U.S. sees highest poverty spike since the 1960s, leaving 50 million Americans poor as government cuts billions in spending... so does that mean there's no way out?

PUBLISHED: 14:03 EST, 2 April 2013 | UPDATED: 14:05 EST, 2 April 2013

The number of Americans living in poverty has spiked to levels not seen since the mid 1960s, classing 20 per cent of the country’s children as poor.

It comes at a time when government spending cuts of $85 billion have kicked in after feuding Democrats and Republicans failed to agree on a better plan for addressing the national deficit.

The cuts will directly affect 50 million Americans living below the poverty income line and reduce their chances of finding work and a better life.

Success story: Before spending cuts kicked in, 49-year-old Antonio Hammond (pictured) became a success story for Catholic Charities of Balitmore and is now in employment

Before spending cuts kicked in on March 1st, 49-year-old Antonio Hammond became a success story for Catholic Charities of Baltimore - one of a multitude of organizations trying to haul people out of poverty.

In this Maryland port city, one of four residents is considered poor by U.S. government standards.

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Hammond says he ended up in Baltimore three years ago, addicted to crack cocaine and snorting heroin, living in abandoned buildings where "the rats were fierce," and financing his addiction by breaking into cars and stealing copper pipes out of crumbing structures.

Eighteen months after finding his way to Catholic Charities via a rehabilitation center, the Philadelphia native is back in the work force, clean of drugs, earning $13 an hour cleaning laboratories for the Biotech Institute of Maryland and paying taxes.

Kicked his habit: Antonio Hammond (pictured) says he ended up in Baltimore three years ago, addicted to crack cocaine and snorting heroin - while living in poverty

Catholic Charities, which runs a number of federally funded programs, spent $18,000 from privately donated funds to turn around Hammond's life through the organization's Christopher's Place program which provides housing and support services to recovering addicts and former prisoners.

Such success stories are in danger as billions in federal government spending cuts begin squeezing services for the poor nationwide.

They are hitting as the U.S. slowly climbs out of the deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

"All I wanted to do was get high," Hammond said. "I didn't even know any more how to eat or clean myself."

Now he lives with two other men in housing subsidized by the charity, got his driver's license and bought a car. What he marvels at the most is that he has been accepted after a 20-year absence by some of his nine children. That's the best part, he said. "At least I know now they might not hate me."

The U.S. Census Bureau puts the number of Americans in poverty at levels not seen since the mid-1960s when President Lyndon B. Johnson launched the federal government's so-called War on Poverty.

As President Barack Obama began his second term in January, nearly 50 million Americans — one in six — were living below the income line that defines poverty, according to the bureau. A family of four that earns less than $23,021 a year is listed as living in poverty. 

The bureau said 20 percent of the country's children are poor.

Although it is far from the country's poorest city, Baltimore's poverty rate far outstrips the national average of one in six.

Catholic Charities of Baltimore is a conduit for state and federal money for programs designed to help the poor. The charity plays a major role in administering Head Start, a federal program that provides educational services for low-income pre-school children and frees single mothers to find work without the huge expense of childcare.

The spending cuts, known as the sequester, are going to hit Head Start especially hard.

"Before the sequester only half of the need was being met. Now, after the cuts fully take effect, there will be 900 children already in the program who won't be able to take part," said William McCarthy, executive director of Catholic Charities.

The streets of Baltimore: Baltimore is far from the worst American city for poverty, but it faces all the problems of cities where vast numbers of the poor now live

There is no question the national belt-tightening "will deepen and increase poverty," said McCarthy, citing the cuts in long-term care for poor seniors including assisted living and nursing care, and fewer low-income housing spaces, among other ripple effects.

Under the spending cuts, Baltimore Housing Commissioner Paul T. Graziano said his agency faces a $25 million shortfall in funds to help poor people with housing. 

There are 35,000 people on the waiting list. He also lamented cuts that will hamper the city's efforts to clean up or demolish blighted neighborhoods.

Baltimore has 15,000 vacant and abandoned structures as a result of a steep population decline over the past half century.

"It's very, very disheartening. We take a couple of steps forward and then fall back at least one. The private sector isn't going to fix these neighborhoods. I view these things as investments, not expenditures. These things are an investment in the future that bring returns many times over," he said.

While the U.S. economy is slowly recovering, improvements for those deep in poverty do not keep pace with the cuts now in place. 

The spending reductions going into effect will hit hardest at Americans whose prospects are not directly tied to the economy — people like Antonio Hammond and children in the Head Start pre-school programs.

Kids on the streets: When President Obama started his second term in January, 20 per cent of America's children were classed as poor

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said Baltimore depends on federal grants and funding for 12 percent of its budget. 

