The Third Revolution on the NSA...

Color me shocked that anyone thinks that the NSA scandal is a scandal. I thought that spying on domestic and worldwide electronic communications is what they were paid to do. And that bullying private sector corporations into giving up said data is what governments were paid to do.

Way back in 2004, in The Third Revolution,  I reflected that outlook through the literary lens of Ms. Kim Lange, then special assistant and confidant of Montana Governor Ben Kane:

Joe took a sip of his draft and turned to Kim. “So are you expecting a late night out with the Billings' brass?”

“No, not at all. The mayor is a busy man. Ben just wants me to take his temperature on the federal stuff.”

“Wouldn’t a phone call have been quicker?”

“The National Security Agency monitors all calls made in the country—in the world, for that matter. They have for years. But in the last three years or so they’ve actually installed the computing power they need to be able to process and screen the millions of calls they capture every day. Ben wants people to be able to speak freely to him without risking the chance the conversation is going to show up on some NSA junior analyst’s radar screen.”

 I'm quite sure I wasn't the only one who knew this. At any rate, for a more in-depth look at my visionary grasp of the obvious, please pick up your own copy of The Third Revolution to discover more of my Nostradamus-like insights into the evolution of the U.S. political landscape. 

When everything is a crime, everyone is a suspect.

Sooner or later...

Sooner or later, one of these movements is going to succeed, and then, I believe, all hell will break loose:

Representatives of 10 rural Colorado counties met Monday in the sleepy plains town of Akron, about a half an hour from the Kansas border, to advance a plan that has been both hailed and ridiculed in recent weeks: A bid to split from Colorado and form the country’s 51^st state.

As you might figure, this is yet another urban/rural, liberal/conservative split boiling over, but this time the minority (conservatives) are opting for the more libertarian solution: you live the way you want to live, and we'll live the way we want.

I don't know if this particular movement will work out; it's worth noting that no attempt at state partitioning has been successful since the creation of West Virginia in 1863. But the legislative mechanisms remain, and when a large enough, relatively cohesive group of people feel that their culture, their livelihoods and their liberty are being adversely impacted by a group of perceived "outsiders," a bit of push-back is to be expected. Since they feel (for apparently good reason) that their traditional political/legislative avenues have been cut off, they're moving ahead with the only solution remaining: leaving.

Sooner or later, it's going to work, and then everyone is going to want to get in on it...

 Read the entire article here: Rebellious Colorado counties move forward with plans to secede

Slowly but surely...

My first novel, The Third Revolution, was set in 2013.  While the fictional tale has yet to unfold in its entirety, it does seem to be moving along, inch by inch, toward the confrontation imagined in the book. From the AP:

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) -- Imagine the scenario: A federal agent attempts to arrest someone for illegally selling a machine gun. Instead, the federal agent is arrested - charged in a state court with the crime of enforcing federal gun laws...

An Associated Press analysis found that about four-fifths of the states now have enacted local laws that directly reject or ignore federal laws on marijuana use, gun control, health insurance requirements and identification standards for driver's licenses. The recent trend began in Democratic leaning California with a 1996 medical marijuana law and has proliferated lately in Republican strongholds like Kansas, where Gov. Sam Brownback this spring became the first to sign a measure threatening felony charges against federal agents who enforce certain firearms laws in his state...

And Montana is in the thick of it:

After Montana passed a 2009 law declaring that federal firearms regulations don't apply to guns made and kept in that state, eight other states have enacted similar laws. Gun activist Gary Marbut said he crafted the Montana measure as a foundation for a legal challenge to the federal power to regulate interstate commerce under the U.S. Constitution. His lawsuit was dismissed by a trial judge but is now pending before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals...

A new Kansas law makes it a felony for a federal agent to attempt to enforce laws on guns made and owned in Kansas. A similar Wyoming law, passed in 2010, made it a misdemeanor. The Missouri bill also would declare it a misdemeanor crime but would apply more broadly to all federal gun laws and regulations - past, present, or future - that "infringe on the people's right to keep and bear arms.

Read the entire article here:  Federal Nullification Efforts Mounting in States. Where it ends, nobody knows, but I do know what Ben Kane would do...

A New Look for an Old Friend...

The Third Revolution - New Cover!

Since it was first published in 2004, the trusty buffalo on the cover of my first novel, The Third Revolution, has been confounding fan and foe alike:

"Why is it there?"
"Is it a book about buffalo?"
"Is it some sort of environmental screed?"
"Is it about the politics of bison management?"
"Patriotic buffalo?"

"Why is it there?!!!"

Those of you who've pushed past the issue and actually read the book know that it's a tale about freedom and liberty, a story that cuts to the core of why groups of individuals decide to form governments in the first place. There are bison (lots of 'em!) featured in the plot, but it's not about them. They just live there...

The argument could (easily) be made that they serve a metaphorical presence in the story, but metaphors don't make very compelling visual hooks when you're competing in a crowded book market, where most consumers do indeed judge a book by its cover. Hence the change.

