Frontiersman, November 1994

Notice:
This issue of the Frontiersman contains contact information that is out-of-date. For current contact information, click here.

Frontiersman, November 1994

Exit Pole
by Sam Aurelius Milam III
A written declaration of U.S. citizenship is a prerequisite to voting in California. It doesn't matter if you've lived here all your life, or anything else. You must make the written declaration, and you must make it under penalty of perjury.
Citizenship wasn't constitutionally defined in the U.S.A. until July of 1868. Page 1 Box 1 At that time, by the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, a citizen was defined (in part) as being someone subject to the jurisdiction of the U.S. government. Jurisdiction means power and control. When you register to vote, you acknowledge (under penalty of perjury) your subordination to the power and control of the U.S. government.
It isn't surprising that voter registration is voluntary. It has to be, because that's the only way the resulting jurisdiction can be enforceable; there is, after all, no obligation under duress. This also explains the intense propaganda aimed at persuading people to register to vote. The reason is that the government needs documentation of your obligation, whereby that obligation can be proven. Remember, under the Doctrine of Social Contract and the common law, you don't have to prove the lack of an obligation. That's presumed. If the government believes an obligation exists, the government must prove it. Your voter registration form, the Fourteenth Amendment, and any good dictionary will allow the government to do so.
When you voluntarily become a U.S. citizen, you acquire an obligation to do whatever the U.S. government tells you to do. Page 1 Box 2 When you voluntarily register to vote, you acknowledge that obligation in a form that can be used against you in court. The obligation is legitimate because you joined voluntarily and you were fully informed at the time. (Well, weren't you?) Neither the results of any election, the performance of any elected official, nor the behavior of any bureaucrat is of any relevance. You knew the rules and you joined anyway.
Whether or not you were fully informed before, you are now and my advice is don't participate. The influence of your vote, compared to the cost to you in status, is probably the worst deal you'll ever make with the U.S. government. It does you no good at all, it empowers those who enslave you in the name of liberty, and (assuming you haven't already done so in some other way) registration to vote converts your status from free man to slave.

They Lied Again
by Sam Aurelius Milam III
They said that the Twenty-First Amendment repealed Prohibition which, as you can see from the quotes below, is nonsense. The Twenty-First Amendment repealed the Eighteenth Amendment, but it didn't repeal Prohibition. It revised Prohibition. How many more lies will it take before you don't believe them anymore?

Genocide: I recommend Gun control + Government = Genocide, by Jay Simkin, in the September 1994 issue of Massachusetts Liberty. The article explores the foremost reason for gun ownership. Write to P.O. Box 2610, Boston, Massachusetts 02208 or call 617 625-1100
Page 1 Box 5

Gestapo Force
by Sam Aurelius Milam III

On Tuesday, September 27, 1994 a 68-year-old grandfather armed with a 3 1/2" pocket knife was murdered by officers of the San Jose Gestapo. It isn't clear whether the old man was threatening the officers or trying to surrender to them. Witnesses gave conflicting reports. Gestapo spokesman Lt. Craig Buckhout said the officers used necessary force. "The way we train our officers," he explained, "is that they use the necessary force until the threat is over with. Sometimes that's nine shots, and sometimes that's one shot." So six armed cops confronted an elderly man in a parking lot, fired a total of 9 shots at him, and killed him. According to the Gestapo, that's necessary force. I'll tell you what I think. Policemen should never be permitted to carry weapons. It's never a policeman's job to kill someone. Never. There is always an alternative. When all else fails, a beleaguered cop can back down. With 6 to 1 odds against an old man, they could have subdued him. They didn't need to kill him. The officers who did it should have their trigger fingers amputated.

Actually, maybe all cops should have their trigger fingers amputated as a prerequisite to being cops. If they don't like it, then they can go after data-entry jobs, where they'll have an excuse for needing all their fingers.

Miss Management
by Sam Aurelius Milam III

On Sunday, September 16, 1990, I watched the Bloopers and Practical Jokes program on T.V. One of the jokes was played on the 1989 Miss America, and led me to speculate about the traditional political process.

She (Miss America) was told of a radical new broadcast technology that had just been invented, and was to be demonstrated by way of a live broadcast. She was told that the name of the new technology generated an acronym that allowed it to be named after her position. I don't remember the buzz-words they used, but it was something like Multisynchronous Integrated Signal System, or some such gobbledegook.