The austerity cuts "to housing programs_as well as those to public safety, health, and education_will have an adverse effect on Baltimore and throughout the country," she said.

The cuts, which will also hit U.S. defense spending, were designed two years ago as an incentive for lawmakers to avoid a standoff over the federal debt and a potential government shutdown. 

The measures were seen as so onerous as to force Republicans and Democrats in Congress to reach a compromise spending plan. But compromise proved impossible before the March 1 deadline, and what were once seen as unthinkable cuts automatically went into effect.

Democrats want a deficit reduction plan that includes some spending cuts and tax increases on the wealthy. Republicans balk at any more tax increases and insist the problem should be addressed solely by reigning in spending. That feud continues as the two sides battle out future fiscal issues.

Republicans want to see even more cuts in next year's budget, reductions that would, by and large, return military spending to pre-sequester levels and provide big tax benefits to wealthy Americans.

A 2014 budget plan proposed by Rep. Paul Ryan, the vice presidential candidate on the unsuccessful Republican presidential ticket last year, would be particularly tough on social safety net programs. 

His plan would slash $135 billion over the next decade from the program that provides food aid for low-income Americans. Nearly three-quarters of households receiving help from the program include children, who, census figures show, are the group hardest hit by poverty.

Ryan's plan would also turn the government's Medicare health insurance program for Americans age 65 and over into a voucher system, providing direct government payments to seniors who would then try to buy insurance on the private market.

Derelict conditions: Baltimore (pictured) has 15,000 vacant and abandoned structures as a result of a steep population decline over the past half century

Ryan defends his drive for austerity as necessary to begin shrinking the country's $16 trillion national debt.

"If we never balance the budget, if we keep adding deficit upon deficit we have a debt crisis like Europe has. 

That means seniors lose their health care benefit, that means the people in the safety net see the net cut and they go in the street. 

That means you have a recession. These are the things we prevent from happening by balancing the budget. 

Balancing the budget is but a means to an end. It's growing the economy, it's creating opportunity, it's getting government to live within its means," he said in an interview with Fox News.

Obama backs increasing taxes on the wealthy while instituting smaller government spending cuts, a plan that would reduce deficit spending but more slowly. He and most fellow Democrats argue that European-style austerity has not worked there and will harm the U.S. recovery from the Great Recession.

It's an ideological fight that dates back decades. Republicans work from the premise that by unleashing the private sector and removing government controls, all Americans will prosper along with the economy and benefits will flow down to lower-income earners. 

Democrats insist there is an essential role for government in putting a floor under the poor and helping local governments with problems that the private sector cannot or will not shoulder.

Some worry the gap between rich and poor in the U.S. will keep widening under the austerity measures.

According to a report by the non-partisan Congressional Research Service late last year, "U.S.

income distribution appears to be among the most unequal of all major industrialized countries and the United States appears to be among the nations experiencing the greatest increases in measures of income."

Mary Anne O'Donnell, director of community services at Catholic Charities of Baltimore, said increasing income inequality has shown itself dramatically during the U.S. downturn.

"In the last three years, there's been a great change in the kinds of people we are serving. There are increasing numbers of people who owned a home, lost their jobs, end up living in their car and are coming with children to our soup kitchen," she said.

Her organization spent $126 million in the last fiscal year feeding the poor, helping them find jobs and housing, running nursing homes and putting men like Hammond back on their feet.

Of that figure, $98 million came from various programs funded by the city, state and federal governments. Those now face the big cuts as politicians in Washington fail to find a compromise.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2302997/U-S-sees-highest-poverty-spike-1960s-leaving-50-million-Americans-poor-government-cuts-billions-spending.html#ixzz2PPSowr3q
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Charlie Daniels Seizing of Power

The seizing of power is not always accomplished by military coup or even at the ballot box. As the old saying goes, there's more than one way to skin a cat, some being so subtle and gradual, flying below the radar and stealthily creeping piecemeal into society in the guise of benefiting the "greater good" that by the time a slumbering society is awakened to the danger, it is firmly entrenched and extremely powerful.

The early stages of such takeovers seldom affect the whole of society at any one time.  It's accomplished by fostering confusion, class envy and the feeling that somebody is not paying their "fair share," that there are people who don't want the masses to have a level playing field, don't want poor people to have health care or adequate food and housing and the problems of the underclass are all their fault.

A public which is mostly convinced that the system needs changing and don't really mind the painful ones as long as it's "them" not us that it happens to, not realizing that the pain will eventually fall on them, also.

Can it happen in America? The answer to that is that it's already happening in America.

