#Tenth Amendment Center

[darkmaga-returns]

Treason. Invasion. Conquest.

That’s how the Founders and old revolutionaries described usurpation – power stolen, not delegated.

And it wasn’t just rhetoric. It was a foundational, and now-forgotten principle at the very heart of the American Revolution.

When government repeatedly goes beyond the limits of the Constitution, it’s not just an innocent mistake – it’s a kind of war waged against the sovereignty, or final authority, of the people.

MORE THAN JUST “BAD POLICY”

To the Founders, this wasn’t theory – it was a warning. Few, if any, put that warning into sharper words than St. George Tucker, a patriot of the Revolutionary War and one of the most important constitutional scholars of the early republic.

“If in a limited government the public functionaries exceed the limits which the constitution prescribes to their powers, every such act is an act of usurpation in the government, and, as such, treason against the sovereignty of the people, which is thus endeavored to be subverted, and transferred to the usurpers.”

Tucker called it treason. Thomas Paine explained the foundation of it – where all power comes from.

“All power exercised over a nation, must have some beginning. It must either be delegated or assumed. There are no other sources. All delegated power is trust, and all assumed power is usurpation.”

Paine and Tucker weren’t inventing something new. These were long-established principles, recognized for generations. Over a century earlier, Algernon Sidney laid the same foundation:

“The making of laws, coronation, inauguration, and all that belongs to the chusing and making of kings, or other magistrates, is merely from the people; and that all power exercised over them, which is not so, is usurpation and tyranny.”

John Locke took that idea a step further – defining usurpation as the theft of power that rightfully belongs to someone else:

“Usurpation is the exercise of power, which another hath a right to.”

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

May 21, 2025

Heather Cox Richardson

May 22, 2025

Just after 1:00 this morning, the House Rules Committee began its hearing on what congressional Republicans have officially named The One Big, Beautiful Bill. If passed, this measure will put Trump’s wish list into law. Although this is technically a budget bill, items in it from that wish list include a significant restriction on “the authority of federal courts to hold government officials in contempt when they violate court orders,” as Dean of Berkeley Law School Erwin Chemerinsky explained in Just Security Monday. “Without the contempt power,” he writes, “judicial orders are meaningless and can be ignored.”

Three judges are currently considering whether the administration is in contempt of court over its apparent disregard for court orders over its rendition of undocumented immigrants to third countries.

But the center of the bill is indeed related to money: it is the $3.8 trillion extension of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, which disproportionately benefit the wealthy and corporations. Yesterday the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said that Americans in the lowest tenth of earners will lose money under the measure while people in the top five percent of earners will see a tax cut of $117.2 billion, more than 20% of the tax cuts in the bill.

Poorer Americans take a hit from the bill because it cuts federal healthcare and food assistance programs to partially offset the costs of the tax cuts. Cuts to Medicaid are expected to leave at least 9 million people without healthcare coverage. Cuts of about 30% to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program would be “the biggest cut in the program’s history,” Ty Jones Cox, vice president for food assistance policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, told Lorie Konish of CNBC. They would cut about $300 billion from the program through 2034. More than 40 million people, including children, seniors, and adults with disabilities, receive food assistance.

Yesterday the CBO reported that the measure will add $2.3 trillion to the deficit over ten years, and noted that when a budget adds too much to the federal deficit, it triggers cuts to Medicare (not a typo) under the Pay-As-You-Go law. The CBO explains that those cuts are limited by law to 4% but would still total about $490 billion from 2027 through 2034.

Tobias Burns of The Hill summed it up: “Republicans’ tax-and-spending cut bill will take from the poor and give to the rich, Congress’s official scoring body has found.”

Tonight, after 22 hours of debate and after a set of amendments made steeper cuts to Medicaid to woo far-right Republicans, the House Rules Committee agreed to move the bill forward to the House itself. There, Republican leadership intends to push it through as quickly as possible, originally hoping to have the vote over by 6:00 Thursday morning.

In 2025 the Republicans’ signature bill redistributes wealth from the poorest Americans to the richest. Knowing the provisions in the bill will be enormously unpopular, the Republicans have been jamming it through, often in the middle of the night, as quickly as they could.

I have not been able to stop thinking today of the significance of the timing of the Republicans’ push for this bill, and what it says about how dramatically the U.S. has changed in the past 60 years.

On May 22, 1964, in a graduation speech at the University of Michigan, President Lyndon Johnson put a name to a new vision for the United States. He called it “the Great Society” and laid out the vision of a country that did not confine itself to making money, but rather used its post–World War II prosperity to “enrich and elevate our national life.” That Great Society would demand an end to poverty and racial injustice.

But it would do more than that, he promised: it would enable every child to learn and grow, and it would create a society where people would use their leisure time to build and reflect, where cities would not just answer physical needs and the demands of commerce, but would also serve “the desire for beauty and the hunger for community.” It would protect the natural world and would be “a place where men are more concerned with the quality of their goals than the quantity of their goods.”

“But most of all,” he said, it would look forward. “[T]he Great Society is not a safe harbor, a resting place, a final objective, a finished work. It is a challenge constantly renewed, beckoning us toward a destiny where the meaning of our lives matches the marvelous products of our labor.”

