Voting~ Hidden Camera In Minnesota

But isn't this the Norm in Lisbon?

Remember the vote to remove Norma Wells and the restrictions the town put on the voting process?

PLEASE WATCH.  IT IS SCARY AND SHOULD BE STOPPED.

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Wait till you view this...

 The first 60 seconds tells the story! Want to see EXACTLY how Barry will win this election!!!!!!! This is why the Just-Us Department, under Eric Holder, will do everything to stop voter ID.   If you are unaware, Attorney General Eric Holder, America's Himmler, is attempting to stop Florida from purging a few hundred thousand illegals, deceased, and  felons from the voter rolls.  Florida is using information supplied by the Department of Homeland Security (aka, America ’s KGB) to ascertain who should or should not be on the rolls... yet Holder is attempting to stop them.   No wonder why...!!  Because the only way communists can get elected in this country is to run under the Democrat banner, be protected by the MSM and get as many illegal voters into the polling places as possible.             OH MY GOD!   ALL OF OBAMA’S ACORN VOLUNTEERS WILL BE OUT COLLECTING STACKS OF  ABSENTEE  VOTER  FORMS TO FILL IN TO VOTE FOR OBAMA WITHOUT ANY IDENTIFICATIONREQUIRED --- THIS IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING. THE FIX IS IN!  NO WONDER THE DEMOCRATS DO NOT WANT THE STATES TO REQUIRE I.D. IN ORDER TO VOTE .  Do you think Obama can't win?  HE CAN AND HE WILL...!! Please pass this on, if you are as alarmed as I am ... Hidden camera in MN voting

We Have All Been Lied To and You All Have Bought It Hook Line and Sinker: You should be proud of yourselves, not: BrasscheckTV: Pilots for Truth‏

Lisbon
 
In addition to architects and engineers,
there are hundreds of pilots who have
put it all on the line to tell the truth
about the official 9/11 story. 
 
Here's just one small slice of their
research. 
 
Video:
 
http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/20225.html
 
- Brasscheck

 



Some people are too dumb to know that they are stupid.   You all have been lied to many many times and continue to buy right into it.  Watch what is going to happen before the so called national USA election, it is rigged anyways but watch for the false flag.   DUH!  yah meat head a flag with nothing on it.   Famous Quote:  " Ya Can't  Fix Stupid"

How is  or does this apply to Lisbon,  well just hang on to your undies cause we will explain it in detail with the help of some very powerful agencies.

A Great Informative Interview About Home Foreclosure: Tim Cason, and Brenda Nelson Interview Sheriff Merry

What is a responsible Sheriff?

"There is no lawful authority for Judges and the Courts to direct the law enforcement activities of a County Sheriff. The Sheriff is accountable and responsible only to the citizens who are inhabitants of his County, He is under Oath of Office, and need not receive unlawful Orders from Judges or the Courts. He is responsible to protect citizens, even from unlawful acts of officials of government. He should not allow his office to be used as an unlawful "lackey" of the Courts or Federal agents or agencies." 

"The Sheriff, in unknowing and unthinking acceptance of [the imposition of Equity or Merchant Law], has become the "bag man" for a bunch of private criminals [bankers], and thereby is committing crimes himself, and is therefore a criminal. It is a crime to violate Constitutional Rights and his oath of office to support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America and the Constitution of his own State, it being drafted in conformance thereto, and being secondary thereto. "

Tim Cason, and Brenda Nelson Interview Sheriff Merry 

Citizen Journalist Brenda Nelson interviews Tim Cason and Sheriff Joel Merry on Tim's recent fraudulent foreclosure eviction order. All three give poignant points of view on the issue. We rushed this video out because time is of the essence.

If you really want to learn more about what a real sheriff is like and does simply go to this website.

www.sheriffmack.com

 

Lisbon REVISED Agenda For August 21, 2012 at the last minute

REVISED AGENDA at the last minute

COUNCIL MEETING
TUESDAY, AUGUST 21, 2012
LISBON TOWN OFFICE
7:00 P.M.

1. CALL TO ORDER & PLEDGE TO FLAG
2. ROLL CALL
___Councilor Bickford
___ Councilor Bowie
___ Councilor Larochelle
___ Councilor Lunt
___Councilor Mason
___ Councilor Pomelow
___ Councilor Ward
Town Clerk reading of meeting rules

3. PUBLIC HEARING
A. Public Hearing – CDBG Public Service Grant Acceptance

4. AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION

5. AUDIENCE PARTICIPATION RESPONSE

6. CONSENT AGENDA

2012-116 ORDER −
A. Minutes of July 31, 2012

7. COUNCIL ORDERS, RESOLUTIONS, & ORDINANCES
2012-117 ORDER −
Finance Committee (1st reading)

2012-118 ORDER −
Carries & Transfers

2012-119 ORDER −
2012-2013 Road Paving Schedule

2012-120 ORDER −
Adopt the DHHS/MCDC Rules Relating to Lodging Establishments

2012-121 ORDER −
Adopt the State Chapter 201 Rules Relating to the Administration & Enforcement of Establishments Licensed by the Health Inspection Program