The unchallenged presidential fiat, a legislative body too politically expedient or just too lazy to fully read or comprehend the bills they pass, giving too much latitude to government agencies run by appointed bureaucrats with some idealistic ax to grind.

The give an inch, take a mile regulation of agencies that turn out reams of meaningless caveats make breaking their petty rules all but impossible.

The purchase of heavy-duty weapons, armored vehicles and millions of rounds of ammunition by Homeland Security, an agency with no mandate to raise an army, especially one to be deployed on American soil.

The first small harbingers of Obamacare are starting to show their heads and, bit by bit, as America's health care nightmare unfolds, citizens will begin to understand how inept, corrupt and incompetent our government has grown. Then, apathy will turn to anger, and anger to frustration, as these and other manifestations of Obama's power-grab start to manifest themselves.

The impassioned plea for gun control, banning certain calibers of firearms and magazines is only the beginning in the incremental disarming of America and as each increment is enacted they will move quickly on to the next phase until, like prewar Germany and many other nations who learned the hard way, law-abiding citizens will be left without protection.

You only need talk to a logger in Oregon, or a fisherman in New England to find out how restrictive and many times silly some of the restrictions these desk jockeys can come up with really are.

America's Coal Belt is being decimated, not just an industry, but also a way of life, as generations of miners are being uprooted by Obama's war on coal. Not a "let's find a way to make this work" attitude, mind you, but a "coal is dirty and needs to go now" attitude that's having disastrous effects on a region that has had its share of trouble.

In my opinion, the military of the United States is being systematically looted via budgets cut to the detriment of our readiness, retirement of experienced officers and the slowing of the research and development of new weapon systems that would keep our fighting forces up with, or ahead of, our enemies.

Raw power is being handed over to the federal government in unprecedented and dangerous amounts and, once the power becomes strong enough, the true purposes will be exposed as America succumbs to the very dictatorial system it fought against for a century.

Do you think I'm wrong?

Let's both hope so.

What do you think?

Pray for our troops and the peace of Jerusalem.

God Bless America

Charlie Daniels

Leaked Document: Military Internment Camps in U.S to be Used for Political Disadents

Wealth Inequality in America

Senator: Obama's Golf Weekend With Tiger Cost As Much As 341 Federal Workers Furloughed

"There is nothing just or virtuous about protecting a stale welfare state that is failing the people it is supposed to help."

1:52 PM, MAR 1, 2013 • BY DANIEL HALPER

Single PageIn a sharply written statement, Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama blasts President Obama for campaigning and not governing. He calls Obama's response to the sequestration "the most cynical behavior I have seen during my time in Washington."

           Adds the senator, "Replacing the sequester would require the President to save $85 billion out of a $3,500 billion federal budget. One would think that any President would leap at the opportunity to make government more effective and responsive. But what does the President do instead? He says Republicans are ‘cutting vital services for children’ in order to ‘benefit the well-off and well-connected.’ This has been the strategy now for years: block any attempt to reform the government and then relentlessly attack the reformers. Does any lawmaker, reporter, or citizen believe that the only way to save taxpayer dollars is to hurt children, that every government program is effective and helpful and not one penny is wasted?"

Sessions is the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee. 

"While the White House operatives may think this attack is clever, it betrays an astonishing elitism: the federal government is perfect and requires no reform. That is why they have no plan to make our government leaner and more efficient. The President had 18 months to develop reforms to improve the government, but instead he announced furloughs of federal workers as a political cudgel. Yet, his golf weekend at the yacht club with Tiger Woods cost taxpayers over a million dollars—enough money to save 341 federal workers from furlough," Sessions writes.

"These workers know firsthand how much waste and inefficiency exists in the government. Our Budget Committee office will look for a way to solicit federal employees to send suggestions for how to save money in their departments, agencies, and divisions. What is better? To furlough someone or to empower them to make their office more efficient?

"Now, we learn that the President is going to submit his budget plan—which contains his recommendations to Congress, the reason the law requires it to be submitted early in February before our budget work begins—on March 25th. Yet he will be submitting it after the House and Senate have produced a budget proposal and adjourned for Easter. So while the President speaks of his deep concern for American workers and families, he fails to even submit to Congress his financial plan to help those workers and families. Why then doesn’t the President furlough his entire 500 person staff at the Office of Management and Budget instead of threatening teachers and law enforcement personnel? The budget deals with more than just deficits. It is the chief executive’s plan for American prosperity. What does it mean that he doesn’t want to lay that out? He is the CEO of the Executive Branch and every cabinet official and government employee answers to him. It is his duty to the American people to be the person advancing reform, not blocking it.

