The governor of North Carolina declared a state of emergency in North Carolina. At least 23 known deaths have been reported so far. Many neighborhood were destroyed when the central and east areas of NC was slammed by more than 60 tornadoes in a wide area from Fayetteville to Sanford to Raleigh, WIlson, Dunn, Benson, and as far east as Bertie.

Government doors stay open.

Here’s the federal government slant they’d like you to believe. Harry Reid and John Boehner were able to negotiate a budget agreement. President Obama is pleased that government is not forced to shut down.

Mainstream media will be reporting optimistic, celebratory news to show how wonderful it is that the two state-sponsored political parties were able to iron out differences and work together on a federal budget compromise. Exactly how terrible the budget planned will be for the economy will not be mentioned. It will be avoided by the politicians and the press so that people will see the approved version of the government spin and be the sheep of contentment.

Reporting of the truth about the budget, planned to increase the national debt, appears closed, kept from the mainstream.

It is true. The federal budget has definitely been compromised, just as it has been for years. This is planned bankrupting of the economy by budgets in which there are too many extremely expensive funding programs and big government departments that are sacred cows.

The President and Congress are planning to implement another out-of balance budget plan which will further bankrupt the federal government which has grown to 14.281 Billion dollars. The deficit numbers at the US Debt Clock are speeding up!

Much of what you’ve been seeing in the televised news media concerning a threatened government shutdown due to the House and Senate battling over 36 billion dollars in spending cuts, and arguments about whether or not to cut off federal funding for Planned Parenthood, has been nothing more than theatrics, with all the major players failing to tell the people the ugly truth. The truth is that there will be, (by plan!) no balanced budget. They can’t balance the budget since the federal government and elected politicians want to spend, spend, spend.

All the discussion about withholding funding of Planned Parenthood being a sticking point has very little to do with the proper running of government. It is nothing more than a distraction issue to keep the people divided and bickering rather than demand an actual balanced budget.

Recently, just one day of launching Tomahawk cruise missiles into a distant country (Libya) we weren’t at war with cost about 150 million dollars. Let’s see Congress get real bold and take back the power to start wars rather than serve the beck and call of the UN. It is not just Obama who thinks the President can launch us into wars. George Bush’ simultaneous wars were costing over a billion per month. That is a lot of zeros but it translates to real indebtedness.

A reduction of 37 billion dollars is less than 1% of the spending they plan to do. Double digit percentage cuts were needed. If you and I ran our household economy like this, we would be going deeper and deeper into debt and lose everything. If a small business were to do this, their creditors would shut them down. When deep in debt, the only way out of it is either to drastically increase revenue or drastically reduce the spending. Since the working class is already at the stress point, revenue increases would have to come from those who can afford to pay more by doing away with tax deductions for expenses only the wealthy can afford, such as private jets, yatchs, real estate holdings, and other write-offs that you and I cannot afford in the first place. The idea of reducing spending by getting back to an affordable defense budget and reducing the extravagant financing of the ever-encroaching and developing police state, where cops all look like like SWAT, seems to be sacred cows. To have a military strong enough to ward off all attacks is one thing, but the US spends more on defense than the next 10 countries combined. That kind of budget planning is unsustainable and idiotic.

Anyone who is able to balance their checkbook should see through the magicians smoke and mirrors and know that even if Reid and Boehner sent chocolates and flowers to each other, there is no cause for monumental celebration. An agreement to reduce an already bloated budget by cutting only 37 billion dollars or thereabouts is just a plan to continue in the red and further run up the debt. Does the federal government plan to fix the economy by getting serious about spending reductions? Ever?

If government had to plan to keep all planned expenditures at or slightly below projected revenue levels, double digit percent cuts in spending is required. Even a 10% reduction in spending, or about 370 billion dollars (or half the wall street bailout in 2008 during the Bush presidency), would still not put the federal government in budget surplus mode.

