Matt Weidner - Candidate For The American People

Speaking Out As Long As Political Speech Remains Protected

Home Foreclosure Defense
Matthew Weidner, Attorney at Law
Law Offices of Matthew D. Weidner P.A.
1229 Central Avenue
St. Petersburg Florida 33705
Phone: 727-894-3159
Fax: 727-213-6235
E-mail: weidnerlaw@yahoo.com

Occupy Wall Street

Occupy Together 

We are the 99 percent

Occupy Wall Street, Wikipedia

We're still here. We intend to stay until we see movements toward real change in our country and the world. This is the third communiqué from the 99 percent.

Today, we occupied Wall Street from the heart of the Financial District. Starting at 8:00 AM, we began a march through the Wall Street area, rolling through the blocks around the New York Stock Exchange. At 9:30 AM, we rang our own "morning bell" to start a "people's exchange," which we brought back to Liberty Plaza. Two more marches occurred during the day around the Wall Street district, each drawing more supporters to us.

Hundreds of us have been occupying One Liberty Plaza, a park in the heart of the Wall Street district, since Saturday afternoon. We have marched on the Financial District, held a candlelight vigil to honor the fallen victims of Wall Street, and filled the plaza with song, dance, and spontaneous acts of liberation. Read more here

Occupy Tampa, Press Releases

Occupy Tampa, Facebook

Occupy Tampa, Protesting Do’s and Don’ts 

ACLU pocket brochure, "What To Do If You Are Stopped By The Police, Immigration Agents or the FBI" 

Matt Weidner's invitation to Occupy Tampa October 6, 2011



Occupy Tampa
Gaslight Park Protest

October 6, 2011
by The Justice Network

America is broken. That was the message of the Occupy Tampa protest in Gaslight Park Thursday. The peaceful assembly was attended by several hundred diverse protesters. Although the park is located right across from Tampa Police headquarters, no officers showed up in the park, and only a handful watched from afar.

Protesters expressed their complaints on signs, and chanted "We are the 99 percent" and "Banks got bailed out, we got sold out" while marching to a beat provided by a young man with a drum. Some of the messages included "Rise Up The System Is Broken", "Healthcare Not Warfare" and "Hang The Bankers".

"Robert", a French national, complained about corrupt politicians.

"Robert", a French national, complained about corrupt politicians in Europe and America. His gray hair and business attire lent credibility to his complaints about the insurance, oil, and banking industries.

News organization helicopters hovering over the park created a deafening racket that made conversations difficult. The day-long protest included several marches around downtown Tampa. One such march began at 5:00 PM, went past the Bank of America building at Kennedy Blvd. and Tampa Street, then down Ashley Avenue past the art museum and library. The marchers turned at Zack Street, and again on N. Florida Ave., and continued to march past the Sam M. Gibbons US Courthouse. A few blocks further the protesters stopped for a rally on the steps of the old Federal Courthouse.

Keeping a beat for the protesters as they marched at Occupy Tampa

The Tampa protesters included many older people. This "Occupy" movement is no longer a youth movement, it is now mainstream, or as they say, the "99 percent" of Americans. I saw babies in backpacks. One man marched in a wheelchair. People of all ages, races and backgrounds marched and chanted side by side.

One woman wore a Ron Paul shirt. A sign proclaimed "Governments Stage Terror To Take Away Our Rights, Infowars.com". Another read "Stop The Creed Of Greed", and one said "Stop Killing Kids In Afghanistan". "End The Federal Reserve", "Capitalism is destroying our lives!" and "Corporate America You're Fired" were messages too, along with "Save the American Dream" and "For the People not Corporations".

They chanted slogans before returning to Gaslight Park. The mainstream and alternative news media were present. Shanna Gillette snapped photos for Creative Loafing. A reporter for WMNF 88.5 FM Community Radio covered the protest. News vans parked near the police building. A mainstream reporter stood by with a board look on her face, while the cameraman filmed the event.  

One protester said it best, "When Injustice Becomes Law, Rebellion Becomes Duty". 

Occupy Wall Street protest underway at Gaslight Park in Tampa
ABC News
by Heather Gordon
October 6, 2011

 The Occupy Wall Street movement is staging a protest in Tampa's Gaslight Park. The protest got underway around 9 a.m. in Lykes Gaslight Park on Franklin Street and is scheduled to last until 5 p.m. At last word, about 100 protesters had gathered.