2012-122 ORDER −
Adopt the DHHS/MCDC Maine Food Code

2012-123 ORDINANCE −
Amendment to Ch. 10, Article V[Victualer’s] Sec. 10-292(e)[Temporary permits] (1st reading)

2012-124 ORDER −
CDBG Standards of Conduct

2012-125 ORDER −
CDBG Residential Antidisplacement & Relocation Assistance Plan

2012-126 ORDER −
CDBG Equal Employment Opportunity Policy Statement

2012-127 RESOLUTION −
CDBG Fair Housing Resolution

2012-128 RESOLUTION −
CDBG Public Service Grant Resolution

2012-129 ORDER −
Code Violations

8. OTHER BUSINESS

A. Assessor Tax Rate Update

B. Finance Director’s

C. Town Manager’s Report

9. APPOINTMENTS

10. COUNCILOR COMMUNICATIONS

11. EXECUTIVE SESSION

 
2012-130 ORDER −
1 M.R.S.A 405(6)(D) - Labor Negotiations

2012-131 ORDER −
1 M.R.S.A 405(6)(C) – Economic Development

 ANY CLUES???

2012-132 ORDER −
1 M.R.S.A 405(6)(E) – Consultations with Legal Counsel (Code Violations)

12. ADJOURNMENT
2012-133 ORDER −
To Adjourn

13. WORKSHOP

A. Davis Street Well Discussion

B. Charter Amendments

Councilor Cote Writes To Explain Route 9 Issue

Councilor Cote’s Input

Let me start by explaining my side of the situation so that you readers understand the magnitude of this dire situation that Lisbon’s so called Town Management find themselves in now.

In 1993, Jerry Samson, Lisbon’s Tax Assessor, wrote me a letter and also stopped by my Small Engine & Lawn Mower Repair Shop to inform me that I was in violation of town ordinances by operating my business in a Rural Open (1) Zone.  He stated in writing, that if I did not cease operation immediately I would be finding myself in Court. 

To comply and be a good citizen, I closed my very successful business.  And I say successful because I was drawing business from another ‘grandfathered’ small engine repair and junk yard (owner was and still is a member of the Planning Board) just down the hill.  Funny how that worked out!

Currently, we have several businesses operating in violation of town ordinances with the blessings of the town.  So how are they going to solve this situation, legally? 

I ended all my business operations as required by the letter that I still have possession of.  All the while new businesses open up, some expand, and others like Councilor Gina Mason and her husband Rick circumvented the ordinance by getting the Planning Board to approve a temporary conditional use permit to operate an agricultural business in a Rural Open (1) Zone, with no expiration date.  They have an excavating and dirt hauling business.  Which is more agricultural a lawn mower repair shop or dump truck, excavator, & bulldozer business?  

Let the facts speak for themselves.

There are numerous businesses in operation and violation now.

Signed, Roger Cote

And About The Town Council Workshop Last Night August 14,2012: Here's Larry's Report, God Bless Him For His Dedication

RECAP TOWN COUNCIL WORKSHOP – AUGUST 14TH

Last night was the council workshop and on the agenda was:  Finance Committee Discussion; Charter Amendments; Davis Street Well Discussion; Parks/Recreation Discussion and finally Trails/Conservation Committee Discussion.  But first Scott Benson updated the council on the progress of the Library Workforce Development Grant Application.  The grant application for $20,000 dollars was submitted on June 8th and the DECD/OCD selected the application on June 26th.  On August 2nd the DECD/OCD Project Manager Tammy Knight visited the town reference to the grant.  There will be a Public Hearing held on August 21st at the Town Council meeting to hear Public comments on this project.

Finance Committee Discussion – The town council is trying to replace the current Budget Advisory Board with the Finance Committee.  The council is going to require the Finance Committee to review and audit the procedures of the town.  The review and audit is a great idea with the exception that no matter what they discover they cannot change anything because they are ONLY advisory.  This is identical to the Budget Advisory Board.  The town council did not and does not listen to anyone except Councilor Bowie.  Changing the name from Budget Advisory Board to Finance Committee without any additional authority is a pure waste of time.  Why not have the Budget Advisory Board perform the review and audit of town procedures?  As long as any board or committee is advisory and the town is ignoring them; why waste everybody’s time?  