Although the politicians and mainstream media are doing a disservice by not reporting on the stark realities, so visibly displayed by the US Debt Clock, there are some segments of the population who have reason to celebrate. For example, this is very good news for those in the military who were in a panic because they weren’t sure if they would be getting paid, and when they might see their next paycheck. Many low-ranking enlisted personnel in the military live from paycheck to paycheck, and have no savings. They depend on that paycheck arriving on time.

Also celebrating are many government employees including the bureaucrats who have job security unlike anyone in the private sector. When you see agencies such as the NHTSA wanting to send hundreds of thousands of dollars to several states so that they will put up unconstitutional motorcycle roadblocks and hand out safety propaganda literature to promote helmets that are 63% ineffective, taxpayers should wonder how much they pay those statisticians and middle managers who come up with those figures and those ideas.

The federal government is the largest employer in the United States. At the end of the last millenium, during the Clinton administration, there were budget surpluses. The idea of budget surpluses changed drastically to budget deficits under the G.W. Bush administration which ran up over a trillion dollars in debt with invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, followed by sudden massive bailouts of mortgage lenders, investment bankers, and insurance companies during the final months of his failed presidency. The strategies of bailing out the wealthiest entities that are too big to fail was like stabbing a sword into the heart, but not of the wealthy. Instead of paying for their own gambling losses government intervened, forcing payments and indebtedness onto the middle class and the working class.

The Federal Reserve Bank, which is not federal but private, must be loving these out of control spending sprees, as the interest payments on the debt is making them and their few banker friends, many of whom are foreigners, wealthier than over 300 million Americans combined.

So as other news sources will be optimistically posting headlines cheering the fact that the government is open, you have to ask if it is really open government or if we are all being led down the wrong path, by plan. At least it is great to be in America where alternative news media sources are still allowed to rant from a different perspective than the mainstream media.

This is the NC Home editors’ opinion. It is what it is.

NC House Bill 381 Checking Station Pattern Selection keeps moving
Raleigh (AMP) April 6, 2011

North Carolina House Bill 381, H381, titled Checking Station Pattern Selection, which most people in the motorcycling community “should” favor since it will clarify motorcycle only roadblocks (MOR) otherwise referred to as checking stations or checkpoints, are prohibited in NC was heard in Judiciary Subcommittee B yesterday, where there was a committee substitute, and received a FAVORABLE report. It is heading back to be put on the calendar for the House. I believe it will get scheduled as a 2nd Reading of the bill, and then go directly into a 3rd reading of the bill (unless the Speaker of the House does an unexpected move). It is quite possible for a motion to arise on the floor of the House to ask that the bill be scheduled for the House Transportation Committee, as a courtesy prior to any vote.

Expect it to clear the House and move to the Senate with plenty of time to meet crossover deadlines.

To see H381 Checking Station Pattern Selection and check on its’ status here is the link:
http://www.ncleg.net/gascripts/BillLookUp/BillLookUp.pl?Session=2011%20%…

For our last report on this bill, see http://boltusa.org/node/231/ NC Reduce Profiling

By Pepe Escobar

You invade Bahrain. We take out Muammar Gaddafi in Libya. This, in short, is the essence of a deal struck between the Barack Obama administration and the House of Saud. Two diplomatic sources at the United Nations independently confirmed that Washington, via Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, gave the go-ahead for Saudi Arabia to invade Bahrain and crush the pro-democracy movement in their neighborhood in exchange for a “yes” vote by the Arab League for a no-fly zone over Libya – the main rationale that led to United Nations Security Council resolution 1973.

The revelation came from two different diplomats, a European and a member of the BRIC group, and was made separately to a US scholar and Asia Times Online. According to diplomatic protocol, their names cannot be disclosed. One of the diplomats said, “This is the reason why we could not support resolution 1973. We were arguing that Libya, Bahrain and Yemen were similar cases, and calling for a fact-finding mission. We maintain our official position that the resolution is not clear, and may be interpreted in a belligerent manner.”

