any defense except such as I believe to be honestly debatable under the law of the land; I will employ for the purpose of maintaining the causes confided to me such means only as are consistent with truth and honor, and will never seek to mislead the judge or jury by any artifice or false statement of fact or law; I will maintain the confidence and preserve inviolate the secrets of my clients, and will accept no compensation in connection with their business except from them or with their knowledge and approval; I will abstain from all offensive personality and advance no fact prejudicial to the honor or reputation of a party or witness, unless required by the justice of the cause with which I am charged; I will never reject, from any consideration personal to myself, the cause of the defenseless or oppressed, or delay anyone’s cause for lucre or malice. So help me God."

Once these qualifications are in place, the bar examiner certifies to the Clerk of the Supreme Court that the prospect is qualified, and the Clerk issues the license.

That is all well and good, but serious flaws exist in the system. To begin with, Amendment IV to the U.S. constitution guarantees every criminal defendant the right to assistance of effective counsel of choice. That does not confer upon the government at any level the power to determine who that counsel may be nor what qualifications that counsel must have. And, Amendments IX and X specifically preclude the government from assuming any powers not specifically granted to it by the constitutions.

Thus, if defendant in a criminal proceeding has the constitutional right to enlist a topless dancer as counsel, and the government has no say whatsoever in the matter...

We wish. Unfortunately, the government very clearly tries to strongarm defendants into selecting only bar members as their counsel, and through the bar association, it works assiduously to prohibit the "practice of law" to anybody but bar members.

The below web site shows Florida Statute 454, the only one I can find that seems related to Attorneys.

http://www.leg.state.fl.us/Statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&URL=Ch0454/ch0454.htm

I have indented all the Title 454 statutes below, and presented my comments regarding them below the relevant statutes. I have not found anything that requires a person to be a member of the Bar in order to practice law, and I have found nothing that says only the Supreme Court may decide who practices law. The language is obscure in the most relevant paragraphs that might be used to determine who may practice law, how one is licensed to practice law, or what the licensing requirements are.

454.021 Attorneys; admission to practice law; Supreme Court to govern and regulate.--

(1) Admissions of attorneys and counselors to practice law in the state is hereby declared to be a judicial function.

(2) The Supreme Court of Florida, being the highest court of said state, is the proper court to govern and regulate admissions of attorneys and counselors to practice law in said state.

This clearly says the Supreme Court of Florida is the proper court determine who practices law and regulate the practice. But it does not show requirements for the practice of law, it does not say the Supreme Court shall be responsible for those things, and it does not point to any corresponding statute that delineates and enumerates such requirements.

454.026 Authority of Department of Law Enforcement to accept fingerprints of, and exchange criminal history records with respect to, bar applicants.--The Department of Law Enforcement is authorized to accept fingerprints of applicants for admission to The Florida Bar and, to the extent provided for by federal law, to exchange state, multistate, and federal criminal history records with the Florida Board of Bar Examiners for licensing purposes.

Although the above paragraph mentions the Florida Bar, applicants for admission to the Bar, and the exchange of records, and it mentions licensing, it does not authorize or entitle the Bar to authorize or license people to practice law.

454.11 Powers of attorneys.--Every attorney duly admitted or authorized to practice in this state shall have the right to appear before any court of the state, or any public board, committee, or officer in the interest of any client, and may appear as amicus curiae when so permitted. All attorneys shall be deemed officers of the court for the administration of justice, and amenable to the rules and discipline of the court in all matters of order or procedure not in conflict with the constitution or laws of this state.

The above paragraph says what attorneys might do if they are duly admitted or authorized, but it does not stipulate the requirements for admission or authorization, nor does it prohibit anyone who is not an attorney from practicing law.

454.18 Officers not allowed to practice.--No sheriff or clerk of any court, or deputy thereof, shall practice in this state, nor shall any person not of good moral character, or who has been convicted of an infamous crime be entitled to practice. But no person shall be denied the right to practice on account of sex, race, or color. And any person, whether an attorney or not, or whether within the exceptions mentioned above or not, may conduct his or her own cause in any court of this state, or before any public board, committee, or officer, subject to the lawful rules and discipline of such court, board, committee, or officer. The provisions of this section restricting the practice of law by a sheriff or clerk, or deputy thereof, shall not apply in a case where such person is representing the office or agency in the course of duties as an attorney.

Interestingly, the above does not prevent you from practicing law UNLES you are a non-attorney court officer or a bad person.