Town Attorney Roger Therriault

Charter Amendments – The town attorney made the changes to the Charter Councilor Bowie requested.  The people are going to be able to vote on the municipal budget twice and then the councilor’s budget will automatically go into effect.  These changes to our Charter are completely meaningless and have absolutely no value.  This defeats the purpose of having the people vote on the budget.   Councilor Mark Lunt finally got it and asked “Why don’t we use last year’s budget instead of the councilor’s budget?”  This would provide the council an incentive to prepare a budget the town’s people can live with because the way it reads now; the council gets its budget after two NO votes by the people.  Of course, no member of the council spoke up at all.  It was like the rest of the council totally ignored the comment.
Councilor Lunt is absolutely right there is no incentive for the council to reduce spending and lower the town’s operating cost.  They simply spend whatever they want because they realize the towns' people will reject the budget both times and then the council gets everything they asked for and our taxes continue to rise.   Councilor Bowie and his puppets do not get it.  It is imperative the people tell the council this is not what 2025 citizens voted on last November.  Call or email your councilors and tell them you want to use last year’s budget instead of the councilor’s budget after two votes. 

Councilor Mike Bowie

Chairman Fern LaRochelle – 353-2329    flarochelle@lisbonme.org
Vice Chair Lori Pomelow – 353-8822       lpomelow@lisbonme.org
Councilor Bowie – 353-2607                      mbowie@lisbonme.org
Councilor Bickford – 353-8946                  rogginbic32@gmail.com
Councilor Mason – 353-9086                    gmason@lisbonme.org
Council Lunt – 353-9903                            mlunt@lisbonme.org
Councilor Ward – 353-7306                      lward@lisbonme.org

Davis Street Well Discussion – The council is still not sure as to who is responsible for the well.  Councilor Bowie wants to know the town’s liability from the town attorney.  Councilor Mason stated the STATE paid for her father’s well when it got contaminated.  Chairman LaRochelle asked the town manager to put out a Request for Procurement (RFP) to see what it is going to cost to resolve the situation.  This will be discussed further in September.

Parks/Recreation Discussion – The council is considering the possibility of combining the Parks and Recreation Departments.  Councilor Bowie pointed out there is insufficient data to arrive at a good decision.  Vera Brooks is against the consolidation.  Mark Stevens did not sound like he was in favor of this either.  Chairman LaRochelle asked the town manager to provide additional data.  The Parks Department took on the additional duties of maintaining the gardens and mowing this year.  Councilor Bickford comment “Why fix something that is not broke?”

Trails/Conservation Committee - The council is considering combining the Trails Commission with the Conservation Commission.  According to Councilor Bowie, the Trails Commission ONLY designs the trails.  The creation and maintenance of these trails is another department’s responsibility.   The council has no understand of the by-laws and mission of each of the committees so they asked the town manager to provide this information and to schedule both of these committees to come before the council in a workshop to provide additional information prior to making any decision.
Finally as a note and not part of the agenda, Chairman LaRochelle asked the council how they wanted to handle the Water Department discussion.  Apparently, a survey was sent out to certain members of the community by Councilor Bickford and the result indicated the people wanted to put the Water Department under the town.  In my personal opinion, this is extremely underhanded and illegal.  If you want to ask a question of the citizens of Lisbon, it should be done on a ballot in November and not by a handpicked group to represent the town people’s wishes.  However, this is the way business is conducted by this council.  Remember, when the question of whether or not to have the people vote on the municipal budget came up; it was put on the November ballot.  The decision was decided by the entire town and not a handpicked group.  This is supposed to be a democracy and not a dictatorship.  In this country, the majority speaks for the people.  Don’t you think the entire community has a right to vote on this critical question?

 Councilor Gina Mason

Council Mason brought up an important issue and that was; there is little to no participation on town issues by citizens of Lisbon.  Councilor Mason cannot understand why.  Do you suppose it is because the council ignores the people when they speak?

 Remember the Public Hearing on the 2% wage increase in this year’s budget, everyone who spoke out stated they did not want a 2% wage increase this year and what did we get?  The 2% wage increase was left in the budget and higher taxes.  Now, after two unsuccessful votes by the people to approve the municipal budget; the proposed budget by the council is automatically approved and will be the budget for the next year.  These councilors do just what Bowie tells them to do.  Apparently, none of them are capable of making decisions of their own.



VOTE THEM OUT IN NOVEMBER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Larry Fillmore
Concerned Citizen

Come on people get off your duffs and participate

Gregg has left a new comment on your post "And About The Town Council Workshop Last Night Aug...":

Ok I have a few questions maybe someone can answer ...

Replace the current Budget Advisory Board with the Finance Committee ...

- why bother? the council didn't seem to folow their recommendations so changing the name isn't going to help ...



Budget Charter Amendment ...

- Using last years budget is a good stop gap, but may not be the best answer to promote a change ... But acceptance after two no votes is beyond a waste of time and money ... its an insult ...



Davis Street Well Discussion – "The council is still not sure as to who is responsible for the well" ...

- Can anyone shed light on this? and if this is a workshop item, why wouldn't this have already been addressed BEFORE you get all the counselors together to discuss it in a workshop?



Parks/Recreation Discussion – "The council is considering the possibility of combining the Parks and Recreation Departments. Councilor Bowie pointed out there is insufficient data to arrive at a good decision."