For now you'll see the new cover on the Kindle edition only; changing the cover on the print edition is a big production and hardly seems worth it given the rising primacy of ebooks. As always, thanks for your support, and your feedback is always welcome.  

The original cover - Still gracing the print edition

Sneak Peek at Manifest Destiny...

I'm working on Manifest Destiny, my third "Ben Kane" novel. I thought I'd toss his fans a bone, pull back the curtain a bit and give you a peek at how things were shaping up.

In this scene Governor Kane places a call to the CEO of Phillip Morris to discuss an idea he's been kicking around. All of the major tobacco companies have left the United States and have relocated to the Middle American states in order to avoid the usurious taxes, the never-ending legal settlements and the ever-growing list of burdensome regulations:

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Ben spoke with Calderone for a while longer, working their way through the presumptive military chess game that they were facing. When the meeting ended, Ben spent some time considering his next move. He had a long list of people he needed to consult with—legislative leaders, cabinet administrators within his administration, the other governors and Kim, of course. But in the end, as with all difficult calls, any decision would be his to make. He picked up the phone and called Phillip Morris; moments later he was on the line with Jeffrey Johnson, the Chairman and CEO.

“Governor,” Johnson said. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Ben allowed about thirty seconds for small talk before asking his first question. “How many smokers are there in the U.S.?”

“The number’s been holding pretty steady at about twenty-percent of the population, call it 61 million. That’s including our free states, so figure 60 million outside of our borders.”

“That’s a lot of people.”

“The industry’s been demonized for so long most people—smokers included—never give much thought to how many of them there are out there. That number has dropped considerably over the years as a percentage of overall population, but the actual number of smokers hasn’t changed as much as you might think. Back in 1960, about 40-percent of the population smoked. But the population back then was only, say, 180 million, so there were 72 million smokers, verses the 61 million today. But that number is still roughly equivalent to the combined populations of California, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania.”

“I never thought of it that way,” Ben said. “You would think that they’d have more political clout with those kinds of numbers. Why do they let themselves get pushed around by the health Nazis the way they’ve been? I don’t think I’ve ever heard of smokers pushing back against the regulations, restrictions and taxes aimed at them.”

“Guilt, I imagine. They’ve got grotesque, graphic warnings on each and every pack directed at them, and television and print ad campaigns have been haranguing them at every turn, for decades. And keep in mind that most of those regulations, restrictions and taxes were never proposed as being against smokers, they were always pitched as being for the benefit of non-smokers. Add that to constant reminders about how smokers are a burden to the health care system, and are accused of killing their children and neighbors with secondhand smoke, and you make it difficult for the average smoker to stand up in his or her own defense without looking like a selfish, anti-social, self-destructive serial killer.”

“So everyone just swallows their guilt, pays their tobacco taxes, and smokes their cigarettes in exile, out in the snow or under a narrow awning in the rain.”

“Welcome to my world.”

“I was always surprised that the industry didn’t push back harder against the state and federal government, especially with those sorts of numbers behind you.”

“The truth is they never really bit into our income much, so we settled for a seat at the table whenever they were ready to cook up a new batch of regulations. The taxes and fines were meaningless—they just got passed on to the customers, so they never affected our bottom line. The sad reality was that the industry long ago got into bed with the government and got comfortable with it. When I took the helm three years ago, I started looking west to what you folks were doing and thought: why not us? Then the new administration took office and started making noises about extending the Tobacco Agreement beyond its original terms. At that point I started talking to my counterparts in the other companies and—you know the rest. Here we are.”

“So how’s business? Are you able to move your product into the states without too much of a problem?”

“We’re stumbling along. We fly the product up through Canada and then to warehouse distribution centers either in Mexico or the Bahamas. We’ve been given a “special dispensation” from the new black market restrictions—they can’t afford to give up the sales taxes they collect on cigarettes. Rumor has it they’re going to increase the federal tobacco tax to try to fill the gap left by our missing settlement and income tax payments. They’re cracking down like crazy on a whole array of other black market products—retailers are being heavily fined and even threatened with felony convictions if they’re caught with anything originating out of the free state region.”

“I know. It’s really getting ugly out there. So how come you’re warehousing the product outside the U.S. if they’ve given you a green light to do business there?”

“We don’t trust the administration; it’s as simple as that. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to wake up one morning to a phone call telling me that the government had seized our warehouses for one fabricated reason or another. Remember, we’re the devil incarnate to begin with, and they honestly feel that they were robbed when we left the states to come work here. So we sell the product to wholesale distributors in the states, deliver only what’s been paid in advance and let them worry about it. It’s the same way we operate with third world military juntas. We keep our assets out of their reach and essentially just dump the product on the beach and let them do what they want with it.”

“This is a really sad conversation, isn’t it?”

“You bet. The tobacco industry was here before the founding of the country. It breaks my heart to see what’s happening—both to the industry and to the country. Thank God for you, Governor.”

“Thanks, but I wasn’t fishing for the compliment. Let me ask you something—how big a hit would you take if you suspended all cigarette shipments to the U.S. market? Just cut ‘em off, out of the blue.”

