So far the federal government has done little to respond to the historic floods in eastern Iowa which are among the worst in recorded history. In order to maintain tyranny in the flooded areas, local governments have had to step up to meet the challenge.
Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff said Friday that he was pleased with the federal government’s virtually invisible response to the Midwest flooding, which in some areas exceeded 500-year plan levels and has destroyed millions of acres of crops across six states and displaced tens of thousands of people.
There have been no complaints about the federal response, because the federal government hasn’t done much of anything to date.
According to the Associated Press, federal response in the immediate aftermath of the flooding consisted of “moving federal assistance into the regions quickly and not waiting for bureaucratic declarations [and] setting up field offices with state and local officials.” These preparations will come in handy later when people start filing their applications for FEMA money, but in the meantime, for bungling and stupidity, we must look instead to state and local response.
In Cedar Rapids, where the Cedar River crested at 31.1 feet Friday, flooding nine square miles and displacing over 24,000 people, police have cordoned off large areas of the town and have sent in so-called “strike teams” to “inspect” houses as floodwaters begin to recede. On Friday, police chief Greg Graham said that while firefighters would enter homes through unlocked doors and windows, law enforcement would not enter homes. Yet video evidence has surfaced that police officers were not only entering homes, but breaking down locked doors and windows to do so.
Police officer Josh Bell, seen in this video breaking into a home and threatening a nearby resident, is described by a person who has known him since high school as a “prick cop” who had psychological problems including trouble socializing with his peers. Bell has certainly gotten his revenge against the society which “once threw him out into the hall butt ass naked after swim class.” Now he’s the big man with a gun, and he plays the tyrant role well. Notice how he goes for his gun while he’s breaking and entering.
Police officers manning these checkpoints are still keeping people out, even though floodwaters are receding. They even arrested one man at gunpoint who attempted to drive past a checkpoint on Monday. Rick Blazek, 54, was dragged from his truck at gunpoint and arrested after police say he hit one of them with his truck three times while trying to drive around the checkpoint. Three times? Did the officer just keep jumping in front of the truck? The officer, of course, was not injured at all.
Yet some people still think the police and other bureaucrats are there to protect them, because — at least this week — that’s what they seem to be doing.
“They are keeping us out of our homes even though we’re getting upset with them,” resident Veronica Johnson told CNN. “We have no right [to be upset] because they’re trying to protect us.”
Indeed. Strike teams are tagging houses as they inspect them, with green stickers meaning the house is safe to enter, yellow stickers meaning the house is damaged but safe, red stickers meaning the house is unsafe, and purple stickers meaning the government will come by later and forcibly demolish the home.
Pray you don’t come home and find a red or purple sticker. You could get arrested and jailed for going into your own home, because the government’s idea of protecting you from yourself is pointing guns at you and forcing you into one of their own small metal boxes, and perhaps killing you. Either way your life is at risk, either from nature or from the people who you thought were protecting you.
Remember, these people are under no obligation to protect you from anything. It’s not part of the social contract. They can let you die if it suits them, and your survivors have no legal recourse. The only reason they go to all this trouble is to preserve their illusion of legitimacy and make you think that they should have control over every aspect of your life, for your own good.
These are not people to be respected; there is nothing respectable about how they do what they do. They may instead be feared, but above all they must be opposed, for not only violating the Fourth Amendment by breaking into people’s homes without good reason, but for doing what they do best: violating the trust of the people who were gullible enough to think that government was there to help out of some humanitarian motive.
We know that government can’t do anything as well as people acting voluntarily, and everyone in Cedar Rapids should now know what Hurricane Katrina victims know: ordinary people are much better than government employees at emergency response, and if government responds, things will go wrong.
And next to suffer from government incompetence and tyranny is downstate Illinois and Missouri, where the Mississippi River is now rising and threatening to reach levels not seen since the flood of 1993. More tyranny is sure to come.
(1 votes, average: 3.00 out of 5)
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Continually increasing the debt is one of the logical outcomes of Keynesianism, since more government spending is always their answer. It is claimed that government must not stop spending when the economy is so fragile. Government must act. Yet, when times are good, government also increases in size and scope, because we can afford it, it is claimed. There is never a good time to rein in government spending according to Keynesian economists and the proponents of big government.