- Ok, so why was this a workshop item, is it a cost savings to combine the two departments? Insufficent data? Same as the well, shoudln't this have already been addressed by the Town Manager and the respective department heads BEFORE you get all the counselors together to discuss it in a workshop? Isn't that what the Town Manager and Department heads are paid to do ... the Council should be the final approving authority not the ones physically running the town/departments.



Trails/Conservation Committee - "The council has no understand of the by-laws and mission of each of the committees"

- Ok, I have an issue with this, but shouldn't this be a topic for the Town Manager to have knowledge of ... or at least, if this was on the adjenda for the workshop - shouldn't the two committees have had representation at the workshop so they could brief the council ...



Water Department - "a survey ... indicated the people wanted to put the Water Department under the town"

- Isn't this considered a "public utility" and as such regulated by the State Public Utilites Commission? Has this been addressed by the town attorney to ensure this whole process isn't a waste of time? What are the Pro's and Con's ? I haven't seen any survey ...

Has Your Home Been Taken From You? WCSH6: Occupy Maine takes on foreclosures

PORTLAND, Maine (NEWS CENTER) -- Occupy Maine is continuing a trend seen at Occupations around the country that have focused in on the nation's housing crisis.

Occupy Maine has been out of Portland's Lincoln Park since February, but the group has continued to meet and work on social justice issues. One of the most important issues to Occupiers right now is foreclosure. They held a public forum Tuesday night where people could share their personal struggles with foreclosure. The goal is to try to pool resources and try to find housing solutions together.

"Pool our knowledge and pool our resources to make sure that each person has the best chance to either keep their home or find the best living situation that does fit their budget," organizer William Hessian said. "And it's just about searching for those answers together."

If you are facing foreclosure you can call the Foreclosure Prevention Hotline at 1-888-664-2569.

NEWS CENTER

The Maine Wire: Author warns that regionalization is part of a globalist plan‏

Author warns that regionalization is part of a globalist plan

By Diana George Chapin

Many people across the nation are making the connection between the regionalization of land conservation efforts and the goals of the United Nations Agenda 21, which is a “comprehensive plan of action to be taken globally, nationally and locally by organizations of the United Nations system, governments and major groups in every area in which human impacts on the environment.”

In Maine, land trusts have moved from conserving land on a local level to a regional level. For example, the 12-Rivers Collaborative is a plan for doubling the amount of land encumbered with conservation easements in the mid-coast, is being undertaken by a collective of 10land trusts based within the area.

Likewise, across the state, land trusts are joining forces and planning regional conservation in an effort to attract project and endowment funding from outside of Maine.

The efforts of many of these land trusts are directed by The Wildlands and Woodlands project, a group of dozens of private, non-profit, board-of directors-controlled corporations.

Encompassing an even greater area, The Human Footprint Project looks at international landmasses—the U.S. and Canada—and directs the efforts of a statewide land trust that focuses on acquiring a controlling interest in the state’s forestland.

Rosa Koire, a Santa Rosa, Calif. resident, blogs at www.democratsagainstunagenda21.com about the pervasive nature of the UN Agenda 21. Koire started to unravel the local implementation of the agenda when she began to witness a planning revolution sweeping through her city and state.

Koire defines UN Agenda 21 succinctly: “The action plan to inventory and control all land, all water, all minerals, all plants, all animals, all construction, all means of production, all energy, all information and all human beings in the world.”

Koire writes in her book, Behind the Green Mask, “This plan is a whole life plan. It involves the educational system, the energy market, the transportation system, the governmental system, the health care system, food production and more. The plan is to restrict your choices, limit your funds, narrow your freedoms and take away your voice.”

In the summer of 1993 the President’s Council on Sustainable Development (PCSD) met to lay the groundwork for implementing UN Agenda 21 in America. The federal-level cabinet secretaries and private, non-profit corporations, including the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club and the Nature Conservancy, made this statement: “We need a new collaborative decision process that leads to better decisions, more rapid change and more sensible use of human, natural and financial resources in achieving our goals.”
Out with democracy and in with consensus.

Koire said in a recent telephone interview that the Delphi Technique, a mind-control technique devised by the RAND corporation, is being used in public meetings across the nation to “manufacture consensus,” and that consensus is used to neutralize opposing viewpoints. Jargon is used to create a vague sense of the mission and to keep people from becoming alarmed.

Delphi is used to create an appearance of listening to community opinion and incorporating it into a given “vision” or plan. But it’s just an illusion, Koire says. “There’s nothing they can say that will have any impact on the plan,” she said. “We’re seeing this in government meetings all across the United States.”

“Livable. Walkable. Vibrant. Consensus. Conversation. Diversity. Carbon footprint. Smart. Vision. Green. Stakeholders. Regional. Sustainalbe,” Koire writes. “Buzz words and slogans are used as tags to manipulate you. When you hear jargon words like this, you are being conditioned to support and accept the project or plan they’re attached to without questioning it.

