I first read a version of this story in Douglas Hyde’s little book, Dedication and Leadership (1956). Hyde had been a Communist Party leader in Great Britain in the 1930s and 1940s. In the late 1940s he defected and joined the Roman Catholic Church. He wrote a fine autobiography, I Believed.

In 1962, he gave a seminar in front of priests and nuns. He called it Dedication and Leadership Techniques.  I own a photocopy of the minutes of that seminar. I have reprinted most of it. It is posted on my website,

www.GaryNorth.com.

This leadership training strategy, when coupled with Facebook (free), YouTube (free), WordPress.com (free), and Amazon S3 (dirt cheap), will work for Tea Party activists to begin to capture small counties that the Establishment ignores. There are over 3,000 counties in the United States. Most of them are like ripe fruit, ready to be picked.

This can be called the Wal-Mart strategy: build your organization in the sticks, where nobody notices until it’s way too late.

It can also be called the dogcatcher strategy. You can read about it here.

To work, this strategy takes dedication. It takes time. It takes perseverance. It also takes leaders. It takes the system used by the Communists to train their leaders.

The reason why it works is simple: nobody else has the same degree of dedication and perseverance.

In a world of television addiction, a dedicated person has the advantage.

How dedicated are you?

Here, I reproduce the section of Douglas Hyde’s manual on the story of Jim. If, after you have read it, you think it makes sense, email it to a like-minded fanatic.

Let me give you the story of one man who came to the Communist Party and how we made a leader of him. You will note the stages in his development and the steps which the communists believe are required in the formation of a leader through instruction.

I had been giving a leadership course. I was the tutor. When I came to the last session, I ended it by saying what the communists the world over say: “The Communist Party is able to take anyone who is willing to be trained in leadership and turn him into a leader.” I will repeat that because the communists believe it. The Communist Party is able to take anyone who is willing to be trained in leadership and turn him into a leader.

You note the one qualification–if he is willing to be trained. That presupposes an attitude of mind which communist parties have to try to create.

I closed my series with those words; I got down from the platform. A new recruit who was doing the course came to me and said that he wanted to be made into a leader. He did not say it like that. It was not as simple as that. As I looked at him, I thought I had never seen anyone look less like a leader in my life. He was short, grotesquely fat, with a great, flabby, wide, uninteresting face, as unprepossessing a man as you will find anywhere. He had a cast in one eye, and the poor man had a most distressing stutter too, and so quite literally he said to me–I am not making fun of the man–”C-c-comrade, I w-w-want you t-t-to -t-take me and t-t-train me and t-t-to t-t-t-tum me i-i-into a l-l-leader of m-men.” I wondered how I was going to do it. I wondered why we had made that big claim of being able to take anyone who was willing.

Here was Jim, pathetically willing, but how were we going to do it? I thought, this is a challenge, and so I told him: “If you come to our classes, Jim, you will have to study. You will learn dialectical and historical materialism. From that you will learn that the very laws of the universe are on the side of communism. The law of change, progress coming through conflict, is something which we use, which helps us, which guarantees our ultimate victory, provided that we understand our communism sufficiently well.”

“You will see that there has been a pattern in history–running through history over the years, building up to the ultimate triumph of communism. We shall only succeed in our aim if a sufficient number of people are trained in leadership, understand the moment of opportunity and seize it when it comes.”

I gave him a hope; I gave him a goal. I gave him something to work towards, and I set out to give him confidence in himself. That is the first step on the way to making a man a leader. You must give him self-confidence.

That in itself is not enough. The world is full of people who are bursting with self-confidence and have nothing to back it up. They are not leaders. They are just nuisances. So, the next thing was, of course, to give him something to be confident about. In other words, we gave him his instruction; we gave him something which others had not got. When he had been going to classes some eight or nine months, I went to him one night and I said, “You know, Jim, you ought to be a tutor.”

He was absolutely terrified.

I said, “You have been in the Party now for some time. You have been attending classes for eight or nine months. Have you learned anything?”

He said, “Yes, I have learned a lot.”

I said, “Well, you know, the majority of people who join the Communist Party know as little as you did when you joined. In other words, they know practically nothing about our theories. Now if you have already learned a lot, this means that you know more than the people who have just joined.

He said, “Yes.”

I said, “The whole art of teaching is to know just a little bit more than the people you are teaching–if you do, you can get away with it. If people ask you questions, and you do not know the answers, all right, go to your textbook. Say, ‘I do not know the answer, but I will give it to you next week.’ Go to the textbook. Find it there. In that way you will learn. If you cannot find it there, I will give it to you.”

