Outlaws, Gangs, War, Drugs, where is the solution?

I've been thinking lately about crime, in general, and more specific the gangs that are out of control in this country. And while the Gangs are a real problem and commit a lot of crimes, their total carnage pales in comparison to the so called White Collar criminals. The big difference between those two faction is the violence involved. The word Outlaw popped up and it got me to thinking maybe, just maybe it's time it made a come back.

If the legal system was doing its job, if it was working the way it's supposed to I wouldn't need to even suggest this idea. But it isn't, it's a failed institution riddled with its own problems.

Gangs are the violent problem, after watching some of the Gangland series on the History Channel, I had no idea it was this bad, that such out of control brutality is allowed to exist.

Well if they system can't deal with the problem then maybe we need to look back in time at the root of the word Outlaw. I'm going to borrow from, Wiki for this.

Outlawry was a formal judgment that a person was an outlaw, or literally "outside the law". This is different from the modern usage of "outlaw", i.e., a criminal who is evading custody.

An outlaw or bandit is a person living the lifestyle of outlawry; the word literally means "outside the law".[1]

In the common law of England, a "Writ of Outlawry" declared the subject to be "Caput gerat lupinum" (that is, "Let his be a wolf's head"), and it followed not only that, since the subject was no longer human, he had no legal rights, but also that he could be killed on sight as if a wolf or wild animal. Outlawry was thus one of the harshest penalties in the legal system, since the outlaw could not use the law to protect himself if needed, such as from mob justice, and could be robbed or even murdered with impunity.[2]

In the common law of England, a judgment of (criminal) outlawry was one of the harshest penalties in the legal system, since the outlaw could not use the legal system to protect them if needed, e.g. from mob justice. To be declared an outlaw was to suffer a form of civil death. The outlaw was debarred from all civilized society. No one was allowed to give him food, shelter, or any other sort of support — to do so was to commit the crime of aiding and abetting, and to be in danger of the ban oneself. An outlaw might be killed with impunity; and it was not only lawful but meritorious to kill a thief flying from justice — to do so was not murder. Because the outlaw has defied civil society, that society was quit of any obligations to the outlaw —outlaws had no civil rights, could not sue in any court on any cause of action, though they were themselves personally liable. In effect, (criminal) outlaws were criminals on the run who were "wanted alive or dead".

The way I understand it, when a person chose a criminal path and became a real problem, but couldn't be dealt with using ordinary means, refused to comply with the law and justice system. They were declared to be an Outlaw, which also meant they were then living outside the protection the law affords. The old wanted Dead or Alive posters we all know from Western movies and books reflect that designation. Anyone could kill an outlaw without fear of reprisal or punishment; probably get a reward of some sort. Kill a bad enough one you could get a parade and become famous enough to land your name and deed in the history books..

So what would happen if we did that today, here in this country. Tag all those outlaw gang members and let the people have open season. The people are certainly well armed, except in States like California, where Ironically they have some serious gang problems. California may even be the source of gang expansion. That would go back to the Bloods and the Crips, one wore red the other wore blue bandannas. That kinda pissed me off years ago because I was a big fan of red and blue bandannas for work and at other times. Well they are after all a useful thing to own, there are whole lists of things you can do with a bandanna, especially if you are out in the desert or the woods, the wilderness.

Back to the subject here before I get too far sidetracked.

Outlaws, should we or shouldn't we? These are not just good boys gone bad, they have gone past bad into wild animal territory. I think they should be met with the same force and brutality they inflict on others. Especially the random killing for sport. What's up with that anyway? Anyone that goes out and just kills at random is a rabid animal that needs to be put down fast and hard. Take a few dozen or hundred down and I'll bet it will get the full attention of the rest. Better yet once they are declared officially as Outlaws, post their photo's everywhere, on posts and fences, poles and billboards, and everywhere online. Force the Media to give up space to list them, be it in a newspaper or on TV or Radio, magazines, the whole full spectrum. Plaster their faces and everything known about them everywhere people can see and or hear.