"Also at issue is the fact that our massive federal government is, right now, creating poverty and hurting families. Look at cities like Baltimore, Chicago, and Detroit. Raising taxes—instead of reforming government—denies struggling Americans the help they need. There is nothing just or virtuous about protecting a stale welfare state that is failing the people it is supposed to help. President Obama is defending the bureaucracy at the expense of the people.

"It is time for the President to end the permanent campaign and work with both parties to make this government work better."

- See more at: http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/senator-obamas-golf-weekend-tiger-cost-much-341-federal-workers-furloughed_704915.html#sthash.kykgGTUj.dpuf

OBAMA's END GAME REVEALED BY KGB - Obama Socialist / Communist / Marxist / Maoist

Ronald Reagan Tribute

KUHNER: Nixing the rule of law for rule by Obama

President Obama is abusing his power and usurping congressional authority. He is replacing the rule of law with arbitrary rule, ignoring the constitutional limits upon his power. This is the real meaning of his assault on the Second Amendment.

On Wednesday, Mr. Obama released his proposals to curb gun violence in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre. Surrounded by schoolchildren, the president announced the most sweeping gun-control package in decades. His reforms have three policy objectives: implement universal background checks on gun owners, ban so-called assault weapons, and place strong limits on high-capacity ammunition magazines. In short, his goal is to roll back gun rights.

Moreover, the president is issuing 23 executive orders to combat gun violence. Their primary purpose is to bolster the federal government’s system for background checks. The orders expand the nanny state, further undermining individual liberties. All gun owners will be registered in a national computer database. Hence, Big Brother will know which U.S. citizens own guns and how many. We are one step closer to achieving what liberals truly crave: the confiscation of all firearms. If the government can identify all gun owners and how many weapons they have, then an all-out gun grab becomes possible.

Mr. Obama’s proposals would have done nothing — absolutely nothing — to prevent the shootings in Newtown, Conn. They are simply smoke and mirrors to advance the radical leftist gun control agenda. Shooter Adam Lanza’s mother passed a comprehensive background check. The shooter killed his mother before taking her AR-15 rifle and several handguns to unleash his diabolical rage.

The sad truth is that the Newtown massacre occurred for one reason: An evil, mentally ill man snapped and slaughtered 20 children and six adults. Lanza should have been receiving serious psychiatric treatment. He wasn’t. His mother should have properly secured and stored her weapons, and not had him practice regularly at the firing range. She didn’t. That was the lethal cocktail that sparked the tragedy. The government cannot abolish bad parenting or severe mental illness — at least not in a free society.

There is only one policy prescription that can help prevent school shootings: placing armed guards in every school. School districts should hire trained professionals, especially former military personnel, who will patrol school grounds and exercise deadly force if an armed intruder threatens students. This would serve as a massive deterrent, substantially reducing the likelihood of Sandy Hook-style massacres happening again.

Instead, Mr. Obama and his media allies are exploiting the dead children of Newtown to eviscerate the Second Amendment. Liberals’ hostility toward gun rights is based upon their hatred of limited government and individual freedom. The Constitution clashes with their dream of utopian collectivism. Hence, a disarmed citizenry is fundamental to their drive to erect a powerful, centralized socialist state. Stripping away the Second Amendment would remove another major obstacle to the rise of big-government progressivism. By monopolizing force, the state would have nearly complete control over citizens. This is why our Founding Fathers championed gun ownership as the linchpin of a self-governing republic.

Moreover, it is why Mr. Obama is politicizing the Sandy Hook shooting. He realizes that comprehensive gun control will take America one giant step closer to a European-style social democracy. He wants to do this even if it means trampling upon the Constitution and usurping power.

His executive orders are illegal and unconstitutional. The president has no authority — not a scintilla — to unilaterally regulate or limit gun ownership or violate the Second Amendment. Such acts are strictly the purview of Congress and the courts. Moreover, his order using Obamacare as a vehicle to essentially deputize doctors, enabling them to ask patients whether they have firearms, is a blatant abuse of executive power. He is turning doctors into agents of the federal government.

Tea Party Republicans are finally waking up to Mr. Obama’s game. Rep. Steve Stockman of Texas has warned that he may file articles of impeachment. Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky is rightly comparing the president to a “king or monarch.” Mr. Obama is acting as though he is above the law. He isn’t.

Jeffrey T. Kuhner is a radio commentator in Boston.

Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jan/18/nixing-the-rule-of-law-for-rule-by-obama/#ixzz2IS7sPctw
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We The People....