As Asia Times Online has reported, a full Arab League endorsement of a no-fly zone is a myth. Of the 22 full members, only 11 were present at the voting. Six of them were Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) members, the US-supported club of Gulf kingdoms/sheikhdoms, of which Saudi Arabia is the top dog. Syria and Algeria were against it. Saudi Arabia only had to “seduce” three other members to get the vote.

Translation: only nine out of 22 members of the Arab League voted for the no-fly zone. The vote was essentially a House of Saud-led operation, with Arab League secretary general Amr Moussa keen to polish his CV with Washington with an eye to become the next Egyptian President.

Thus, in the beginning, there was the great 2011 Arab revolt. Then, inexorably, came the US-Saudi counter-revolution.

Profiteers rejoice
Humanitarian imperialists will spin en masse this is a “conspiracy”, as they have been spinning the bombing of Libya prevented a hypothetical massacre in Benghazi. They will be defending the House of Saud – saying it acted to squash Iranian subversion in the Gulf; obviously R2P – “responsibility to protect” does not apply to people in Bahrain. They will be heavily promoting post-Gaddafi Libya as a new – oily – human rights Mecca, complete with US intelligence assets, black ops, special forces and dodgy contractors.

Whatever they say won’t alter the facts on the ground – the graphic results of the US-Saudi dirty dancing. Asia Times Online has already reported on who profits from the foreign intervention in Libya (see There’s no business like war business, March 30). Players include the Pentagon (via Africom), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Saudi Arabia, the Arab League’s Moussa, and Qatar. Add to the list the al-Khalifa dynasty in Bahrain, assorted weapons contractors, and the usual neo-liberal suspects eager to privatize everything in sight in the new Libya – even the water. And we’re not even talking about the Western vultures hovering over the Libyan oil and gas industry.

Exposed, above all, is the astonishing hypocrisy of the Obama administration, selling a crass geopolitical coup involving northern Africa and the Persian Gulf as a humanitarian operation. As for the fact of another US war on a Muslim nation, that’s just a “kinetic military action”.

There’s been wide speculation in both the US and across the Middle East that considering the military stalemate – and short of the “coalition of the willing” bombing the Gaddafi family to oblivion – Washington, London and Paris might settle for the control of eastern Libya; a northern African version of an oil-rich Gulf Emirate. Gaddafi would be left with a starving North Korea-style Tripolitania.

But considering the latest high-value defections from the regime, plus the desired endgame (“Gaddafi must go”, in President Obama’s own words), Washington, London, Paris and Riyadh won’t settle for nothing but the whole kebab. Including a strategic base for both Africom and NATO.

Round up the unusual suspects
One of the side effects of the dirty US-Saudi deal is that the White House is doing all it can to make sure the Bahrain drama is buried by US media. BBC America news anchor Katty Kay at least had the decency to stress, “they would like that one [Bahrain] to go away because there’s no real upside for them in supporting the rebellion by the Shi’ites.”

Full article here

Editorial opinion by Liberty Fairbanks.

How light bulbs are going to make you thirsty.

In 2007, President G.W. Bush signed a law that will outlaw incandescent light bulbs. When the law goes into effect, within just a few years, a percentage of groundwater across America will be more poisoned by mercury than it already is. When those new mercury lightbulbs wear out or break, people are just going to throw them in the trash. From there, they get lugged away to a landfill, where the mercury will seep into the aquifer.

Robber barons from the energy industry understand all too well; oil and gasoline are not essential to life. Neither is gold. Water is.

As water resources are poisoned by the mercury from lightbulbs as a result of the law signed by Bush, and there is no more clean drinking water anywhere in America, expect G.W. Bush to hoard potable water from his 99,000 acre aquifer in Paraguay until the price is right. If you don’t buy the water from Bush, you might buy it from another Texan, T.Bone Pickens, who has bought up all the land which contains a large aquifer. Currently, large amounts of drinking water are being exported to China rather than being kept for Americans.

Anyone who has an IQ above 100, should recognize that when we talk about light bulbs, there is a much larger issue involved. The problem is, most people know government is going to do whatever the heck government wants to do, so they prefer to not think of the bigger picture, leaving it up to government, even if the ramifications are only several years into the future. So, for those people, we’re relegated to talking about the light bulb issue as if it is only going to be a daily inconvenience that will invade their life, as a limitation to their choices as consumers.