Let the people be Deputized as Outlaw Hunters. Bring out the long rifles with the big scopes. Let 500 People go out together and drive them into a killing zone where the long rifles can pick them off. What ever it takes.

And for you Namby Pamby Pussies and all the Do-Gooder coddlers out there who might read this someday. I'll remind you of an old traditional saying that also needs a come back, ALL is Fair in Love and War. This is War, we didn't start it but we sure as hell can finish it. If they wish to live among the rest of us then they need to change their ways.

One other thing that would help us rid ourselves of these outlaw thugs, and that's end the war on drugs. Yep I said Legalize all drugs. That is not as crazy an idea as you are thinking. I refer you to LEAP, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, their Web site is www.LEAP.cc Leap is primarily Law Enforcement people retired and active. The people that have been on the front lines of this failed War on Drugs Richard Nixon started. They know it isn't working and isn't winnable. Plus prison doesn't work. They are and have been getting a much larger success rate with counciling and other treatments.

Will the whole country sudden;y go drug crazy if they are legalized, not hardly. All the people who won't use drugs now still won't if they are legalized. If you look at history you see the proof that only a small portion of the population indulges in drugs outside of Alcohol and Caffeine on a regular basis. Alcohol causes far more problems and damage than all the rest put together. And millions upon millions are speed addicts, Caffeine is speed, it may be the low end of the spectrum but it's still speed. Try taking away Coffee and Tea as well as certain soft drinks and you would tempt riots in the streets in every City and State. Caffeine offers some nasty withdrawals to anyone quitting cold turkey.

Do that and the Prisons would empty the bulk of their populations. The Black market for drugs would dry up over night. And that would cut off the money the gangs depend on. There would be no profit in smuggling a legal product, nor in selling questionable drugs when the guaranteed real thing sans pollutants or who knows what they cut it with, can be bought at every corner drug store for less.

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Plus we get to tax it all. The revenues stream on Pot alone would be in the Billions. And it has to be the safest drug on the planet, as well as having many legitimate medical uses. Read the book Jack Herrer wrote, The Emperor Wears No Clothes and you will get a good education in the truth, as compared to the lies you have been told all your life by the Government. The whole War on Drugs is rooted in two very troubled men Harry J. Anslinger and Richard M. Nixon. Both of whom would have benefited from some good long term therapy. Harry was the first Drug Car and a dedicated Liar as well as a racist and biggot. The really troubling part of Harry and his lies is that there are a lot of people that even today still believe everything he said was absolute truth. If you ever saw the movie Reefer Madness, it's a page right out of Harry's twisted mind. One puff off a reefer and you turn into a maniac murderer, or a Heroine addict prostitute, depending on your Gender. It makes Black men want to have sex with, rape if necessary, all white women. It makes people aggressive enough to run around murdering any and everyone they see. It also turns them into pacifists to laid back to hold a gun or fight in the military. That's right he told both lies, one out of each side of his twisted mouth. And he told them to Congress. Harry also told Congress that the AMA, the medical community was 100% behind making Marijuana criminal. The truth was the medical community said no such thing, they were in fact of just the opposite opinion. But since they were calling the plant by it's real name Cannabis, they didn't kn ow that the Marijuana Harry was spouting off about was the same plant. Marijuana was the Mexican slang term for Cannabis Sativa. Harry went so far as to convince Congress that it's cousin Cannabis Hemp, which doesn't contain enough THC to get a Gnat high, or a human even if they smoked a whole Semi-Truck load, but does provide the raw material for hundreds of useful products, including some of the best oil for health, or fuel on the planet, should be banned right along with the will get you high kind.

The point here being that We need to do something to put this country back on track, to rid ourselves of the problems that threaten our security from within. I guess we could also consider declaring the Gangs as domestic terrorists. Let Homeland Security at them under the Patriot Act. That would be enough to scare me into walking the straight and narrow path of legality.