Miss America accepted the invitation to be the official host of the inaugural broadcast. The day of the history-making event arrived. All was ready for the phoney broadcast with two phoney technical experts and Miss America on the set. With two minutes until broadcast time, one of the experts had to leave the set for an emergency phone call. A few seconds later the other expert developed problems with her microphone and left the set to resolve the problem. Miss America sat and waited, and the seconds ticked by. People around her, participating in the joke, began to get uneasy, then nervous, then frantic, and the two technical experts were nowhere to be found. When broadcast time arrived, Miss America was alone on the set. She'd been given no technical briefing whatsoever, and she knew nothing about the new broadcast system, yet she was suddenly told to present a discussion of it and demonstrate the enigmatic equipment in front of her. The frantic director told her to "just ad lib!" She did. After a minute or so of cool and collected chatter, she'd said all she could say, and seemed in need of some help, but not at all flustered. As viewers, of course, we could see the prank in action on cameras of which Miss America was unaware. The pranksters then presented her with a set of large hand written cue cards which had the appearance of having been quickly scribbled, and were not easily readable. However, Miss America picked up her lines without any visible hesitation, and began reading a technical description of the new system. It was, of course, nothing but a lot of technical sounding mumbo-jumbo, but Miss America didn't know that. From her description of the system, an uninformed viewer wouldn't have known her from the inventor. However, the second cue card, and all the cards following it, were upside down.

At this point, it became evident that the practical joke had been turned upon the pranksters, because Miss America continued to read from the upside down cards as if she'd been doing it all her life. I was entranced by her performance. After several more cards, the prankster holding them contrived to fumble one and drop the whole stack of them onto the floor. With only a slight change of angle, Miss America continued to read from the next card, which was on the floor and still oriented so she was reading upside-down. She was marvelous. She took my breath away. Her poise was perfect. She never lost her finesse, or her appearance of enjoying the occasion. Of course, when no more cue cards were visible, she had to stop. Even that she did without loosing her composure. Then the director cued her to start demonstrating the new system, and she gamely started pushing buttons on the equipment before her. It happened that one of them activated a pre-planned announcement telling her that she had been tricked, ending the joke.

Her amazing grace and poise under such stress in what she thought was a live broadcast has caused me to speculate that perhaps the wrong method is being used to choose political figures. Maybe you need in them other qualities than those which presently enable them to win elections. Perhaps their political beliefs are irrelevant. Their advertised opinions during campaigns are mostly cowplop anyway. They never do what they said they would do, so why worry about it? Maybe you should stop electing them, and start selecting them. You could have a Mr. President contest and a Mr. Senator contest. The Senators and Representatives (from Texas, for example) could be selected from among the Mr. Texas contestants. Page 2 Box 1

Selections would be much cheaper than elections because the entire process could be financed by admission tickets, sponsors, network broadcast contracts, and so forth. You could select your political figures according to their performance judged against a set of standards not unlike those of the Miss America contest. Maybe for extra excitement you could have some events patterned after the American Gladiators competitions. The contestants would need to be healthy, attractive, intelligent, quick-witted, friendly, and courteous. They'd have a better chance if they could sing, dance, or tell jokes. The winners would get to travel around a lot, make lots of guest appearances, do some commercials, and get practical jokes played on them. Most important, they'd be so busy acting like celebrities that they probably wouldn't have much time to do a lot of damage to the country. Even if you didn't get better people in office, you certainly wouldn't get any worse and they wouldn't have all those promises to break. Something to think about, eh? Try it. You might like it.

Reader’s Corner
RE: article Mafia versus Federal Bureaucracy by Jim May, October 1994
As always I enjoy the Frontiersman, and this time my attention fell on the Mafia vs the Bureaucrats. My advice is: don't feel too secure with the Mafia. It seems they have just discovered that their power has been limited and they are off to take over the government. (I believe they are beginning with Chicago, a place where ethical standards have never been too high.) I'm really not surprised. Seems to me the Italian city-states in the Middle Ages were taken over by these types & later peddled as "noblemen". And next thing you know they'll be bureaucrats!