Listen to the Prophet's Voice - Elder Kimball 1961

Listen to the Prophet's Voice

Elder Spencer W. Kimball

Of the Council of the Twelve Apostles

Spencer W. Kimball, Conference Report, October 1961, pp. 29-34

My beloved brothers and sisters, I hope that of the estimated million who may have been listening this morning, there may have been many among them who might have been kings and their courts, presidents and their cabinets, prime ministers and their associates, editors, commanders of armies and navies and air forces, and all others in the world, particularly our fellow men of the Americas from Tierra del Fuego to Point Barrow—for the prophet of the Lord spoke in stirring tones of warning to all the people of this world.

Our world is in turmoil. It is aging toward senility. It is very ill. Long ago it was born with brilliant prospects. It was baptized by water, and its sins were washed away. It was never baptized by fire, for that is still to come. It has had shorter periods of good health, but longer ones of ailing. Most of the time there have been pains and aches in some parts of its anatomy, but now that it is growing old, complications have set in, and all the ailments seem to be everywhere.

The world has been "cliniced," and the complex diseases have been catalogued. The physicians have had summit consultations, and temporary salve has been rubbed on afflicted parts, but it has only postponed the fatal day and never cured it. It seems that while remedies have been applied, staph infection has set in, and the patient's suffering intensified. His mind is wandering. It cannot remember its previous illnesses nor the cure which was applied. The political physicians through the ages have rejected suggested remedies as unprofessional since they came from lowly prophets. Man being what he is with tendencies such as he has, results can be prognosticated with some degree of accuracy.

In an ancient situation somewhat comparable to our own, there was a great destruction, and when the quiet came, those who were spared were wailing:

". . . O that we had repented before this great and terrible day, and then would our brethren have been spared . . . and our mothers and our fair daughters, and our children . . . not have been buried" (3 Ne. 8:24-25).

Today is another day, but history repeats itself. We read the headlines. The great powers warn and threaten. Bombs are detonated. Terror is substituted for reason. Defense stockpiles increase. Nuclear races get swifter. The radios whine. The newspapers carry glaring headlines, politicians wrangle, students and authorities harangue. Everybody expresses opinions, but few approach the real cause or the real cure.

What is the illness? Its symptoms are manifested in every corner of the globe. They are found among men in high places, in hut and mansion. Its symptoms are carelessness, casualness, covetousness, slothfulness, selfishness, dishonesty, disobedience, immorality, uncleanness, unfaithfulness, ungodliness.

Our national and international authorities should know that men have ". . . been destroyed from generation to generation according to their iniquities; and never hath any of them been destroyed save it were foretold them by the prophets of the Lord" (2 Ne. 25:9). And modern prophets are warning frequently, constantly. People are destroyed by their own acts.

"There is one principle," a modern prophet said, "(that we should) understand:—that is of blessings and cursings. For instance, we read that war, pestilence, plagues, famine, etc., will be visited upon the inhabitants of the earth, but if distress through the judgments of God comes upon this people, it will be because the majority have turned away from the Lord."

The world's living prophet has warned and pleaded that the people return to God, who has said again: "I, the Lord, am bound when ye do what I say; but when ye do not what I say, ye have no promise" (D&C 82:10).

This America is no ordinary country. It is a choice land, "choice above all other lands" (1 Ne. 2:20). It has a tragic and bloody past, but a glorious and peaceful future if its inhabitants really learn to serve their God. It was consecrated as a land of promise to the people of the Americas, to whom God gave these great promises:

"It will be a land of liberty to its people" (2 Ne. 1:7).

"They shall never be brought down into captivity" (2 Ne. 1:7).

"And there shall be none to molest them" (2 Ne. 1:9).

"It is a land of promise" (1 Ne. 2:20).

"It shall be free from all nations under heaven."

"There shall be no enemies come into this land."

"It shall be free from bondage" (Ether 2:12).

"There shall be no kings upon the land" (2 Ne. 10:11).

"I will fortify this land against all other nations" (2 Ne. 10:12).

"He that fighteth against Zion shall perish" (2 Ne. 10:13).

But these promises, glorious though they be, desirable as they are, can come only ". . . if they will but serve the God of this land who is Jesus Christ" (Ether 2:12). There is only one way. That infallible cure is simply righteousness, obedience, Godliness, honor, and integrity. There is no other cure. Mountains of arms and ammunitions will not guarantee safety, for enemies can also build fortifications and missiles and bomb shelters. If we would but believe the prophets! For they have warned that if the "inhabitants of this land are ever brought down into captivity and enslaved, it shall be because of iniquity; for if iniquity shall abound cursed shall be the land" (see 2 Ne. 1:7).