There is more to this, more information you need to make an intelligent and informed decision. I'll let you go find that on your own, it's all right there at your finger tips.

Let me ask you again, Would you spend a Dollar to buy back your country? Would you spend a Dollar a month, or a week? If we could get every man woman and child living in this country to donate just a single dollar we could buy back our country. I would first use that money to buy back our jobs. Re-open business or start new ones that hire people. Creating jobs is a must do first step. Once we have our jobs back the revenue will start flowing. Then if we start using our power of the vote to elect good people and stop re-electing the same old problem politicians term after term, if we start doing what the system was designed to do, we pay off the debt and spend our money where it needs to be spent. We could cure cancer and other nasty diseases. I've heard it said that a cure could cost up to 200 Billion dollars. Ok, that's not chump change, but think about how much money Obama spent already, and it's not even been a whole year since he started spending, on the War and on Bailing out the Greedy Corporations; several times that amount. The so called War on Terror is Black Hole for money and time. We can't win a religious war, unless we are willing to kill them all, as fast as possible. And we know that will never happen. Maybe old Ronnie Reagan was right when he said what we need to pull this planet together is a common enemy, like an Alien invasion, from the Stars not someplace like Mexico. If we faced such a global threat the petty squabbles here would be just that in comparison.

There is a solution to ending this War, I'm just not 100% sure what that is or how we get the Industrial Military Complex to find and use one, but we better at least try.

You have a few things to think about. You come up with a workable solution, post it in the comment section. The email me part isn't working until I give it a new address.

Until the next Ramble, Happy Trails,

Ho

Been a while

Well it's been a while, three years. And it took me hours to get back in here. And I'm not 100% sure how I did it. Finding the passwords from old dead computers is tricky at best.
And more recent things I have to say are found here, http://ramblingsfromho.wordpress.com/
I do want to thank my Brother for keeping the link to this alive on his web site, www.journaled.com he has lots of interesting things for you to take a look at, especially if you like Martial Arts.
I'm going to leave this now, mostly to see if this posts and IF I can get back in as easy as I once did.
Later Dudes and Dudettes

Update for June and why it's been so long

Hi there, it's June, almost halfway through in fact.
I've been having some real computer troubles, I lost the whole thing more than once. I have found there are certain buttons you do not want to push and certain areas where you do not want to check the wrong box. There are no warnings before or after.
I learned that windows can delete a while hard drive without being told or even asking if you want to.
I've learned a lot about things not to do in Windows XP.
I spent hours and days and weeks searching the web for fixes to the troubles the problems I had.

There was something else that got my attention in the middle of all these problems and that is that Goggle and Yahoo are not what they used to be, not as good at returning search results on topic.

I believe it has to do with money more than anything, with the people who buy show my site first. And I am sick and tired of seeing no matter what I type in show up in a side column for some company who can sell me whatever by having what ever it was I typed in to search for inserted into the blank space in their standard line, and I am really tired of those links never working, producing nothing but a blank page; when I look at what is in the browser address space it is never the site address I supposedly clicked on.


Anyone else notice this problem?
Well friends, it's very late, I'm very tired so I'm going to bed now. I'll get back here as soon as I can and tell you the rest of the story about what's been going on around here lately.

Some Good News for a Change and a bit of bad news too

I have good news, well and some bad news, to report today.

First the Good news, I was laying in bed last night when it finally dawned on me that even though my docs, my 92 page brief and all the supporting evidence, got deleted, I still have printouts of a lot of things from the previous years. All I have to do is scan them back in, or just make copies.
The other good news is I finally located some web sites, pages and documents, that have the much needed "fair value is not fair market value" phrase within them, I had originally found only one, a court case out of Colorado, today I am happy to announce I found several, and counting, pages using Gahoo/Yoogle, which if you don't know about it has a split screen with yahoo results on one side and Google results on the other, and yes most times there is a difference.
Here is the link WWW.gahooyoogle.com go ahead and try it out.