“It’s also an indoctrination technique,” Koire reports.  “What it also does is it propagandizes the people who are in the meeting. It vilifies and shames and calls out people who would stand up and speak out against whatever the plan is. It uses ‘Communitarianism’ to do that, which is the idea that individualism is shameful and you should be working for the so-called ‘common good,’ whatever that is.”

“Agenda 21 is a plan to destroy, to erase jurisdictional boundaries, and, of course, it is a global plan,” she said. “It is a globalist plan. The idea is that there will be no boundaries. The stepping stone to a globalist plan is regionalization. What we’re seeing across the country is regionalization of our areas that had previously been city, county, state and federal. The plan is to erase those boundaries with regional boards, regional plans and regional areas.”

“It is the erection of a regional governance, which is not going to be representative,” she said. “This is something that is part of United Nations Agenda 21. It’s basically a two-pronged program: urban and rural. And it’s a war on rural people. It’s a way to get people out of the rural and suburban areas, into the dense city centers where they can be more easily managed, surveilled and controlled.

“What we need is to know is that awareness is the first step in the resistance,” Koire said. “As soon as people understand what it is that we are looking at, they are part of the resistance.
“I want to emphasize that this is a non-partisan issue,” she said. “Freedom is non-partisan. This is an American issue. All of us—left, right, center, Republican, Democrat—no one wants to live in a corporatocracy. No one wants to live in a global totalitarian state. This is antithetical to what we are as Americans. And we need to join together and we need to find those things that we hold in common.

“There is no other issue that is more important than this right now,” Korie said. “We’re talking about a loss of our personal freedom, a loss of our civil and property rights. This is something that all of us, across the country need to recognize: no hero is going to come and take care of this for us. This is something that we need to do together and we will prevail.”

ICLEI (The International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives) is the arm of the United Nations that implements Agenda 21 principles locally. The non-governmental, un-elected organization describes itself as “is an association of over 1,220 local government members who are committed to sustainable development.”

In Maine, Belfast, Falmouth, Portland, South Portland, Yarmouth, York and York are ICLEI member cities. (Source:http://www.iclei.org/index.php?id=11454)

Municipal members come from 70 different countries and encompass more than 569,885,000 people. According to the website,www.iclei.org, “ICLEI has grown to become the largest international association of local governments as determined by budget, personnel and scale of operations.”

Being a branch of the UN, ICLEI is funded by taxpayers.

Koire will be speaking in an event open to the public on Monday, August 13 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. in Waldoboro at the First Baptist Church at 7 Grace Avenue (just north of Moody’s Dinner on Route 1).

Diana George Chapin is a freelance writer and a fourth-generation family farmer from Montville, Maine.
This is part of an ongoing series about Maine Land Trusts – Read all articles here.

 http://www.themainewire.com/2012/08/author-warns-regionalization-part-globalist-plan/

Interesting and well written. Can anyone say, "Cover up?"Subject: NIEVES: The Brian Terry exception (Fast and Furious, Cover-Up, Eric Holder, Department of Justice, Drugs,DEA,Mexican Cartels)

 We received this from a confidential source of high standing. It came to us via email and we are sharing with our readers under the fair use act.

Dear AFFNA (Assoc of Former Fed Narcotics Agents) Member:

I just received the following from AFFNA Member Bobby Nieves.  I flatter myself to say that as my former boss I consider him a friend.  Having taught me a lot it is great to see him still leading and teaching.  The following is an Op-Ed piece that he had published in the Washington Times this weekend.  I hope that current government leadership takes the time to read this.  It is so well written I felt that I should share it with you.

David G. Wilson

Executive Director

NIEVES: The Brian Terry exception

Quick turnaround in federal probes absent in shameful murder case

By Robert J. Nieves    Friday, July 6, 2012

Anyone who has spent time in Washington knows government runs on process. There is a procedure for everything, and this is especially true in federal law enforcement, where lives are at risk every day. I should know, I spent most of my adult life as an agent with Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

As chief of major investigations in the 1990s, I managed DEA's highly sensitive undercover operations targeting the Medellin and Cali cartels. We routinely coordinated with our colleagues in the Department of Justice (DOJ) and enjoyed great success. Agent safety always was paramount in our discussions, and we were successful, in large part, because we followed procedures for the review of sensitive undercover operations.

Before commencing a sensitive operation, the field office had to prepare an operations plan detailing the activities it intended to pursue and the goals of the operation. Once the op plan was received, it was vetted in DEA headquarters to include coordination with any foreign office impacted by the proposal, the U.S. Embassy and host-nation counterparts. After vetting, the plan would be presented to Justice for approval, which included a meeting attended by the field managers, the U.S. Attorney's Office, DEA headquarters and a deputy assistant attorney general from the Justice Department's Criminal Division.

