Standing up And being Counted

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Exposes Bill Gates & His Relationship With Big Pharma

Bill Gates is fond of using his bully pulpit to talk about “miracles” and “magic.” Gates has featured one or both words in nearly all of his annual wrap-up letters for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2014, 2016 and 2017), most often in reference to the Gates Foundation’s outsized financial and ideological support for global vaccine programs. As Gates says, “In the same way that during my Microsoft career I talked about the magic of software, I now spend my time talking about the magic of vaccines.”

Gates’s words give us an immediate clue that he is engaging in his own brand of magical thinking—which social scientists define as “illogical causal reasoning.” How else to explain his simplistic endorsement of vaccines as a miraculous intervention with unmitigated benefits and no down side? The Gates Foundation’s global spreadsheet appears to have no room to tally the massive flood of vaccine injuries afflicting children worldwide, despite abundant evidence that this damage is standing the vaccine risk-benefit calculus on its head and turning childhood into an extended round of Russian roulette.

Let’s Report History Accurately

In a widely cited 2014 blog post on the “miracle of vaccines,” Gates expressed enthusiasm about the “inspiring” data on vaccines and the “fantastic” and “phenomenal” progress being made to expand vaccine coverage. There is one major problem with Gates’ professed reliance on “data,” which is that the philanthropist ignores fundamental historical facts governing infectious disease and vaccine timelines.

There is one major problem with Gates’ professed reliance on “data,” which is that the philanthropist ignores fundamental historical facts governing infectious disease and vaccine timelines.

Vital statistics data reveal that in the U.S. and elsewhere, fatalities from diseases such as scarlet fever—in the absence of any vaccine—had become quite rare by the mid-20th century. Mortality from infectious diseases such as measles and whooping cough (pertussis) also had declined rapidly, well before the introduction of the corresponding vaccines (see Figure 1). A meticulous review of U.S. mortality data from 1900–1973 concluded:

“Medical measures [such as vaccines] contributed little to the overall decline in mortality in the United States since about 1900—having in many instances been introduced several decades after a marked decline had already set in.”

The same researchers, in another article, chastised the medical establishment for its misplaced confidence in “magic bullets” (there is that word “magic” again!). Instead, if the decline in infectious disease incidence and mortality in the last century represented any kind of “miracle,” the phenomenon was, by all honest accounts, attributable to classic and long-term public health measures such as better sanitation and, especially, improved nutrition. A study of 20th-century mortality trends in Italy found a significant association between increased caloric intake and declining mortality, reflecting “progress in average nutritional status, lifestyle quality, socioeconomic level and hygienic conditions.” Moreover, mortality dropped most sharply in Italy’s youngest age groups—who were “probably the most sensible to the changes in nutrition and wellness.” Even early 20th-century epidemiologists who were inclined to give some credit to vaccines recognized that other factors were at play, including changes in “human resistance and bacterial quality” as well as factors yet to be determined.

Source: http://drsuzanne.net/dr-suzanne-humphries-vaccines-vaccination/

Oh Miracle, Where Art Thou?

Even if one leaves 20th-century vital statistics behind, there is a glaring piece of evidence that gives the lie to Bill Gates’ disingenuous assertions about vaccine miracles: vaccines are not actually making or keeping children healthy. Instead, in the U.S. (where children are the most highly vaccinated in the world), over half of all young people have a chronic illness—a trend that coincides with the expansion of the nation’s vaccine schedule. Similar patterns of chronic illness are emerging worldwide, including for potentially life-threatening conditions such as food allergies and asthma.

…there is a glaring piece of evidence that gives the lie to Bill Gates’ disingenuous assertions about vaccine miracles: vaccines are not actually making or keeping children healthy.