So things are moving forward.

I got a letter from the State Tax Appeal Board last week, it seems I forgot to include the notice from the county board when I filed for the appeal. They gave me 10 days [from the day they mailed it; May 1, 2006] to return it to them, I'm hoping that weekends don't count. I don't go to the post office everyday, sometimes only once a week or less. So I had only two days, if weekends count, to get it back to them. I sent a note explaining that I didn't get the letter until the 5th, didn't open it until the 6th and mailed it back the next possible day, Monday the 8th, it could get there by the 10th if it goes right through. I'm only maybe 25 miles give or take as the crow flies from Olympia, but 60 miles or more by road, the mail from out here on the other hand goes first to Portland Oregon and then back to Washington. I'm hoping it took the fast route.


The other Bad News, is I am still trying to recover the lost/deleted files. I got one program I could at least understand, plus it was Freeware, it found over 41,000 lost files. The problem is few of them were saved on a different drive, it recommends not trying to save on the same drive the lost files are on, and most of those found either won't open or are blank. I got a couple to open, they appear to be program files, like sample pages and such. I am almost ready to give up and start all over again, but I won't do that yet, there is way to much to get back, too much time involved, like the years it took me to create and collect them all. Not to mention some files that I actually bought.

More Good News

I got busy yesterday and did some dirt plowing and then planting, not to mention filtering out a lot of sticks and roots inbetween. It is going to take me a really long time to create the new garden plus. This old body is in loud rebellion with the digging and stick finding, throwing out, part. But with no one else left around here to share the chores I get to do ALL of them myself. So I now have corn [which is showing] green beans, edible pea pods, tomatoes [ several kinds], dill, cucumbers, pumpkins, radishes, zucchini [I got nuts and planted a whole row of the stuff], onions, and more to come. Plus there are the berries and grapes and the rhubarb here and there. Then the trees, apple, pear, and peach, so far only the three apple trees are producing, the others need a year or three more before fruit will grow. Now I need to prepare and figure out what else to plant in the acre plus of bare dirt still out there; maybe next year.

So keep tuned for updates, and if you read this let me know, if you are interested in my appeal let me know.

Beware what you do in Windows XP

I had the ultimate bad experience the other day. I have been changing hard drives around in this machine, got two inside it and one external hard drive. But I made a real goof, not knowing it could happen and Windows didn't even give me a notice or a chance to not do it or anything.

I had to send one of the drives back because I couldn't get the system to recognize it as being there, more on that later.
So when I got it back I pulled one out and put it in, it was an 80 gig the one I pulled was a 160 gig, my original and still C: drive is only a 40 gig. Anyway, the computer was shut down, asleep hibernating whatever it does on its own, enough so that I have to push the power button to get it to revive. I had a brief thought that I should wake it up and then shut it down, but I didn't thinking it wouldn't matter I just pulled the plug and opened it up and swapped the drive out, put the 160 gig back in.
BUT when I turned it back on Windows deleted all the contents of that drive, which just happened to contain all of my docs, music, videos, programs and way more things. It was my back up in fact.
But due to other problems I had to dump everything I lost from the C: drive in an attempt to defrag it. By the way I couldn't even defrag after removing a lot of things, it said that google earth was the problem, it had files that couldn't be defragged, I don't understand that but that's what it said.
So there I was with the drives all installed, the external hooked up and formatted and all my data gone in the blink of an eye, well a few seconds longer. The Documents folder was only a measly 4.7 gigs
This was not something I had even an inkling of an idea could happen.
So beware of XP, it makes decisions all on its own and won't even ask you for permission.

