On line newsletter of the Southern Cross Party

Secession Fever

May 02, 2009: Secession fever is apparently sweeping through the Conservative World, and it’s getting closer to the Carolinas. A poll a couple of weeks ago, after Texas Gov. Rick Perry broached the subject at a Tea Party, revealed that the GOP in Texas is evenly divided over whether the Lone Star state should secede from the United States. Now, a new poll from Research 2000 shows that 43 percent of Republicans in Georgia say their state would be better off as an independent nation than as a part of the United States. Is secession an option to the loss of freedom?

The Return of States' Rights?

Secession talk far from extreme

by Bob Barr

April 22, 2009: Although he later downplayed his remark, Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s use of the “S” word — secession — during one of the April 15 tea parties has focused attention on the growing gulf between the dramatic, unprecedented growth in the federal government’s power and spending, and efforts by individual states to maintain independent authority.
Any reference, however vague, to the notion that one of the 50 states might actually consider cutting the ties between it and Washington evokes howls of derision from the political establishment.

But the growing grass-roots sentiment that dramatic action is necessary to restore a semblance of balanced federalism in the country makes it likely such discussion will increase.

The fact that Perry also noted that some military veterans in the crowd at Austin might be “right-wing extremists” also reflected the growing chasm between government and citizens opposed to runaway federal spending and power.

The governor’s reference, echoed in other tea parties last week, was based on the fact that federal and state government law enforcement Web sites and publications characterize grass-roots organizations concerned about gun control, nationalization, unemployment, loss of civil liberties and excessive government spending, as “right-wing extremists” and “militants.”

That people would be viewed by our government as a possible threat because they express concern for the loss of freedom and our growing economic problems is itself so bizarre that references to secession are unsurprising.

Placing Perry’s remarks in the context of his position the previous day in support of a Texas state House resolution reaffirming support for the 10th Amendment strengthens the reasonableness of his position. On April 14, Perry expressed his “unwavering support for efforts all across our country to reaffirm the states’ rights affirmed by the 10th Amendment.”

He also noted that he and “millions of Texans are tired of Washington, D.C., trying to come down here and tell us how to run Texas.” Are such views “extreme”? Do they not, rather, reflect mainstream and historically accurate sentiments? After all, is not the resolution Perry supported simply a reaffirmation of the very words of and the philosophy underlying the 10th Amendment?

Much of the media, in addition to characterizing Perry’s comments as “reckless” (the words of one Texas newspaper), also have attempted to paint such views as economically irresponsible. This view is premised on the “loss” of federal funds that would befall Texas or any other state that might sever ties to Washington. In fact, many of the 50 states send more in tax dollars to Washington than the states and its citizens receive from the feds — making secession actually not that bad a business deal (Texas about breaks even).

In fact, the sky likely would not fall if some serious moves were made to break the stranglehold the federal government now maintains on virtually every aspect of state and local governments. There are, in fact, some examples starting to surface. The RealID program, with its mandate of a national identification card, has been brought largely to a standstill because of state opposition.

And at least a few states — Texas and South Carolina among them — are refusing President Barack Obama’s “stimulus monies” because of the strings attached.
Who knows? If Texas were to secede, the state might enjoy a significant inward migration of independent-minded citizens from other states, and precipitate a real boom in its economy.

Regardless, simply musing about such things, as did the Texas governor, is neither subversive nor pointless.

Nearly 600 Illegals detained in Mississippi Raid

Tuesday, August 26, 2008: The largest single-workplace immigration raid in U.S. history has caused panic among Hispanic families in this small southern Mississippi town, where federal agents rounded up nearly 600 plant workers suspected of being in the country illegally.

One worker caught in Monday's sweep at the Howard Industries transformer plant said fellow workers applauded as immigrants were taken into custody. Federal officials said a tip from a union member prompted them to start investigating several years ago.

Fabiola Pena, 21, cradled her 2-year-old daughter as she described a chaotic scene at the plant as the raid began, followed by clapping. "I was crying the whole time. I didn't know what to do," Pena said. "We didn't know what was happening because everyone started running. Some people thought it was a bomb but then we figured out it was immigration."

About 100 of the 595 detained workers were released for humanitarian reasons, many of them mothers who were fitted with electronic monitoring bracelets and allowed to go home to their children, officials said. About 475 other workers were transferred to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Jena, La. Nine who were under 18 were transferred to the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement.