Johnson proposed rebuilding the cities, protecting the countryside, and investing in education to set “every young mind…free to scan the farthest reaches of thought and imagination.” He admitted that the government did not have the answers to addressing the problems in the country “But I do promise this,” he said: “We are going to assemble the best thought and the broadest knowledge from all over the world to find those answers for America. I intend to establish working groups to prepare a series of White House conferences and meetings—on the cities, on natural beauty, on the quality of education, and on other emerging challenges. And from these meetings and from this inspiration and from these studies we will begin to set our course toward the Great Society.”

Johnson’s vision of a Great Society came from a very different place than the reworking of society launched by his predecessor, Franklin D. Roosevelt, in the 1930s. Roosevelt’s New Deal had used the federal government to address the greatest economic crisis in U.S. history, leveling the playing field between workers and employers to enable workingmen to support their families. Johnson, in contrast, was operating in a country that was enjoying record growth. Far from simply saving the country, he could afford to direct it toward greater things.

Immediately, the administration turned to addressing issues of civil rights and poverty. Under Johnson’s pressure, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibiting voting, employment, or educational discrimination based on race, religion, sex, or national origin. Johnson also won passage of the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, which created an Office of Economic Opportunity, which would oversee a whole series of antipoverty programs, and of the Food Stamp Act, which helped people who didn’t make a lot of money buy food.

When Republicans ran Arizona senator Barry Goldwater for president in 1964, calling for rolling back business regulation and civil rights to the years before the New Deal, voters who quite liked the new system gave Democrats such a strong majority in Congress that Johnson and the Democrats were able to pass 84 new laws to put the Great Society into place.

They cemented civil rights with the 1965 Voting Rights Act protecting minority voting, created jobs in Appalachia, and established job-training and community development programs. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 gave federal aid to public schools and established the Head Start program to provide comprehensive early education for low-income children. The Higher Education Act of 1965 increased federal investment in universities and provided scholarships and low-interest loans to students.

The Social Security Act of 1965 created Medicare, which provided health insurance for Americans over 65, and Medicaid, which helped cover healthcare costs for folks with limited incomes. Congress advanced the war on poverty by increasing welfare payments and subsidizing rent for low-income families.

Congress took on the rights of consumers with new protective legislation that required cigarettes and other dangerous products to carry warning labels, required products to carry labels identifying the manufacturer, and required lenders to disclose the full cost of finance charges in loans. Congress also passed legislation protecting the environment, including the Water Quality Act of 1965 that established federal standards for water quality.

But the government did not simply address poverty. Congress also spoke to Johnson’s aspirations for beauty and purpose when it created the National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities. This law created both the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities to make sure the era’s emphasis on science didn’t endanger the humanities. In 1967 it would also establish the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, followed in 1969 by National Public Radio.

Opponents of this sweeping program picked up 47 seats in the House and three seats in the Senate in the 1966 midterm elections, and U.S. News and World Report wrote that “the big bash” was over. And now, exactly 61 years later, we are seeing Republican lawmakers dismantle the Great Society and replace its vision with the idea that the government must work for the wealthy few.

“For better or worse,” Johnson told the University of Michigan graduates in 1964, “your generation has been appointed by history to deal with those problems and to lead America toward a new age. You have the chance never before afforded to any people in any age. You can help build a society where the demands of morality, and the needs of the spirit, can be realized in the life of the Nation.

“So, will you join in the battle to give every citizen the full equality which God enjoins and the law requires, whatever his belief, or race, or the color of his skin?” he asked.

“Will you join in the battle to give every citizen an escape from the crushing weight of poverty?...”

“There are those timid souls who say this battle cannot be won; that we are condemned to a soulless wealth. I do not agree. We have the power to shape the civilization that we want. But we need your will, your labor, your hearts, if we are to build that kind of society.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[undergroundusa]

"DeSantis' action to investigate FEMA — and through that agency, the federal government – serves as an opening salvo to a confrontation centered on the Ninth Amendment and the Tenth Amendment…"

ORIGINAL CONTENT: https://www.undergroundusa.com/p/is-desantis-firing-a-shot-across

LIKE & COMMENT PROTECT FREE SPEECH

[alphaman99]

Tenth Amendment Center

James Madison argued that the best way to limit the number of wars would be to make the people pay the full cost immediately instead of financing them with debt and putting the onus on future generations to bear the cost.

This would force politicians, and the population at large, to count the cost of war before rushing headlong into hostilities.

Madison reasoned that if the people knew the actual cost of war and had to pony up the funds, it would reduce the number of wars. People would make a more concerted effort to resolve conflict peacefully.

[misfitwashere]

May 21, 2025

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

MAY 22

READ IN APP

Just after 1:00 this morning, the House Rules Committee began its hearing on what congressional Republicans have officially named The One Big, Beautiful Bill. If passed, this measure will put Trump’s wish list into law. Although this is technically a budget bill, items in it from that wish list include a significant restriction on “the authority of federal courts to hold government officials in contempt when they violate court orders,” as Dean of Berkeley Law School Erwin Chemerinsky explained in Just Security Monday. “Without the contempt power,” he writes, “judicial orders are meaningless and can be ignored.”

Three judges are currently considering whether the administration is in contempt of court over its apparent disregard for court orders over its rendition of undocumented immigrants to third countries.

