Family wins battle against USDA; won’t pay 4 Million in fines for backyard bunnies.

John and Judy Dollarhite, a couple from Nixa, MO faced an unthinkable attack from the USDA, when in 2009 they got a surprise visit to their home from an inspector from the federal government. The Dollarhite family was even more shocked when they were informed by an investigator from the USDA that they were in violation of a guideline and would face fines of close to 4 million dollars. The agents cited the fact that the couple had sold more than $500 worth of rabbits without obtaining a USDA permit, and could face a $10,000 fine per bunny. The USDA never disputed the fact that the rabbits were completely healthy, well cared for and had more than adequate living conditions.

Thankfully, the former owners of the Dollarvalue Rabbitry, a venture which stemmed from their teenage son’s school project, are finally able to breathe a sigh of relief. The incident, which is outrageous even to those who embrace overbearing government regulation, has finally come to end.

Yesterday, the Dollarhites posted the following announcement:

“We have a signed settlement with USDA. It isn’t everything we had hoped for because there wasn’t an apology included for all the nightmares we have endured these several months. There is no fine. They stipulated a 2 year ban on obtaining a USDA license, which we never wanted, nor can I ever envision us wanting anything to do with USDA. ….”

The victory comes after lawsuit launched by the couple which was funded in part by donations. But it was largely due to public outcry which placed pressure on elected representatives that put an end to the madness. Activists and liberty lovers rallied around the Dollarhite family and sent a message to the system.

Conservative blogger, Clay Bowler, author of Bungalow Bill’s Conservative Wisdom broke the story and it was eventually picked up by several national media outlets.

I had the pleasure of meeting John Dollarhite. He is a good man and certainly undeserving of being treated like a criminal. I am pleased to know that we live in a country still free enough that we have the ability to be our own media, and expose a government abuse of this magnitude.

Ron Paul receives early Christmas gift from supporters

It was four years ago, that Ron Paul supporters shocked pundits when their “Tea Party 07” event raised more than 6 million dollars in a single day, setting a new record. An anomaly which was mimicked yesterday on the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party, when his loyal base was able to raise over 3 million dollars in just 24 hours. The event was organized by grassroots supporters and was held at Dr. Paul’s official campaign website. While they weren’t able to muster another single day record breaker, the overall totals are much greater than Paul’s last run, and still more was raised in 24 hours than many other candidates raised for entire quarters. If you ask Ron Paul supporters the purpose behind these “Money Bombs” they will tell you it’s not just to fund the campaign. Ron Paul’s campaign has often been dismissed as a fluke, a few people on the internet with the ability to win online polls. But when the campaign is able to organize and garner more individual donors than any other candidate, it’s hard to deny that “Ron Paul Revolution” is not going to simply go away.

This method of breaking through the media barrier didn’t stop with fundraising. Ron Paul supporters in Missouri set another new record by constructing the largest election sign in the nation. The sign, which can be seen by more than 60,000 commuters per day, is located alongside the major interstate corridor, I-44. The sign which reads “Ron Paul 2012” is 84 feet long.

More pictures, videos and information available at www.bigronpaulsign.com

Individuals behind the sign project have been in touch the Guinness Book to certify the record.

Ron Paul supporters have shown an uncanny ability to pull of unbelievable feats which highlight the dedicated organization of their movement. Ron Paul has won more straw polls than all of the other candidates COMBINED. The latest Iowa polls show Ron Paul within 1 percent of current front-runner Newt Gingrich. But more interestingly, the polls show Gingrich losing support, and Ron Paul gaining. Considering Paul’s campaign x-factor of highly organized volunteers, it is highly likely that Ron Paul will win the Iowa Caucuses.

Ron Paul has been asked repeatedly in interviews if he will support the eventual nominee, in the event he falls short of the goal in the primaries. In addition, Ron Paul has been hammered for famously refusing to pledge not to run third party.

But with Paul’s ability to pull off upset after upset, maybe it’s time to ask Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and the other candidates if THEY will run third party should Ron Paul win the nomination.