The World Mercury Project’s Campaign to Restore Child Health has been documenting parents’ first-hand accounts of serious adverse outcomes experienced by their children following vaccination. These testimonials, which represent the tip of the iceberg, cover a panoply of disorders that were rare or even unheard of a few decades ago:

• Thirteen percent of U.S. children are in special education.
• One in six American children has a developmental disorder such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
• Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) affects nearly 11% of American children.
• One in 20 children under the age of five has epilepsy.
• Peanut allergies are the most common cause of food-related death.
• Women who receive flu and Tdap vaccines during pregnancy are at greater risk of miscarriages and other problems.
• Pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorders associated with streptococcal or other infections (PANDAS or PANS) may affect as many as 1 in 200 children in the U.S., including up to 25% of children diagnosed with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and tic disorders.
• Sensory processing disorder (SPD) often co-occurs with ADHD and ASD.
• In the U.S., the infant mortality rate, including from sudden infant death syndrome(SIDS), is double the rate in many other high-income countries. In Africa, a comparative study in Guinea-Bissau found that infant mortality was at least twice as high (10%-11%) in children who received the diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (DTP) and polio vaccines as in children who did not receive the vaccines (4%-5%).

…large foundations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation exert influence not just through their “enormous resources” but also “by shaping development concepts and policies.”

Cui Bono?

A recent German report on global philanthropy observes that modern philanthropy has its roots, first and foremost, in business tycoons’ self-interested desire to shield income from taxation while “garner[ing] prestige and influence in the U.S. and world affairs.” The report’s authors note that large foundations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation exert influence not just through their “enormous resources” but also “by shaping development concepts and policies.” The Gates Foundation—established in 2000 with an initial endowment of $42.9 billion and amplified by an additional $30 billion from Warren Buffet in 2006—has become the world’s leading global health player as well as the largest non-state funder of the World Health Organization (WHO). As a result of the Gates Foundation’s “tremendous agenda-setting power,” the global health community designated 2010–2020 as the Decade of Vaccines; developed a Global Vaccine Action Plan; and created the public-private Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI Alliance), which receives almost one-fourth of its funding from the Gates Foundation.

While Gates has rhapsodized that vaccines are a fantastic investment, the vaccine industry, in fact, is a primary beneficiary of Gates Foundation largesse. According to the German analysts, for example, the Gates Foundation’s support of the GAVI Alliance has incentivized manufacturers to increase production of specific vaccines. These incentives have resulted in payments of over $1 billion to Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK). Some reporters have described this arrangement as “a leg-up for pharmaceutical companies ‘seeking to expand into faster-growing, lower-income countries.’” However, as the German report notes, the non-governmental organization Doctors without Borders (MSF) has questioned the GAVI Alliance’s overall impact on vaccine affordability, stating that “the cost to fully immunize a child was 68 times more expensive in 2014 than it was in 2001.”

The German analysts and others have outlined key features of the Gates Foundation’s close partnership with the pharmaceutical industry, including the revolving door between the staff of the Foundation and pharmaceutical companies such as Merck and GSK…

The German analysts and others have outlined key features of the Gates Foundation’s close partnership with the pharmaceutical industry, including the revolving door between the staff of the Foundation and pharmaceutical companies such as Merck and GSK; the preponderant focus of the Foundation’s largest global health awards (20/50 or 40%) on research and development of new vaccines and drugs; and the Foundation’s $52 million equity stake in CureVac (a German pharmaceutical company) to speed up development of mRNA-vaccines. The Gates Foundation also has increased its direct support for the biotechnology industry, which is of considerable relevance to the vaccine industry due to the rapidly increasing use of biotech in modern vaccine manufacturing. Recent articles have pointed out, moreover, that the Gates Foundation routinely pays public relations firms to manipulate scientific decision-making in favor of the risky genetic engineering technologies that the Foundation supports.

What these observations make apparent is that  Bill Gates’s vaccine philanthropy indeed represents a “miracle”—but the miracle’s beneficiaries are the corporations and stockholders who are laughing all the way to the bank, and certainly not the children and adults around the world who are bearing the brunt of unsafe vaccines. Dr. Arata Kochi, the WHO’s former director of malaria research, chose to call a spade a spade in 2008 when he described the Gates Foundation as a cartel that suppresses diversity of scientific opinion and is “accountable to no one other than itself.”

