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Put not thy faith in princes, or anyone?
 In 1964 I entered Brooklyn Technical High School and its Honor English program. The English part of the entrance exam contained a very long paragraph of legalese, the slang term for the kind of language lawyers use in contracts, and I aced it. I was 14 years old and had never read a contract, so I consider this to be my first channeled experience, though it might also be explained as the result of a past lifetime as either a lawyer, legal secretary, or someone back then who was like I am today, a layman who does his own legal work.
There is a saying about people like me, When you act as your own lawyer you have a fool for a client. This may be true but so far so good and I've saved a lot of money acting as my own lawyer, not to mention the time I've saved - most lawyers see nothing wrong with running up the billable hours when another way of approaching a case might take less time.
I wish I was a lawyer now because I'd be suing EVERYONE in the government and in these investment firms that have caused so much ruin to so many. Back in the Honor English program at Tech, we studied the King James version of the Bible as a book, not the revealed word of God, and it was an experience whose value stays with me to this day. Today, the study of the Bible in a public high school would send the lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union to the barricades to stop that practice, no matter how valuable it might be. Church and state must be separated, they believe. I am not so sure.
I was someone who didn't like saying "Under God" when we stood and said the Pledge of Allegiance, so I didn't say it and no one said anything to me about it because plenty of other boys did (Tech was all boys then, so how smart were we really for going there? Not very!) The Viet Nam war was kicking into gear, boys a little older than me were dying, and one day I didn't stand for the pledge and was hauled to the principles office, at my home room teacher's order, by none other than my best friend, Jay Abramson, who was an officer in the hall monitors guard service (and went on to be a Navy carrier pilot and fly for Continental, who are lucky to have a genius for a pilot). I didn't bear him any malice, he was doing his job and why should both of us get in trouble because of me? This was the supposedly enlightened, selfishly self-less, turbulent sixties and we were the class that went on strike to be allowed to wear blue jeans to school. Seems crazy, no?
Today, the whole world seems to have gone crazy. I believe that, to a large degree, this is the result of separating the morality that is a big part of religion from the schools of this country. How else can we explain the thousands of otherwise good men and women who could not see how wrong it was to make business decisions that, if they were not strictly illegal, were most certainly immoral in that they were putting at risk not just the savings, but the very jobs and lives of countless people who had put their trust in them in one way or another. I'm talking about banks, to be sure, but I'm also talking about government, from the President on down through the Senate and House of Representatives - what a bunch of thieves! They have sold us out for campaign contributions and the wrath of the nation should be upon them. If President Bush and Vice President Cheney are to be prosecuted, then so should be every Senator and Representative, especially Chris Dodd and Barney Frank for knowing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were going to pull us down and doing nothing, unless you call dating an executive from Fannie Mae nothing (Barney Frank was living with the guy when he said FM was safe and sound! What a good example he sets, that hypocrite!). It goes on and on and on right on down to the state and local governments for bad measure. They have not served us well, to be sure, and in many cases they have betrayed our trust in them and in far too many cases they have committed criminal acts that should send them to prison, though when I get this angry I start to think that China has the right idea about what should happen to people who destroy people's lives. And there's nowhere safe to turn now! When you post this rogues galllery, you have to throw in almost every big business that people interact with on a daily basis, of course the banks (Hudson City Savings is great, more solid than any of them!), the brokers, the utilities, the car companies, the health insurers and all insurers for that matter. Today it was revealed that 83 of the biggest 100 corporations have off shore tax havens!
One saying from the Bible that I took to heart was "Put not thy faith in princes." What I didn't realize was that I could not put my faith in practically anyone for the last few decades. Anyone who was in a position to be tempted by making easy money by loosening their morals seems to have done so, using their creativity not for service but for cooking up schemes, cooking the books to hide them, and making up excuses and lies when they were finally caught. This is a disgusting, demoralizing state of affairs. If this was pre-revolutionary America or other countries in the world, there would be riots in the streets. Though I don't want to see riots in the streets, there very well may be more than a few once there are enough people out of work and out of hope.
