CAN YOU PROVE THAT YOU ARE A NATIVE-BORN AMERICAN? A PUBLIC SERVICE MESSAGE FROM RAGNAROK65

If you do not have a "certified copy" (the one with the State Seal on it, not the hospital issued birth certificate) get ready to jump through some hoops - especially if you were adopted!

I relocated back to Utah last year, and went down to get a Utah driver's license. I was told that a federal law took effect in 2009, and that I had to have a certified copy of my birth certificate in order to get a driver's license now.

Well, here's where things become even more complicated, because I was born in NJ, and adopted by my maternal grandparents in NY when I was 5 years old. Not only do I need the certified birth certificate to get my driver's license, but I need a certified copy of the Final Order of Adoption from NY State to prove the name change. What does NY want from me to get the Adoption Order? A certified copy of my birth certificate from NJ! I'm jumping through more hoops than a circus dog, in order to prove - after 67 years on Earth, 53 years of paying income tax, and 20+ years in the US military - that I am indeed a bona fide American citizen. BUT... in order to get the Adoption Certificate I have to have "certified copies" of my grandparents (the adopters) Death Certificates, to which I never had access. Tracking those down will probably take a month or so, dealing with the bureaucracies of Pinellas County. Florida and some other county in NY, who will also probably want copies of whatever!

To make matter even worse, in my case all of these things must be taken care of through the US Postal Service. That means delays of at least one week in each direction if everything goes smoothly... which it never does! I figure, with any luck, I should have my Utah driver's license sometime in 2012. My retired Air Force ID means nothing in this process, much like my Top Secret clearance status while I was on active duty, or the fact that the FBI approved me to buy several firearms just last year.

This is not just a Utah law! Proof of citizenship is now required by Federal law prior to issuing a driver's license, so, my advice to you is this: if you are a native-born American, and you don't have a certified copy of your birth certificate, complete with the state seal, and your current driver's license was issued prior to 2009, get a certified copy of whatever you need before you find yourself in the same bureaucratic quagmire that I'm in! Especially if you were adopted!!

Luckily, my Oregon driver's license doesn't expire until 2015. With any luck this should be resolved by then. Does this keep illegal aliens from driving? NO! - they'll drive without a license, which is a minor offense compared to violating our border. Or, they'll have somebody illegally create the required documents to obtain a license. If Obama can do it, why can't they?

CONGRESS INVESTIGATES FORT HOOD SHOOTINGS? THEY SHOULD INVESTIGATE THEMSELVES!

"WASHINGTON — Congress and the Obama administration on Monday headed toward a showdown over access to information about how an Army major with known contacts to Islamic extremists was able to carry out a deadly shooting spree at a Texas military base last fall.

Saying the Pentagon and Justice Department had failed to cooperate in Congress' efforts to understand what took place, the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs issued subpoenas to Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Attorney General Eric Holder, demanding documents about Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the disgruntled Army psychiatrist charged with killing 13 people and injuring another 32 during a Nov. 5 shooting spree at Fort Hood, Texas."

Here's my question - Why can't congress let the FBI and Army CID finish their investigations and then just read the report? Oh, I forgot... they don't even have time to read the BILLS they pass! How many members of Congress are qualified criminal investigators? The only thing they seem qualified to do is spend our money on PORK projects, give themselves raises, and foist a national health care program on us that we don't want!

"There were repeated signals being sent off by Major Hasan that he was a potential danger," Senator Joe Leiberman stated. Well, DUH! He can thank Political Correctness, and nobody wanting to be labeled a racist for that crack in the floor. Lacking those two elements, Hasan would have been identified, and discharged from the military long before he would have been able to create the carnage at Fort Hood! Name one career military officer who wants to dead-end his career by pointing a finger at any member of any minority for any reason. Immediately the "race card" comes out - which trumps logic every time. Don't you DARE "profile".

PC has no real place in our society - least of all in matters of national security. The buck shouldn't stop on this one until it reaches Janet Napolitano (Homeland Security Chief) and Barack Hussein Obama (Commander in Chief).

I could be wrong about this... and Hasan could be innocent. Somebody else killed those people and then threw the guns to Hassan, which he just reflexively caught. Yeah... that story should satisfy the morons in our Congress!