By Children's Health Defense 

Collective Evolution

No One Trusts the US Government

No One Trusts the US Government

Not even the American people, says Paul Craig Roberts.

Atlantic Bridge, a German front organization set up by Washington to propagandize Germans to serve Washington, has failed in the job.  The latest survey conducted by the front group shows that 85% of Germans are alienated from the US.  The front group’s chairman acknowledged “the great lost of trust in the United States.”  By a margin of two to one, Germans see China as a more reliable partner for Germany than the US.  

Americans have come to the same conclusion about the US government as have Germans.  The latest Gallup Poll reveals that Americans regard America’s top problem to be the US government.  Twice as many respondents regard the US government to be the top problem than regard immigration, and Americans see Washington to be six times the problem that health care is. 

As many have concluded, the United States is not a democracy. It is an oligarchy ruled by monied private interest groups. 

There has clearly been a revolution in America.  An aristocracy has overthrown the people. Democracy is dead.  We live in the Oligarchy United Against the People.

Civil disobedience is not something outside the realm of democracy. Democracy requires civil disobedience. Without civil disobedience democracy does not exist.

Howard Zinn

If your a patriot a must view

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CouCoups Are Peace, Censorship Is Trust Intolerance Is Love.

CouCoups Are Peace, Censorship Is Trust
Intolerance Is Love.

Exactly 70 years after came out, most fancy themselves smart to totalitarian doublespeak. But perverse lies need no torchlight or mass rallies, just a tailored suit, complacent media and a docile populace.

We know this, yet hear them so often that they become background noise, and even if they come from the mouths of politicians we do not believe, we let the distortions wash over us, unwilling to expend the mental effort to challenge them every time. But when we stop and think, they barely make any sense.

‘Peace-loving nations’

“Peace-loving nations” desire a “peaceful transition” in Venezuela where “peaceful protesters” are being “threatened with violence” by “dictator” Nicolas Maduro, Donald Trump declared recently.

In fact, the US president is openly urging what he must know will be an armed and bloody uprising perhaps magnitudes more devastating than the violence that has already taken place. A month after the same dove-releasing Western powers barely bothered to conceal how they coordinated efforts to endorse out of nowhere a little known self-proclaimed president, furnishing him with every financial tool and foreign-aid incentive to topple the elected government.

One doesn’t have to be a fan of Chavismo or hate America to appreciate the sheer gall. Unless we think of this peace as some cast-iron Western guarantee for post-revolutionary idyll (hello, Libya and Iraq) the only way these nations could be less peaceful is if they actually invaded Venezuela themselves. And it’s not like they haven’t considered that option.

Close relative: NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg telling the Munich Security Conference at the weekend that Russia’s missiles in Europe are a threat to stability, but that the alliance must invest more in weapons “to keep our people secure” – all while insisting that “we remain determined to avoid a new arms race.”

‘Internet of Trust’

“We need to build this new space – a free, open and safe internet – which I believe in profoundly, enabling the access of all but also enabling us to ensure our values and our ideals are respected there,” argued Emmanuel Macron in a speech to the UN last November.

So which is it – “free” or “respectful” ? Because, as he has now discovered with the Yellow Vests, in a truly free internet not everyone might share his “values and ideals.”

Further in his speech Macron did little to hide that censorship was his solution to the quandary: proposing an “Internet of Trust” that offered “regulation” that would keep out “enemies” that “enter all our systems, giving the impression they had the same rights as the others.”

From Ruptly Facebook bans, to German social

 media laws, to the 1984-ish Newsguard, the Internet of Trust is already here.

Close relatives: Fake news. IntegrityInitiative – who, if not these people, should be the inquisitors of online truths? Almost anyone.

‘Don’t let hate win’

Variations of the “Don’t let hate win” refrain are particularly popular among the liberal luminaries even as they spread their love by condemning their political opponents as black-hating or children-caging bigots, denying that they could experience such human feelings as kindness or empathy. All while congratulating themselves on being much nobler people, while occasionally physically assaulting them, if they are Antifa. What a way to defeat hate.