John Foxworth, an attorney representing some of the immigrants, said eight appeared in federal court in Hattiesburg on Tuesday because they face criminal charges for allegedly using false Social Security and residency identification. He said the raid was traumatic for families but the arrest of criminals usually is traumatic.

"There was no communication, an immediate loss of any kind of news and a lack of understanding of what's happening to their loved ones," he said. "A complete and utter feeling of helplessness." The superintendent of the county school district said about half of approximately 160 Hispanic students were absent Tuesday. Roberto Velez, pastor at Iglesia Cristiana Peniel, where an estimated 30 to 40 percent of the 200 parishioners were caught up in the raid, said parents were afraid immigration officials would take them.

"They didn't send their kids to school today," he said. "How scared is that?" Those detained were from Brazil, El Salvador, Germany, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, and Peru, said Barbara Gonzalez, an ICE spokeswoman. Elizabeth Alegria, 26, a Mexican immigrant, was working at the plant Monday when ICE agents stormed in. When they found out she has two sons, ages 4 and 9, she was fitted with a bracelet and told to appear in federal court next month. Her husband, Andres, was not so lucky.

"I'm very traumatized because I don't know if they are going to let my husband go and when I will see him," Elizabeth Alegria said through a translator Tuesday as she returned to the Howard Industries parking lot to retrieve her sport utility vehicle. "We have kids without dads and pregnant mothers who got their husbands taken away," said Velez's son, Robert, youth pastor at the church. "It was like a horror story. They got handled like they were criminals."

Howard Industries is in Mississippi's Pine Belt region, known for commercial timber growth and chicken processing plants. The tech company produces dozens of products ranging from electrical transformers to medical supplies, according to its Web site. Gonzalez said agents had executed search warrants at both the plant and the company headquarters in nearby Ellisville. She said no company executives had been detained, but this is an "ongoing investigation and yesterday's action was just the first part."

A woman at the Ellisville headquarters told The Associated Press on Tuesday that no one was available to answer questions.  In a statement to the Laurel Leader-Call newspaper, Howard Industries said the company "runs every check allowed to ascertain the immigration status of all applicants for its jobs."  "It is company policy that it hires only U.S. citizens and legal immigrants," the statement said.  Gov. Haley Barbour recently signed a law requiring Mississippi employers to use a U.S. Homeland Security system to check new workers' immigration status.

The law took effect July 1 for businesses with state contracts and takes effect Jan. 1 for other businesses. Mississippi lawmakers once used laptops made by Howard Industries, but it's not clear whether the company has current state contracts.  Under the law, a company found guilty of employing illegal immigrants could lose public contracts for three years and the right to do business in Mississippi for one year.  The law also makes it a felony for an illegal immigrant to accept a job in Mississippi. A message was left with the district attorney's office after hours seeking comment on whether he would use the law to bring state charges against Howard Industries or the workers.

The Mississippi raid is one of several nationwide in recent years with many more to come. Now if we could just find a way to discourage all of those yankees from moving down here we might be able to make the South Southern again.

Yankees Racial Attack on Two Black Students from Dixie

Monday, August 18, 2008: Levi Lee and Bryson Mills arrived on the doorstep of the Daily News last week looking bruised and battered. Even hard-bitten reporters - their eyes widening - seemed taken aback by the appearance of the two young men. Their clothes were smudged with blood. Mills gingerly pressed an ice pack to his right eye, which was swollen shut. Lee sported gashes in his lip and head.

But the worst injuries weren't visible. As victims of an alleged hate crime, Lee and Mills said they suffered the kind of soul-penetrating wounds that may never completely heal."They didn't know us," Lee said. "We didn't know them. "They just beat us up because of the color of our skin."

Lee and Mills, both 22, said that they were so disturbed by the experience that they felt compelled to speak out publicly. They recounted their story with a kind of mild-mannered outrage: Mills had just one more week of summer vacation before classes resumed at Bloomsburg University, where he is captain of the basketball team. Lee, who graduated from Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, N.C., in May, wanted to show his childhood friend a good time before he went back to school.

Duded up in designer clothing, they spent Thursday night clubbing in Old City. They finished the evening at Moda Lounge, a hip place on Chestnut Street known for speciality cocktails and a big dance floor. At about 2 a.m., they walked along Market Street, looking to catch a cab home. The streets were peppered with weary partyers. Suddenly, at 5th and Market streets, Lee and Mills said that they spotted about six or seven white men chasing a black man. " 'Get back here, nigger,' " one yelled, according to Lee and Mills. " 'We gonna get you, nigger.' "

One of the white guys took a swing at the black guy, and Mills said that he yelled out something like, "Yo, they're jumping that black guy!" The pack of white males turned their attention to Mills and Lee, while the guy they were chasing took off toward Penns Landing and disappeared.