454.19 Certain partnerships prohibited.--No judge of a court of this state who is permitted by the constitution and laws to practice law shall form any partnership with the prosecuting attorney of such court or become a partner in any firm in which he or she is a partner. No attorney who may be a law partner with any judge of any court who is permitted by law to practice law shall be allowed to practice before the court of which his or her partner is judge.

What about collusion between judges and prosecutors, which happens all the time? They frequently function as partners to railroad defendants accused of a crime. For example, prosecutors and judges routinely collude to prevent juries from knowing they are entitled to decide matters of law as well as matters of fact, and to nullify judicial rulings they believe are unjust. In so doing, they hamstring juries and prevent them from implementing just findings.

454.20 Attorneys not to be sureties.--No attorney shall become surety on the official bond of any state, county, or municipal officer of this state, nor surety on any bond of a client in judicial proceedings.

This does not limit any person from practicing law other than attorneys.

454.23 Penalties.--Any person not licensed or otherwise authorized to practice law in this state who practices law in this state or holds himself or herself out to the public as qualified to practice law in this state, or who willfully pretends to be, or willfully takes or uses any name, title, addition, or description implying that he or she is qualified, or recognized by law as qualified, to practice law in this state, commits a felony of the third degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082, s. 775.083, or s. 775.084.


What does this mean? Obviously, the state does not issue licenses to practice law, and neither does the BAR association. Therefore, nobody, including attorneys hold a valid authorization (license) to practice law in Florida. So far, I have not seen any law that stipulates the requirements for qualification to practice law. So how can anybody other than those guilty of violation of one of the other paragraphs be charged with a felony?


454.31 Practice while disbarred or suspended prohibited.--Any person who has been knowingly disbarred and who has not been lawfully reinstated or is knowingly under suspension from the practice of law by any circuit court of the state or by the Supreme Court of the state who practices law in this state or holds himself or herself out as an attorney at law or qualified to practice law in this state commits a felony of the third degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082, s. 775.083, or s. 775.084.

454.32 Aiding or assisting disbarred or suspended attorney prohibited.--A person who knowingly aids or assists any person in carrying on the unauthorized practice of law, knowing that such person has been disbarred and has not been lawfully reinstated or is under suspension from the practice of law by any circuit court of the state or by the Supreme Court of the state, commits a felony of the third degree, punishable as provided in s. 775.082, s. 775.083, or s. 775.084, and shall also be subject to disbarment.

The above two provision do not require an attorney to be a member in good standing of the Bar. They clearly say that a person who has been disbarred cannot practice law, or even say that he is entitled to practice law. However, they do not say that an ordinary human being cannot practice law.


Nothing in the above statutes properly defines “practice of law,” particularly not in terms of giving legal advice, or operating as limited counsel to a defendant or party to a lawsuit in a court of law.

Our Amendment I right to freedom of speech prevents the government from prohibiting our free discussion of all things, including legal matters. However, the bar association seems willing vigorously to prosecute anybody who presumes to give legal advice to a friend.


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Sunday, January 15, 2006

How to Teach the Gospel to Christians

Gemma Vigna wrote:

> My gosh, my mild mannered, kind, Christian technican at work was ready to take my head off when I expressed the atunement truth a few years ago.
> I had just finished my first read of UB [The Urantia Book] and was all dewey eyed about the whole thing. Well, still am but matured after being bashed several times when expressing this new concept.
> It all goes back to believing that God punishes us. I said to my co-worker, what father would have his son killed for someone's sins ? Greg and I to this day still discuss God a lot. Greg is a very kind, community giving person. So no matter, he knows Brotherhood of Man and Doing God's Will. He is a star to me none the less !
>

Gemma:

It is good to find common points in belief between you and Christians you want to enlighten, and to focus on those. Nevertheless, it is also right to spread the gospel, just as both the Bible and the UB say Jesus commanded his followers to do. Even though many Christians might not know it, they do already believe the real gospel Jesus taught. Unfortunately, they just don't believe that is also a plan of salvation.

If you want to maintain peaceful and happy relations with Christians, the real gospel is what to focus on, both in your speaking and your living. And when it comes to tenuous issues like the atonement doctrine, it's best merely to ask questions with a big smile on your face, questions that will make the other person question his own sanity in embracing the atonement doctrine. You can simply state a truth about Bible scripture (something from Jesus), then ask a question about it. Wherever possible, quote Jesus' teachings right from the Bible.

