[CTRL] Citizenship Training Seminar (fwd)

[Yardbird]

-Caveat Lector-

-- Forwarded message --
Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2001 12:58:33 -0400
From: COCL <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: Hannah Woody <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Citizenship Training Seminar

The Coalition for Constitutional Liberties of the Free Congress Foundation
would like to direct your attention to the following message:
CITIZENSHIP TRAINING
 You CAN make a difference!

"Democracy is not a spectator sport" - Ronald Reagan

OK, you don't want to be a spectator any more.  You want to make your voice
heard.  You want to exercise your rights as a citizen and have some
influence on the people who are making the laws you have to live under. But
you don't know how to begin.

What do you do?  Come to a Free Congress Foundation Citizenship Training
Seminar!

Learn the most important facts about politicians and how legislatures (from
your city council to Congress) work.  Learn how you CAN make a difference
and how you can get others to help you do it - even if you don't think you
have the time.   Learn how to keep from burning out.  Understand how to be
an effective Grass Root.

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do
nothing" - Lord Acton

August 7, 2001:  Sioux Falls, South Dakota
August 24-26 - Fort Worth, Texas
September 22 - Olympia, Washington
Dates to be announced:  Indianapolis, Indiana
   Kansas City
   Salem, Oregon
   Your City!   Contact us if you want to
sponsor training!
===
APPLICATION FORM:

Name:
___

Address_
__



___

Telephone:   e-mail:
___

How did you hear about the training?



___

Who has recommended you to receive the training? (name, organization,
title)_


___


Send to: Connie Marshner /  Free Congress Foundation, Training Center /  804
Rodney Ave., Front Royal, VA 22630
  e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  phone: 540-636-7842

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Om

[CTRL] Citizenship

[Euphorix]

-Caveat Lector-

From
http://www.mises.org/fullarticle.asp?control=594&month=28&title=What+is+Citizenship%3
F&id=28

}}>Begin
What is Citizenship?
by William Anderson
[January 23, 2001]
In his inauguration address, President George W. Bush  exhorted Americans to act as
"citizens" and to demonstrate the virtues necessary for good citizenship.  Of
course, the usual crowd thought that was great, especially following the
narcissistic presidency of Bill Clinton.  However, maybe it is time to look again at
these demands made by the political classes that productive people work even harder
in order to support them.
Books and speeches by politicians demanding virtue from the citizenry are legion.
>From Abraham Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address" to John F. Kennedy's famous "Ask Not"
line to Jimmy Carter's "Moral Equivalence of War" (MEOW) speech given from the
comfort of the White House, individuals are called upon to sacrifice and give
support to the state. This latest inaugural address, while sounding good to the ears
of some pundits, carries on the fiction that collectivism is the highest duty of
American citizens.
First, and most important, it is not as though many of us citizens do not already
work hard to support government at all levels. While I do not earn enough to fall
into the highest tax brackets, a quick examination of my W-2 forms shows that I have
had a huge portion of my income confiscated to feed the revenue beasts of
Washington, D.C., and the State of South Carolina.  When one throws in sales taxes,
gasoline taxes, and the like, the picture becomes even more clear: I work for nearly
half a year just to support the political classes who then demand more.  That I
should work to support my own family must be subordinated to my "duty" to support
the political classes and their allies.
I hardly fall into a singular class. Millions of Americans like myself pay
exorbitant amounts of taxes, and then are forced to hear politicians and some
economists say that cutting taxes is "risky."  Furthermore, any call by citizens to
cut taxes and government spending is immediately shouted down by politicians and
their supporters as "irresponsible" and quite incompatible with Good
Citizenship.  For all the ballyhoo from Washington and Wall Street about the dangers
of President Bush's proposed tax cut, most of us - including that mysterious wealthy
one percent - will hardly notice anything even if Congress approves the whole thing.
Second, politicians are forever pushing the idea that people only "work together"
when exhorted to do so by their political masters. The billions of acts of
cooperation that occur each day within the various private marketplaces are declared
to be nothing more than wicked selfishness, an impediment to Real Social
Cooperation.  Like Thomas Hobbes, they believe that only a Leviathan State can force
people to jointly seek the True Interests of society.
Unfortunately for politicians, reality has a way of clouding their speech.  Last
week, my wife was forced to sit for hours at the local Social Security office just
to be able to apply for an SS card for my recently adopted daughter.  (It used to be
that we could wait until we took our first job before receiving our SS numbers, but
now the government insists that infants also be numbered.)  My wife had no real
option but to "cooperate" with her political masters, who insisted she take a number
and wait her turn.
Later that day, she shopped at one of the many grocery stores in this area.  No one
there put her through the third degree, and the workers there willingly helped her
when she needed assistance.  Yet, in political speak, the SS office was a paragon of
people "working together" while the grocery store was a nest of
selfishness.  Indeed, no one at a private pension office would have abused my wife
the day the Social Security Administration did that day, but according to our
political classes, pensions often are characterized as legalized theft while SS is
compassion in action.
Third, what the political classes constitute to be the "duties of a citizen" and
what seems to be real public service often are at odds.  For example, individuals
who vote are lauded as "participating in democracy," yet it is clear that large
blocs of voters are doing nothing more than electing politicians who promise to loot
the belongings of others.  Just because theft is legalized at the ballot box does
not mean that it is not stealing.  Likewise, working for the government does not
constitute "public service."  As my wife discovered at the SS office, she was the
servant, not those who were supposed to "serve" her.
Of course, Bush also lauds efforts by private citizens to engage in relief work,
building homes for poor people through organizations like Habitat for Humanity, and
working with homeless people. Those volunteers who do such things are often said to
be "giving back to the community," as though they had taken something not rightfully
theirs in the first place.