— Shirley Lewis, Sunnyvale California

Losers' Game
by Sam Aurelius Milam III

When I was a child, my mother taught me how to avoid the seemingly inevitable fight over which kid gets the biggest piece of pie. She suggested that you let one kid cut the pie and then let the other kid choose his piece first. I recently ran across that same example in a story called Triple Detente, by Piers Anthony. It reminded me of my mother's advice, and also set me to thinking. The method has an elegant simplicity that works not in spite of human nature, but because of it. Such an approach is needed in the solution of many larger and more complex problems in the world today.

I don't advocate membership in the U.S. electorate. Page 3 Box 1

I don't necessarily even support the idea of democracy, but the nearly universal propaganda in its favor assures that people will be lining up to vote for quite some time to come. This gives a certain importance to the problems inherent in democracy.

There are several such problems. One of them is election fraud. Throughout the world, elections are vulnerable to corruption. Even if the people supervising them aren't corrupted by their own vested interests, they are vulnerable to covert control by incumbent politicians. The problem of election credibility is never far below the surface, and has spawned remedies which range from idiotic to sinister. Among the very worst is voter registration. Such regimentation of the voters by the authorities is one of the primary dangers of democracy.

If democracy must be attempted in spite of its disadvantages, a method must be discovered whereby the elections will be reasonably honest. The method must work not in spite of human nature, but because of it. In this article, I'm suggesting such a method.

First, the method must be defined constitutionally. This will give it the force of constitutional authority, and also tend to protect it from frivolous changes and legislative tampering.

Here's the method. Each election should be performed under the sole and exclusive authority of an Electoral Congress, which should have no other function. Every candidate who is on the ballot for any office must be required to sit in the next Electoral Congress if he isn't elected to the office for which he is a candidate. Thus, the membership of each Electoral Congress will consist of the candidates who ran for office and lost the election. The term in office of each member of the Electoral Congress will be until the next election for the office to which he failed to win election. Members of the Electoral Congress must be prohibited from running for any government office while they are serving in the Electoral Congress but otherwise may run for office as often as they wish. Failure to win an election must be the only way to obtain a seat in the Electoral Congress. The size of the Electoral Congress will be determined solely by the number of losing candidates.

Consider the advantages. Every election will be conducted under the authority of people who lost the previous election for their particular office. They wouldn't need to complain about having lost an unfair election because, being in charge of the next election, they would have a much more powerful tool than complaining. They could conduct a fair and honest election. Since these people are prohibited from running for office, they won't have an immediate personal incentive to rig the election. If they rig it for somebody else, then their victims will be in control of the next election. Members of small parties can make sure that the requirements for ballot status don't exclude small parties. Independent candidates can oppose unreasonable requirements for ballot qualification for independent candidates. Nobody can complain that the incumbents are in control of the elections. While the losers in charge are making it possible for outsiders to have a fair chance at beating incumbents, they won't dare make it too hard for incumbents to win, because when the losers eventually win they'll become incumbents. Then the previous incumbents will be running the elections. Everybody has an incentive to create and maintain a credible election process, no matter what his position.

This method invokes human self interest in such a way as to provide much incentive for the most fair elections that can be had. Present efforts fall far short of this ideal. They try to mandate fair elections by various repressive measures intended to prevent misconduct, or to punish it. However, you cannot modify human nature to accommodate your political system. Instead, you must design your political system to accommodate human nature. Incentive works. Prohibition doesn't.

"... Democracy, for example, arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal. Oligarchy is based on the notion that those who are unequal in one respect are in all respects unequal; being unequal, that is, in property, they suppose themselves to be unequal absolutely. The democrats think that as they are equal they ought to be equal in all things; while the oligarchs, under the idea that they are unequal, claim too much, which is one form of inequality. All these forms of government have a kind of justice, but, tried by an absolute standard, they are faulty; and, therefore, both parties, whenever their share in the government does not accord with their preconceived ideas, stir up revolution. Those who excel in virtue have the best right of all to rebel (for they alone can with reason be deemed absolutely unequal), but then they are of all men the least inclined to do so ...."

— from Politics, by Aristotle

Wanted: This newsletter needs an artist to produce political cartoons upon request. Any volunteers?

If you don't want to keep receiving this newsletter, print RETURN TO SENDER above your name and address, cross out your name and address, and return the newsletter. When I receive it, I'll terminate your subscription.

Back issues or extra copies of this newsletter are available upon request.

Permission is hereby granted to reproduce this newsletter in its entirity. Permission is also granted to reproduce material from this newsletter, except for material that has been reprinted from other publications, provided that the reproduction is accurate and that proper credit is given.