But the center of the law is indeed related to money: it is the $3.8 trillion extension of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, which disproportionately benefit the wealthy and corporations. Yesterday the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said that Americans in the lowest tenth of earners will lose money under the measure while people in the top five percent of earners will see a tax cut of $117.2 billion, more than 20% of the tax cuts in the bill.

Poorer Americans take a hit from the bill because it cuts federal healthcare and food assistance programs to partially offset the costs of the tax cuts. Cuts to Medicaid are expected to leave at least 9 million people without healthcare coverage. Cuts of about 30% to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program would be “the biggest cut in the program’s history,” Ty Jones Cox, vice president for food assistance policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, told Lorie Konish of CNBC. They would cut about $300 billion from the program through 2034. More than 40 million people, including children, seniors, and adults with disabilities, receive food assistance.

Yesterday the CBO reported that the measure will add $2.3 trillion to the deficit over ten years, and noted that when a budget adds too much to the federal deficit, it triggers cuts to Medicare (not a typo) under the Pay-As-You-Go law. The CBO explains that those cuts are limited by law to 4% but would still total about $490 billion from 2027 through 2034.

Tobias Burns of The Hill summed it up: “Republicans’ tax-and-spending cut bill will take from the poor and give to the rich, Congress’s official scoring body has found.”

Tonight, after 22 hours of debate and after a set of amendments made steeper cuts to Medicaid to woo far-right Republicans, the House Rules Committee agreed to move the bill forward to the House itself. There, Republican leadership intends to push it through as quickly as possible, originally hoping to have the vote over by 6:00 Thursday morning.

In 2025 the Republicans’ signature bill redistributes wealth from the poorest Americans to the richest. Knowing the provisions in the bill will be enormously unpopular, the Republicans have been jamming it through, often in the middle of the night, as quickly as they could.

I have not been able to stop thinking today of the significance of the timing of the Republicans’ push for this bill, and what it says about how dramatically the U.S. has changed in the past 60 years.

On May 22, 1964, in a graduation speech at the University of Michigan, President Lyndon Johnson put a name to a new vision for the United States. He called it “the Great Society” and laid out the vision of a country that did not confine itself to making money, but rather used its post–World War II prosperity to “enrich and elevate our national life.” That Great Society would demand an end to poverty and racial injustice.

But it would do more than that, he promised: it would enable every child to learn and grow, and it would create a society where people would use their leisure time to build and reflect, where cities would not just answer physical needs and the demands of commerce, but would also serve “the desire for beauty and the hunger for community.” It would protect the natural world and would be “a place where men are more concerned with the quality of their goals than the quantity of their goods.”

“But most of all,” he said, it would look forward. “[T]he Great Society is not a safe harbor, a resting place, a final objective, a finished work. It is a challenge constantly renewed, beckoning us toward a destiny where the meaning of our lives matches the marvelous products of our labor.”

Johnson proposed rebuilding the cities, protecting the countryside, and investing in education to set “every young mind…free to scan the farthest reaches of thought and imagination.” He admitted that the government did not have the answers to addressing the problems in the country “But I do promise this,” he said: “We are going to assemble the best thought and the broadest knowledge from all over the world to find those answers for America. I intend to establish working groups to prepare a series of White House conferences and meetings—on the cities, on natural beauty, on the quality of education, and on other emerging challenges. And from these meetings and from this inspiration and from these studies we will begin to set our course toward the Great Society.”

Johnson’s vision of a Great Society came from a very different place than the reworking of society launched by his predecessor, Franklin D. Roosevelt, in the 1930s. Roosevelt’s New Deal had used the federal government to address the greatest economic crisis in U.S. history, leveling the playing field between workers and employers to enable workingmen to support their families. Johnson, in contrast, was operating in a country that was enjoying record growth. Far from simply saving the country, he could afford to direct it toward greater things.

Immediately, the administration turned to addressing issues of civil rights and poverty. Under Johnson’s pressure, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibiting voting, employment, or educational discrimination based on race, religion, sex, or national origin. Johnson also won passage of the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, which created an Office of Economic Opportunity, which would oversee a whole series of antipoverty programs, and of the Food Stamp Act, which helped people who didn’t make a lot of money buy food.

When Republicans ran Arizona senator Barry Goldwater for president in 1964, calling for rolling back business regulation and civil rights to the years before the New Deal, voters who quite liked the new system gave Democrats such a strong majority in Congress that Johnson and the Democrats were able to pass 84 new laws to put the Great Society into place.

They cemented civil rights with the 1965 Voting Rights Act protecting minority voting, created jobs in Appalachia, and established job-training and community development programs. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 gave federal aid to public schools and established the Head Start program to provide comprehensive early education for low-income children. The Higher Education Act of 1965 increased federal investment in universities and provided scholarships and low-interest loans to students.

The Social Security Act of 1965 created Medicare, which provided health insurance for Americans over 65, and Medicaid, which helped cover healthcare costs for folks with limited incomes. Congress advanced the war on poverty by increasing welfare payments and subsidizing rent for low-income families.