Welcome to the Newt World Order

 

Obama has been criticized, and rightfully so, for stating that he wants to “fundamentally transform America.”   Obama has had to answer questions about his past association with radical individuals.  Newt Gingrich has emerged as the Republican frontrunner and is claiming to be the best alternative to Obama for 2012.  If you are concerned with Obama’s ideology and the beliefs of those who influenced him, you should know some things about Newt Gingrich.

Above is a photo of a book titled “Creating a New Civilization: The Politics of the Third Wave” which Newt Gingrich wrote the forward to.   This book is a sequel to “The Third Wave” authored by Alvin Toffler. Gingrich put the book on his recommended reading list for his colleague when he became Speaker of the House in the 1990’s.  Toffler’s writings call for abolition of the United States Constitution and the concept of national sovereignty.  Toffler calls for a world government, which will be ruled by technocratic elites.  There are entire subchapters in the book titled “the sub-elites” and the “super-elites.”  The Third Wave lays out a society similar to Huxley’s Brave New World, but sprinkled with some Republican lingo. Toffler suggests religion should be replaced with loyalty to government and refers to religion in our current system as “cults.” The book describes a society where abortion, homosexuality, and divorce are not only accepted but idolized.  After all, Toffler proclaims the need to reduce world population which the aforementioned would indeed facilitate.  Gingrich calls Toffler his mentor, which explains Gingrich’s connection with the militant environmental movement.  In 2007, Gingrich wrote this book:


In Gingrich’s “ A Contract with the Earth” Gingrich describes himself as a “green conservative” and states that environmental issues transcend politics and cannot be dealt with using conventional governance.


In 2008, after correspondence with Al Gore, Gingrich starred alongside Nancy Pelosi in a commercial which was paid for by Gore’s tax-free foundation, Alliance for Climate Protection. The commercial was part of a campaign to promote carbon taxes.  For those who aren’t familiar, a carbon tax (sometimes called Cap and Trade) is a tax levied on activities which emit carbon dioxide, which the environmental movement claims is toxic to the planet.  The commercial can be seen here:
 This is not the first time Al Gore and Newt Gingrich have teamed up. It was 1993 when Al Gore proclaimed “this is a good deal for our country” on Larry King Live, referring to NAFTA.  Newt Gingrich was instrumental in pushing the trade agreement through Congress. Again in 1994, Gingrich worked to convince his Republican colleagues to get behind another Clinton administration project, the World Trade Organization.  It is Gingrich’s support for forming the world governing body that many credit for his anointment as Speaker.  Time has shown us, Ross Perot of all people, was right when he referred to the giant sucking sound that would be heard when we accepted the agreement.  The U.S. has lost a startling amount of its manufacturing base due to the policy.

The embrace of world government doesn’t stop here. Newt Gingrich is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations- a organization founded by J.P. Morgan, Paul Warburg and others. The CFR is a group which has consistently pushed for world government and a world currency, while publicly claiming only to facilitate “understanding” of the world.  

During the 1990’s socialized medicine was being entertained under the unofficial title of “Hillary Care.”  Even then, Gingrich publicly endorsed the concept of an individual mandate (the precedent that the government has authority to force an individual to purchase a product). More recently, the constitutionality of the individual mandate has become the focal point of the debate regarding Obama’s socialized medicine.  Despite the fact that “Obama Care” as it’s come to be called, is wildly unpopular especially amongst conservatives, Gingrich has come out in favor of the individual mandate as recently as May of this year.  

Gingrich’s recent surge in presidential primary polls comes as a surprise to many conservatives who were around for his reign in Congress.  It can be easily argued that Newt has been more closely aligned with the hard-core left than anything conservative. 

There are those of us who believe in the guiding principles which our American Revolution was fought for. Those of us from the old school believe what America needs is a restoration.  A restoration of the principles which made us strong, like liberty, limited government, low taxes and private property rights.  You won’t get that from someone who calls himself a “conservative futurist.”

With so many issues as devastatingly anti-American as the aforementioned, it would be futile to go over the long list of events, typical of politicians, that that prove Newt Gingrich is morally bankrupt. So we’ll leave that to someone else.