Jersey Shore? Fuhgeddaboudit. Jersey City is the gem of reality TV. Shore is MTV. Jersey City is FBI. Like, how real is that? Killer videos of pols talking trash and passing cash have been unspooling in federal court in Newark at the trial of Jersey City Deputy Mayor Leona Beldini. Beldini was busted last summer in an FBI sweep that corralled dozens of Jersey pols. It was one of the largest corruption roundups in Jersey's thick history of roundups.
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Bob
Jun 18, 2008
It’s getting closer every day. Hitler loved guys like the one in the video. They’ll work for free if you give them authority over others. What do you think Glen?
I know Josh Bell
Jun 19, 2008
I heard from “Josh” that he got a call for a drunk driving incident with a woman….It was his mother! She was drunk as heck and he let her go with her promise not to do it again. His mother and her boyfriend are two of the biggest cocaine dealers in Cedar Rapids and josh knows it but he does nothing about it, he knows that his mother is always over at her friend’s house dawn zamastil doing cocaine and smoking pot on her weekly Friday night party and he does nothing about it! That is the sort of cop he is!!!!
J Dub
Jun 19, 2008
So no response is bad? I thought you libertarian types thought the feds shouldn’t be involved at all, so which is it?
Michael Hampton
Jun 19, 2008
In the case of FEMA, no repsonse is clearly good.
Bret
Jun 19, 2008
Is it fair that Josh Bell is being set up as the poster child representative of homeland security (or government officials in general)? This guy clearly appears to be a public menace, but let’s be careful of allowing anectdotes to rule our emotions.
Michael
Jun 19, 2008
If the buildings are in need of repair, they should be sending in carpenters, joiners and plumbers, not law enforcement. That would probably be quicker at getting things sorted.
A. Magnus
Jun 20, 2008
These ‘law enforcement’ officers don’t deserve to wear the American flag on their uniforms, as they clearly are following the practices of communist states. They are anti-American pinkos and traitors who need to be ostracized by their respective communities.
This American
Jun 20, 2008
While there may still be a few people unaware of the CONSTANT cloud seeding and other weather modification efforts that go on CONSTANTLY over the U.S. and other parts of the world 24/7, I would simply add that seeding for rain has been going on over Missouri, Iowa, Wisconsin, etc. and is VERY visible on many satellite maps. Now why exactly would any Gov. entity want to seed rain over a flooded area?????
Acua Pie
Jun 20, 2008
Google HARPP to find out about the cloud seeding (CHEMtrails) and weather manipulation by our US “DEFENSE” Dept. Get informed!
dmw
Jun 20, 2008
When did the government start using police officers and firefighters as engineers? I would think that if the government needs to inspect these homes they would use experts, not thugs.
This American
Jun 20, 2008
Thanks, Acua Pie, yes I think you mean HAARP (in Gakona Alaska, one of MANY “ionispheric heaters” located worldwide. What the world’s citizens are now witnessing are problems being INTENTIONALLY created with the use of stealth technology (not really all that stealthy as regards this BLATANT weather engineering) that the “controllers” can use to carry out their social/economic/political engineering, while hiding behind a cover of plausible deniability (acts of god,etc). Pretty sadistic IMO but they appear to believe that murder and destruction and disease and economic warfare (and yes flooding people out of their homes) is all well and good if it gives them even MORE control and aids their dreams of totalitarianism. So MANY citizens are awakening to this madness though,and I hope the good citzens of flooded Iowa will take the time as you suggest to become informed (chemtrailcentral is a good place to start) about these efforts. They are quite real (beware the conmen out there defending by denial this lunacy) and quite destructive and often deadly, and it’s time WE The People push back and drive these killers and destroyers back into the sewer from which they oozed out of.
RiverRat
Jun 20, 2008
Great article Mike, no error in your IO. :)
I’ve cross posted that video quite a few places to help spread the word.
Ray
Jun 21, 2008
Does seem to be your normal I am more important than everyone else type cop.
I have done a lot of response work and worked incident command at all levels. I find that in any activity where you don’t get to wave a gun around cops are pretty much useless. The sad thing is that the Feds are even worse. I find that the volunteer cops like the sheriff’s posse to have a least one level of professionalism higher than the paid officers.
Once where I was incident command I ordered one to move his car or I wold have it moved and he threatened to shoot me if I tried. I did point out his chances of survival if he tried that in front of the about 15 armed posse members present. The only reason he was there was that he had heard an Arab name in the context of a hazmat incident. Guess what the Arab last named truck driver was native born and born again ;-) The hazmat was the fuel tanks in conjunction with the cargo both of which were leaking. They were leaking because some idiot gave his college graduate dean’s lister a corvette for this accomplishment. The fed was sure that this Arab and hazmat connection made it a crime scene under his control.