The prophet exclaims again with fervor: "And now we . . . behold the decrees of God concerning this land, that it is a land of promise; and whatsoever nation shall possess it shall serve God, or they shall be swept off when the fulness of his wrath shall come upon them. And the fulness of his wrath cometh upon them when they are ripened in iniquity" (Ether 2:9).

O that men would listen! Why should there be spiritual blindness in the day of brightest material vision? Why must men rely on fortifications and armaments when the God of heaven yearns to bless them? One stroke of his omnipotent hand could make powerless all nations who oppose and save a world even in its death throes.

Jesus Christ our Lord is under no obligation to save this world. The people have ignored him, disbelieved him, failed to follow him. They stand at his mercy which will be extended only if they repent. But to what extent have we repented? Another prophet said, "We call evil good, and good evil" (Isa. 5:20). Men have rationalized themselves into thinking that they are "not so bad." Are they fully ripe? Has the rot of age and flabbiness set in? Can they change? They see evil in their enemies, but none in themselves. Even in the true Church numerous of its people fail to attend their meetings, to tithe their incomes, to have their regular prayers, to keep all the commandments. We can transform, but will we? It seems that we would rather tax ourselves into slavery than to pay our tithes; rather build protections and walls than drop to our knees with our families in solemn prayers night and morning.

It seems that rather than fast and pray, we prefer to gorge ourselves at the banquet tables and drink cocktails. Instead of disciplining ourselves, we yield to urges and carnal desires. Numerous billions we spend on liquor and tobacco. A Sabbath show or a game or a race replaces solemn worship. Numerous mothers prefer the added luxuries of two incomes to the satisfactions of seeing children grow up in the fear of God (Deut. 31:13). Men golf and boat and hunt and fish rather than to solemnize the Sabbath. Old man rationalization is with us. Because we are not vicious enough to be confined in penitentiaries, we rationalize that we are pretty good people; that we are not doing so badly. The masses of the people are much like those who escaped destruction in the ancient days of this continent. The Lord said to them:

"O all ye that are spared because ye were more righteous than they [the slain ones], will ye not now return unto me, and repent of your sins, and be converted, that I may heal you?" (3 Ne. 9:13).

The Great Wall of China with its 1,500 miles of unbreakable walls, with its twenty-five feet high impregnableness, with its innumerable watchman towers, was breached by the treachery of men.

The Maginot Line in France, these forts thought to be so strong and impassable, were violated as though they were not there. Strength is not in concrete and re-enforcing steel. Protection is not in walls nor mountains nor cliffs, yet foolish men still lean on "the arm of flesh."

The walls of Babylon were too high to be scaled, too thick to be broken, too strong to be crumbled, but not too deep to be undermined when the human element failed (Dan. 5:1-31). When the protectors sleep and the leaders are incapacitated with banqueting and drunkenness and immorality, an invading enemy can turn a river from its course and enter through a river bed (Isa. 44:27-28; Isa. 45:1).

The precipitous walls on the high hills of Jerusalem deflected for a time the arrows and spears of enemies, the catapults and firebrands. But even then wickedness did not lessen, men did not learn lessons. Hunger scaled the walls; thirst broke down the gates; immorality, cannibalism, idolatry, godlessness stalked about till destruction came.

"Experience is a dear teacher but fools will learn by no other." But we continue on in our godlessness. While the iron curtains rise and thicken, we eat, drink, and make merry. While armies are marshaled and march and drill and officers teach men how to kill, we continue to drink and carouse as usual. While bombs are detonated and tested, and fallout settles on the already sick world, we continue in idolatry and adultery. While corridors are threatened and concessions are made, we live riotously and divorce and marry in cycles like the seasons. While leaders quarrel, and editors write, and authorities analyze and prognosticate, we break the Sabbath as though no command had ever been given. While enemies filter into our nation to subvert us and intimidate us and soften us, we continue with our destructive thinking: "It can't happen here."

Will we ever turn wholly to God? Fear envelops the world which could be at ease and peace. In God is protection, safety, peace. He has said, "I will fight your battles" (D&C 105:14). But his commitment is on condition of our faithfulness. He promised to the children of Israel:

"I will give you rain in due season,"

The land shall yield her increase and trees their fruit.

Granaries and barns will bulge in seed time and harvest.

Ye shall eat your bread in abundance.

Ye shall dwell in your land safely and none shall make you afraid.

Neither shall the sword go through your land.

And five of you shall chase an hundred, and an hundred of you shall put ten thousand to flight (see Lev. 26:4-6,8).

But if you fail to serve me:

The land will be barren, (perhaps radioactive or dry from drought.)

The trees will be without fruit and the fields without verdure.

There will be rationing and a scarcity of food and hunger sore.

No traffic will jam your desolate highways.