In the old DOS days I had a program, from either Norton or PC-Tools that did some great things, one of them was to undelete files. Back then a file only got the first letter of its name changed to a symbol, the computer seeing that symbol would ignore the file, not show it as being there and all you had to do was change the first letter back and it would show the file again.
I don't know how XP works but I'm hoping it is still the same way.
I am hoping that it is still possible to recover everything.
I looked at a couple of so called undelete programs for sale these days, but they looked way over my head and due to the amount of data lost I don't want to take a chance on really losing it forever. The greatest loss is the 4 years of data collecting I did on my property tax case. I have a not too good print out of the 92 page brief so I can scan a lot of it, but there was so much more I had that was a part of the findings.
The good news, the hopeful news is my youngest has a friend she tells me who knows how to do things like undelete lost files. I told her to find him that I would buy the software if needed and pay him for his time. I'm still waiting but I have high hopes she will find him.
The notice came today from the State Tax Appeal board, I've not open it yet.
If I need to type everything all over again from scratch I can do it but it's the web pages I had logged in that are the greatest loss. Mostly from legal sites and such, things that supported my position that True and Fair value is not Fair Market Value, things that took years to find.
Well just wanted to give you a little warning to not do what I did.

I said I would add more on the system not seeing the drive as being there. It did see it but not openly, seems if you delve deep into windows there is a place where it will show up, but not as an active drive, it shows a small red X in a circle like icon, how was I supposed to know all you had to do was click on it and follow the directions. It was a Hitachi drive I emailed them and they sent back how to do it instructions, which made me wonder if the one I had sent back wasn't actually good. You see when I installed the 160 gig, it was a Seagate it just showed up as being there and windows asked me if I wanted to format it, simple easy no problems. I expected the same thing, so at least I learned something new about XP. And that is XP I think has far too many hidden areas, areas within areas, within areas, of controls.

May 2006 arrives

Thought I would add a bit here on local events.
A nice big bull dozer arrived last week and spent the next 5 days moving dirt around, burning a stump pile bigger than the house, it raged for at least 5 days and now sits there with only one stump left, that one was dug up as an after the fact find so it arrived too late to burn as the fire was only a pile of coals. But not to worry there is an acre or two of bare dirt now chock full of roots and branches all bone dry as the trees were logged back in 92. So for the whole of this summer and maybe next summer small bon fires are the name of the game, which also means lots of hotdogs and marshmallows on sticks.
It is great to finally look out on that bare dirt because after almost 30 years I can finally start planting fruit trees, flowers, vegetables, grapes, berries and whatever else I can find to create a visual treat to the eyes.
For now I'm going to seed most of it in either red clover or alf-alpha, both are in the green manure category, meaning they enrich the soil as they grow. It will depend on which seeds I can find and of course the cost per acre because after the dozer bill comes in there won't be a lot left this month. I was lucky in that Leon the dozer owner takes payments, plus he only charges $60 and hour with an operator. For those of you that don't know that is far cheaper than I could rent a smaller one for and I would need to run it myself.

The other good news is I finally got the rhododendron bushes off eh truck. They were sitting there for 4 weeks exactly. I picked them up off of freecycle. Each was some 5' tall and about as wide. Took 4 of us just to slide them up the ramp onto the truck, took my back a week plus to recover from it, but well worth the effort. One bloomed on the truck, a brilliant red, the other is just now blooming a bright pink. They certainly add something to all the green of the forest around me.
And while doing all of this we happened to notice one dead tree, there are several dozen of them from an ice storm a few years back, this one stands about 20 feet high or more and about 15" thick, there is a nice round hole in the side about 5 feet from the broken top, inside that hole is a woodpecker, working up a frenzy pecking away clearing out space for a nest.
I've only seen the hen so far but I did notice last year a huge red headed woodpecker working the trees in that area, so I'm having hopes that this will be their nest. I need to look them up and see if they keep a nest for years, I hope they do as it will be fun to watch the young ones grow.


So now I finally have cleared space enough to build my woodshop which is a life long dream since childhood, and plenty of good dirt to plant things in, things to eat that is, and a few flowers for color here and there, stripes and patches of them, what ever I feel like doing, I could even create pictures if I wanted. I've seen that done in magazines and books, you just plant different colors according to a graph plan and when they bloom you see the picture. I've spent the last 20 years drawing plans for this property, all sorts of designs so it will be interesting to see what finally emerges.