And so I made him feel that he was adequate to the task. And he was.

I did not send him as a building worker with a minimum of education to teach dialectical materialism to nuclear physicists. I taught him to take a beginners’ class for building workers, like himself. This was a tremendous thing in his training as a leader, because here was a new relationship between himself and his fellow workers. They were sitting at his feet at night. He was teaching them what he knew. This was good for his confidence. And in order to do it, he had to think out what we had taught him. He had to get some order into his thinking, some discipline into his thought, which the average man does not have to do. He had to learn to get the ideas, which we put into his head, out of his head and into the head of the other person. In other words, he had to become articulate. You cannot be a leader if you are not, and so we made him articulate. We gave him a clear goal towards which to work. We made him see his role in the wider fight, and, of course, we sent him into action.

Those were important steps in his formation as a leader; ones worth noting and trying to follow, I think. At any rate in due course, I asked him if he would go through a public speaking course. He went. It is a course pretty much the same as the course which Frank Sheed would give to members of the Catholic Evidence Guild.

Then we put him up at the street corner, in the market place. We did not turn him into a great orator. We did not even cure him of his stutter, which became modified as he gained confidence in himself. But he was still agitating for communism and propagandizing twenty years later.

Having given him–and this is an essential part in training a leader–the broader training in leadership, we told him that he must lead in a specialized field, and this is important too. We did not throw him to the wolves and say: “All right, you go into your labor union and start leading them.” We gave him six months preparation.

(To read the rest of the story, click the link.)

Foreign hospitals are every bit as go as ours, if you go to the right ones. Where do you fund good ones? Click here.

Plane fares are cheaper than American medicine.

One man who was on a tour in Thailand last year got hit with back pain.  He went to a local hospital. He spent half a day in a private room.

Guess what his bill was.

It was $12. Cash.

A man who needed back fusion surgery — assuming anyone does — was told it would be $70,000 in the U.S. he had to pay $14,000. He went to Bankok

Total bill, including plane tickets: $7,000.

Last year, the hospital treated 70,000 Americans. Hip and knee replacement surgery were the most common procedures.

The numbers are up 20% this year.

Physicians there pay $5,000 a year for medical malpractuce insurance. In the USA, it’s $100,000.

Do the math.

Some American families pay $1,000 a month for health insurance. They probably have to co-pay 20%.

Medical tourism is cheaper.

If you are in a terrible auto accident, will your auto insurance pay? Check.

If you are in a terrible fire you had better have a lot of co-pay money in reserve. You need an HSA.

Costa Rica offers cheaper procedures. Way cheaper. Look up Medical Tourism of Costa Rica.

For more information, click the link.

This was police surveillance paid for by advertising.

It’s coming, folks. I read it in a press release.

Press releases are designed to persuade news outlets to promote, free of charge, some new product.

They are usually written by low-level employees who need work on their communications skills.

Hardly anyone readers press releases. They fill space. But sometimes a press release reveals information that reporters miss. This is such a case.

This press release tells of new technology: surveillance cameras that talk to people on the street. This is promoted as great for advertising. Maybe it is.

FAIRFIELD, N.J., May 3, 2012 /PRNewswire/ — Amerlux has partnered with Illuminating Concepts and IntelliStreets to create the SmartSite state of the art LED street lighting and network control system.

I like the phrase, “network control system.” But who is going to be controlled?

The person who wrote the press release jammed it with verbiage. Few people will ever read it. But I read it. A word popped out at me: bi-directional. That means two-way. As in “we’ll be watching you.”

SmartSite™, powered by IntelliStreets, is the world’s most technically advanced street lighting system which integrates energy efficient LED lighting technology with a robust, bi-directional mesh network control system that manages lighting, audio, video and energy usage throughout urban, suburban and college environments.

Another phrase grabbed my attention: homeland security features.

Operating effectively without cable installation, underground trenching or wire maintenance to set-up the control of the outdoor lighting, sound and video, SmartSite is a 24/7 area-wide system that offers architectural luminaire styles, a robust platform, digital wireless solutions, Wi-Fi capabilities, and a myriad of homeland security features.

Buyers get “a myriad” of these homeland security features. That means “a whole lot.”

Janis Joplin started out as the lead singer for Big Brother and the Holding Company. The band’s name seems altogether relevant for what’s coming.