Congress took on the rights of consumers with new protective legislation that required cigarettes and other dangerous products to carry warning labels, required products to carry labels identifying the manufacturer, and required lenders to disclose the full cost of finance charges in loans. Congress also passed legislation protecting the environment, including the Water Quality Act of 1965 that established federal standards for water quality.

But the government did not simply address poverty. Congress also spoke to Johnson’s aspirations for beauty and purpose when it created the National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities. This law created both the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities to make sure the era’s emphasis on science didn’t endanger the humanities. In 1967 it would also establish the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, followed in 1969 by National Public Radio.

Opponents of this sweeping program picked up 47 seats in the House and three seats in the Senate in the 1966 midterm elections, and U.S. News and World Report wrote that “the big bash” was over. And now, exactly 61 years later, we are seeing Republican lawmakers dismantle the Great Society and replace its vision with the idea that the government must work for the wealthy few.

“For better or worse,” Johnson told the University of Michigan graduates in 1964, “your generation has been appointed by history to deal with those problems and to lead America toward a new age. You have the chance never before afforded to any people in any age. You can help build a society where the demands of morality, and the needs of the spirit, can be realized in the life of the Nation.

“So, will you join in the battle to give every citizen the full equality which God enjoins and the law requires, whatever his belief, or race, or the color of his skin?” he asked.

“Will you join in the battle to give every citizen an escape from the crushing weight of poverty?...”

“There are those timid souls who say this battle cannot be won; that we are condemned to a soulless wealth. I do not agree. We have the power to shape the civilization that we want. But we need your will, your labor, your hearts, if we are to build that kind of society.”

—

[yourreddancer]

Heather Cox Richardson

May 21, 2025 Heather Cox Richardson May 22 Just after 1:00 this morning, the House Rules Committee began its hearing on what congressional Republicans have officially named The One Big, Beautiful Bill. If passed, this measure will put Trump’s wish list into law. Although this is technically a budget bill, items in it from that wish list include a significant restriction on “the authority of federal courts to hold government officials in contempt when they violate court orders,” as Dean of Berkeley Law School Erwin Chemerinsky explained in Just Security Monday. “Without the contempt power,” he writes, “judicial orders are meaningless and can be ignored.”

Three judges are currently considering whether the administration is in contempt of court over its apparent disregard for court orders over its rendition of undocumented immigrants to third countries.

But the center of the law is indeed related to money: it is the $3.8 trillion extension of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, which disproportionately benefit the wealthy and corporations. Yesterday the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said that Americans in the lowest tenth of earners will lose money under the measure while people in the top five percent of earners will see a tax cut of $117.2 billion, more than 20% of the tax cuts in the bill.

Poorer Americans take a hit from the bill because it cuts federal healthcare and food assistance programs to partially offset the costs of the tax cuts. Cuts to Medicaid are expected to leave at least 9 million people without healthcare coverage. Cuts of about 30% to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program would be “the biggest cut in the program’s history,” Ty Jones Cox, vice president for food assistance policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, told Lorie Konish of CNBC. They would cut about $300 billion from the program through 2034. More than 40 million people, including children, seniors, and adults with disabilities, receive food assistance.

Yesterday the CBO reported that the measure will add $2.3 trillion to the deficit over ten years, and noted that when a budget adds too much to the federal deficit, it triggers cuts to Medicare (not a typo) under the Pay-As-You-Go law. The CBO explains that those cuts are limited by law to 4% but would still total about $490 billion from 2027 through 2034.

Tobias Burns of The Hill summed it up: “Republicans’ tax-and-spending cut bill will take from the poor and give to the rich, Congress’s official scoring body has found.”

Tonight, after 22 hours of debate and after a set of amendments made steeper cuts to Medicaid to woo far-right Republicans, the House Rules Committee agreed to move the bill forward to the House itself. There, Republican leadership intends to push it through as quickly as possible, originally hoping to have the vote over by 6:00 Thursday morning.

In 2025 the Republicans’ signature bill redistributes wealth from the poorest Americans to the richest. Knowing the provisions in the bill will be enormously unpopular, the Republicans have been jamming it through, often in the middle of the night, as quickly as they could.

I have not been able to stop thinking today of the significance of the timing of the Republicans’ push for this bill, and what it says about how dramatically the U.S. has changed in the past 60 years.

On May 22, 1964, in a graduation speech at the University of Michigan, President Lyndon Johnson put a name to a new vision for the United States. He called it “the Great Society” and laid out the vision of a country that did not confine itself to making money, but rather used its post–World War II prosperity to “enrich and elevate our national life.” That Great Society would demand an end to poverty and racial injustice.

But it would do more than that, he promised: it would enable every child to learn and grow, and it would create a society where people would use their leisure time to build and reflect, where cities would not just answer physical needs and the demands of commerce, but would also serve “the desire for beauty and the hunger for community.” It would protect the natural world and would be “a place where men are more concerned with the quality of their goals than the quantity of their goods.”

“But most of all,” he said, it would look forward. “[T]he Great Society is not a safe harbor, a resting place, a final objective, a finished work. It is a challenge constantly renewed, beckoning us toward a destiny where the meaning of our lives matches the marvelous products of our labor.”