According to the Occupy Tampa Web site, Occupy Wall Street is a "leaderless resistance movement with people of many colors, genders and political persuasions." The group says they are using the "revolutionary Arab Spring tactic to achieve our ends and encourage the use of nonviolence to maximize the safety of all participants."

Tampa Police have said they are not overly concerned about the protest, despite a YouTube video that has threatened the department's computer systems. "We're not in the business of arresting protestors. We're in the business of arresting lawbreakers. If somebody breaks the law, yes they'll go to jail. We don't expect that to happen," said Tampa Police spokesperson, Laura McElroy. Read more here

Occupy Tampa protestors establishing new home base
Tampa Bay Times
by Jodie Tillman, Staff Writer
December 30, 2011

Members of Occupy Tampa, from left, Michael Fernandez, Ben McNulty and Michael Freincle pitch a tent at Voice of Freedom Park, a small parcel on W Main Street owned by Joe Redner. The group is moving from Curtis Hixon Waterfront Park to avoid dealing with police. Read more here

Protesters Against Wall Street
New York Times Editorial
October 8, 2011

As the Occupy Wall Street protests spread from Lower Manhattan to Washington and other cities, the chattering classes keep complaining that the marchers lack a clear message and specific policy prescriptions. The message — and the solutions — should be obvious to anyone who has been paying attention since the economy went into a recession that continues to sock the middle class while the rich have recovered and prospered. The problem is that no one in Washington has been listening.

At this point, protest is the message: income inequality is grinding down that middle class, increasing the ranks of the poor, and threatening to create a permanent underclass of able, willing but jobless people. Read more here

Obama Has Kept the Machine Set on Kill
Democracy NOW!
by Allan Nairn
January 6, 2010

Journalist and Activist Allan Nairn Reviews Obama’s First Year in Office

In an extended interview, award-winning journalist and activist Allan Nairn looks back over the Obama administration’s foreign policy and national security decisions over the last twelve months. "I think Obama should be remembered as a great man because of the blow he struck against white racism," Nairn says. "But once he became president...Obama became a murderer and a terrorist, because the US has a machine that spans the globe, that has the capacity to kill, and Obama has kept it set on kill. He could have flipped the switch and turned it off...but he chose not to do so." He continues, "In fact, as far as one can tell, Obama seems to have killed more civilians during his first year than Bush did in his first year, and maybe even than Bush killed in his final year." Read more here

AttackWatch.com

President Obama is collecting information on those who speak out against him on AttackWatch.com Talking points are offered in response.

Fed Chairman Bernanke

Here Comes FIATtackWatch: Ben "Big Brother" Bernanke Goes Watergate, Prepares To Eavesdrop On Everything Mentioning The Fed
Zero Hedge
by Tyler Durden
September 25, 2011

The Federal Reserve Bank of the United States, which in a Request for Proposals filed to companies that are Fed vendors, is requesting the creation of a "Social Listening Platform" whose function is to "gather data from various social media outlets and news sources." It will "monitor billions of conversations and generate text analytics based on predefined criteria." Read more here

GOP Candidate Ron Paul: "We’re Under Great Threat Because We Occupy So Many Countries"
Democracy NOW!
by Amy Goodman
September 14, 2011

Near the end of Monday’s Republican presidential debate, Republican Rep. Ron Paul of Texas drew boos from the crowd and a rebuke from other candidates on the podium when he criticized U.S. foreign policy in discussing the roots of the 9/11 attacks. "We’re under great threat because we occupy so many countries," Paul said. "We have to be honest with ourselves. What would we do if another country, say China, did to us what we do to all those countries over there?" Our guest, Columbia University Professor Mahmood Mamdani, responded to Dr. Paul’s comments by saying, "He sounds like a professor. I mean, he’s trying to educate his audience, and the audience is not ready to be educated. It wants to be rallied to a cause that it doesn’t have to think about." Mamdani is the author of several books, including "Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror". Read more here

Massive Default Is Best Way to Fix the Economy
Market Watch
by Brett Arends
September 12, 2011


NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — You want to fix this economic crisis? You want to put people back to work? You want to light a fire under the economy?