Intolerance for supposed intolerance is an established tactic at this point, and the sympathetic media will clap along as Hillary Clinton talks about “deplorables” or Michelle Obama boasts about how “When they go low, we go high.” The moral high ground was occupied a long time ago.

Close relative: Celebration of diversity. Who could argue with Justin Trudeau or Barack Obama’s assertion that it is indeed our strength? Perhaps those who disagree with them, thus espousing the wrong kind of diversity – of thought. Being the bad kind of diverse is particularly inadvisable for those holding political office or incapable of tear-filled public apologies.

Joseph F Barber,is a Builder /Contractor/ Freelance Writer and Editor of the blog FREEDOM OR ANARCHY,Campaign of Conscience,Founder of the Veterans Project & The Family Assistance Campaign.it is my message to We the people and the citizens of our world That the time has come were we must stand and be counted and to have are voices be heard to stand free and our ground feed another if we can ,I tell you this as it come from with in my soul There comes a point when a man must refuse to answer to his leader if he is also to answer to his own conscience. 

"I don't know how to save the world. I don't have the answers or The Answer. I hold no secret knowledge as to how to fix the mistakes of generations past and present. I only know that without compassion and respect for all Earth's inhabitants, none of us will survive - nor will we deserve to." Leonard Peltier

FREEDOM OR ANARCHY Campaign of Conscience

Pro Deo et Constitutione – 
Libertas aut Mors Semper Vigilans Fortis 
Paratus et Fidelis 


Joseph F Barber

The President and Chilling Free Speech

The President and Chilling Free Speech

While the public discourse has been consumed over the realization that abortion physicians actually let viable babies who survive late-term abortions die — as well as whether President Donald Trump or House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will blink first over the issue of congressional authorization for building a wall at the country’s southern border, to say nothing of the race-and-sex-infused mess at the top of the government in Virginia — a profound free speech issue has been bubbling below the radar.

A former White House communications aide and former Trump campaign adviser who has written a blistering tell-all book about the Trump White House now finds himself in litigation about whether he can freely publish his book — which he has already done — and freely profit from it.

The former Trump friend and colleague is Cliff Sims, and his book is called “Team of Vipers.” It makes Chris Christie’s book about his bitter experiences with those around the president look as if it were written by Mother Teresa by comparison. The president and his folks, who knew of the book before it was published, apparently bristled at the stories related and allegations contained and opinions expressed in it.

This is an unhappy tale, not with regard to accuracy or fairness in reporting but with regard to the doctrine of fair comment and the natural and constitutional right to the freedom of speech. Here is the back story.

When Sims began his time as an official of the Trump campaign, he signed a nondisclosure agreement, or NDA. NDAs typically bar the revelation of information gathered during one’s employment. They were nearly universal in the Trump campaign.

Sims’ NDA also provided that if there was any dispute between him and the campaign over the meaning of the NDA or whether he or the campaign violated it, that dispute would be resolved in secret arbitration, not in a public courtroom in front of a judge and jury. The NDA further provided for liquidated damages — a pre-agreed-upon amount of money that Sims would owe to the campaign if arbitrators found that he violated the NDA.

What about the freedom of speech and the right to a fair trial? The theory of an NDA is that the signer has knowingly waived those rights in return for the employment contemplated by the NDA. This is a quid pro quo. You get hired at a job you want; you get the pay and perks you sought; you agree to keep silent the secrets you learn. And if there is a dispute about what you can say and to whom you can say it, the dispute itself will be resolved in secret because you agreed to that in the NDA. If the arbitrators find that you violated the NDA, you owe a certain amount of money to the other party — in this case, $10 million to the Trump campaign — whether you caused damages in that amount or not.
That is at least the theory of how these NDAs are supposed to work. The courts do not favor these agreements, because they often stifle free speech — and often it is speech in which there is a material and serious public interest. Yet as they are between private parties, NDAs are enforceable.