My daddy, who was a faith-healer before he died of cancer, always told me it's important to deny the lie and affirm the truth. When you make a frontal attack on the lies that others believe, they "ridge" up, dig in their heels, and become determined to win, even if they are wrong by doing so.

It's important to know precisely what the lie is, and what Christian motives are. Most Christians feel some obligation to help you save your soul by accepting Jesus as your lord and savior. They believe in the saving power of the atonement doctrine - the idea that he died on the cross as a sacrifice for your sins so that you can demolish your separation from God that resulted from Adam and Eve's original sin, and have relationship with God, thereby allowing you entry into heaven. They feel somewhat secure and smug because since they've walked down the aisle and told the preacher that on faith they accept Jesus as Lord and his death as a sacrifice for their sins. Now that they are secure and not heading for hell when they die, they want to save you from hell fire.

Now, when you focus their attention on the truth, and do not directly attack the lies they have embraced as the word of God, the truth is so obvious, refreshing, and appealing to the spirit that they cannot help loving it. And they will begin to see their religion in light of the truth. Thereby, the atonement doctrine lie will merely fade away from their thinking and become a relic, just like many of the Jewish laws to which they still give some lip service. Yes, the law exists, but Christians ignore it for the most part (if they even know what it is). For example, they don't follow Jewish rules for kosher food, and they feel no guilt whatsoever for this. That's how they will someday feel about the atonement doctrine.

Here are some Q&A examples. Actually, they're A&Q because you give them the answer first, from scripture, then you ask the questions.

Examples:

Matthew 7:21 Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.

Doesn't this mean that if I do the Father's will, I will go to heaven, no matter what else I believe?

Mark 9:7 And there was a cloud that overshadowed them: and a voice came out of the cloud, saying, This is my beloved Son: hear him.
Matthew 3:17 And lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.
Matthew 17:5 While he yet spake, behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them: and behold a voice out of the cloud, which said, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him.
Mark 1:11 And there came a voice from heaven, saying, Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.
Luke 9:34-35 While he thus spake, there came a cloud, and overshadowed them: and they feared as they entered into the cloud. And there came a voice out of the cloud, saying, This is my beloved Son: hear him.
John 7:16 Jesus answered them, and said, My doctrine is not mine, but his that sent me.
John 8:42 Jesus said unto them, If God were your Father, ye would love me: for I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but he sent me.
John 14:15 If ye love me, keep my commandments.
John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.


Don't these scriptures mean Jesus is the single most important authority for truth on this world, and that we should heed his words over all others? Isn't it God's will, then, that we believe all of Jesus' direct and unequivocal teachings? Who could possibly teach the gospel better than Jesus did? Did the spirit of the Father ever make such pronouncements about any other person? What does it mean that God "gave" his only begotten Son? Doesn't it mean he sent Jesus to this world to teach the gospel?

Matthew 7:15-16 Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?
Matthew 24:24 For there shall arise false Christs, and false prophets, and shall shew great signs and wonders; insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.
Matthew 19:14 But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.
Matthew 18:6 But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.
Mark 9:42 And whosoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea.
Luke 17:2 It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones.


Doesn't this mean that someone who teaches a so-called "gospel" other than the gospel Jesus taught, that person is a "false prophet" whose teachings should be avoided to the extent they conflict with or fail to support the gospel of Jesus? Didn't Jesus also suggest that a bad fate is in store for people to deny little children the opportunity to hear his gospel and be with him? Isn't a so-called gospel that misleads children from the true gospel Jesus taught the same thing as a false gospel from a false prophet that "offends" those little ones who believe in Jesus?

Luke 17:21 Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.

Doesn't this mean that God's spirit indwells my mind, and he does have a relationship with me, and I with him, no matter what else I believe? I'm not really separated from God, am I?

Matthew 6:14 For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you:

Isn't forgiveness necessary for entering heaven? Isn't the whole idea of the plan of salvation to receive forgiveness for sins? If you're forgiven, don't you already have a good relationship with God, and if so, how can you be separate from God? If you receive forgiveness by forgiving others, how can there be another requirement for forgiveness? If there were one, wouldn't Jesus have said so?

Matthew 6:15 But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

Does this mean that no matter what I believe about salvation, the divinity of Jesus, or even his death being sacrificial, that if I don't forgive others, I won't be forgiven, and therefore I won't go to heaven when I die?

Mark 16:15 And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.
Matthew 28:19-20 Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.


Isn't the above "Great Commission" a direct order from Jesus to teach his gospel and his commandments to all people? What were those commandments?