SmartSite luminaires can be equipped with a variety of cameras and sensors to ensure real-time 24/7-security coverage. The sensors detect a variety of threats that enable rapid response from emergency personnel or help prevent crime and gain control of the streets. Using LED technology, the luminaires provide consistent light dispersal, backed by a centralized remote control of lighting, signage and audio messaging that allow pedestrians to be ushered quickly and safely to the nearest route during storm warnings, events or emergencies.

Some groups are most interested in how the same components that facilitate communication in normal times can switch instantly to providing two-way emergency communications. “Blue-light” emergency communications buttons similar to those found on college campuses can allow individuals to call for help, while the built-in speaker can broadcast emergency information. The digital street sign and/or banner system can provide emergency evacuation routes. Optional built-in sensors can detect rising floodwaters, biological and radiological hazards and relay that information to command centers.

Using SmartSite, powered by IntelliStreets, locally in real-time can have very positive impacts for the public during major natural disasters such as earthquakes and hurricanes, or even terrorist attacks. Localized voice messages can relay the real information that people need to know about the emergency and any action needed to be taken. Instead of relying upon cellular facilities that could be disabled, a mesh network can route around obstacles and still transmit low-bandwidth communications.

The system also links into the Amber Alert Center, the emergency response system that disseminates information about missing persons, usually children, and enlists the public’s help to find them and catch their abductors.

SmartSite is perfectly suited for installation in retail malls, sports venues, on college campuses, and in new construction. A full Activity-Based Costing analysis that would also factor in issues such as more efficient traffic routing during road repairs, special events and emergencies would further strengthen the argument for retrofitting. As the cost of the individual components comes down through economies of scale, the SmartSite system might well become commonplace.

In the meantime, the system will pay for itself.

SmartSite offers a nearly unlimited array of digital advertising opportunities that represents a paradigm shift in which a traditional streetlight is transformed into a 21st-century scaffolding for which a wide variety of communication tools can be posted. Digital ad companies will be available to provide LED banner ads on the street poles to help generate advertising revenue and achieve a greater return on investment more quickly and easily. Using both video and audio advertising messages, businesses can promote brands, municipalities and civic organizations can promote events, and organizations can post a variety of public service announcements and spots.

Well local politicians aren’t going to be roped in so easily. Sure, the community agreed to pay $100,000 to get the money, but now it’s dragging its feet. I mean, who really expects the local taxpayers to pay $100,000 to the Feds. The Feds owe it to the community, right?

This is part of a national program. The Feds pay confiscated and borrowed money to fund boondoggles. That’s the government’s job, right? “Boondoggles R Us.” But they want to make it look reasonable. They ask for a token payment.

Local governments sign papers. But then comes judgment day. The locals claim they just can’t afford it. Times have changed. Revenues are down. “You don’t really expect us to pay, do you? That was then. This is now.”

If the locals don’t fork over the money for the food center, the Feds won’t pay.

I”m rooting for the locals. “Not a brass farthing!”

The people who want the funding have asked the county to write the check.

It turns out that everyone wants into the act. The requests for local funding are at $10 million.

It turns out that politicians at all levels are trying to bail out.

With about $1.4 million remaining from the state grant, the port needs to raise $535,000 to match the $2 million federal grant. Most will come from private donations, the port is counting on the county to provide $100,000.

What, exacty, is the money going to buy? This: “a destination for wine and food education, featuring a tasting room, kitchen, exhibits, teaching vineyards, gardens, classrooms and conference rooms.”

In short, a boondoggle.

Is the national government going bankrupt? Yes. Will this ever stop? Not until it’s bankrupt.

When Washington’s checks stop, people making their living from boondoggles will have to find new careers. They will be a glut on the market.

Police in two cities followed the same procedure. Each sent officers to a man’s home. The police confiscated firearms unrelated to the investigation. Then they refused to give back all of the guns.

In Oakland, police went to a man’s home to investigate his brother’s suicide. Not suspecting anything amiss, he let them into his home. Then they took all of his guns.

The police refused to return one of them. They claimed it is an assault rifle. He disputed this. So do his lawyers.

The second man lives in San Francisco. The police came to investigate him. They took his weapons. The district attorney dismissed the charges against him. The police kept a Remington .22 rifle, a 12-gauge shotgun, and five other guns.

The police claim he could not prove that he owned them. But they can’t prove that he didn’t. Possession is nine-tenths of the law, but not for citizens. It is for the police after the police confiscate the citizen’s weapons.