Speaking of hope, I do hope that President Obama will do his best to live up to the hope/hype he used to get elected. I don't trust anyone now, not even him. So far, it seems that he's been blackmailed by the Clintons, he's put so many of their cronies in major positions of power and public trust. Maybe they know he wasn't born in this country or some other wierdness. I'm telling you, I don't trust anyone now except Amy and our close friends - why should I? Every day, crazier stuff comes out about...everyone! I don't think many people trust the Clintons at this point, so that's a no brainer. But take the fact that Obama came out of the Chicago corrupt political machine. Are we supposed to believe that he arose from that stinking mud without any of it sticking to him, like a lotus flowering from the mud? Sorry if I offend anyone's fairy tale sensibilities, it's just that I don't know what to believe any more and I'm a professional psychic. He seems like a nice guy but I'm sure Bernie Madoff seemed like a nice guy. Time will tell, I know. It's just that I'm afraid of what it will tell.
Though there should not be riots in the street - really, what good would that do? - the government has anticipated that there will be. For the first time since the Civil War, the Posse Commitatus law has been suspended and an active Army combat brigade quartered in the USA ready to deploy somewhere in the USA on a moment's notice. Why? Maybe to defend our Southern border if the situation with the Mexican drug cartels and their assault on the decent people of Mexico and our border areas, like Laredo, Texas, gets out of hand. Maybe to deal with a terrorist attack. Maybe to defend the idiots in our government who have gotten all of us into this mess from an aroused populace.
Speaking of past lifetimes, if Thomas Jefferson and the rest of our founding fathers were alive today they would probably call us all a bunch of cowards for not joining them in rising up en masse and throwing the bums out, as they did to King George III of Britain. To hear people today say that nothing was ever accomplished with violence is to hear people who do not know anything about their own history or any other country's history - violence has accomplished a lot. We're smarter now and we should be able to get it right and get things done without violence, right?
Jefferson and Madison wrote that every generation should have their own revolution. I hope with all my heart that the future peaceful revolutions that are so necessary for the USA, the most important experiment in the history of the world, to endure yet another set of growing pains and get back on track to being the unequivocal light of the world.
I must say that I'm disappointed that for way too long now young people have avoided their civic duty to get out in the street and peacefully protest injustice. The protests of the sixties WORKED! Stop making fun of older people. Stop making fun of everything, there is a time for seriousness and this is that time. I challenge the young people who have a beef with us baby boomers - it seems that your revolution was to rebel against rebelling - to become quiet to the point of invisibility in your fashionable sameness. Well, can you afford that anymore? I know that I cannot afford to be silent anymore.
I have decided that it is time for me to get involved with local politics here in East Hampton. My neighbor is the supervisor, a nice guy, a former police lieutenant, and yet he and his budget guy have spent away the surplus he inherited from the previous administration and done it in a way that may very well be illegal. Sound familiar? Now the State of NY has come in to audit their cooked books. And taxes are being raised big time. Do you see a pattern here? Do you see why I'm more than a little concerned and upset?
Amy and I have worked very hard for a very long time to use our creative energies for the good of all. We never thought we were that special, just doing what was right. We know that the majority of people are like us, moral people. We also now know, unfortunately, that cream of our society has risen to the top but stayed their too long and curdled to the point of being poisonous. Some of the nation's privileged trust-afarians, as the trust fund babies of East Hampton are known locally, and the best and brightest students from all walks of life have advanced themselves to positions of power and then, rather than using their power for the good of all, have made the conscious choice of abusing their power for their own good. They've sold their souls for some gold.
I don't believe in the Devil but I believe in the Devil card of the tarot. The Devil card symbolizes "the seduction of the material world." In our "Enchanted Tarot," Amy used a mask to make the Devil's face because to make it big in big business you have to sometimes wear a mask and play the game. The Devil card is a reminder that you can't play the game all the time or else you'll forget it is a game. And that you have to take the mask off when you're not playing that game.
Too many people with too much power made too much money by robbing too many people. This is intolerable and we must all rise up and get political and make sure that the guilty pay and that we don't pay. These crooks in Congress and Henry Paulson are trying to make sure that their rich friends stay rich even if it makes millions of us poorer, even to the point of being homeless. This outrage cannot go on. We have to do something about it and quickly. Read up on the current situation and then take action in any legal way that you can. We can no longer put our faith in princes, real or imagined.
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