[CTRL] Citizenship and the Charter of Incorporation

[Lucio Benedetto]

 -Caveat Lector-

With all the focus on the evils of "big government," we tend to forget that
real power is held by coroporations.  Get rid of government, and your doing
the folks at Exxon, Chase, and Unocal favor.  Below is an excerpt form an
excellent pamphlet explaining how corporations have become misidentified as
persons under the law.

Cheers,

Lucio

TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS:
Citizenship and the
Charter of Incorporation
http://www.ratical.com/corporations/TCoBeij.html
Earth Island Journal -- Spring 1993
Page 34

The chief executive officer and directors of the International Paper Company
are convicted felons. But not one of them has done time in jail paid a
nickel in fines or performed a day's community service.
  In 1991, International Paper's (IP) CEO, John Georges, and the IP
board of directors were charged in federal district court with violating a
variety of pollution laws, destroying evidence and lying to the US
government. IP's leaders were able to plea bargain these charges down to
five felony convictions for criminal violations of the Clean Air Act and
Clean Water Act. They then arranged for IP's shareholders to pay $2.2
million in fines for their crimes.

  Today, IP continues to poison the people, plants and animals of
Maine by dumping 40 million gallons of chemically saturated wastewater daily
into the Androscoggin River. Georges and IP's directors still run the
corporation.

  How can this be?

  Under pressure from industrialists and bankers, a handful of
19th-century state legislatures and judges gave corporations more rights
than those enjoyed by human beings. Today's business corporation is an
artificial creation, shielding owners and managers while preserving
corporate privilege and existence by claiming special protections.

  Although the US Constitution makes no mention of corporations, the
history of constitutional law is, as former Supreme Court Justice Felix
Frankfurter said, "the history of the impact of the modern corporation upon
the American scene."

A Hidden History
British kings granted charters to the British East India Company, the
Hudson's Bay Company and many American colonies, enabling the kings and
their cronies to control property and commerce. The royal charter creating
Maryland, for example, required that all of the colonys exports be shipped
to or through Great Britain.

  The American colonists did not revolt simply over a tax on tea.
The laborers, small farmers, traders, artisans, seamstresses, mechanics and
landed gentry who sent King George III packing, feared corporations. As
pamphleteer Thomas Earle was to write in 1823: "Chartered privileges are a
burden, under which the people of Britain, and other European nations, groan
in misery."

  While American volunteers were routing the king's armies, they
vowed to put corporations under democratic command. After the revolution,
people were determined to keep investment and production decisions local and
democratic. They believed corporations were neither inevitable nor always
appropriate.

  Many colonial citizens argued that under the Constitution, no
business could be granted special privileges. Others worded that once
incorporators amassed wealth, they would use their corporate shields to
control jobs and production, buy off the press and dominate elections and
the courts.




American colonists feared corporations and vowed to put them under
democratic control




  Craft and industrial workers feared absentee corporate owners
would turn them into "a commodity being as much an article of commerce as
woolens, cotton, or yarn," according to historian Louis Hartz.

  Having thrown off British rule, the revolutionaries delegated
their elected state legislators to issue corporate charters on the people's
behalf. For 100 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence,
citizen vigilance and activism forced legislators to keep corporations on a
short civic leash.

  Because of widespread opposition to corporations, those early
legislators granted very few charters. They denied charters altogether when
communities opposed the plans of prospective incorporators.

  Citizens governed corporations by specifying rules and operating
conditions -- not just in the charters, but also in state constitutions and
laws. Incorporated businesses were banned from taking any action that
citizens and legislators did not specifically allow.

  States limited corporate charters to a set number of years.
Citizen authority clauses dictated rules for issuing stock, for shareholder
voting, for obtaining corporate information, for paying dividends and for
keeping records. They limited corporate capitalization, debts, land holdings
and sometimes profits. They required