LABOR UNIONS HELPED US REACH ECONOMIC DEPENDENCE

The United States has the bloodiest history of labor of any industrialized nation on Earth. It is a story rich in human drama and tragedy. It is also one of progress and hope. For example: Janitors at General Motors are compensated at the rate of about $30 per hour. Assembly line workers are compensated at around $80 per hour. Considering that neither of these positions requires even a high school diploma to fill, there seems to be something incredibly wrong with their pay scales. Entry-level, unskilled labor rarely earns more than the prevailing minimum wage. And, unskilled labor - even with 10 years experience in whatever their field - is lucky if they are earning 50% over minimum wage. Learn a skill or get an education... but, if you fail to do either, learn to enjoy your career at McDonald's.

Pushing a broom and swinging a mop is not rocket science. Running a pneumatic nut driver, placing the same nuts on the same bolts for 8 hours per day doesn't even approximate brain surgery. Granted, they are both necessary and honorable ways of earning a living, but at that level of compensation they are earning two or three "livings". Labor compensation packages are a major part of the price of American-made automobiles... that, and corporate greed. Since 1935 the compensation packages for automotive workers have been negotiated by the United Automobile Workers union (UAW). The UAW is also known as the United Automobile, Aerospace & Agricultural Implement Workers of America International Union, and is a part of the AFL-CIO (American Federation of Labor - Congress of Industrial Organizations). The AFL-CIO is without doubt the largest union organization in the world.

Labor unions - on a relatively small scale - probably began in the USA in 1778, when the New York City journeyman printers united and gained an increase in wages. Apparently the idea of "unionization" didn't catch on right away, because the next notable action of that type didn't occur until 1785, when New York shoemakers struck for three weeks, and in 1786 printers of Philadelphia staged a successful walk-out strike for higher wages and gained a minimum wage of $6 per week. Keep in mind however, that in the 18th century 10¢ per hour was a better-than-average wage. And, in 1792 the Philadelphia shoemakers formed the first local craft union for the purpose of collective bargaining.

Thuggery was a common practice in both union organizing practices and union busting practices. Workers who spoke out or acted against the interests of union organizers frequently found themselves on the wrong end of an axe handle or billy club. Those beatings were simply warnings. If the worker was stupid enough to continue speaking out against union organizers, he might have found himself crippled... or sometimes even converted to a corpse by union thugs. There was an equal amount of blood on the hands of company officials as well, who would hire "special police" (read: "goon squad") to confront the union thugs - either in an all-out donnybrook, or in a 3 (or more) to 1 ratio, in order to explain the company's labor philosophy. Each entity would try to out-thug the other thugsmeisters. Union organization was a very messy undertaking (no pun intended) in the late 17th through the early 19th century.

Today, at the beginning of the 21st century, we are faced with labor unions being backed - and even being enthusiastically presented - by the current Administration in Washington D.C.
They are stacking the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) with radical nominees who will put forward the Employee ‘Forced’ Choice Act via administrative action. Union bosses are pushing forward with efforts to represent airport screeners. One single thread runs throughout: an insatiable desire for money and power on the part of Big Labor bosses. Have they not heard that we are in a depression? We are suffering from a national financial hernia! If we keep applying pressure it will rupture... and our nation will bleed to death. Can you imagine the turmoil if the National Security Agency, the CIA, and the Transportation Safety Administration were to become unionized? Imagine even a brief, 1-hour work stoppage at Kennedy, O'Hare or LAX. Thousands of business meetings, surgical appointments, freight deliveries, etc. would be missed, and some possibly lost forever. Now imagine a 24 hour strike, or a week-long strike... the ramifications are mind-boggling.
Once upon a time, unscrupulous business owners and uneducated workers made unions a "necessary evil". Those times have passed. For the most part workers are no longer uneducated... but, there are still those business owners who would consider attempting to take advantage of the working class. I say "consider" because even the unscrupulous realize that workers are smarter today, and that they are basically familiar with federal and state labor laws. They are also aware that they can leverage businesses into making certain adjustments in compensation packages by simply organizing the employees of that business and initiating a sit-down or walk-out strike at the local level. There is no need for national, dues-collecting unions - they have outlived their usefulness. National unions do nothing but add to the cost of production so they can take (dues) from the workers. If collective bargaining negotiations at the local level cannot resolve issues between management and labor, an arbitrator would be used to facilitate that resolution. If either side refused to comply with the arbitrator's recommendations then an administrative law judge would have the final word. (It sounds like a workable plan to me... but I am also aware that I tend to over-simplify sometimes.)
Union membership was once a symbol of true, demonstrated craftsmanship. Today it is a symbol of security for the barely competent.