"That's when they came running towards us and said, 'You fu**ing niggers,' " Lee said. One guy took a swing at Mills, striking him in the shoulder. Mills said he threw a punch and another guy joined the fight. Lee stepped in to help Mills, and three other white guys pounced. Some wielded two-by-fours. The wooden planks sliced Lee's face, according to Mills and Lee.

As stunned witnesses watched, Lee said he ran into the middle of Market Street and stopped a police car. Meanwhile, Mills lay crumbled on the ground after getting repeatedly stomped, kicked and punched. The white guys ran off, screaming racial slurs, Mills and Lee said. "It's like they had no regard for us as human beings," Mills said.

Paramedics took Mills and Lee to Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, where they spent six hours before doctors determined that they had suffered no broken bones or serious head injuries. Mills' girlfriend, Courtney Gordon, said that she was deep asleep at 4:30 a.m. when Lee called. "He said, 'I need you to come to the hospital. Bryson's eye looks very bad,' " Gordon said.

When she got to Jefferson about a half-hour later, Gordon said that she tried to hide her horror when she saw Mills. By then, police Det. Thomas Galonsky was there to take their statements. He informed them that police already had two suspects in custody. "There was a real good witness, an independent witness, who watched the whole thing," Galonsky said in a phone interview Friday.

The witness pointed out two guys, who were nabbed about a block away from 5th and Market, Galonsky said. Police arrested Richard Lyons, 25, and James Genearao, 26, also known as James Cummings, both from the city's Fishtown section. Lyons and Genearao, who was charged under the name Cummings, were charged with criminal conspiracy, possession of an instrument of a crime, simple assault, aggravated assault, terroristic threats, reckless endangerment and ethnic intimidation.

Galonsky said that he was still trying to identify other possible suspects. He didn't know whether to characterize the incident as a hate crime, he said. "I think some hate might have come out during the attack, but I don't know what sparked the whole thing," he said. Lyons' mother, Nicole Lyons, said that her son is not a racist. "I know my son and he's not anything like that," she said. She claimed that Mills and Lee attacked her son, perhaps in an attempt to rob him. Genearao's family could not be reached for comment.

Lee and Mills grew up together in North Philly and graduated from Benjamin Franklin High School. They both won college scholarships. In college, they thrived, feeling as though no matter their ethnicity or where they came from, if they worked hard nothing could hold them back. Now they are less certain of that. Never before had they encountered such in-your-face racism, Lee and Mills said. Mills' mother, Anita Bethea, said that she cried when her son told her what had happened. "Something just dropped in me," Bethea said. "It really hurt. I was upset that he had to learn that racial tension and racial hatred still exist in 2008. His belief that all is right with the world is gone. There is no getting it back."

I lived in Philadelphia for almost 25 years and I can tell you first hand that I saw more racism up north than I ever saw in Dixie yet the self righteous liberals in this country seem to turn a blind eye to the northern racism while venting their hatred and bigotry against the South and her symbols. Meanwhile POTTSVILLE, Pa. - Three young men were ordered yesterday to stand trial in the beating death of a Mexican immigrant after their friend testified that two of them sucker-punched and kicked the victim during a late-night melee. More yankee racial tolerance.

Southern Governors to Develop Energy Plan

WHITE SULPHUR SPRINGS, W.Va. 11 Aug. 2008 Southern governors whose states represent one of the nation's major energy producing regions are working on a comprehensive plan to reduce the South's carbon footprint and create jobs. "This is a real opportunity for us," Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine said Monday during the closing day of the Southern Governors Association conference at the Greenbrier. Southern states are already working individually to reduce energy use and develop better technology, but need a unified voice to help shape the national debate, he said.

West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin said more federal research dollars are needed to develop clean-coal technologies, especially if coal is going to continue to account for about half of the nation's energy use. "Coal and nuclear are carrying the load," Manchin said. But he said they account for a disproportionately small share of research funding. Many of the region's universities, including the University of Kentucky and Duke University in North Carolina, are eager to assist with research, officials representing both institutions told the governors.