There’s a way to do it. Fast. And relatively simple. But you’re not going to like it. You’re not going to like it at all. Default. A national Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The fastest way to fix this mess is to see tens of millions of homeowners default on their mortgages and other debts, and millions more file for bankruptcy. Read more here

BBC Speechless As Trader Tells Truth: "The Collapse Is Coming...And Goldman Rules The World"

Zero Hedge
by Tyler Durden
September 26, 2011


In an interview on BBC News this morning that left the hosts gob-smacked (google it... it is the BBC after all), Alessio Rastani outlines in a mere three-and-a-half-minutes what we all know and most ignore. While the whole interview is worth watching, the money shot for us was "This economic crisis is like a cancer, if you just wait and wait hoping it is going to go away, just like a cancer it is going to grow and it will be too late!". While he dreams of recessions, sees Goldman ruling the world, and urges people to prepare, it is hard to disagree with much (or actually anything) of what he says and obviously interventions and machinations means we will have days like this (in Silver for instance), there is only one endgame here and we hope there is less hopeful euphoria (and more preparedness) as we pull back the curtain further and further. Read more here

Welcome To The Collapse Of 2011
Seeking Alpha
by Karl Denninger
September 22, 2011

Welcome my friends to the collapse of 2011. Remember the mantra that "consumers have delivered" which has been run over the last two years as an incessant bark from the media, attempting to goad you, the consumer, into more spending and more consumption to "lift the economy."

This claim has been a lie and a fraud upon the public and the new Fed Z1 makes this clear. The peak household credit liability was $13.92 trillion. It currently stands at $13.30 trillion, a reduction of a mere 4.6%.

This all came from home mortgages going ka-boom; $10.6 trillion to $9.9 trillion, a reduction of $700 billion. Total net reduction in liability was $620 billion; ex-mortgages consumer leverage has actually increased. Read more here

Jack Cafferty

Will Our Economy Trigger Violence In U.S.?

For the first time maybe since the Vietnam War or certainly since the civil rights movement, there are some darkening storm clouds on the civility horizon. A growing number of voices are continuing to suggest that if this economy doesn't turn around, and people can't start feeling optimistic about their futures again, we could be headed for some ugly scenarios. A new CNN poll says 48 percent of Americans think the country is headed for another Great Depression in the next twelve months. That is a stunning number. Read more here

"A conservative is one who admires radicals centuries after they're dead"

                                   - Leo Rosten



Dr. King Weeps From His Grave
The New York Times
By CORNEL WEST
August 25, 2011


Selected passages...

...[T]he age of Obama has fallen tragically short of fulfilling King’s prophetic legacy. Instead of articulating a radical democratic vision and fighting for homeowners, workers and poor people in the form of mortgage relief, jobs and investment in education, infrastructure and housing, the administration gave us bailouts for banks, record profits for Wall Street and giant budget cuts on the backs of the vulnerable...

King’s response to our crisis can be put in one word: revolution. A revolution in our priorities, a re-evaluation of our values, a reinvigoration of our public life and a fundamental transformation of our way of thinking and living that promotes a transfer of power from oligarchs and plutocrats to everyday people and ordinary citizens.

In concrete terms, this means support for progressive politicians like Senator Bernard Sanders of Vermont and Mark Ridley-Thomas, a Los Angeles County supervisor; extensive community and media organizing; civil disobedience; and life and death confrontations with the powers that be. Like King, we need to put on our cemetery clothes and be coffin-ready for the next great democratic battle. Read the full post here

Mayor Bloomberg

Mayor Bloomberg predicts riots in the streets if economy doesn't create more jobs
The New York Daily News
by Erin Einhorn and Corky Siemaczko
September 16, 2011

Mayor Bloomberg warned Friday there would be riots in the streets if Washington doesn't get serious about generating jobs. "We have a lot of kids graduating college, can't find jobs," Bloomberg said on his weekly WOR radio show. "That's what happened in Cairo. That's what happened in Madrid. You don't want those kinds of riots here."

In Cairo, angry Egyptians took out their frustrations by toppling presidential strongman Hosni Mubarak - and more recently attacking the Israeli embassy. As for Madrid, the most recent street protests were sparked by widespread unhappiness that the Spanish government was spending millions on the visit of Pope Benedict instead of dealing with widespread unemployment.

Bloomberg's unusually alarmist pronouncement came as President Obama has been pressuring reluctant Republicans to pass his proposed job creation plan. "The damage to a generation that can't find jobs will go on for many, many years," the normally-measured mayor said. Read more here

Why a Working-Class Revolt Might Not Be Unthinkable
The Fiscal Times
by Mark Thoma
September 13, 2011

Selected passages...