Luke 4:18 The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,
Matthew 4:23 And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people.
Luke 4:43 And he said unto them, I must preach the kingdom of God to other cities also: for therefore am I sent.
Matthew 16:20-23 Then charged he his disciples that they should tell no man that he was Jesus the Christ. From that time forth began Jesus to shew unto his disciples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day. Then Peter took him, and began to rebuke him, saying, Be it far from thee, Lord: this shall not be unto thee. But he turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.


Since the "gospel" was being taught by Jesus very early in his public ministry, and since Jesus did not even mention his torture, death, resurrection, or divinity till years later (note Peter's astonishment), how could his death or the significance of it have been part of the gospel? And wasn't the teaching of the gospel the specific reason the Father sent Jesus to this world? So, please tell me: What was the real gospel if it contained nothing about Jesus' death, resurrection, or divinity?

John 5:24 Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.

Doesn't this mean we have to believe in God the Father in order to be saved?

Matthew 7:21 Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.
Matthew 5:48 Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.
Matthew 5:16 Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven.
Matthew 7:12 Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them: for this is the law and the prophets.
Matthew 22:35-40 Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the law? Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.
Luke 10:25-28 And, behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted him, saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? He said unto him, What is written in the law? how readest thou? And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself. And he said unto him, Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live.
John 13:34 A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another.
Luke 6:35 But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil.
Matthew 7:1 Judge not, that ye be not judged.
Matthew 23:11-12 But he that is greatest among you shall be your servant. And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted.
John 6:40 And this is the will of him that sent me, that every one which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life: and I will raise him up at the last day.


Wouldn't you say the above scriptures pretty much sum up the gospel? Isn't it important to know that believing "in" Jesus means first to accept his authority to teach, and second to believe what he says? Isn't this the gospel Jesus taught throughout his public ministry:

1) We should accept the reality that Our Heavenly Father loves us;
2) We should believe the fact that we, being his children, are each others' brothers and sisters, and we should love each other unselfishly and lovingly;
3) We should have faith in the effectiveness of the supreme desire to do the will of God - to be like him?

----------------

I believe it also important to point out the difference between gospel and gospel. The two words look the same, but, depending on context, they don't mean the same. The first four books of the New Testament are referred to as "the gospels", and Paul referred to his preachments as "the gospel." But neither of these are the same thing as the gospel teachings of Jesus. Jesus' teachings actually were and are the real gospel. The teachings of Peter or Paul might have been the gospel, and then, they might not. The stories in Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Acts include much more than the actual teachings of Jesus, and while the stories of Jesus' life or the other events of his time might be interesting, inspiring, or uplifting, they are not the gospel he taught.

We can see from this use of the word gospel that the whole New Testament is couched as "gospel," and that fact gives rise to much confusion as to who is the real authority on the gospel. First of all, the real gospel is not necessarily a plan of salvation (how to escape death), but rather it is a plan for living life. Salvation is merely a consequence of living the gospel. Most of what Jesus taught had to do with changing people's view of reality so that they would be happier and live a more spiritually productive life. Instead of focusing on that, Christianity has focused on the highly selfish concerns of salvation, actually something of an escape from life and the physical death that is its natural consequence. That is precisely the opposite from what Jesus showed in his living. He embraced the death that was the consequence of his living, and he did not change his manner of living in order to escape it.

Most Christians are quite confused about the word gospel. They actually believe (or want to believe) that Jesus, Peter, and Paul all espoused the same gospel. But if you study closely the teachings of Jesus, you find that every single element of his comments that seems to support the atonement doctrine is not a direct, unequivocal teaching, but rather an obliquereference, an aside, or something of an afterthought tacked on to the ends of his alleged statements. Christians like to focus on these as a way of proving the truth of Paul's ideas about salvation. It is important to note that the gospels were not written till 30 or more years after Jesus' death, during which period Paul wielded considerable influence over the thinking of Peter and other teachers. As a result, the later compilers and editors of the four gospels did exert editorial influence over those records of Jesus' life and teachings.

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Here are some of the scriptures Christians use to "prove" Jesus taught the atonement doctrine (even though the above A&Q has thoroughly debunked that notion).

Matthew 20:28 Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.
Mark 10:45 For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.