Both victims have gained free legal counsel from a Second Amendment Foundation, a public interest law firm. Otherwise, legal fees would have been more costly than the guns’ market value.

The police did not factor in this possibility, I suspect. Now they are facing lawsuits in federal court.

The attorneys are arguing more than just confiscation. They are arguing that the state’s Department of Justice has adopted a policy of recommending such action to local police departments.

The plaintiffs are suing the head of the California Department of Justice and the police departments. The goal is to get a favorable ruling that will keep this from happening again.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

First of all, keeping all your money at one company or one fund provider is a very bad idea. I’m sorry because I know that it’s more convienent, but it’s just how I feel. I strongly believe in Institutional Diversification. That is the idea that you split your money up between financial services company and the funds they provide.

Institutional diversification is more than about fund managers commiting fraud or other shenanigans with customer funds (although that has happened in the past as MF Global customers just found out). There are a lot of other unknown risks that can show up as well. Some examples:

1) Your account is compromised and access to your funds is frozen while it is sorted out. It can be identity theft from some rogue player overseas, or (more likely) someone you know. You will likely get access to the funds soon enough, but with more than one company it is unlikely the perpetrator will gain access to all your funds in one fell swoop. And if they do, you have two companies to work out the problem with and one of them likely will handle it faster than the other so you can regain some control.

2) Physical attacks against infrastructure are very real as shown on 9/11. Directed cyberattacks against infrastructure affecting large numbers of accounts at a financial services company are also all possibilities. Again, having more than one company diversifies this risk of being locked out of all your money at once.

3) A natural disaster could happen to affect the company where you have all your money. Earthquakes, hurricanes, etc. are all possible and would be very bad for certain parts of the country where many financial sector companies are based.

4) Lastly, but most importantly (and likely) there is not so much fraud as there is just sheer manager incompetence. SIPC coverage and other legal protections do not do anything if the fund managers do something dumb like Schwab’s YieldPlus fiasco, the Reserve Fund breaking the buck in 2008, or even Vanguard’s own Total Bond Market Fund in 2002 that undershot their benchmark due to manager error. Keeping all your money in one fund type at one provider opens you up to this kind of manager risk that has absolutely no protection of any kind. . . .

Do you think the money is now being used to help home owners? If you are that dense, you are dumb enough to believe that the $250 billion paid by the cigarette companies to the states went to victims of tobacco, or maybe for anti-smoking campaigns “to protect our children.” Less than 3% of the tobacco settlement went for anti-smoking campaigns. North Carolina had the most creative use of the money. It funded the construction of tobacco warehouses.

It’s happening again, according to the New York Times. The money is being used to fill the budget gaps.

In a budget proposed this week, California joined more than a dozen states that want to help close gaping shortfalls using money paid by the nation’s biggest banks and earmarked for foreclosure prevention, investigations of financial fraud and blunting the ill effects of the housing crisis. California was awarded more than $400 million from the banks, and Gov. Jerry Brown has proposed using the bulk of that sum to pay the state’s debts.

The settlement was second in history only to the tobacco settlement.

Governors don’t want that kind of money going to waste — “waste” being defined as “what the settlement money was justified for.”

As part of the settlement, the banks agreed to pay the states $2.5 billion, money intended to help homeowners and mitigate the effects of the foreclosure surge. But critics complained that this was the only cash the banks were required to pay — the rest comes in the form of “credits” for reducing mortgage debt and other activities. Even that relatively small amount has proved too great a temptation for lawmakers.

Only 27 states have devoted all their funds from the banks to housing programs, according to a report by Enterprise Community Partners, a national affordable housing group. So far about 15 states have said they will use all or most of the money for other purposes.

Rick Perry’s Texas sent $125 million to the general fund. Missouri will use $40 million to bankroll its colleges. Indiana is more creative. It will use its money to pay energy bills for low-income families.Virginia will send over $60 million to local governments.

Georgia will use the money to attract businesses to the state.

“The governor has decided to use the discretionary money for economic development,” said a spokesman for Nathan Deal, Georgia’s governor, a Republican. “He believes that the best way to prevent foreclosures amongst honest homeowners who have experienced hard times is to create jobs here in our state.”

Translation: “The governor wants to get taxpaying businesses into the state, which will hire people, who will pay taxes.”

It’s all about taxes.

The $2.5 billion was intended to be under the control of the state attorneys general, who negotiated the settlement with the five banks — Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Ally. But there is enough wiggle room in the agreement, as well as in separate terms agreed to by each state, to give legislatures and governors wide latitude. The money can, for example, be counted as a “civil penalty” won by the state, and some leaders have argued that states are entitled to the money because the housing crash decimated tax collections.