"Many of the policies enacted during and after the Great Depression not only addressed economic problems but also directly or indirectly reduced the ability of special interests to capture the political process.... But since the 1970s many of these changes have been reversed. Inequality has reverted to levels unseen since the Gilded Age, financial regulation has waned, monopoly power has increased, union power has been lost, and much of the disgust with the political process revolves around the feeling that politicians are out of touch with the interests of the working class...There was a time when I would have scoffed at the idea of a mass revolt against entrenched political interests and the incivility that comes with it. We aren’t there yet – there’s still time for change – but the signs of unrest are growing, and if we continue along a two-tiered path that ignores the needs of such a large proportion of society, it can no longer be ruled out" Read the full article here

Chrystia Freeland

What happens when citizens lose faith in government?
Reuters
Chrystia Freeland
August 5, 2011

Tolstoy thought unhappy families were unique in their unhappiness.

But when it comes to countries, these days the world’s gloomy ones have a lot in common. From Fukushima to Athens, and from Washington to Wenzhou, China, the collective refrain is that government doesn’t work.

"2011 will be the year of distrust in government," said Richard Edelman, president and chief executive of Edelman, the world’s largest independent public relations firm.

For the past decade, Mr. Edelman has conducted a global survey of which institutions we have confidence in and which ones are in the doghouse. In 2010, the villains were in the private sector — from BP, to Toyota, to Goldman Sachs, corporations and their executives were the ones behaving badly.

But this year, Mr. Edelman said, we are losing faith in the state: "From the sovereign debt crisis in Europe, to the government’s response to the earthquake in Japan, from the high-speed rail crash in China, to the debt ceiling fight in Washington, people around the world are losing faith in their governments."

Even the Arab Spring, Mr. Edelman mused, was an extreme expression of the same breakdown in the people’s support for those who rule them. Read more here

New Progressive Alliance

The New Progressive Alliance (NPA) is a grassroots organization founded in 2010, entirely online, in response to the Democratic Party’s complete and final forsaking of its role as the leading voice for Progressive ideals and reform in America.

In the 30 years prior to 2010, though their campaign rhetoric claimed otherwise, the party’s leadership and vast majorities of its Congresspeople and Senators had increasingly shown a willingness to sell out the vital interests of America’s poor, its disadvantaged, and its working men and women – and to capitulate on basic Progressive policy issues such as non-intervention, civil and human rights, and progressive taxation...

For many Progressives, the final straw came in early 2010. Despite control of both houses of Congress and the White House, Democrats failed to enact nationalized health insurance, or even to provide a publicly funded alternative to the high-cost "coverage" offered by profiteering, benefits-denying insurance companies. Read more here

Ross Douthat

The Class War We Need

The New York Times
by ROSS DOUTHAT
July 11, 2010

The rich are different from you and me. They know how to game the system.

That’s one interpretation, at least, of last week’s news that Americans with million-dollar mortgages are defaulting at almost twice the rate of the typical homeowner. It suggests an infuriating scenario in which the average American slaves away to keep Wells Fargo or Bank of America off his back, while fat cats and high fliers cut their losses and sail off to the next investment opportunity. Read more here

Frank Rich

The Billionaires Bankrolling the Tea Party

The New York Times

by FRANK RICH
August 28, 2010

ANOTHER weekend, another grass-roots demonstration starring Real Americans who are mad as hell and want to take back their country from you-know-who. Last Sunday the site was Lower Manhattan, where they jeered the "ground zero mosque." This weekend, the scene shifted to Washington, where the avatars of oppressed white Tea Party America, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, were slated to "reclaim the civil rights movement" (Beck’s words) on the same spot where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had his dream exactly 47 years earlier. Read more here

Covert Operations

The New Yorker

by Jane Mayer

August 30, 2010

The billionaire brothers who are waging a war against Obama

On May 17th, a black-tie audience at the Metropolitan Opera House applauded as a tall, jovial-looking billionaire took the stage. It was the seventieth annual spring gala of American Ballet Theatre, and David H. Koch was being celebrated for his generosity as a member of the board of trustees; he had recently donated $2.5 million toward the company’s upcoming season, and had given many millions before that. Read more here

Bob Herbert

Hiding From Reality
The New York Times
by Bob Herbert
November 19, 2010

The nation is in denial about the true extent of its problems, from the economy to the deficits to the wars overseas.

However you want to define the American dream, there is not much of it that’s left anymore.

Wherever you choose to look - at the economy and jobs, the public schools, the budget deficits, the nonstop warfare overseas - you’ll see a country in sad shape. Standards of living are declining, and American parents increasingly believe that their children will inherit a very bad deal.

We’re in denial about the extent of the rot in the system, and the effort that would be required to turn things around. It will likely take many years, perhaps a decade or more, to get employment back to a level at which one could fairly say the economy is thriving...