Jun 22, 2008
AAMVA to build REAL ID verification hub - Homeland Stupidity
asdf
Jun 23, 2008
This is outrageous, the “checkpoints” and the breaking and entering by the police. These are practices straight out of Nazi Germany. I’ll be damned if I will let this happen in my country.
George W. Leppelmeie
Jun 24, 2008
Dick,
we got ta shut down this site from all the Internets.
Signed,
the Decider
EL CID
Jun 24, 2008
What qualifies the Police and Fire Dept. to access the condition of a home or building? I have been a contractor for 15years and I won’t give you that opinion. I would consider someone who is a Civil Engineer, Architectual engineer or Structural engineer for crying out loud even an army corps engineer to do this work. These guys were there to do one thing create fear, and sweep the homes for contraband (ie…guns, gold or anything they could get thier hands on). Wake up America this is conditioning your mind for more of the same.
Ray
Jun 25, 2008
EL CID:
I do wonder why they thought that they needed to do this. It would have been interesting to see what would have happened if they broke into a house to “survey it” and had it fall in on them and kill them. I can see a number agencies which would have then tried to sue the home owner. Don’t think it couldn’t happen. I worked the recent floods (three days eight hours sleep :-( ) We had a lady who had to be rescued because someone let her into her house, and she was literally jumping up and down for joy that it was not damaged and that caused it to fall in on her.
I can see police or fire being able to tell that a house is toast, that is unsafe. But they could do that from the outside better than from the inside. I could maybe see some kind of a “this one didn’t get flooded so is OK” thing. But once again this would be best done from the outside. Other than that I tend to agree with you that in most cases determining safe as compared to unsafe would take someone who is trained as an engineer, which I am, and with serious construction experience, which I don’t really have (one summer as a heavy equipment operator doesn’t count ;-) ). Even then there will be issues of not catching unsafe conditions.
This would lead one to believe that you are dealing with some kind of a pretext search. Want to bet they wanted to search one house really really bad, and had for several years, and now they figured by “surveying” all of them they could “accidentally” search this house.
This American
Jun 25, 2008
Citizens best be forewarned, all over this great country America is witnessing a WAR ON PRIVACY and an attack on The Bill of Rights by a FEW Fascist elements that work night and day to undermine the few protections Americans have left.
They will take advantage of ANY situation they can to detroy what little Liberty is left in America, they have their Orwellian stooges in BOTH parties, they have NO allegiance to America, they serve a GLOBALIST agenda that sets an ELITIST FEW above ALL the rest of the world’s citizens. I fully suggest if there are any citizens not familiar with the term FALSE FLAG, that they learn what that term means pronto, these Orwellians are NOT above creating their own problems and then using that to further their Liberty hating agenda.
LONG LIVE THE REPUBLIC and those proud American Patriots that fully support her and The Bill of Rights!!!
SiliconDoc
Jun 25, 2008
I can understand a stray officer or two, but what really bugs me is they turn out to be lifelong veterans of the force, and when seemingly a three year old can figure our mr officer friendly is a bad man and did a bad bad thing (no doubt for the hundreth time – just got caught this time), the police chief shows up on TV, delcares all their men and women completely and utterly innocent, and then we hear the insane rabble screeding about lives on the line every moment of every day, the endless spew piles up from LA to DC, shrieking support for the criminal in the blue uniform, and the press mostly pretends it doesn’t know what the truth is, and could get to it if that secret internal investigation wasn’t going on…
The real clincher is the Police Chief appearing and excusing the absolutely stark raving madman conduct that is all over youtube and present but friendly censored on the nightly news, while he dreams up some ridiculous accusation for the beaten and bleeding victim.
Then we have the endless station beating videos, and the bully thug in blue street cop, who acts like a gang banger, if you don’t immediately “obey the command” or dare flinch, or “have an attitude”, or make some sort of motion that is instantly interpreted as ” a felony attempted assault on an officer of the law “.
Youtube and the internet combined with commonplace digital camera/phone vid is the worst thing that could have happened to the entrenched thug police culture.
Smaller towns and cities aren’t that bad yet, but the major 100 or 200 cities are a big mess.