In this case, the speech is about Trump — not as a candidate but as the president. So after Sims’ book was published and after the folks in the West Wing, where he worked for a year, read what he wrote, the Trump campaign — it still has a skeleton staff and lawyers on the payroll — filed a complaint with the designated arbitration entity, demanding the liquidated damages of $10 million.
Then Sims’ lawyers filed a complaint in federal district court, asking a judge to enjoin the arbitration proceeding because what Sims’ wrote he learned about while working for the government, not on the campaign. The campaign will no doubt point to an NDA it claims Sims signed when he began his tenure in the West Wing and argue that it applies as effectively as the NDA he signed for the campaign. Sims recalls no NDA at the White House.

Here is the problem for Trump. The campaign is not subject to the First Amendment, but the White House clearly is. Even if Sims did sign an NDA at the White House, the First Amendment bars the government from enforcing it, and several federal statutes protect whistleblowers, no matter what they agreed not to say at the outset of their work, unless it is classified material being protected. In the West Wing, Sims worked for the federal government, not Donald Trump personally and not the campaign.

Can the government punish speech of someone who agreed to remain silent? In a word: No. It cannot deter speech, and it cannot chill speech. Chilling takes place when government behavior is so oppressive that the potential speaker is afraid to speak about what he knows.

And if the speech is comment about public people or public policy, it is protected by the doctrine of fair comment. That is a Supreme Court rubric underscoring the truism that the whole purpose of the First Amendment is to protect and encourage open, wide, robust speech about the government — speech that sheds light on dark government corners, speech that is unafraid of and immune from the slightest whiff of government redress, speech that can be harsh in tone and discomfiting in delivery.

It is that brand of public free speech that the Framers intended to protect by the First Amendment. As one of President Trump’s no-holds-barred predecessors famously said, “if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.”

If presidents can use legal artifices to punish the speech they hate and fear, they are no longer presidents in a free society. They are princes in an empire.

Reprinted with the author’s permission.
 Andrew P. Napolitano

Joseph F Barber,is a Builder /Contractor/ Freelance Writer and Editor of the blog FREEDOM OR ANARCHY,Campaign of Conscience,Founder of the Veterans Project & The Family Assistance Campaign.it is my message to We the people and the citizens of our world That the time has come were we must stand and be counted and to have are voices be heard to stand free and our ground feed another if we can ,I tell you this as it come from with in my soul There comes a point when a man must refuse to answer to his leader if he is also to answer to his own conscience.

"I don't know how to save the world. I don't have the answers or The Answer. I hold no secret knowledge as to how to fix the mistakes of generations past and present. I only know that without compassion and respect for all Earth's inhabitants, none of us will survive - nor will we deserve to." Leonard Peltier

FREEDOM OR ANARCHY Campaign of Conscience

Pro Deo et Constitutione –
Libertas aut Mors Semper Vigilans Fortis
Paratus et Fidelis

Joseph F Barber

Rule by Fiat: National Crises, Fake Emergencies and Other Dangerous Presidential Powers

Rule by Fiat: National Crises, Fake Emergencies and Other Dangerous Presidential Powers

“When the President does it, that means that it is not illegal.”—Richard Nixon

Who pays the price for the dissolution of the constitutional covenant that holds the government and its agents accountable to the will of the people?

We all do.

This ill-advised decision by President Trump to circumvent the Constitution’s system of checks and balances by declaring a national emergency in order to build a border wall constitutes yet another expansion of presidential power that exposes the nation to further constitutional peril.

It doesn’t matter that the legal merits of this particular national emergency will be challenged in court.

The damage has already been done.

As reporter Danny Cevallos points out, “President Donald Trump only had to say ‘national emergency’ to dramatically increase his executive and legal authority. By simply uttering those words … Trump immediately unleashed dozens of statutory powers available to a president only during a state of emergency. The power of the nation's chief executive to declare such an emergency knows few strictures — it was designed that way.”

We have now entered into a strange twilight zone where ego trumps justice, propaganda perverts truth, and imperial presidents—empowered to indulge their authoritarian tendencies by legalistic courts, corrupt legislatures and a disinterested, distracted populace—rule by fiat rather than by the rule of law.

This attempt by Trump to rule by fiat merely plays into the hands of those who would distort the government’s system of checks and balances and its constitutional separation of powers beyond all recognition.