Even if the big picture does not get you so darn ticked off at government, as you should be, that you want to erect gallows in Crawford, and on the lawn of the Capitol and the White House, as a warning that you will not take these bad laws sitting down, does the smaller picture of removal of your choice of lightbulbs upset you enough that you might, at least, complain to your legislator? Do you think the government should be removing your choice, as a consumer, to purchase incandescent light bulbs?

RALEIGH March 21, 2011
United States Attorney George E.B. Holding announced that in federal court today TIMOTHY ALTON STANCILL, 49, of Ayden, North Carolina, pled guilty before United States District Judge James C. Dever III, to the making of false statements in connection with the federal crop insurance program, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 1014 and making material false statements, in violation of Title 18, United State Code, Section 1001.

During the course of the investigation, it was determined that STANCILL filed false multi-peril crop insurance claims and crop disaster payment claims. With respect to the claims, STANCILL misrepresented his tobacco production to secure the monies fraudulently. Specifically, STANCILL sold some of his tobacco through Mark Pridgen, a previously indicted co-conspirator, was paid in cash, and failed to disclose the sale in his indemnity claims. STANCILL also paid a bribe to an adjuster so that his losses were falsely inflated, thereby increasing the amount of money he collected in connection with federal indemnity claims. Therefore, he applied for and received federal crop disaster payments based upon a false production history.

At sentencing, set for the July 5, 2011, term of court, STANCILL faces up to 30 years’ imprisonment for making false statements in connection with the crop insurance program and up to five years’ imprisonment for making material false statements. Also, as stipulated in the plea agreement, STANCILL has agreed to pay restitution to the United States Department of Agriculture, Risk Management Agency and the Farm Service Agency, in the amounts of $196,189 and $34,113, respectively, and to Rural Community Insurance Services in the amount of $36,885.

Investigation of this case was conducted by the United States Department of Agriculture, Office of the Inspector General, Risk Management Agency, Special Investigations Branch, and the Internal Revenue Service, Criminal Investigation Division. Assistant United States Attorney Banumathi Rangarajan, who is assigned to the officer’s Economic Crimes Unit, represented the government.

(AMP) Raleigh
If HB 375 passes the NC General Assembly and becomes law, those roadblocks which stop traffic and violate everyones’ rights might become just a bad memory of a state which was rapidly becoming a police state rather than a free state.
House Bill 375 introduced in the NC General Assembly by first-term representative Glen Bradley of Youngsville would clarify that checkpoints are illegal in the state. Law enforcement refers to roadblocks as checkpoints, check points, or safety checkpoints. US Supreme Court has ruled checkpoints are seizures without a warrant and without probable cause, and as such are unconstitutional in violation of the 4th Amendment of the Bill of Rights, but the court specifies there are exceptions which allow police to violate the law in the name of public safety. For example, if police received a tip that there are religious extremists with a bomb on the way to blow up a building, there may be good reason to conduct a roadblock. It would still be illegal, but it would be an allowed exception to the Bill of Rights.

Rep. Glen Bradley explains, he hands out copies of the US Constitution to police when he is stopped, saying they obviously “need them” (to know they are violating peoples’ rights). The US Constitution is law which limits the powers of government in order to preserve the rights of the people.
In the embedded video, Wake County Sheriff Harrison clearly wants to continue the violations, and opposes the bill. Harrison favors continuing to accept federal funds (which adds to the debt) to set up checkpoints.

The General Assembly will also review a much weaker bill regarding roadblocks and checkpoints. HB 381 would prevent police from setting up checkpoints in order to profile specific types of vehicles.

Make no mistake about it, those federal funds used to fund states to set up checkpoints do come from taxpayers wallets. The US House of Representatives is currently considering House Resolution HR 904 which would prevent the US Department of Transportation (DOT) from providing federal funds to create motorcycle only roadblocks (MOR).