“Believe it or not, we’ve considered it. I think I told you the first time we met that we could sell everything we produce here overseas. Financially, we’d come out ahead, because the American made products are so popular we can position them as premium brands and price them accordingly. Why do you ask?”

“You might recall that during my televised address I promised everybody that, one way or another, I’d turn this embargo back on Washington. I can’t think of any one better way of doing that then cutting off tens of millions of smokers cold turkey. I really hate to drag Joe Six Pack into this mess, but it’s time everyone had a little skin in the game. Plus it allows me to piss off 60 million or so already maltreated second-class citizens and dump them on Washington’s doorstep. I have to tell you, the idea has some appeal to me.”

“Let me kick it around a little, talk to a few people. If we were to stay out of the market for too long it would probably cost us fifty-percent or more of our customer base as people who wanted to quit took advantage of the situation and gave up the habit for good. But we might be able to arrange some manufacturing delays or product recalls or something along those lines that would result in nationwide product shortages for a few weeks or a month or so. Would that do?”

“I’m glad I don’t smoke anymore.”

Holy Crap, The Third Revolution is coming true...

I've been saying for a while now that my first novel, The Third Revolution (first published in 2004), was starting to read more like political history than political fiction. Check this out:

Will Montana Voters Nullify the Mandate?

HELENA, Mont. – On Nov. 6, Montana residents will exercise their sovereign right and decide on health care freedom.
LR-122 would prohibit the state and federal governments from requiring any Montana citizen to purchase health insurance, or from “imposing any penalty, tax, fee or fine on those who do not purchase health insurance.”

 Same state, same methodology (legislative action to nullify offensive legislation) as my book envisioned. All we need is libertarian Governor Ben Kane to show up to sign the bill into law. At this rate, it just might happen...

Also freaky ... The Third Revolution was set in the "near future," in the year 2013, right after a Presidential election.

Read the entire article here: Will Montana Voters Nullify the Mandate? 
And of course, The Third Revolution is still available in both softcover and Kindle editions. Excerpts and reviews here.

Update: It's spreading:  Legislators in 3 States Set to Introduce ObamaCare Nullification Bills

Update (Nov. 8, 2012): Some post-election nullification victories--> Nullification Victories!

Secession movement spreading...

I've been saying for a while now that my first book, The Third Revolution, was written as political fiction but is starting to look more and more like a history text. This article's not proving me wrong:

Fanned by angry contempt for Washington, secession movements have sprouted up in perhaps more than a dozen states in recent years. In Vermont, retired economics professor Thomas Naylor leads the Second Vermont Republic, a self-styled citizens network dedicated to extracting the sparsely populated New England state from "the American Empire."

And on the other side of the continent, Northwestern separatists envision a "Republic of Cascadia" carved out of Oregon, Washington and the Canadian province of British Columbia.

While most Americans dismiss the breakaway sentiments, sociologists and political experts say they are part of a larger anti-Washington wave that is rapidly spreading across the country. ...

More commonplace are states’ rights movements to directly challenge federal laws, a citizen revolt that one scholar says is unparalleled in modern times. Among the actions in which states are thumbing their nose at Washington:

■ Montana and Tennessee have enacted legislation declaring that firearms made and kept within those states are beyond the authority of the federal government. Similar versions of the law, known as the Firearms Freedom Act, have been introduced in at least four other states.

■ Arizona lawmakers will let voters decide a proposed state constitutional amendment that would opt the state out of federal healthcare mandates under consideration in Congress. The amendment will be placed on the November 2010 ballot. State Rep. Nancy Barto, R-Phoenix, said five other states considered similar versions of the amendment this year and at least nine others are expected to do so next year.

■ Nearly two dozen states have approved resolutions refusing to participate in the Real ID Act of 2005, which requires that driver’s licenses and state ID cards conform to federal standards. A similar resolution was introduced in the 2009 Texas Legislature but died in committee.

Read the entire article here: Secession movement spreads well beyond Texas.

More secession talk from Beck...

You know, I sent Glenn Beck a copy of The Third Revolution a couple of months ago. Not that I'm taking credit for his interest in the subject; the guy works about twenty hours a day, so I'm quite sure he hasn't gotten around to it yet. Hope it does, though ... it would be right up his alley.

So here's another group that's had enough. Interesting that 12% of registered Vermont voters support secession. I think the number in Texas (after Gov. Rick Perry's statement on the subject) is about 35% in support of secession. Support for our Revolutionary War ran about 40 - 45%, so there's a ways to go before any serious momentum gets build up, though I suspect that government-run health care and cap-and-trade will go a long way towards pushing the movement along.





Here's the transcript if you'd rather read than watch.

Montana Gun Sovereignty Law...

This all went down about a month ago, but I thought it worth revisiting as it's virtually a page out of The Third Revolution. The book was written over six years ago, but is starting to read more like a history text than the political fiction it was intended to be.



And, yeah, I know it's Glenn Beck, but who else is covering this stuff?