This is about unadulterated power in the hands of the Executive Branch.

This is about corporate greed disguised as a national need.

Most of all, however, this is about the rise of an “emergency state” that justifies all manner of government tyranny and power grabs in the so-called name of national security.

This is exactly the kind of concentrated, absolute power the founders attempted to guard against by establishing a system of checks of balances that separates and shares power between three co-equal branches: the executive, the legislative and the judiciary.

“The system of checks and balances that the Framers envisioned now lacks effective checks and is no longer in balance,” concludes law professor William P. Marshall. “The implications of this are serious. The Framers designed a system of separation of powers to combat government excess and abuse and to curb incompetence. They also believed that, in the absence of an effective separation-of-powers structure, such ills would inevitably follow. Unfortunately, however, power once taken is not easily surrendered.”

The Constitution invests the President with very specific, limited powers: to serve as Commander in Chief of the military, grant pardons, make treaties (with the approval of Congress), appoint ambassadors and federal judges (again with Congress’ blessing), and veto legislation.

In recent years, however, American presidents have anointed themselves with the power to wage war, unilaterally kill Americans, torture prisoners, strip citizens of their rights, arrest and detain citizens indefinitely, carry out warrantless spying on Americans, and erect their own secretive, shadow government.

The powers amassed by each past president and inherited by each successive president—powers which add up to a toolbox of terror for an imperial ruler—empower whomever occupies the Oval Office to act as a dictator, above the law and beyond any real accountability.

Consider some of the presidential powers—which have been acquired through the use of executive orders, decrees, memorandums, proclamations, national security directives and legislative signing statements and can be activated by any sitting president—that have allowed past presidents to operate above the law and beyond the reach of the Constitution.

The power to kill. As the New York Times concluded, “President Obama, who came to office promising transparency and adherence to the rule of law, has become the first president to claim the legal authority to order an American citizen killed without judicial involvement, real oversight or public accountability.” Obama’s kill lists—signature drone strikes handpicked by the president—have been justified by the Justice Department as lawful because they are subject to internal deliberations by the executive branch. “In other words,” writes Amy Davidson for the New Yorker, “it’s due process if the President thinks about it.”

The power to wage war. Ever since Congress granted George W. Bush the authorization to use military force in the wake of 9/11, the United States has been in a state of endless war without Congress ever having declared one. Having pledged to end Bush’s wars, Barack Obama extended them.

The power to torture. Despite the fact that the Bush Administration’s use of waterboarding as a torture tactic was soundly criticized by Obama, the Obama Administration refused to hold anyone accountable for participating in the rendition and torture programs. In the absence of any finding of criminality, the authorization of such torture tactics remain part of the president’s domain—should he or she ever choose to revive it.

The power to spy on American citizens. In the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to carry out surveillance on Americans’ phone calls and emails. The Bush Administration claimed that the Constitution gives the president inherent powers to protect national security. The covert surveillance continued under Obama and is full force under Trump.

The power to indefinitely detain American citizens. In 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued an executive order requiring that all Japanese-Americans be held in internment camps. While that order was later rescinded, the U.S. Supreme Court declared it to be constitutional. The ruling has never been overturned. Pointing out that such blatantly illegal detentions could happen again—with the blessing of the courts—Justice Scalia warned, “In times of war, the laws fall silent.” In fact, each National Defense Authorization Act enacted since 2012 has included a provision that permits the military to detain individuals—including Americans citizens—indefinitely without trial.

The power to strip American citizens of their constitutional rights. The Bush Administration claimed it could strip American citizens of their constitutional rights, imprison them indefinitely, and deny them legal representation simply by labeling them as enemy combatants. While the Obama Administration jettisoned the use of the term “enemy combatant,” it persisted in defending the president’s unilateral and global right to detain anyone suspected of supporting terrorist activities.

The power to secretly rewrite or sidestep the laws of the country. Secret courts, secret orders, and secret budgets have become standard operating procedure for presidential administrations in recent years. A good case in point is Presidential Policy Directive 20, a secret order signed by President Obama as a means of thwarting cyberattacks. Based on what little information was leaked to the press about the clandestine directive, it appears that the president essentially put the military in charge of warding off a possible cyberattack.