Why do printers quit working at the worst possible moments?

I attempted to print out one of my replies to the assessors office. To separate out the request for the law he claims requires him to assess your property at 100% of its Fair market Value. I have been requesting for some 4 to 5 year now that he tell me which law it is, so I can look it up and read it for myself. Up until last week the question was never acknowledged. Now I get a reply stating they have no obligation to enter into any debate or discussion over the law. I don't want a discussion or debate either I just want him to "show me the law" as is my right.
So I get this letter of reply written, after 5 days of editing and redoing it again and again, only to find my printer won't print it.
I was starting to get the feeling maybe I wasn't supposed to send it, but then I figured it was just some hex put on me by the Evil Prince stopping me, it would however print out in color, so I printed it out in dark blue and sent it off.
After two days of trying to figure out the problem, it was an almost new cartridge, well one of the recycled ones at half cost, I came to the conclusion it had arrived with not very much ink inside.
I put in another of the "new" ones and bingo it now prints just fine in black. Go figure.

At least I can now print away until it too runs dry. So I get to send in my other letter, the one for disclosure of his methods. I had to separate the issues of show me the law and show me the method as they are playing word games.

And I still need to get my appeal to the State Tax Board in ASAP.

Oh the Fun of it all.

By the way if anyone who reads this would like to get involved in fighting to have your property tax taken to the proper level just drop me a note, I think my email is posted on the page for replies, I'm still learning about how this Blog thing works, I'll get better as time goes by.

County Board of Equalization [property tax] Decision

I got my property tax appeal decision in the mail yesterday. If this wasn't such a serious matter I would have laughed until I fell down on the ground and rolled all over the place .

If you remember I mentioned that the 5 member board admitted that none of them had read all of what I presented as evidence; I got the impression, I could see it in their eyes, read it in their faces, that none had read more than a page or two if that. And I would lay odds none had bothered to read it all after the hearing. Which makes the decision I got in the mail a joke.

They wrote in their notice, their decision, that due to the lack of any clear and concise evidence they had to find in favor of the assessor, never mind that he didn't really present any evidence, just a note with three addresses on it, those were supposed to be the comps I guess. You see the law here says that the assessor is given the presumption of correctness. Meaning he is trusted to have done his job and he need not offer any actual proof that he did.

I also got a letter yesterday from the assessors office about my request for disclosure. At the bottom of the letter was a short paragraph that said they would not get into any discussion or debate over the law with a Citizen.
To quote" In regards to the issue of the use of verbiage fair market value, The Assessor-Treasurer, or any of his staff, are not required to enter into a debate about interpretation of the laws, court findings, legal options and written directions from the State of Washington that govern the assessment of properties in Pierce County in response to a public record or information request." Now isn't that interesting?
I was not opening a discussion or debate but simply asking that the Assessor provide me with a copy of the law he advertises both orally and in print he claims requires him to assess property at 100% of its Fair Market Value.

He won't answer my question, he won't disclose or provide a copy of that law because there is no such law. So instead of admitting the mistake he is clouding the whole issue, ducking and dodging it with smoke and mirrors. But never fear my fellow Citizens because I will not give up on this quest. I don't give up once I have sunk my teeth into something like this. In fact it now has my dander up that they are playing games and refusing to make disclosure, as required by law, freedom of information and all that.
So in keeping with the Game he is creating I am going to make it a whole separate issue, all on its own, under the Freedom of Information requirements and see how he responds to that form of a request.


So I am off to file a next level appeal to the State Tax Board. And start preparing next years appeal, it has to be filed by the end of June. It is going to be filed every year for the rest of my life, well as long as I own property. I keep hopes that someday the rest of you will rise up, wake up, and join me. After all as the assessor says, and prints in his literature, you should be paying, Not a Penny More, than you are legally required.