De ja Vu....

Funny how much you can get accomplished if you don't care who gets the credit and you're willing to stand up for what's right.

When I butted heads with the blackmailing publisher in Washington State when I was a newspaper editor there, the townspeople there donated five truckloads of items and held a yard sale for me and gave me the $250 they raised from the sale. I met people who told me they didn't want/need anything at the sale but wanted to support the truth so they bought something or they pressed a $5 or $20 bill into my hand. It was humbling to see the demand for honest reporting. I used that $250 for my first month's rent on my office directly across the street from my old paper. They didn't like that much and for weeks shut their blinds.

I did 100% of the work - the writing, layout, photography etc. myself. A friend helped out keeping the books. School kids sold the papers door-to-door making 25 cents on each 50 cent paper they sold. It was distributed in 32 retail locations in two states -I know. I delivered it myself too and even drove two hours down to Portland, OR and back every week to pick up the papers.

A had a couple salespeople come on once I got it rolling. But from the get-go it was a success. A state senator told me it was the first paper in 20 years to become a newspaper of record in the state - the first in 40 years to do so with under $1 million in start-up money. Just me, a home computer and a lot of community support and desire for the truth and someone to "tell it like it was."

No one else would call the Columbia River Gorge Commission on their lie, cheat and steal tactics and The Klickitat County Monitor did. The editorials were hard and the letters to the editors would make blood boil on both sides. It was a REAL newspaper - an exchange of ideas, emotions, facts and truth and community - not a spread sheet for all the local accidents and fires...see some samples of a few issues by CLICKING HERE.

But 100 hour weeks and living in the office and showering in the campground 20 miles away took its toll. After a bout with pneumonia in which I was so sick I couldn't move for days I sold it and moved into an RV in a campground. The new owners had their own agenda - basically wanting the paper to be the voice of the county commissioners and to be driven more advocacy than truth and facts. One of the men who purchased it said, "I read a newspaper every day, so heck yeah I can run one." They had no idea. So I quit rather than be a puppet to yet another agenda driven owner. Two years later it was defunct. It was the exchange and the heat of ideas and facts and debate that made it work - not the arm twisting that it became. Other editors who went to work there after me quit as well - also not wanting to be a shill for someone else's agenda.


Everywhere I've gone in journalism except for The Knoxville Journal, I've experienced deception, cowardice and greed when what people want is the truth - unless of course it concerns their own deceptions! I'm not perfect. I've been zealous and I've offended a lot of people! But I acknowledged it immediately when I was wrong - and on the front page - not buried somewhere. But I have always said and believed that the freedom of speech and the freedoms accorded us in the Bill of Rights and the Constitution are the most valuable freedoms in the world and that we will lose them if we don't exercise them. And most of the world agrees and is stunned at how little we in America respect and value our freedoms.

Every day we lose more and more and more of our freedoms. We no longer have a right to petition the government for a redress of our grievances unless we have a bank account equal to the gross national product of a small country. People can be sued into submission for speaking the truth. Freedom of speech has become a haven only for those wealthy enough to afford it. All an officer has to do is say, "Terrorist threat - domestic or otherwise" and the government doesn't need a search warrant - thanks to the Patriot Act. Citizens are marching in the streets of big cities and demanding an investigation into our own government's participation in the events of 9/11 - foreign governments and people know and believe what we ourselves don't - that 9/11 "Was an inside job".....and yet where is our media? Reporting on Britney Spears mental health breakdown and on the traffic accident or fire of the day. No wonder bloggers have made a difference. They're the only ones really reporting the news!!!

Corrupt government officials get away with crimes every day. 300,000 people in this country "go missing" every year and no one knows what's happening to them. Have you gone to the state's website to see how many people are missing in Virginia alone each year? 153 in the last year. Check it out. Click here.

Everyone is so worried about being "politically correct" that they have forgotten how to be "EC" Ethically correct.

Maybe Danville likes the way things are - or they simply haven't had anyone who spoke up loudly enough. It's not just Danville. It's all over. The state press associations in every state in this county have ethics but rarely do they investigate or enforce sanctions when a paper transgresses those ethics. Rarely will a newspaper turn on one of its own even when they violate core ethics. So you can't really depend on anyone but citizen bloggers to fight.

If the revolutionaries who dumped the tea in Boston had had internet access they might have blogged instead. But America was founded by people who valued their right to pursue happiness, to worship as they chose and to speak out to criticize the government and any wrong doing they saw. I'm not giving that up. Are you?

If - as many predict - including Biblical prophesy, the United States of America falls - and we're close to that now with Saudi Arabia and a proposed oil cartel that will require payment for oil in Euros, not dollars (we can print dollars. We can't print Euros) and we go to war in Iran life as we know it will change drastically. It's inevitable of course. I predict within a year...life and freedoms as we've known them will begin to fail to exist. Expect martial law, more disasters and more government control. Expect a national draft as well - we can't staff the wars we're in now or the bases we staff around the world. A draft is inevitable. We're so close to that already. For two decades now our presidents have publicly endorsed a "New World Order." We barely escaped it in the 1930's, so is it finally time to go round again?

We've lost our middle-class and are a nation of haves and have-nots. 70% of Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck. We are becoming as close to a dictatorship as we can be...the Patriot Act has gutted our civil freedoms - corporations are giving the government our cell phone conversations and computer records with impunity and Homeland Security has made us all suspect of anything and made it legal for the government to enter our homes without cause, warrant or notice. Congress in a secret session? You bet. See it here. And what did they discuss?

The media SHOULD have been exposing all this - but they've abdicated their honor, their duty and their calling to make a buck. And the people have let them. Why? I don't know. We're at the tipping point America. A few more years of rolling over and letting the truth fall by the wayside and it's over. We won't have that option any more. Don't believe me? www.brasschecktv.org. Spend a couple of evenings watching the free videos and see/think/consider for yourself. Go to YouTube.com and search "New World Order," and see. But 75% of the people have no idea...none. And what is our media, both local and national obscessed with? You got it...fires, shootings, celebrities - entertainment - things that grab our attention and play into our fear - but not that stimulate our brains. How much do you know about uranium? Not much. There has been no real coverage and there won't be. Not unless there's a new newspaper in town willing to cover it. Yet - it will impact this county MORE than any other business that could settle here - including the big company that's coming and making its announcement in the next few days, weeks....

Why? Ad dollars. Don't want to scare off advertisers. Do you want safety or truth? Unfortunately most of us prefer safety. But without the truth there is no real safety. With the truth we know where we stand and can make decisions. Without the facts, without the truth - we're in the dark. Where do you want to be?