The wreckage from the recession and the nation’s mindlessly destructive policies in the years leading up to the recession is all around us. We still don’t have the money to pay for the wars that we insist on fighting year after year. We have neither the will nor the common sense to either raise taxes to pay for the wars, or stop fighting them.

State and local governments, faced with fiscal nightmares, are reducing services, cutting their work forces, hacking away at health and pension benefits, and raising taxes and fees. So far it hasn’t been enough, so there is more carnage to come. In many cases, the austerity measures are punishing some of the most vulnerable people, including children, the sick and the disabled...

We’ve become a hapless, can’t-do society, and it’s, frankly, embarrassing. Public figures talk endlessly about "transformative changes" in public education, but the years go by and we see no such thing. Politicians across the spectrum insist that they are all about job creation while the employment situation in the real world remains beyond pathetic.

All we are good at is bulldozing money to the very wealthy. No wonder the country is in such a deep slide...Read more here

Comment 20, J J Bakunin, Tucson, November 20th, 2010, 1:42 am:

"Everything dies; people, countries everything. That is what the U.S. is doing. We are in an irreversible decline. We will not "recover". There is no community, it's everyone for themselves.
Goodbye, Goodbye, Goodbye; I'm glad I'm old"

The humiliation of Barack Obama

Al Jazeera
by Robert Grenier
September 20, 2011

As he prepares to singularly veto Palestine's statehood bid, he must be thinking to himself: 'This isn't right'.

Sooner or later, it's going to happen. Most likely, the moment will come just before his first head-of-state meeting in New York. Or perhaps it will happen just before his first side-bar meeting with Binyamin Netanyahu. Or then again, it may come as the cumulative reaction to a series of embarrassing encounters with fellow world leaders. But the moment will come.

At some point this coming week, during his visit to the this year's opening of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, US President Barack Obama is going to have a nearly irresistible urge. He is going to want to stand up to his hovering political handlers and the smothering bureaucracy which tries to dictate his every move, summon his personal dignity, and say "Enough". Read more here

Uploaded by Russia Today Nov-02-10

With midterm elections in the US about to begin, RT has spoken with 4-time presidential candidate Ralph Nader about the real powers that govern America. Ralph Nader does not belong to either of the two parties ruling Congress. Nader believes that Theodore Dreiser put it very well many years ago, when he said that "the corporations are the government". "Knowing they [corporations] can't be out front because people don't like a lot of these big corporations, they are ripped off by the banks and credit card companies, they camouflage and their camouflage is that they give the Tea Parties certain deceptive information and focus on certain politicians, and therefore they continue their work behind the scenes. We have corporate socialism in this country where profits are kept and losses are socialized on the back of the taxpayer," Nader said. "There isn't a single department agency in the US government whose outside influence overwhelmingly is not corporate," he added. "They control from the outside, they put their representatives into government positions, funding the members of Congress with their cash [and] 35,000 full-time lobbyists in Washington -- they are the government."

Pat Buchanan on Iran, the Tea Party and the American empire
RT, Russia Today
April 7, 2010

According to former presidential candidate, political analyst and author Pat Buchanan, America is facing a crisis of democracy. Buchanan warns of the rising deficit, gridlock in Washington and a possible war with Iran.

From Fault Lines: The Top 1%
Al Jazeeria
August 2, 2011

The richest one per cent of Americans earn nearly a quarter of the country's income and control an astonishing 40 per cent of its wealth.

Inequality in the US is more extreme than it has been in almost a century - and the gap between the super-rich and the poor and middle class people has widened drastically over the last 30 years.

Meanwhile, in Washington, a bitter partisan debate over how to cut deficit spending and reduce the US' $14.3 trillion debt is underway. As low and middle class wages stagnate and unemployment remains above nine per cent, Republicans and Democrats are tussling over whether to slash funding for the medical and retirement programmes that are the backbone of the US' social safety net, and whether to raise taxes - or to cut them further.

The budget debate and the economy are the battleground on which the 2012 presidential election race will be fought. And the US has never seemed so divided - both politically and economically.