Johnson proposed rebuilding the cities, protecting the countryside, and investing in education to set “every young mind…free to scan the farthest reaches of thought and imagination.” He admitted that the government did not have the answers to addressing the problems in the country “But I do promise this,” he said: “We are going to assemble the best thought and the broadest knowledge from all over the world to find those answers for America. I intend to establish working groups to prepare a series of White House conferences and meetings—on the cities, on natural beauty, on the quality of education, and on other emerging challenges. And from these meetings and from this inspiration and from these studies we will begin to set our course toward the Great Society.”

Johnson’s vision of a Great Society came from a very different place than the reworking of society launched by his predecessor, Franklin D. Roosevelt, in the 1930s. Roosevelt’s New Deal had used the federal government to address the greatest economic crisis in U.S. history, leveling the playing field between workers and employers to enable workingmen to support their families. Johnson, in contrast, was operating in a country that was enjoying record growth. Far from simply saving the country, he could afford to direct it toward greater things.

Immediately, the administration turned to addressing issues of civil rights and poverty. Under Johnson’s pressure, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibiting voting, employment, or educational discrimination based on race, religion, sex, or national origin. Johnson also won passage of the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, which created an Office of Economic Opportunity, which would oversee a whole series of antipoverty programs, and of the Food Stamp Act, which helped people who didn’t make a lot of money buy food.

When Republicans ran Arizona senator Barry Goldwater for president in 1964, calling for rolling back business regulation and civil rights to the years before the New Deal, voters who quite liked the new system gave Democrats such a strong majority in Congress that Johnson and the Democrats were able to pass 84 new laws to put the Great Society into place.

They cemented civil rights with the 1965 Voting Rights Act protecting minority voting, created jobs in Appalachia, and established job-training and community development programs. The Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 gave federal aid to public schools and established the Head Start program to provide comprehensive early education for low-income children. The Higher Education Act of 1965 increased federal investment in universities and provided scholarships and low-interest loans to students.

The Social Security Act of 1965 created Medicare, which provided health insurance for Americans over 65, and Medicaid, which helped cover healthcare costs for folks with limited incomes. Congress advanced the war on poverty by increasing welfare payments and subsidizing rent for low-income families.

Congress took on the rights of consumers with new protective legislation that required cigarettes and other dangerous products to carry warning labels, required products to carry labels identifying the manufacturer, and required lenders to disclose the full cost of finance charges in loans. Congress also passed legislation protecting the environment, including the Water Quality Act of 1965 that established federal standards for water quality.

But the government did not simply address poverty. Congress also spoke to Johnson’s aspirations for beauty and purpose when it created the National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities. This law created both the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities to make sure the era’s emphasis on science didn’t endanger the humanities. In 1967 it would also establish the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, followed in 1969 by National Public Radio.

Opponents of this sweeping program picked up 47 seats in the House and three seats in the Senate in the 1966 midterm elections, and U.S. News and World Report wrote that “the big bash” was over. And now, exactly 61 years later, we are seeing Republican lawmakers dismantle the Great Society and replace its vision with the idea that the government must work for the wealthy few.

“For better or worse,” Johnson told the University of Michigan graduates in 1964, “your generation has been appointed by history to deal with those problems and to lead America toward a new age. You have the chance never before afforded to any people in any age. You can help build a society where the demands of morality, and the needs of the spirit, can be realized in the life of the Nation.

“So, will you join in the battle to give every citizen the full equality which God enjoins and the law requires, whatever his belief, or race, or the color of his skin?” he asked.

“Will you join in the battle to give every citizen an escape from the crushing weight of poverty?...”

“There are those timid souls who say this battle cannot be won; that we are condemned to a soulless wealth. I do not agree. We have the power to shape the civilization that we want. But we need your will, your labor, your hearts, if we are to build that kind of society.”

��

[dankusner]

MUNICIPAL ELECTIONS

Thousands head to polls

North Texas sees typical low turnout as council, mayoral seats up for grabs

Election Day wrapped with under 50,000 in-person ballots cast in Dallas County, according to officials.

The Dallas County elections officials said on social media that more than 47,300 in-person ballots were issued as of 7 p.m.

They added that there was an estimated turnout of 8.4% for the May 3 election.

Saturday was election day for many municipal and countywide races across North Texas.

Tuesday was the last day of early voting and 69,000 total registered voters cast their ballots early in Dallas County — representing about 5% of the county’s total voters.

Polls opened at 7 a.m. Saturday and closed at 7 p.m., though anyone in line before 7 p.m. was allowed to stay in line until they voted.

Dallas County had over 400 voting locations available to voters. Tarrant County has about 160 locations, Collin County had about 60 locations and Denton County had at least 200 locations.

As of 1:20 p.m., more than 400 people had voted at South Garland Library, according to Dallas County vote center data.

DALLAS CITY COUNCIL DISTRICT 4

DISD trustee leads contest

He looks to focus on south Oak Cliff public safety, development

As of 10 p.m., unofficial vote totals showed Dallas ISD trustee Maxie Johnson with a comfortable lead in the election for south Oak Cliff’s District 4 City Council seat.

The District 4 representative will bring new leadership to the Dallas City Council.

The district’s incumbent, Carolyn King Arnold, was term-limited.

Three candidates were vying to succeed Arnold:

Johnson, who is a pastor;

Dallas County sheriff’s office communications department worker Kebran Alexander;

and first grade teacher Avis Hardaman.