I solicit letters, articles, and cartoons for the newsletter, but I don't pay for them. Short items are more likely to be printed. I suggest that letters and articles be shorter than 500 words, but that's flexible depending on space available and the content of the piece. I give credit for all items printed unless the author specifies otherwise.

This newsletter isn't for sale. If you care to make a voluntary contribution, you may do so. The continued existence of the newsletter will depend, in part, on such contributions. I accept cash and postage stamps. I don't accept checks, money orders, anything that will smell bad by the time it arrives, or anything that requires me to provide ID or a signature to receive it. In case anybody's curious, I also accept gold, silver, platinum, etc. I'm sure you get the idea.

Money (the series):
Divisibility and Availability
by Sam Aurelius Milam III
Knowing that to be money, a thing must be both durable and portable, you're far better educated than you were before. Your next acquisition of money might be in the form of Levi's jeans. They're durable, if the advertisements are true, and they're portable. People carry them around all the time. Some people do it quite nicely. However, if you accept Levi's jeans as money and then go to the Quik Stop to buy a half gallon of milk, you'll discover the milk to be worth a fraction of the value of one pair of jeans, which is your smallest unit of money. If you divide a pair of jeans into (for example) 30 equal pieces, none of the pieces will be worth 1/30 of the original jeans. The problem of making a small purchase with indivisible money will reveal to you yet another of the Rules of Money. That is, to work well as money, a thing must be divisible without loss.

All this will probably have caused you to give serious thought to the nature of money. Perhaps you'll next arrange to be paid in pecans. A box of pecans is durable, portable, and can be divided without loss down to the size of a pecan, which is pretty darned small. Your next trip to Sears might be quite successful. In exchange for a trunk of pecans, you might buy a video system. In exchange for a bag of pecans, the Quik Stop might sell you a loaf of bread. All will seem well for a while, and you might not notice the sudden appearance in vacant lots and back yards of a large number of young recently planted trees. However, after several years of happily doing business in pecans, you'll notice that the cost of that loaf of bread has crept from one bag of pecans to two bags of pecans, and you might start to wonder what's wrong. The answer is another of the Rules of Money. This is what happened. When people noticed that pecans were circulating as money, every available space in town was planted with pecan trees. As the trees matured and began to produce, the supply of pecans grew quickly, and their value dropped. Thus, you learned that to work well as money, a thing must be available in limited quantity. All things have value in relation to other things, and any thing whose availability can be easily manipulated will not work well as money.

Next Month: Acceptability and Intrinsic Value

The greatest convenience of money over barter isn't for the buyer or the seller, but for the accountant.

Respond to:
Frontiersman
435 South White Road
San Jose, California 95127

Back to the Frontiersman Directory

PDF Version of this Insert With Links

PDF Version of this Insert to Print

Instructions for using this DNA Privacy Agreement:


•		Take this DNA Privacy Agreement with you when you visit any doctor, nurse, hospital, clinic, or any health care provider or practitioner whatsoever.

•		Before consenting to provide any sample whatsoever (blood, urine, tissue, etc.), present this agreement to the person asking for the sample.

•		Do not consent to provide any such sample until this agreement is completed and signed.

This document is provided courtesy of

, 435 South White Road, San Jose, California 95127
and may be reproduced freely.

Sunday, October 23, 1994

DNA Privacy Agreement

I, _________________________________________________ hereby make the following statements and enter into this DNA Privacy Agreement.	Name of Signatory, Printed
I am ______________________________________________ at ________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________	Title or Position of Signatory Name of Institution Address of Institution
I hereby certify that I am authorized to make this DNA Privacy Agreement, and that the Institution named hereon is bound by my signature affixed hereon. I hereby, on behalf of the Institution named hereon, assure the Patient ___________________________________________________	Name of Patient, Printed
that the bodily fluid or substance taken from the Patient, or provided by the Patient, will not now or later be used in any way for purposes of DNA related identification of the patient.
I hereby make these statements and enter into this DNA Privacy Agreement under penalty of perjury.
___________________________________________________ ___________________________________________________	Date of Signature Signature

This document is provided courtesy of

, 435 South White Road, San Jose, California 95127
and may be reproduced freely.

Sunday, October 23, 1994

Back to the Frontiersman Directory

Back to the Beginning of This Issue