How did the gap grow so wide, and so quickly? And how are the convictions, campaign contributions and charitable donations of the top one per cent impacting the other 99 per cent of Americans? Fault Lines investigates the gap between the rich and the rest. Read more here

War Inc. – Pentagon sucks in American youth

RT, Russia Today
August 12, 2011

As the U.S. economy remains on a consistent downward spiral, one thing the U.S. Government is never shy to invest endless cash in is the Pentagon. Which - on its end -- is pumping millions of dollars into luring in the young population of America into enrolling into the military. RT's Anastasia Churkina looks at some of those mesmerizing techniques, and what kind of effect they have had on those fit to serve. Read more here

Join, or Die
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


"Join, or Die" is a well-known political cartoon, created by Benjamin Franklin and first published in his Pennsylvania Gazette on May 9, 1754. The original publication by the Gazette is the earliest known pictorial representation of colonial union produced by a British colonist in America. It is a woodcut showing a snake severed into eighths, with each segment labeled with the initials of a British American colony or region. New England was represented as one segment, rather than the four colonies it was at that time. In addition, Delaware and Georgia were omitted completely. Thus, it has 8 segments of snake rather than the traditional 13 colonies. The cartoon appeared along with Franklin's editorial about the "disunited state" of the colonies, and helped make his point about the importance of colonial unity. During that era, there was a superstition that a snake which had been cut into pieces would come back to life if the pieces were put together before sunset. The cartoon became a symbol of colonial freedom during the American Revolutionary War. Read more here

Benjamin Franklin "The First American"
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Franklin, in his fur hat, charmed the French with what they saw as rustic new world genius.


Benjamin Franklin (January 17, 1706 [O.S. January 6, 1705] – April 17, 1790) was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, musician, inventor, satirist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat. As a scientist, he was a major figure in the American Enlightenment and the history of physics for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity. He invented the lightning rod, bifocals, the Franklin stove, a carriage odometer, and the glass 'armonica'. He formed both the first public lending library in America and the first fire department in Pennsylvania.

Franklin earned the title of "The First American" for his early and indefatigable campaigning for colonial unity; as an author and spokesman in London for several colonies, then as the first United States Ambassador to France, he exemplified the emerging American nation. Read more here

The Boston Tea Party

From Eyewitness to History.com

In Boston, the arrival of three tea ships ignited a furious reaction. The crisis came to a head on December 16, 1773 when as many as 7,000 agitated locals milled about the wharf where the ships were docked. A mass meeting at the Old South Meeting House that morning resolved that the tea ships should leave the harbor without payment of any duty. A committee was selected to take this message to the Customs House to force release of the ships out of the harbor. The Collector of Customs refused to allow the ships to leave without payment of the duty. Stalemate. The committee reported back to the mass meeting and a howl erupted from the meeting hall. It was now early evening and a group of about 200 men, some disguised as Indians, assembled on a near-by hill. Whopping war chants, the crowd marched two-by-two to the wharf, descended upon the three ships and dumped their offending cargos of tea into the harbor waters. Read more here

Read more on Wikipedia

March 23, 1775

Patrick Henry - "Give me liberty or give me death"

 "Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, Give me Liberty, or give me Death!

One of the most influential, radical advocates of the American Revolution and republicanism, especially in his denunciations of corruption in government officials and his defense of historic rights. Read more here

Minute Man

"By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled;
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard 'round the world."

Ralph Waldo Emerson's "Concord Hymn" (1837). The stanza is inscribed at the base of the Minute Man statue by Daniel Chester French, located in Concord, Massachusetts.

Benjamin Franklin Joins the Revolution
Smithsonian.com
by Walter Isaacson
August 01, 2003

Returning to Philadelphia from England in 1775, the "wisest American" kept his political leanings to himself. But not for long.

Just as his son William had helped him with his famed kite-flying experiment, now William’s son, Temple, a lanky and fun-loving 15-year-old, lent a hand as he lowered a homemade thermometer into the ocean. Three or four times a day, they would take the water’s temperature and record it on a chart. Benjamin Franklin had learned from his Nantucket cousin, a whaling captain named Timothy Folger, about the course of the warm Gulf Stream. Now, during the latter half of his six-week voyage home from London, Franklin, after writing a detailed account of his futile negotiations, turned his attention to studying the current. The maps he published and the temperature measurements he made are now included on NASA’s Web site, which notes how remarkably similar they are to ones based on infrared data gathered by modern satellites.