This careful and tedious review and approval process was carried out by the Sensitive Activities Review Committee (SARC). Only after a successful SARC review would the DEA administrator and the deputy assistant attorney general from the Criminal Division authorize and approve the operation. If an operation was particularly sensitive, the approval process would rise to the level of the attorney general. I am aware that the FBI has a similar review committee for sensitive undercover operations.

Wouldn't the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), a Justice law enforcement bureau, have similar procedures for obtaining approval for sensitive undercover operations like Operation Fast and Furious? It defies logic to assume that the Department of Justice would give ATF a pass on the review-committee process in a matter as serious as allowing automatic weapons to be delivered to Mexican drug-smuggling cartels.

Equally illogical is the behavior of the department's "independent" inspector general (IG). He has had the Fast and Furious case for 14 months but hasn't issued a report of initial findings. At one point in my career, I was an inspector in DEA's Office of Professional Responsibility. This office is similar in many relevant respects to that of Justice's inspector general. I have never heard of any case that took 14 months for a report on initial findings to be issued. Why is the Fast and Furious case taking so long? Is the IG incompetent, or is he being told to delay the issuance of his report? Either way, the family of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry loses. His parents are being denied access to the facts surrounding the death of their son, who was killed with one of the Fast and Furious weapons. To put this in perspective, the FBI issued its first report on the Kennedy assassination, one of the most complex and controversial cases in U.S. history, just 17 days after the event.

We recently learned about Secret Service agents consorting with prostitutes in Colombia . During a nationally televised TV appearance, President Obama called the agents who partied with the prostitutes "knuckleheads." Mr. Obama told Jimmy Fallon: "What these guys were thinking, I don't know. That's why they're not there anymore," a reference to the fact that a mere two weeks after the event, two agents had been fired and several others had been removed from their positions.

What about the Justice and ATF knuckleheads who approved Fast and Furious?  What were they thinking? Have any of them lost their jobs? More than 18 months have passed, and no one at Justice or ATF who approved this fiasco has been fired - and this case doesn't involve Colombian prostitutes. This is a case where one of their own, Terry, a federal agent, was killed by weapons provided by ATF - a tragic case of "friendly" fire by proxy.

One of my bosses at DEA once told me, "Bad news is not fine wine; it does not get better with age." He couldn't have been more correct. If there is bad news at Justice or in the IG's reports, better to air it now. Otherwise, everyone will wonder if the information being hidden is another of Washington 's "inconvenient truths." Now that the president has placed the mantle of executive privilege over the Justice reports, the Terry family and the families of countless numbers of murdered Mexican citizens may have to wait decades to know the truth.

There is something very, very wrong with the way the Terry case is being handled. Take that as gospel from a former fed who wants nothing but the truth to come out so federal agents everywhere can learn from mistakes made and know the Department of Justice still has their backs. But even more important, Justice needs to come clean so the Terry’s can know exactly what happened to their son.

A few months ago, Mr. Obama commented on the Trayvon Martin case in Florida , saying, "You know if I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon." Then he added a statement that made me think of my own children: "You know, I think they are right to expect that all of us as Americans are going to take this with the seriousness it deserves, and we are going to get to the bottom of exactly what happened."

It's a shame our president doesn't feel the same way about Brian Terry. I have a daughter and two sons. One of my sons is a federal agent. He looks a lot like Brian Terry.

Robert J. Nieves is a partner in the firm BERG Associates. He retired from DEA in 1995 as the chief of international operations.

 http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jul/6/the-brian-terry-exception/

 http://www.rememberbrianterry.com/

Lisbon's Liars Club: HYPOCRITES OR JUST PLAIN LIARS

HYPOCRITES OR JUST PLAIN LIARS

I cannot tell if the management of the town of Lisbon are hypocrites or just plain liars so I am going to leave it up to you to make the decision.  There are two bullets in the town “Mission Statement” and they are: 

(1)”We are committed to serving the public, being accountable, and conducting ourselves with integrity, honesty, and responsibility.” 

(2)”We are committed to sharing information with our citizens and including them as partners in the decision making process.”

In 2011, I was forced to sue the town for information pertaining to the Revolving Loan Fund.  In January of this year, the court ordered the town to provide me information pertaining to the Revolving Loan Fund.  I pointed out to the Judge, town attorney, and town manager there were two loans which were scheduled to be repaid in 2008 still on the Outstanding Revolving Loan Fund Portfolio. 

 Scott Benson

 I understand that these loans were approved prior to Stephen Eldridge and Scott Benson being hired by the town.  However, these loans come directly under their supervision and one would have expected these two individuals to review and ensure all the items they are responsible for are present and up-to-date because you are talking about town funds being utilized.  Instead, I found out these loans were still outstanding and no one had taken action to resolve the issues. 