The above scripture seems to express that Jesus gave his life (died) as a ransom (human sacrifice), but it does not come out and say he died. Give his life means "live on this world." Ransom for many means his life here is a substitute for some more horrible fate. Most Christians do not know that Abraham practice human sacrifice, and that that pagan ritual was customary in his day. They do not know that 1500 years before Jesus arrived, Moses essentially out lawed human sacrifice with the ransom payment system whereby fathers would pay a ransom fee to the priesthood in lieu of murdering their first-born sons or giving those sons over to be servants of the priests. The ransom payment is a substitute for sacrifice. Further evidence that Jesus abhorred sacrifice is in his actions of driving the moneychangers and sacrificial creatures out of the temple, of refusing sacrificial meat at his last passover feast, and his instituting the bread and wine sacrament as a substitute for the practice of sacrifice, so as to forever wean his followers from sacrificial rituals. He also agreed with the man who said love was greater than all the burnt offerings and sacrifices (Mark 12:33-34). So, while Christians try to use the above scriptures as proof that Jesus' death was sacrificial in nature, it actually proves precisely the opposite. Note the obvious collusion of editors who put exactly the same text into two books of the bible. The likelihood that Matthew and Mark would both remember those exact words is slim. Note also the fact that the phrase to give his life as a ransom for many appears to be an out-of-context editorial appendage.

Matthew 26:28 For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.
Mark 14:24 And he said unto them, This is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many.
Luke 22:20 Likewise also the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you.


These scriptures that describe the sacrament seem to imply Jesus' death was sacrificial (the shedding of innocent blood). In reality, Jesus is providing his followers with a sacrament that will forever be a substitute for the practice of sacrifice of any kind. And, he does this before he dies, rather than afterward, so it does not really refer to his actual death, but only an idea of his death. The sacrament of bread and wine is a symbolic substitute for the ritual of sacrifice, and its purpose was to dislodge the idea in the minds of his Jewish followers that sacrifice of any kind is efficacious. The bread and wine were just that: bread and wine. They were not Jesus' body or blood, and they did not (and do not) become Jesus' body or blood just because a priest blesses them. Note in the scriptures the obvious collusion of editors who put identical text into three books of the Bible. As far as we know, Luke never even met Jesus, and neither Luke nor John Mark were in the upper soom at the time of the last supper. So they had no first-hand knowledge of the bread and wine sacrament. Such evidence of editorial collusion indicates an almost conspiratorial desire to impose the atonement doctrine on readers of the bible. And, as you can see, the comment shed for many for the remission of sins looks like an out-of-context editorial addition. Even if Jesus did utter those words, they are still in the context of a sacrament that is a substitute for sacrifice, and therefore they cannot refer to Jesus' actual death as a sacrificial death.

John 3:16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.


The words gave and believeth in cause a lot of confusion for Christians. First of all they think the word gave means Jesus' death was sacrificial, but it clearly does not either say or allude to that idea. The word gave simply means Jesus was sent to this world by the Father to live and teach his gospel truths. Second, they think believeth in has some kind of mystical connotation, such as believing Jesus is a divine being, and that such a belief is necessary to salvation. It means no such thing. The word in could easily be omitted without changing the context of the sentence. It simply means that one must believe Jesus had the authority to teach, and that Jesus' teachings should be believed. After all, Jesus said in Luke 4:23 that he was sent to teach the (gospel of the) kingdom of God, and in John 7:16 that the doctrine he taught was from God.


I won't go into the many scriptures Christians like to quote from the apostle Paul's letters and from the book of Hebrews that support the Atonement doctrine. It is enough to say that if the gospel Jesus taught is true, then the atonement doctrine cannot be true, and that means Paul and Peter both were false prophets to the extent they portrayed the gospel as anything different from what Jesus taught. Since Jesus did not teach the atonement doctrine, but instead taught the gospel of love, forgiveness, service, and devotion to God's will, the atonement doctrine is merely an invention by his misguided followers.

There are some scriptures that clearly indicate how misguided they were.

In Acts 2:14-41 Peter launches his fiery Pentecost-day sermon in which he pronounces Jesus is the risen Christ. While that is true, it very clearly is not the gospel that the resurrected Jesus had, earlier that very day, ordered him to teach to all nations. Jesus' death and resurrection were, as I have pointed out in scripture, not part of his gospel message.

1 Corinthians 9:20-24 And unto the Jews I became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews; to them that are under the law, as under the law, that I might gain them that are under the law; To them that are without law, as without law, (being not without law to God, but under the law to Christ,) that I might gain them that are without law. To the weak became I as weak, that I might gain the weak: I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some. And this I do for the gospel's sake, that I might be partaker thereof with you. Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain.


In the above comment, Paul admits he is a prevaricator, and that he will say anything to convince others to go along with his teachings.