Famine will stalk rudely through your doors and the ogre cannibalism will rob you of your children and your remaining virtues.

There will be pestilence uncontrollable.

Your dead bodies will be piled upon the materialistic things you sought so hard to accumulate and save.

I will give no protection against enemies.

They that hate you shall reign over you.

There will be faintness of heart "and the sound of a shaken leaf" shall chase you into flight and you will fall when none pursueth.

Your power—your supremacy—your pride in superiority—will be broken.

Your heaven shall be as iron and your earth as brass. Heaven will not hear your pleadings nor earth bring forth her harvest.

Your strength will be spent in vain as you plow and plant and cultivate.

Your cities will be shambles, your churches in ruins.

Your enemies will be astonished at the barrenness, sterility, desolation of the land they had been told was so choice, so beautiful, so fruitful.

Then shall the land enjoy her Sabbaths under compulsion.

And ye shall have no power to stand before your enemies.

And your people will be scattered among the nations as slaves and bondsmen.

You will pay tribute and bondage and fetters shall bind you (see Lev. 26:14-43).

What a bleak prediction! Yet "These are the statutes and judgments and laws, which the Lord made between him and the children of Israel in Mt. Sinai by the hand of Moses" (Lev. 26:46). The Israelites failed to heed the warning. They ignored the prophets. They suffered the fulfillment of every dire prophecy.

Do we twentieth century people have reason to think that we can be immune from the same tragic consequences when we ignore the same divine laws?

With such innumerable blessings as are available to godly people of this land, how can any sane one continue in his careless patterns of life?

There is a cure for the earth's illness, an infallible one.

War clouds gather, fear heightens; tenseness increases, yet there need be no fear and worry and sleepless nights.

Our God rules in the heavens. He lives. He loves. He desires the happiness and well being of all his children. He has a prophet on the earth today who receives his revelations. He is a prophet to all the world. He has on numerous occasions outlined the cure for all international as well as local ills. The diagnosis is sure, and the remedy certain. Today's prophet stands in the same position between God and the people as did Isaiah, Samuel, and even Moses who gave to the world the ten commandments.

But a controlling majority of the people of this world have relegated them to the past.

"Thou shalt have no other gods before me" (Ex. 20:3, italics added). Yet today we worship the gods of wood and stone and metal. Not always are they in the form of a golden calf, but equally real as objects of protection and worship. They are houses, lands, bank accounts, leisure. They are boats, cars, and luxuries. They are bombs and ships and armaments. We bow down to the god of mammon, the god of luxuries, the god of dissipation.

"Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain" (Ex. 20:7, italics added). Yet on the corner, in public places, on work projects, at banquet tables, there come ringing into our ears the sacred names of Deity without solemnity.

"Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy" (Ex. 20:8, italics added). Yet work goes on, merchandise is sold, athletic entertainments, fishing, hunting go forward without regard to commandments. Conventions, unnecessary travel, family picnics, the Sabbath is violated generally. A relatively few people attend their church services, pay their tithing, serve their fellow men. Few live up to the truth they know. The taverns are full, the beaches crowded, the grandstands packed, man servants, and maid servants hired to duty, the ski lifts busy, canyon picnic tables loaded. Scriptures are read little, and the holy day becomes a holiday.

"Six days shalt thou labour" (Ex. 20:9, italics added). Yet ever-increasing hours of leisure provide ever increasing opportunities for Sabbath breaking and commandment ignoring, and strikes and lobbying go on to increase damaging leisure and decrease work hours further.

"Thou shalt not commit adultery" (Ex. 20:14, italics added). Yet this common sin and idolatry run hand in hand. Free love and indiscretions and deviations of every nature are common in our day. Illegitimate births are said to reach as high as one in ten, yet promiscuity far exceeds illegitimacy. This ugly deviation is found among youth and married people. Divorce, ever on the increase, jumping from one divorce for thirty-six weddings in Civil War days now has reached somewhere near one to four. Flirtations, rationalized to be innocent ones, are the root of numerous of the divorces and other ills.

"Thou shalt not steal" (Ex. 20:15, italics added). Yet in high places and in low, in government office and in business, in everyday life, men have rationalized until consciences seem to have been seared in the matter of honesty. Yet here are bribery, fraud, deceit, theft, padding of expense accounts, tax evasion, installment buying beyond ability to pay, and gambling running into the billions.

The outlook is bleak, but the impending tragedy can be averted. But it can be only through a great repentance and transformation.

"What can I do?" asks the fearful one. I can transform my own life till it is perfected and then influence others when thus transformed. I am prepared to live or die and need not fear. The righteous were saved in Enoch's day and the wicked were drowned in the flood. Other rebellious people were destroyed in the convulsions of the earth in the meridian of time, and they who were more righteous were saved.