Now on July 10, 2012, I submitted a Freedom of Access Act (FOAA) requesting this list previously provided under court order be updated to include the newest loan approved by the town council.  I also knew there was an additional loan which was scheduled to be repaid in September 2011 and I wanted to know if it had been paid off.  I received a letter from Mr. Eldridge dated July 16th 2012 stating and I quote “The request for the information pertaining to outstanding loan documents has already been provided to you.  The information that you are requesting has not changed.  Should you have any questions please don’t hesitate to contact me.”  Apparently, the two loans scheduled to be paid off in 2008 and the one for September 2011 are still outstanding loans and the town has not processed the new loan yet.  I sent Mr. Eldridge an email asking him about these loans but have not received any response.

Now, I have requested a copy of the Credit Enhancement Agreements (CEA) for the six businesses currently under the Tax Increment Financing Program.  My request was denied stating I was not entitled to this information.  I contacted the State of Maine Director of the TIF program and she met with the Eldridge, town attorney (Roger Therriault) and Scott Benson.  After this meeting, I was provided four of the five CEA’s.  The town was still working on the fifth one and one was not active so no CEA was necessary.  

 Roger Therriault

One of the four I received was signed by Eldridge and effective April 1, 2004 which is more than four years before Eldridge was hired.  Apparently, the town was missing two of the CEAs and you ask why this is so important to the town.  The reason is the CEA is the contract between the town and these businesses and controls how much of our tax dollars are returned to each business.   About a week to ten days later I received the last one and it too was signed by Eldridge with an effective date of December 16, 2002.  The town has been making TIF payments to these businesses without a legal contract on file.

I have had to sue the town in order to get information.  I had to request the state step in to get information I was always entitled to; so please someone tell be how the two bullets in the town’s Mission Statement could possibly be accurate.  

Now, come the tough questions.  Is the town council aware of what is really going on in this town and are they supporting this type of behavior by the town manager?  Apparently, the town council is supporting the town manager because they continue to renew his contract.  Why does a citizen of Lisbon have to bring these discrepancies out to the town council instead of the town council monitoring our town funds?
 

Mr. Eldridge received a salary of over $91,000 of our tax dollars in 2011 and this mismanagement of town funds is what we get in return.  I do not believe we are getting our money’s worth from the town manager.  I believe the town council needs to take action to replace Eldridge and get a competent town manager.

Larry Fillmore
Concerned Citizen

The Maine WIRE:M.D. Harmon: “Gun-free zones,” some of the most dangerous places in America

These so called "gun free" zones supporters in America have blood on their hands .
Much more to come on this topic.

Now that a week has passed since the murder of 12 people with firearms in the hands of a lunatic in a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., there are some useful conclusions to be drawn.

~ The first set is (forgive me) philosophical, because what happened there is not a tragedy.

A tragedy, in this context, is when a hurricane wipes out a city, or tornados flatten schools, homes and trailer parks all over the Midwest. The destruction, injuries and fatalities caused by earthquakes, volcano eruptions, floods and tsunamis are tragic in the applicable sense of the word: They involve the infliction of pain and suffering by impersonal forces far beyond the control of any human being.

What happened in Aurora, or Columbine, or Virginia Tech — or what happens almost any night of the week in New York or Chicago, where a few media-hyped slaughters are far outdone by the continuous mayhem on the streets — is not a tragedy, it is an atrocity, which in its most relevant sense is the intentional result of human evil working its will upon the innocent and defenseless.

And for those who think that the fact that the perpetrator may well be clinically insane makes what he did any less evil does not understand the moral truth that, just as extraordinary acts of heroism or charity have spiritual resonance beyond the scope of the acts themselves, so do acts of darkest depravity.

Good and evil, we are correctly taught, are not subjective but objective realities, and the agents that work for either end of the moral equation are part of the outcome as well as the process. Machiavelli’s aphorism that “the end justifies the means” is a slogan that inevitably passes through a gate labeled “Arbeit Macht Frei” and ends up in the gulag and the lao-gai.

Rather, the ends are the means: Who we are dictates how we act and produces what we create. A murderer may be insane, but that does not make the things he does any less objectively evil, or lessen the need to remove him from society.

~ After expressing profound sympathy for the victims and their friends and families (and honoring the heroism of the three men who reportedly sacrificed themselves for their female companions by blocking bullets with their bodies), we should also recall what law professor Glenn Reynolds (who blogs as Instapundit) points out: There are two classes of people found at every such random incident, shooters and victims.

And the best way not to be a victim is to have the ability to shoot back, something denied those killed and wounded in Aurora by the owners of the movie theater itself.

Very few people are likely aware that there was another random firearm-related murder in Aurora just a few days before James Holmes opened fire. One person, a pastor’s mother, was killed in a shooting at a church before an armed member of the congregation (an off-duty police officer) shot the perpetrator dead.

But firearms were banned from the movie theater showing Batman that night, proving once again that “gun-free zones” are among the most dangerous places in the country, as only criminals will have firearms there.

Laws, as examples around the world show, will never keep weapons out of the hands of such people.