Johnson had more than 77% of the votes as of 10 p.m., according to the unofficial totals reported.

He was followed by Alexander, who had just over 19% of early votes.

Arnold became ineligible to run for reelection as a result of a voter-approved charter amendment in November.

She was one of four incumbents who did not return to the ballot this year.

The new City Council will have significant influence on the city’s future.

Members will be tasked with crafting the next city budget, dealing with new charter-mandated rules that require more funding for police-related initiatives, addressing issues with raising property values, and increasing park space.

Council members will face issues like homelessness, affordable housing and failing city infrastructure.

In District 4, council members will face key redevelopment projects, including the construction of Halperin Park, a deck park over Interstate 35E, and revitalization efforts in areas like the Tenth Street Historic District.

Race for funds

In the days leading up to this race, Johnson and Alexander emerged as the front-runners.

Arnold endorsed Alexander.

But Johnson’s campaign haul eclipsed his competitors throughout the race.

Johnson raised more than 10 times the money Alexander had, and received donations ranging from former elected officials such as Mayor Mike Rawlings, South Dallas giant Diane Ragsdale as well as former council members Adam McGough and Philip Kingston.

He also received funds from the who’s who of Dallas’ moneyed circles.

Businessmen Doug Deason and Darwin Deason as well as Henry and Lucy Billingsley, related to Dallas developer Trammell Crow, have donated to Johnson’s campaign.

As election day grew closer, a new political action committee called Revitalize Dallas sent out mailers in support of Johnson.

The effort was funded by short-term lodging platform Airbnb, which contributed half a million toward the effort, latest election filings show.

Airbnb has much at stake in an ongoing fight between the city and short-term rental operators.

The city reignited a legal fight it lost earlier this year against ordinances that all but banned short-term rentals in single-family neighborhoods.

Arnold, the outgoing council member, voted for the ban.

Johnson had centered his campaign around his experience as a Dallas Independent School District trustee.

In public forums, Johnson had touted his experience in education and community organizing and pointed to public safety and economic development as his top priorities.

He previously ran for the seat in 2021 but narrowly lost to Arnold in the runoffs.

Other issues

On housing issues, Johnson said he wants to act as a bridge between the developer and community members to progress development efforts in the district.

Tackling homelessness is also a priority, he said, adding that his experience with vulnerable children in Dallas schools has bolstered the urgency with which Dallas needs to act to provide resources.

Alexander said he wanted to prioritize policies that helped expand affordable housing and improve the city’s infrastructure for roads, parks, utility lines and pipes.

He expressed concerns about the upcoming budget cycle and said new council members will be heading into “uncharted territory.”

[bullionguide]

04/27/2025 - Gold and Silver Market News

Brought to you by the Free Bullion Investment Guide

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04/27: Gold Prices Can Go "Multiples" Higher: Larry Lepard - Quoth the Raven

04/27: For investors who missed gold's rally, it might not be too late for silver - Seeking Alpha

04/27: Gold Isn't Going Up—Your Money is Just Losing Value - The Bubble Bubble Report

04/27: Florida House Passes Bill to Make Gold and Silver Legal Tender - The Tenth Amendment Center

Thank you for your time, Take Care & God Bless.

[darkmaga-returns]

When discussing the intellectual influences on the Founding Fathers of the United States, one typically hears names such as Locke, Montesquieu, and Blackstone.

However, one influential thinker often overlooked is Niccolò Machiavelli. Far from being merely the author of The Prince, a treatise often associated with ruthless political maneuvering, Machiavelli also penned Discourses on Livy, a profound examination of republican government and civic virtue. It is this work that resonated with the Founding Fathers, providing insights into the nature of republics, the dangers of corruption, and the balance of power – concepts fundamental to the American experiment.

Machiavelli and Republican Virtue

Unlike the cynical realpolitik of The Prince, Discourses on Livy reveals Machiavelli’s admiration for the Roman Republic, which he regarded as a model of political virtue and strength. Machiavelli argued that liberty thrives in a republic when citizens actively participate in governance and hold their leaders accountable. In fact, he believed that popular uprisings against corrupt leadership are not threats to liberty, but its preservation. As he wrote in Discourses:

When a people is corrupted and without virtue, it is impossible for them to maintain a free government. [Book I, Chapter 17]

This assertion struck a chord with the Founding Fathers. Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and others understood that only a virtuous and vigilant citizenry could maintain a republic. Jefferson famously remarked that “eternal vigilance is the price of liberty” – a sentiment echoing Machiavelli’s assertion that the people’s willingness to rise against corruption preserves freedom.