The voyage was notably calm, but in America the longbrewing storm had begun. On the night of April 18, 1775, while Franklin was in mid-ocean, a contingent of British redcoats headed north from Boston to arrest the tea party planners Samuel Adams and John Hancock and capture the munitions stockpiled by their supporters. Paul Revere spread the alarm, as did others less famously. When the redcoats reached Lexington, 70 American minutemen were there to meet them. "Disperse, ye rebels," a British major ordered. At first they did. Then a shot was fired. In the ensuing skirmish, eight Americans were killed. The victorious redcoats marched on to Concord, where, as Ralph Waldo Emerson would put it, "the embattled farmers stood, and fired the shot heard round the world." On the redcoats’ daylong retreat back to Boston, more than 250 of them were killed or wounded by American militiamen. Read more here

The United States Declaration of Independence is a statement adopted by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, which announced that the thirteen American colonies then at war with Great Britain were now independent states, and thus no longer a part of the British Empire. Written primarily by Thomas Jefferson, the Declaration is a formal explanation of why Congress had voted on July 2 to declare independence from Great Britain, more than a year after the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War. The birthday of the United States of America—Independence Day—is celebrated on July 4, the day the wording of the Declaration was approved by Congress. Read more here

September 22, 1776

Nathan Hale, American hero

"I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country"

Nathan Hale was a soldier for the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War. Widely considered America's first spy, he volunteered for an intelligence-gathering mission, but was captured by the British. He is best remembered for his speech before being hanged following the Battle of Long Island, in which he said, "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country." Read more

American Revolutionary War
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The American Revolutionary War (1775–1783) or American War of Independence, or simply American Revolution, began as a war between the Kingdom of Great Britain and thirteen British colonies in North America, and ended in a global war between several European great powers. The war was the end result of escalating political tensions between the Parliament of Great Britain and colonists opposed to various taxes and other laws they considered oppressive and illegitimate. Earlier responses of the colonies to Parliamentary actions included petitions to King George, a boycott of British goods, and the Boston Tea Party in 1773. Parliament responded to this act by sending more British soldiers to Boston and appointing General Thomas Gage as governor of Massachusetts. In April of 1775, Gage sent a contingent of troops out of Boston to seize a suspected rebel armory. Rebel militia, including many known as 'minutemen' because they were trained to muster on short notice, confronted the British troops in the town of Lexington, and the resulting Battles of Lexington and Concord began the war. Read more here

George Washington
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

George Washington (February 22, 1732 [O.S. February 11, 1731] – December 14, 1799) was the dominant military and political leader of the new United States of America from 1775 to 1799. He led the American victory over Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army in 1775–1783, and he presided over the writing of the Constitution in 1787. The unanimous choice to serve as the first President of the United States (1789–1797), Washington presided over the creation of a strong, well-financed national government that stayed neutral in the wars raging in Europe, suppressed rebellion and won acceptance among Americans of all types. His leadership style established many forms and rituals of government that have been used ever since, such as using a cabinet system and delivering an inaugural address. Washington is universally regarded as the "Father of his country". Read more here

George Washington's Farewell Address
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Washington's Farewell Address (issued as a public letter in 1796) was one of the most influential statements of republicanism. Drafted primarily by Washington himself, with help from Hamilton, it gives advice on the necessity and importance of national union, the value of the Constitution and the rule of law, the evils of political parties, and the proper virtues of a republican people. He called morality "a necessary spring of popular government". He said, "Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle."

Washington's public political address warned against foreign influence in domestic affairs and American meddling in European affairs. He warned against bitter partisanship in domestic politics and called for men to move beyond partisanship and serve the common good. He warned against "permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world", saying the United States must concentrate primarily on American interests. He counseled friendship and commerce with all nations, but warned against involvement in European wars and entering into long-term "entangling" alliances. The address quickly set American values regarding foreign affairs. Read more here

United States non-interventionism
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

George Washington’s Farewell Address is often cited as laying the foundation for a tradition of American non-interventionism:
The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations, is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. Europe has a set of primary interests, which to us have none, or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves, by artificial ties, in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities. Read more here

John Ferling

Independence: The Struggle to Set America Free

John Ferling, Author

John Ferling Official Web Site

No event in American history was more pivotal-or more furiously contested-than Congress's decision to declare independence in July 1776. Even months after American blood had been shed at Lexington and Concord, many colonists remained loyal to Britain. John Adams, a leader of the revolutionary effort, said bringing the fractious colonies together was like getting "thirteen clocks to strike at once."

Other books have been written about the Declaration, but no author has traced the political journey from protest to Revolution with the narrative scope and flair of John Ferling. Independence takes readers from the cobblestones of Philadelphia into the halls of Parliament, where many sympathized with the Americans and furious debate erupted over how to deal with the rebellion. Independence is not only the story of how freedom was won, but how an empire was lost.