Oklahoma Rebellion

20 July 2008: One of the unappreciated casualties of the War of 1861, erroneously called a Civil War, was its contribution to the erosion of constitutional guarantees of state sovereignty. It settled the issue of secession, making it possible for the federal government to increasingly run roughshod over Ninth and 10th Amendment guarantees. A civil war, by the way, is a struggle where two or more parties try to take over the central government. Confederate President Jefferson Davis no more wanted to take over Washington, D.C., than George Washington wanted to take over London. Both wars are more properly described as wars of independence. Oklahomans are trying to recover some of their lost state sovereignty by House Joint Resolution 1089, introduced by State Rep. Charles Key. The resolution's language, in part, reads:

"Whereas, the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States reads as follows: 'The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.'; and Whereas, the Tenth Amendment defines the total scope of federal power as being that specifically granted by the Constitution of the United States and no more; and whereas, the scope of power defined by the Tenth Amendment means that the federal government was created by the states specifically to be an agent of the states; and Whereas, today, in 2008, the states are demonstrably treated as agents of the federal government. … Now, therefore, be it resolved by the House of Representatives and the Senate of the 2nd session of the 51st Oklahoma Legislature: that the State of Oklahoma hereby claims sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States over all powers not otherwise enumerated and granted to the federal government by the Constitution of the United States. That this serve as Notice and Demand to the federal government, as our agent, to cease and desist, effective immediately, mandates that are beyond the scope of these constitutionally delegated powers."

Key's resolution passed in the Oklahoma House of Representatives with a 92 to 3 vote, but it reached a bottleneck in the Senate where it languished until adjournment.

However, Key plans to reintroduce the measure when the legislature reconvenes.

Federal usurpation goes beyond anything the Constitution's framers would have imagined. James Madison, explaining the constitution, in Federalist Paper 45, said, "The powers delegated … to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.

The former will be exercised principally on external objects, [such] as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce. … The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people." Thomas Jefferson emphasized that the states are not "subordinate" to the national government, but rather the two are "coordinate departments of one simple and integral whole. … The one is the domestic, the other the foreign branch of the same government."

Both parties and all branches of the federal government have made a mockery of the checks and balances, separation of powers and the republican form of government envisioned by the founders. One of the more disgusting sights for me to is to watch a president, congressman or federal judge take an oath to uphold and defend the United States Constitution, when in reality they either hold constitutional principles in contempt or they are ignorant of those principles.

State efforts, such as Oklahoma's, create a glimmer of hope that one day Americans and their elected representatives will realize that the federal government is the creation of the states. A bit of rebellion by officials in other states will speed that process along.

Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University.

The Late Great Jesse Helms

04 July 2008: Today one of the last of America’s great patriots and a defender of freedom died.

One of the qualities most admired about Jesse was his sincerity, people never had to guess where he stood on an issue, and he was always above board. Some of the things he rallied against during his thirty years as a senator were government spending, abortion, the United Nations, homosexuality, pornography, socialism-communism, and the so-called progressive movement that is determined to lead this country down the path to destruction and slavery.

Of the things that endeared him to the Cuban-American community was his tough stand against Fidel Castro and the communist regime that turned that island nation into a prison for the Cuban people. On February 24, 1996, Cuban fighter jets shot down two private planes operated by a Miami based Cuban refugee support group called Hermanos al Rescate (Brothers to the Rescue) over international waters and it was this atrocity that inspired the Helms-Burton Act.

The Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act of 1996 or Helms-Burton Act is a United States federal law which strengthens and continues the United States embargo against Cuba. The act extended the territorial application of the initial embargo to apply to foreign companies trading with Cuba, and penalized foreign companies allegedly "trafficking" in property formerly owned by U.S. citizens but expropriated by Cuba after the Cuban revolution. The act also covers property formerly owned by Cubans who have since become U.S. citizens.

Helms had close ties to the rightist Salvadoran political leader Roberto D'Aubuisson and was considered a main sponsor of D'Aubuisson's political party, the Nationalist Republican Alliance and supported the contras in Nicaragua as well as the right-wing government of El Salvador. Helms was an ardent supporter of the late Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet.

Helms once offended a black colleague, Democratic Senator Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois who was a rabid anti-Southerner, by singing part of "Dixie" on a Capitol elevator.

Helms had declared homosexuality "degenerate," and homosexuals "weak, morally sick wretches". This being the truth tended to upset a few people but then again truth has a way of doing that sometimes and Jesse had a habit of telling the truth. Jesse Helms will be sorely missed by a lot of staunch Conservatives but especially missed by Southerners who love the South.

Last updated: Saturday, May 02, 2009