Concerning Jerusalem the Lord said: "I will defend this city" (2 Kgs. 19:34) when the powerful, invincible Assyrian army camped at the gates. That night the Lord saved Jerusalem from Sennacherib and his 185,000 troops who did not live the night through to attack (2 Kgs. 19:35-37). Three hundred soldiers and God and Gideon routed the powerful army of the Midianites (Judg. 7:1-25). The thirteen colonies gained a permanent victory over superior forces, and America was born. The Lord and David slew Goliath (1 Sam. 17:45-47), and Israel won many battles when they were righteous. God will fight our battles if we honor him and serve him with all our hearts, might, mind, and strength.

This I know, for the Lord has so declared it through the ages, and I know he lives and is all powerful.

The cause is not lost. If race tracks were closed on the Sabbath, if gambling ceased, drinking eliminated, work and play confined to week days; if stores were closed and all people went to their sanctuaries truly to worship even as best they know; if taverns never opened, and transgressors all repented, and broken homes were mended, and children were trained in uprightness; if families all knelt in prayer night and morning, if tithes were paid and integrity and worship reigned in the lives of men, the era of total peace would be ushered in. Fear would vanish, and enemies would be subdued.

"I will fight your battles," says the Lord God Omnipotent (D&C 105:14). He never fails his promises.

If we are of the masses who are casual, passive, irreligious, irreverent, unholy, immoral, ungodly, then we must "repent or suffer" (D&C 19:4).

Of course, a one-sided disarmament could be madness if worldliness and materialism continued, but a serious turn of the masses could forestall all military conquests, all tragedies of conflict. God is all powerful.

I plead with men everywhere to "Come, listen to a prophet's voice" and hear the word of God from our living prophet who sits with us here today. I know he is God's recognized prophet. I beg of you to listen and act, in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

History of Gun Control

A LITTLE HISTORY

In 1929, the Soviet Union established gun control.

From 1929 to 1953, about 20 million dissidents, unable to defend

Themselves, were rounded up and exterminated.

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In 1911, Turkey established gun control. From 1915 to

1917, 1.5 million Armenians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded

Up and exterminated.

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Germany established gun control in 1938 and from

1939 to 1945, a total of 13 million Jews and others who were unable to defend

Themselves were rounded up and exterminated.

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China established gun control in 1935. From 1948 to

1952, 20 million political dissidents, unable to defend themselves,

Were rounded up and exterminated

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Guatemala established gun control in 1964.

From 1964 to 1981, 100,000 Mayan Indians, unable to defend themselves, were

Rounded up and exterminated.

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Uganda established gun control in 1970. From 1971

To 1979, 300,000 Christians, unable to defend themselves, were rounded

Up and exterminated.

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Cambodia established gun control in 1956. From 1975

To 1977, one million educated' people, unable to defend themselves, were

Rounded up and exterminated.

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Defenseless people rounded up and exterminated in the

20th Century because of gun control: 56 million.

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It has now been 12 months since gun owners in

Australia were forced by new law to surrender 640,381 personal firearms to be

Destroyed by their own government, a program costing Australia taxpayers

More than $500 million dollars. The first year results are now in:

List of 7 items: Australia-wide, homicides are up

3.2 percent Australia-wide, assaults are up 8.6 percent

Australia-wide, armed robberies are up 44 percent (yes, 44 percent)!

In the state of Victoria alone, homicides with

Firearms are now up 300 percent. Note that while the law-abiding citizens

Turned them in, the criminals did not, and criminals still possess their

Guns!

While figures over the previous 25 years showed a

Steady decrease in armed robbery with firearms, this has changed drastically

Upward in the past 12 months, since criminals now are guaranteed that their

Prey is unarmed.

There has also been a dramatic increase in break- ins

And assaults of the ELDERLY. Australian politicians are at a loss to

Explain how public safety has decreased, after such monumental effort and

Expense was expended in successfully ridding Australian society of guns.

The Australian experience and the other historical facts above prove it.

You won't see this data on the US evening news, or

Hear politicians disseminating this information.

Guns in the hands of honest citizens save lives and

Property and, yes, gun-control laws adversely affect only the

Law-abiding citizens.

Take note my fellow Americans, before it's too late!

The next time someone talks in favor of gun control,

Please remind them of this history lesson.

With guns, we are 'citizens'.

Without them, we are 'subjects'.

During World War II the Japanese decided not to invade

America because they knew most Americans were ARMED!

If you value your freedom, Please spread this anti-gun control