The Balance of Power

Machiavelli’s writings also explored the necessity of balancing power to prevent tyranny. In Discourses on Livy, he observed:

It is necessary that the institution of a Republic shall have such a form that the interests of the private citizen shall never be opposed to the public good. [Book I, Chapter 37]

[spacenutspod]

A Falcon 9 stands ready for a Starlink mission at Cape Canaveral’s pad 40. File photo: Adam Bernstein/Spaceflight Now. Update Oct. 21, 4:20 p.m.: SpaceX is pushing back its planned launch to no earlier than Tuesday, Oct. 22. SpaceX is set to launch another batch of 23 Starlink satellites from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station to low Earth orbit on Tuesday. The Falcon 9 rocket launch comes on the heels of a week that saw the company launch a record six missions with four Falcon 9 rockets, one Falcon Heavy rocket and a Starship rocket, utilizing all four of its launch pads. Liftoff of the Starlink 6-61 mission from pad 40 at CCSFS is set for no earlier than 6:14 p.m. EDT (2214 UTC), pending weather. This will be SpaceX’s 68th dedicated Starlink launch of the year. Spaceflight Now will have live coverage beginning about an hour prior to liftoff. Coming into the Monday launch opportunity, the 45th Weather Squadron forecast 70 percent chance of favorable weather during that window. Meteorologists said they are tracking the impacts of Hurricane Oscar, which may also impact the booster recovery zone. “The breezy, onshore flow will continue into the upcoming week as the combination of a strong high centered to the north and Hurricane Oscar to the southeast enhance the pressure gradient over the Florida peninsula,” launch weather officers wrote. “These conditions will persist tomorrow as an area of higher low-level moisture moves in, enhancing Atlantic shower activity along the Space Coast.” A little more then eight minutes after liftoff, the first stage booster is set to touchdown on a SpaceX droneship, stationed in the Atlantic Ocean west of the Bahamas. If successful, this will be the 280th droneship landing and 357th overall booster landing. Expanding Starlink The mission is the first time that SpaceX has launched a batch of its Starlink satellites bound for the sixth shell of its constellation since May 31 with the Starlink 6-64 mission. Since then, it has been building out its eighth, ninth, tenth and 11th shells. The company has been working to get approval from the Federal Communications Commission to deploy and operate nearly 30,000 Gen2 Starlink satellites. Back in March, the FCC approved a request “to conduct communications in the 71.0-76.0 GHz (space-to-Earth) and 81.0-86.0 GHz (Earth-to-space) frequency bands (collectively, E-band), with the 7,500 Gen2 Starlink satellites that the Commission previously authorized in the first partial grant of this application.” That authorization caps the number Gen2 satellites at that number, for now. “Grant of this portion of SpaceX’s request will serve the public interest by allowing SpaceX to utilize the full capacity of its more advanced Gen2 Starlink satellites, which will improve the broadband service that SpaceX is bringing to U.S. customers, including those in unserved and underserved areas of the country,” the FCC wrote on March 8. “We continue to defer consideration of the remainder of SpaceX’s request, including SpaceX’s ongoing use of emergency beacons, which is the subject of a second amendment to SpaceX’s application, as well as the remaining 22,488 satellites SpaceX proposed in its application, as amended.” On Aug. 16, the FCC’s Satellite Programs and Policy Division approved a license modification request from SpaceX regarding its Gen1 satellites, of which there are 4,408, according to the FCC. “Specifically, SpaceX is authorised to modify its operations due to planned changes in satellite hardware, including modification of beam-forming and digital processing equipment to enable narrower beam capabilities,” the FCC wrote. “This modification also reflects updates to SpaceX’s orbital debris mitigation plan due to planned deployment of larger satellites.” Essentially, this approval allows SpaceX to launch Gen2 Starlinks as replacements for the Gen1 versions under the Gen1 authorization. According to astronomer and expert orbital tracker, Jonathan McDowell, as of Oct. 20, 2024, there are 6,473 Starlink satellites in low Earth orbit. Among those, 4,150 are Gen1 and 2,323 are the Gen2 Mini variety. The next generation Starlink satellites, which are so big that only Starship can launch them, will allow for a 10X increase in bandwidth and, with the reduced altitude, faster latency https://t.co/HLYdjjia3o — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 14, 2024 The full-size Gen2 Starlink satellites will be launched using SpaceX’s Starship rocket, which just completed its fifth test flight on Oct. 13. The company was able to catch the first stage booster, called Super Heavy, using its launch tower for the first time. SpaceX points to this capability as key to being able to enable rapid reusability of the rocket in the future. In addition to expanding the number of Starlink satellites that it is allowed to launch and operate, SpaceX also wanted to modify the nominal orbits of some of its shells, as first reported by Ars Technica. In a filing to the FCC dated Oct. 11, 2024, Jameson Dempsey, SpaceX Director of Satellite Policy, wrote that SpaceX wants “to lower the nominal altitudes of its shells at 525 km, 530 km, and 535 km to 480 km, 485 km, and 475 km altitude, respectively.” “For the lower-altitude shell at 475 km, SpaceX requests authority to reduce the nominal inclination from 33 degrees to 32 degrees,” Dempsey wrote. “With the exception of its shell at 475 km altitude, SpaceX requests to modify its authorization to more flexibly distribute satellites in up to 56 planes per shell and up to 120 satellites per plane. “While this reconfiguration will result in a higher potential maximum number of orbital planes and satellites per plane for all but one shell at 475 km, the total number of satellites in the Gen2 system will not exceed 29,988 satellites, and the first tranche of satellites in the Gen2 system will remain 7,500 satellites until such time that the Commission permits deployments beyond that first tranche.” Dempsey argues that the requested modifications will allow the Starlink Internet constellation to “deliver gigabit-speed, truly low-latency broadband and ubiquitous mobile connectivity to all Americans and the billions of people globally who still lack access to adequate broadband.” The FCC has yet to respond to this latest request. Special coverage concluding While there aren’t any Starlink satellites that feature the Direct to Cell capabilities on the Starlink 6-61 mission, SpaceX is about to wrap up a unique learning opportunity with the technology. On Oct. 7, the FCC’s Satellite Licensing Division granted SpaceX “special temporary authority” to operate its second-generation Starlink satellites that have the DTC capacity for 15 days “with supplemental coverage from space-capable Earth stations in the areas of Florida affected by Hurricane Milton.” It was also granted the same authority on Oct. 4 for the territories impacted by Hurricane Helene. In the United States, SpaceX is partnering with telecommunications company, T-Mobile, to provide the service, though it has expressed an interest in working with other providers in the future. SpaceX also began testing the functionality down in New Zealand with telecommunications company, One New Zealand. “When we announced our collaboration with SpaceX, we were dealing with the aftermath of Cyclone Gabrielle, a stark reminder of the necessity of a resilient back up to our mobile network, which can be disrupted by climate-related, fibre and power outages,” said One New Zealand CEO Jason Paris in a statement. “We’re unfortunately seeing this play out with Hurricane Milton in Florida right now, where Starlink satellites with direct-to-cell capability are playing a vital role keeping people connected as the extreme weather has disrupted their ground based mobile networks. That’s why starting testing here is a giant step forward on our mission to bring coverage like never before to New Zealand.” Starlink d2c now beginning testing in New Zealand with @onenzofficial! https://t.co/c810mpihRz — Michael Nicolls (@michaelnicollsx) October 21, 2024