You may believe that there is no effort to undermine American sovereignty and her system of constitutional government, and those who believe there is an effort, are conspiracy theorists.   But the fact of the matter is, Newt Gingrich believes in world government and he has sold his soul to the cause.

Why the Church should embrace small government

You can’t legislate morality.  That is the tired old argument that liberty minded folks and constitutionalists present to those who favor using the government to enforce their religious views.   But as a person of faith myself, I will do you one better.  It is true, that is impossible to force people to be moral with the use of government force. Evidence of this fact can be seen everywhere. Alcohol prohibition of the 1920’s was a faith based initiative.  The aim of those in favor of prohibition was to rid society of the evils of alcohol consumption.  As history showed, this plan backfired and organized crime infected society and alcoholism exploded.

However, the simple fact that that government is not capable of being a moral enforcer is the weakest argument for liberty in my opinion. The real evil of this concept is, when you give the moral authority to the government, it replaces the church in that role.  By setting this standard, you set the precedent that someone should look at whether or not something is legal when making the decision of whether not it is moral.  If you’re claiming that the government will protect you from bad behavior, doesn’t that presume that if something is legal, then it must be morally acceptable?

Recently, a person stated to me, “I agree with the concept of liberty, but I don’t think it should extend to allow immorality.”  They went on to apply that to the issue of homosexuality, and advised it should be illegal. Say we give this power to government, along with the money, guns and authorization to use violence that goes along with it.  Do they propose we put a camera in every bedroom?  The idea that it should be the job of the police to monitor everyone’s sexual behavior is far more perverse than the alternative.

Christians make the issue of gay marriage one of their central concerns during elections. They are unaware however, that their embrace of the big government nanny state made them lose this battle a long time ago. It was a long time ago that the Church accepted that it should be a responsibility government to sanction marriage. Once again, the Church relinquishes the moral authority.

Society has almost entirely replaced faith with government. It was well-meaning Christians who helped embrace the concept that the government should take the earnings of some to provide for the poor and down trodden. After all, the Bible does command us to help those in need (though we are given free will, which makes the action of giving one of faith rather than compliance).  There was a time in America, when you needed help, you went to a Church.  Once again, this function has given to government, removing the opportunity to witness to those individuals.  Now, society views (mistakenly) government as the savior and doer of good deeds.  Since the role of welfare has been handed over to the state, and income redistribution is perpetrated on a massive scale, many folks pay more than half their income in taxes.  If government did not claim rights to this much of our wealth, we might have more to give or to tithe.   Once the image of righteousness is attached to government, it doesn’t take long for people to witness one of the many evils that it engages in, destroying along with it, the perception of Christianity which has placed its stamp of approval on the system.


The notion that government is synonymous with morality has created a monster.  In order to police the behavior of the people it has been necessary to create a leviathan of power, a vast network of laws and the guns, personnel and prisons to enforce it.  What happens when a force with a different view of morality, or worse, a purely evil force gains control of this mechanism?  We have seen what happens.  Nazi Germany is an example of a once-moral people embracing the idea of a totalitarian state.

The poor arguments come from both sides in this debate.  Many of those, whom I respect for their faith and devotion, have a view of this relationship I cannot accept. When examining an atrocity or evil committed by the state, they often respond by saying “we live in fallen world.” So, we should attempt to regulate behavior of individuals, but write off institutionalized sin? Other arguments include a reference to how the end times are prophesied or a quote of the verses in Romans 13.  I like to remind them however, that Romans 13 was Hitler’s favorite Bible verse, and that Christians in Nazi Germany believed they were witnessing the end times.

The Church does not often recognize this dangerous relationship with government.  However, governments have and will always understand it.  The government, now bloated and drunk on the unending power which we have allowed it, views the family and faith as its competitor.  Realizing this reciprocity, whether by nature or by calculated tactic, those in power seek to destroy and dismantle the family and real faith.

It is for these reasons that I would urge people of faith to embrace a more humble role of government.  One that is more safe for everyone.  We should recognize that the only true and necessary function of government should be to protect the liberties of all and the only legitimate function of government force is to prevent illegitimate force.  If we embrace this, we will eliminate Christianity’s most fierce predator.