At this remarkable moment in history, high-stakes politics was intertwined with a profound debate about democracy, governance, and justice. John Ferling, drawing on a lifetime of scholarship, brings this passionate struggle to life as no other historian could. Independence will be hailed as the finest work yet from the author Michael Beschloss calls "a national resource."

"This is how it really happened. In unequivocal prose, John Ferling captures the combined bluster and outrage on both sides of the Atlantic. He exposes the quirks, while exploring the vision, of the opinionated, opportunistic delegates who were present in Philadelphia in 1776; he shows us just how they rhetorically overcame the "mystique of invincibility" that attached to the British military, before launching America, in the words of one delegate, "on a most Tempestuous Sea." Independence is rich in personality, and Ferling unsurpassed as an authority. This is no ordinary history."—Andrew Burstein, author of Jefferson’s Secrets, and coauthor of Madison and Jefferson

"John Ferling has established himself as one of the leading chroniclers of the American Revolution, but Independence goes beyond anything he has written before. Instead of recycling the familiar story of the Revolution, he has given us an enlightening and exciting book that proves that history has no guarantees or foreordained outcomes. Expertly blending biographical vignettes with fast-paced narrative and sure-footed interpretation, Ferling captures the mystery of historical contingency in exploring the period between the Boston Tea Party in 1773 and the declaration of American independence in 1776. Not even the founding fathers knew what the future would bring; Ferling performs a national public service in reminding us of this basic fact, and demonstrating it with elegance and style."—R. B. Bernstein, distinguished adjunct professor of law, New York Law School, and author of The Founding Fathers Reconsidered and Thomas Jefferson.

Read more here

Myths of the American Revolution
Smithsonian magazine, January 2010
By John Ferling
Illustrations by Joe Ciardiello

A noted historian debunks the conventional wisdom about America's War of Independence

We think we know the Revolutionary War. After all, the American Revolution and the war that accompanied it not only determined the nation we would become but also continue to define who we are. The Declaration of Independence, the Midnight Ride, Valley Forge—the whole glorious chronicle of the colonists’ rebellion against tyranny is in the American DNA. Often it is the Revolution that is a child’s first encounter with history.

Yet much of what we know is not entirely true. Perhaps more than any defining moment in American history, the War of Independence is swathed in beliefs not borne out by the facts. Here, in order to form a more perfect understanding, the most significant myths of the Revolutionary War are reassessed. Read more here

Are You Ready For The Revolution?
Matt Weidner blog
August 1, 2011

Are you ready to do something real?
Are you ready to stand up?
Are you ready to stop feeling like you have no voice?
Are you ready to make sure you have a voice?

Just stay tuned. Share this site with as many friends and people that you can. Whether they care about foreclosure or not. Whether they care about our courts or fundamental rights or not. Share this site and get them ready to get involved. Read more here

GET UP, GET READY~ a PEACFUL, paper revolution!

Matt Weidner blog

August 3, 2011

Comment of Rob Harrington – Niceville, Florida

OFFICIAL NOTICE:

"WE, THE PEOPLE, ARE TAKING BACK OUR GOVERNMENTS."

We, the people of the State of Florida, have had enough of our governments’ siding with large corporations over the best and fair interests of consumers, taxpayers and property owners.
In fact, the consumers, taxpayers and property owners, not only in Florida, but around the country, watch in horror, disgust and contempt every day, as our "elected officials" in our Federal and State governments waste our financial resources, self-deal, and perpetuate fraud. In an obviously determined and deliberate fashion, they dismantle our freedoms and hopes for our futures, and our children’s futures. Read more here

Mayor Bloomberg

Bloomberg, on Radio, Raises Specter of Riots by Jobless
The New York Times
By KATE TAYLOR
September 16, 2011

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg takes every opportunity these days to mention what he says are two major problems facing the country’s economy: enormous public debt and high unemployment. But on the radio show he appears on with John Gambling on Friday mornings, Mr. Bloomberg took his comments further than usual.

"You have a lot of kids graduating college can’t find jobs," he said in response to a question about the poverty rate. "That’s what happened in Cairo. That’s what happened in Madrid," he continued, referring to the uprising that overthrew President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and the more recent protests against the Spanish government’s austerity measures. "You don’t want those kinds of riots here."

One day, a trader on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Adam Sarzen, a decade or so older than many of the protesters, came to Zuccotti Park seemingly just to shake his head. "Look at these kids, sitting here with their Apple computers," he said. "Apple, one of the biggest monopolies in the world. It trades at $400 a share. Do they even know that?" Read more here