Romans 7:19 For the good that I would I do not: but the evil which I would not, that I do.

In the above comment, Paul admits he is a moral weakling who does things he knows he should not do.

Galatians 1:8 But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.

In the above comment, Paul admits he is a usurper of the gospel, stealing authority from John Zebedee (a real apostle who was still alive and preaching at the time), and even from Jesus (who taught the real gospel of love, service, forgiveness, and devotion to God's will).

Galatians 1:15-20 But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by his grace, To reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen; immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood: Neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before me; but I went into Arabia, and returned again unto Damascus. Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter, and abode with him fifteen days. But other of the apostles saw I none, save James the Lord's brother. Now the things which I write unto you, behold, before God, I lie not.

It's just like a lawyer to lie and claim he's not lying. It is reasonable to conjecture that Paul went to Philadelphia, Arabia (now Amman, Jordan) and met the apostle Andrew, Peter's brother and the head of Jesus' apostles, as well as the head apostle of John the Baptist, and Lazarus and his sisters Martha and Mary. This was the town that was friendly to Jesus' teachings, and the last place Jesus taught on his teaching missions. Paul admitted he was blinded and told to go to Damascus to get further orders. Then suddenly he's off to Arabia. But he refuses to say what he learned there. What would he learn there and whom would he meet? He met the one apostle most loyal to Jesus' gospel teachings, Andrew, and Andrew's other associates, all of whom were intimately familiar with Jesus' teachings, first-hand. Why didn't Paul explain in his letter to the Galatians what he learned there? Why did he essentially lie about the experience? Because he did not agree with what Andrew and the others told him. And, what they told him was the real gospel.

Revelation 3:7-12 And to the angel of the church in Philadelphia write; These things saith he that is holy, he that is true, he that hath the key of David, he that openeth, and no man shutteth; and shutteth, and no man openeth; I know thy works: behold, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it: for thou hast a little strength, and hast kept my word, and hast not denied my name. Behold, I will make them of the synagogue of Satan, which say they are Jews, and are not, but do lie; behold, I will make them to come and worship before thy feet, and to know that I have loved thee. Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to try them that dwell upon the earth. Behold, I come quickly: hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown. Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out: and I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, which is new Jerusalem, which cometh down out of heaven from my God: and I will write upon him my new name.

In case anyone doubts whether the church Andrew and his associates founded at Philadelphia was actually doing well, one need only review the first part of the book of Revelation. In the above quote, Jesus is allegedly saying (in John Zebedee's vision) that he favored the church at Philadelphia because it was loyal to his teachings. In the other text at the beginning of Revelation, Jesus denounces the other 6 churches for one reason or another. All of those churches were founded by Paul or Paul's followers. So, in effect, Jesus is denouncing Paul.

2 Timothy 2:15 Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.

If you ever get a Christian to admit that Jesus' gospel and Paul's gospel were different and opposed in some respects, the Christian will then toss around for some other way to prove to you that Paul should be believed, and the above scripture is one of the favorites I've heard offered as such proof. To begin with, Paul is not exactly the most credible witness, as I have shown. But more than that, this scripture seems to imply that some parts of scripture apply to some people, and other parts to other people. Fundamentalist Christians like to claim that the application of the above scripture is to the teachings of Jesus versus those of Paul. They say that Jesus taught to the Jews and Paul to the Gentiles, and that Jesus' gospel does not apply to Gentiles. In this, they are deluded. The Great Commission (Mark 16:15, Matthew 28:19-20) prove that Jesus' gospel is for the entire world, not just the Jews. And his comments about false prophets in Matthew 17:15 and 24:24 are an appropriate warning against such sophistries as "rightly dividing the word of truth."

I don't recommend that you start denouncing Paul or Peter. That will only alienate Christians because they believe the whole New Testament is the holy word of God. However, you should know that the scriptures they love to quote to you come from men who were not loyal to Jesus' Great Commission.


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Well, the above should give anyone a pretty good start in exposing the lie of the atonement doctrine without directly attacking it, and of revealing the gospel. Most Christians have an agenda - to proselytize lost sinners. By showing them scripture from the very Bible they believe is the inerrant, infallible holy word of God, then asking them questions to which the answers are obvious from scripture, you switch the agenda from theirs to yours, and you get them scrambling to answer the questions without looking like an utter fool. They cannot possibly adhere to the atonement doctrine if they embrace the above direct and unequivocal teachings of Jesus.

Bob Hurt