The power to transform the police into extensions of the military and indirectly institute martial law. What began in the 1960s as a war on drugs transitioned into an all-out campaign to transform America’s police forces into extensions of the military. Every successive president since Nixon has added to the police’s arsenal, tactics and authority. In fact, the Trump Administration has accelerated police militarization by distributing military weapons and equipment to police and incentivizing SWAT team raids and heavy-handed police tactics through the use of federal grants and asset forfeiture schemes.

The power to command the largest military and intelligence capabilities in the world and, in turn, “wag the dog.” As Professor Marshall points out:

In his roles as Commander-in-Chief and head of the Executive Branch, the President directly controls the most powerful military in the world and directs clandestine agencies such as the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency. That control provides the President with immensely effective, non-transparent capabilities to further his political agenda and/or diminish the political abilities of his opponents. Whether a President would cynically use such power solely for his political advantage has, of course, been the subject of political thrillers and the occasional political attack. President Clinton, for one, was accused of ordering the bombing of terrorist bases in Afghanistan to distract the nation from the Lewinsky scandal, and President Nixon purportedly used the Federal Bureau of Investigation to investigate his political enemies. But regardless whether such abuses actually occurred, there is no doubt that control of covert agencies provides ample opportunity for political mischief, particularly since the inherently secretive nature of these agencies means their actions often are hidden from public view. And as the capabilities of these agencies increase through technological advances in surveillance and other methods of investigation, so does the power of the President.

The power to declare a national emergency. The seeds of this present madness were sown more than a decade ago when George W. Bush stealthily issued two presidential directives that granted the president the power to unilaterally declare a national emergency, which is loosely defined as "any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions." Moreover, that national emergency can take any form, can be manipulated for any purpose and can be used to justify any end goal—all on the say so of the president. For instance, back in 1952, President Harry S. Truman tried—and failed—to use a national emergency declaration to seize control of the country’s steel mills. He lost when the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer against the presidential power grab.

Be warned: none of these powers expire at the end of a president’s term. They remain on the books, just waiting to be used or abused by the next political demagogue.

All of these imperial powers amassed by Trump’s predecessors—to kill American citizens without due process, to detain suspects (including American citizens) indefinitely, to strip Americans of their citizenship rights, to carry out mass surveillance on Americans without probable cause, to wage wars without congressional authorization, to suspend laws during wartime, to disregard laws with which he might disagree, to conduct secret wars and convene secret courts, to sanction torture, to sidestep the legislatures and courts with executive orders and signing statements, to direct the military to operate beyond the reach of the law, to establish a standing army on American soil, to operate a shadow government, to declare national emergencies for any manipulated reason, and to act as a dictator and a tyrant, above the law and beyond any real accountability—have become a permanent part of the president’s toolbox of terror.

Thus, Trump is not the first president to weaken the system of checks and balances, sidestep the rule of law, and expand the power of the president. He is just the most recent.

To our detriment, every successive occupant of the Oval Office since George Washington, who issued the first executive order, has expanded the reach and power of the presidency and made our republic that much more vulnerable to those who would abuse those powers in the future.

As Professor Marshall explains, “every extraordinary use of power by one President expands the availability of executive branch power for use by future Presidents.” Moreover, it doesn’t even matter whether other presidents have chosen not to take advantage of any particular power, because “it is a President’s action in using power, rather than forsaking its use, that has the precedential significance.”

In other words, each successive president continues to add to his office’s list of extraordinary orders and directives, granting him- or herself near dictatorial powers.

There’s no point debating which politician would be more dangerous with these powers.

As It points out in the book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the fact that any individual—or branch of government—is empowered to act like a dictator is danger enough.

Joseph F Barber,is a Builder /Contractor/ Freelance Writer and Editor of the blog FREEDOM OR ANARCHY,Campaign of Conscience,Founder of the Veterans Project & The Family Assistance Campaign.