THERE SHOULD BE NO UNIONS CONTROLLING GOVERNMENT FUNCTIONS!

Census Workers Marking GPS Coordinates of U.S. Homes

I have seen that headline - or one very similar - in several different places over the last few months, but I do not personally know it to be a fact. However, I do believe I may have actually seen a census worker with a hand-held GPS in front of my house a few weeks ago. I can find no other plausible explanation for his actions.

This 'older man' was afoot, holding an object which appeared to be an electronic device (approx 5"x7") in his hands. He paused in front of the house, looked down at the device in his hands and then approached the front door (I can observe the front yard from my computer room window). I was waiting for a knock at the door... which never came. A few seconds later I saw him walking away from the house back into the street, putting an end to this 'close encounter of the weird kind.' The government's excuse for conducting such a census is, "GPS technology allows us to reduce the amount of time spent by census workers in locating addresses while increasing productivity. Most importantly, by adding a GPS coordinate to each housing unit, the Census Bureau is able to ensure that residents are counted in the right location. This is important as the data are used to apportion congressional representation and used to draw redistricting lines.”

Here are a few of the problems I have with anybody GPS'ing my domicile:
1. First and foremost, it seems unnecesarily intrusive. Why does the government need to know the exact coordinates of any individual's living quarters? It smacks of the groundwork for the fabled "Black Ops" - black helicopters and SUV's showing up, and citizens being spirited off in the middle of the night, never to be seen again. But, there's no real proof of "Black Ops" against the citizens of the USA... yet. The U.S. Census Bureau is simply an excuse—a harmless-looking means of obtaining the front door coordinates. The creation of GPS coordinates for front doors has nothing to do with the Census, in all honesty, no matter how much the United States Government tries to convince you that it does.

2. Given that our national security is significantly less-than-bulletproof, at both our physical borders and the 'borders' of our ostensibly secure government computer systems, to what use could this GPS information be put by those who bear us ill will? I can envision a scenario wherein a foreign power hacks into the appropriate government database and retrieves every bit of data needed to pinpoint heavily populated areas as well as the locations of critical utilities. (The only reason I didn't include the locations of sateside military installations in that scenario is that the rest of the hostile/envious world already knows precisely where those bases are located.)

Our government has already overstepped the bounds of the charter of the U.S. Census Bureau, by using them to gather information beyond a simple headcount. Questions like "Do you have running water in your household?", "Do you have insurance?", questions about educational level, number and kinds of disabilities , etc., have no place in the "census". Census is defined thusly:
1: a count of the population and a property evaluation in early Rome
2: a usually complete enumeration of a population ; specifically : a periodic governmental enumeration of population
3: count, tally

It was designed as a system of "how many"... not a system of "how much"!

Can we afford to forget the scenes of smart bombs and tomahawk missiles, guided by GPS coordinates, going through the windows and doors of buildings during the invasion of Iraq? "That could never happen here.", you say? Ask the Native Americans what they think about that. And do a little research on the "Bonus Army", Washington D.C., 1932 while you're at it - wherein a cavalry charge was led against WWI military veterans by our own 'heroes', General Douglas McArthur and Major George S. Patton.

As Government grows larger, I am reminded of the words of Thomas Paine, who said, ""Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one." and Daniel Webster's quote, "There are men in all ages who mean to govern well, but they mean to govern. They promise to be good masters, but they mean to be masters." And, although often attributed to Thomas Jefferson, the only verifiable attribution for "The best government is that which governs least." is to Henry David Thoreau. They all make sense to me!

I could be wrong about this... I suppose... perhaps... maybe... or maybe not!