It seems jumping to takedown and zapping and beating while screaming is standard operating procedure, they all do it like that, I’ve seen ‘em in Europe on the youtube – seems it’s a western or maybe global equivalence training.
Saw a stadium crown intervene in a cop administered skull crushing beating they were delivering to a fan who had run across the field with a flag, too. The opposing team and crowd watched for a few – but couldn’t let them crush the kids skull and break his neck or back with the billy clubs and knees – the stadium piled out to rescue the poor fan, and the cops fled the field. One of ‘em didn’t make it, he was hit and kicked unconscious – before some of the fans put an end to that as well.
Sure taught me something. It’s gone so far, and they feel so justified in these beatings we see on the internet, that they’ell do it in full view of a filled stadium…
AND THE PEOPLE DID RISE UP AND SAY “NO WAY!”
Yeah, it’s gone too far. That’s why busting in doors and banning people from their own property by show of force edict and making haphazard condemning purple sticker guesses is one of their favorite pasttimes. Bust open the doors in the name of security, creep in wondows and flop in before you announce who you are and not even have the sanity to think the resident might react and consider you a breaking in thug in the “dangerous” area you’re supposed to be protecting…
If a resident shoots you as you flop unannounced in their window or break open their front door and be 5 steps in before your yapper opens and says “police fire and rescue”, and blows your noggin off, will you thank them for remaining safe before you croak, or will it “assualt on a criminal in blue”, again ?
It’s really, really sick.
They NEED to be put back in their place, they need to know who they work for, and what they are supposed to be doing, which is assisting, not becoming tyrannous idiots making every matter they show up for worse than it was before they got there.
SiliconDoc
Jun 25, 2008
I read the strike team link and the “rules” . I’ll say one thing. If some police or fireperson thinks they are goig to enter my home, disaster or no disaster, without my permission or me present, they better draw their weapons before I draw mine.
I saw one MAN in the recent reports, but they got his red pickup truck stopped, broke his window, and yanked him out arrested him.
I seriously do not know how people put up with it. I guess most of the population is so scared of water and mud or debris they thank the thugs for “saving their lives” after they break down their front doors or prying open a window jam and pile in, for their secret search and grab and “I’m the only person who can smell natural gas” arrogant stupidity.
If you live in a residence and cannot shut off your own gas and electric, and check for damage yourself, maybe you shouldn’t be free.
We’ve become a society that demands EVERYONE be a helpless, incompetent victim of their own stupidity, unable to take a tiny risk that “only the local trained thugs” can.
If you notice, we don’t hear about endless injuries and deaths from the “frontline thugs”.
They should have the decency to WORK WITH the citizens – with them PRESENT if they so desire – that of course would be EXCELLENT community relations and “relationship building” – but we see what that means to the out of control power freak thugs- not a thing.
People want to go in, they simply sign a waiver, then the thugs assist as decent people should, that’s how it should be done.
” ohhh, we can’t have that! we’d be hindered…”
Yes, a million endless excuses, it’s all the people’s fault, only the tyrranists are capable.
Boy am I sick of it.
Keep your thug paws off and out of my fellow Amricans homes and property until and only IF they issue a request and agree with assistance.
Steal from everyone at the airports, steal into their under cover of walled keep out thug enforced lines…
Not here bubba, not ever.
Ray
Jun 26, 2008
Better question if they were that worried about the gas, why in the world did they enter the house. All gas shutoffs are outside of the house. I responsible emergency worker might be worried about gas in a situation like this, but such a responsible emergency worker would know you don’t enter a house that possibly has gas leaking into it except to rescue people. No live people you shut the gas off outside of the house and wait for it to vent. Now even if the house is closed up it will vent pretty shortly, but breaking a window or two might be in order to speed the process. But you have no reason to enter the house.
susan28
Jul 03, 2008
“then the thugs assist as decent people should, that’s how it should be done.”
LOL.. (picturing myself shouting, “hey i need some assistance, can i get a thug over here please?”, hehe..
agreed w/ Bob that they’d do it for free; i’ll do you one better: i think they’d PAY for the priviledge, for privilidge is exactly what they’re exercising.
spent the last couple days digesting this great article, entitled “The Myth of the Rule of Law” by a Georgetown law prof deconstructing the myth and explaining why we buy into it, how we are persuaded to do so, and why we’ll be forever saddled with this sort of outrage until we wake up from the delusion.
mark
Oct 25, 2008
fagula Josh Bell whould of got a bullet in the head if he did that at my house..