That is proved, as I referenced above, by the experience of our largest cities. Investor’s Business Daily pointed out in an editorial July 24 that “The gun-controlled Windy City is on a pace to have 450 murders this year, an Aurora every 10 days.” And in the week from July 2 to July 8, “there were 21 murders in New York,” IBD said.

“Granted, New York City (where, as in Chicago, firearms possession by law-abiding citizens is also effectively banned) is a lot larger than Aurora, Colo. But its citizens have one thing in common with the patrons of the Century 16 theater — they were not allowed to defend themselves.”

Perhaps it’s time for survivors to start filing lawsuits to hold the theater’s owners responsible for preventing people from defending themselves by exercising their constitutional rights.

~ We should also free ourselves of the false belief that any possible reform of our laws regarding the possession and use of firearms would make such incidents “impossible” in the future. Timothy McVeigh killed 163 people with a rental truck filled with fertilizer, solvents and widely used commercial explosives, hardly things that people will ever be refused permission to buy.

But, let’s stick to firearms. James Carville, the prominent Democratic consultant, said this week that the National Rifle Association has a “dominating position” in American politics — but does anyone really think that if millions of voters didn’t vote for politicians who supported firearms rights and against ones who didn’t, the NRA would have any clout at all?\

It’s not the NRA, it’s Americans’ love of liberty and support for the right to defend themselves and their families against the agents of evil, that drives what remains of the “debate” over firearms’ civil rights in this country.

Barring the imposition of a new control regime by undemocratic processes (such as a new Supreme Court ruling overturning D.C. v. Heller, which recognized that the Constitution protects an individual right to bear arms), that right is nearly impervious to legislative assault, and will be as long as Americans keep voting the way they are now.

That’s a good thing, because it offers the only hope that average citizens have of defending themselves against those whose evil works itself out in assaults on the innocent.
Columnist Thomas Sowell, a fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, lays it out: “You would never know, from what (New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg) and other gun-control advocates have said, that there is a mountain of evidence that gun-control laws not only fail to control guns but are often counterproductive. For those people who still think facts matter, it is worth presenting some of those facts.

“Do countries with strong gun-control laws have lower murder rates? Only if you cherry-pick the data. Britain is a country with stronger gun-control laws and lower murder rates than the United States. But Mexico, Russia, and Brazil are also countries with stronger gun-control laws than the United States — and their murder rates are much higher than ours. Israel and Switzerland have even higher rates of gun ownership than the United States, and much lower murder rates than ours.

“Even the British example does not stand up very well under scrutiny. The murder rate in New York has been several times that in London for more than two centuries — and, for most of that time, neither place had strong gun-control laws. New York had strong gun-control laws years before London did, but New York still had several times the murder rate of London.”

~ In the meantime, we’ve seen some truly astounding things come out of this event. Most have been too widely covered to belabor here, but it remains astounding that a professional news reporter on a major network, Brian Ross of ABC, would so carelessly link a James Holmes found on a Tea Party website with the entirely different James Holmes who was the actual perpetrator.

Following the Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto, who found several people with his name in trouble with the law, I entered “Michael Harmon criminal” into a search engine and immediately was told that person had been arrested on July 14 for domestic abuse.

Anyone could have cited that fact and linked it to me, even though that Michael Harmon is 12 years younger than I am and lives in Oakland, Calif. In fact, a website, howmanyofme.com, reports that there are 1,113 Michael Harmons in the country, many of whom are likely less than stellar citizens.

And since I have used the term “Tea Party” in several columns, my name is tied to it on the Internet. So I’m just as vulnerable to a false linkage as the James Holmes libeled by Ross — a reporter whose reflex to check Tea Party sites, rather than, say, sites about the ACLU, the Democratic Party or even the Occupy Wall Street movement, is what is most telling about his journalistic malfeasance.

Compounding the irony is that Mayor Bloomberg, one of the nation’s most prominent Republicans-in-name-only, actually called on police officers to go on strike until stronger firearms laws were passed.

That is, it is worth it to him to have police violate their oaths (it is illegal in New York and most other places for police and firefighters to go on strike) to put more citizens in actual danger to get laws passed that will not increase public safety one bit.

As was noted as soon as he said it (and he has since retreated from his idiocy), all that would show is that people really are in charge of their own self-defense — a constitutional right that liberals like Bloomberg continue to deny to Americans unfortunate enough to live under their iron-fisted rule.

Remember two things about the cops: First, they are not a crime-prevention force, they are a crime-solving force. After all, the Supreme Court has ruled they have no constitutional obligation to protect us from harm.

Second, “When your life is in danger and seconds count, the police are only minutes away.”
One cannot, as Dave Barry’s saying goes, make up such nonsense as the ideas Bloomberg and other gun-banners continue to spout. Could anyone really be this disconnected from reality, this utterly foolish?

Oh, that’s right. They’re progressives. Of course they can.

M.D. Harmon, a retired journalist and military officer, is a free-lance writer. He can be contacted at: mdharmoncol@yahoo.com