[deblala]

Louisiana Senate Passes Bill to End State Cooperation with UN and WHO | Tenth Amendment Center

https://blog.tenthamendmentcenter.com/2024/03/louisiana-senate-passes-bill-to-end-state-cooperation-with-un-and-who/

[alphaman99]

Tenth Amendment Center

Using a secretive process known as “parallel construction,” police build cases on illegally obtained, warrantless data collected by the NSA and other federal agencies without anybody ever knowing.

These investigations take place in complete secrecy with no judicial oversight. Oftentimes, suspects and defense attorneys have no idea how police obtained information.

[rauthschild]

Our view of the Militia is informed by the same sources presented in the repost of the article from The Tenth Amendment Center that was sent out yesterday.

We obviously consider homosexuality a private matter that should never become an object of concern in public administration; lamentably, the practice of sodomy in the military has increased to the point that it has not only adversely impacted the military, but has spread out into the general population so as to promote a political movement.

We felt it was important to warn the public that this "sudden" LGBTQ Movement is not the product of Liberalism, but is rather being promoted by Roman/Nazi elements that have become entrenched in the military. These are not men that we would consider to be "liberal" in any sense but their sexual proclivities. Otherwise, they are often doctrinaire conservatives, control junkies, and misogynists.

This has become a real problem for the military and for our civilian culture as well, but we can hardly hope to address it, if we ignorantly assume that the LGBTQ effort is coming from liberal civilian sources, when in fact, it's leaking out of conservative military circles, instead.

That is the "alert" that I am spreading here, so that people are not blind-sided and amazed when all of a sudden they realize that this "tradition" has been encapsulated and carried forward over the course of more than 2,000 years and is making a bid to come into fruition again.

As I noted in other correspondence, it goes back all the way to Babylon, and is well-represented in Greek Epic Poetry and by Lesser Greek Poets -- Achilles and Alexander the Great were both homosexuals; there is little doubt that the Spartan heroes celebrated as "the 300" who held back the Persians at Thermopylae were bisexuals or dedicated homosexuals indoctrinated into military sodomy at an early age, the feared Black Eagle Legion of Rome was entirely staffed by homosexuals; and the Nazis, patterning themselves after Rome, openly practiced sodomy in the ranks--- and only used it as a hypocritical excuse to get rid of political rivals and for associated blackmail in other venues when it suited them.

The military needs to be put on Notice that despite this long association of homosexuality and sodomite submission associated with the military tradition, this is an issue that has gotten out of hand and been inappropriately justified and politicized, while the American Public needs to be aware that the LGBTQ "Agenda" is largely coming from an unexpected place: the military.

The mindless and misplaced belief that our planet is overpopulated when it once supported 500 billion people --- roughly 60 times the present population--- has been used to promote a cynical and hateful agenda to murder billions of innocent people rather than give up petty investments in antiquated infrastructure, energy sources that cause pollution, and Nineteenth Century monopolies that should have never existed in the first place.

The men charged with carrying out this murder and genocide of the species agenda have been following along in the deluded expectation that they were fighting a political enemy -- "the Americans" or "the Communists" -- when in fact that have been committing suicide and setting up their own demise and the demise of their families and kith and kind.

The Higher Ups in this Lemming-like insanity have been deluded by beliefs in "Higher Dimensions" and fairytale nonsense, while ignoring the wisdom of more than 13.8 billion years of organic experience and evolution represented by the DNA coding found in each one of us and also in the 250,000 year-old mitochondrial DNA that makes up our 47th chromosome.

Those who do not know or who do not remember the past are doomed to relive it, but we are now at the point where we do remember, and upon remembering, must be set free.