The money is not going to solve the housing crisis.

Diverting the money away from housing is resented by groups that want government money for housing. Everyone wants free money, and now the diversion of the loot is creating turf wars.

Using the money for other purposes is shortsighted, housing advocates warn. “If you leave homeowners hanging out there to dry, then in the short term maybe you help to meet the budget gap this year,” said Maeve Elise Brown, the executive director of Housing and Economic Rights Advocates, based in Oakland. “But in the long term the more people we have going through foreclosure, the worse it’s going to be for our economy as a whole.”

In some states, redirecting the money could have a racially discriminatory effect, said Alan Jenkins, the executive director of the Opportunity Agenda, which supports homeownership, because in some cities black homeowners disproportionately lost their homes, Mr. Jenkins said.

“If you dump all of these funds into the general coffers, the African-American homeowners are not going to benefit in any real way because they represent such a small percentage of the larger state,” Mr. Jenkins said.

Tossing that much money in front of special-interest voting blocs creates a feeding frenzy. “The money is owed to us!”

Meanwhile, the housing bubble remains popped.

When foreigners buy more cotton from American cotton producers, the cotton is shipped out of the country. This leaves less cotton domestically for Americans to buy.

Is this a rotten deal for taxpayers? You bet it is.

Is this a rotten deal for Americans who want to wear cotton clothing? You bet it is.

Is this a good deal for cotton growers? You bet it is.

Will it keep happening? You bet it will.

Which agency wrote the checks? The U.S. Department of Agriculture.

It’s part on the Market Access Program. It supports lots of trade associations, not just cotton. It pays for advertising, research, technical assistance and junkets — excuse me: travel.

“This program plays a role in keeping the demand for cotton strong,” said Allen A. Terhaar, executive director of the council.

You see, without taxpayer funding, cotton would not be strong. You wouldn’t want that, would you? Weak cotton? The thought is terrifying.

If cotton gets weak, the terrorists have won!

How much money is involved in all of this support for advertising in foreign nations? About $200 million a year.

Compared to a deficit of $1.2 trillion, it’s peanuts.

There is also support for peanuts.

This money has not been wasted. It went to fund a manual for pet owners in Japan. Japan, a backward Third World nation, needs manuals of all kinds.

There was also a class at a Mexican culinary school to teach chefs how to cook rice for Mexican consumers.

Can you imagine other uses for your share of the money? Congress thinks otherwise.

Lobbyists agree entirely.

“We think it’s well justified,” said Jay Howell, a lobbyist who coordinates the Coalition to Promote U.S. Agricultural Exports, the industry’s effort to keep the program financed. “It has helped lots of people around the country in small towns and rural communities.”

Mr. Howell and other supporters point to a 2010 study by the Agriculture Department showing that for every dollar that government and industry spend on promotion, agricultural exports increase by $35

Another study by the Department says that pigs can fly under certain conditions (e.g., Level 5 tornadoes). It has not been released.

The Obama Administration wants the money spent to promote smaller companies. It also wants to make sure big companies do not indirectly benefit as members of trade associations.

If you believe this, you might as well believe in Obama’s Photoshopped birth certificate.

Sunkist, Welch’s and Blue Diamond are cooperatives owned by farmers and are eligible for government funds for their promotions abroad. The companies received more than $6 million last year, with about $4 million going to Sunkist alone.

These subsidies have weathered the fiscal storm for decades. There have always been narrow-minded, tight-0fisted critics in Congress, but they have not been successful.

American industry cannot compete, we are told by industrial lobbyists. We need to make strong companies through endless tax subsidies.

It’s the American way.

Then they get sued. The city or county usually loses the case. The city or county pays money to the “criminal.”

This is good. Bureaucracies change only when (1) their budgets get cut; (2) they receive bad publicity; (3) an outside board takes over monitoring them. All three strategies are needed today.

Here is another case.

Police confiscate a college student’s camera because he dared to take photos of them while he was outside his home.

He was arrested. The charges: obstruction, resisting arrest, and disorderly conduct.

His attorney says he merely took photos.

The police arrested his girlfriend, too.

The police refise to talk to the press about the details.

Add “stonewalling” to the list of stupid police tricks.

The student was sitting on his front steps. The police pulled over a vehicle. He had a camera. He took pictures. He is a journalism student.

A policeman told him to stop taking pictures. He refused, claiming Constitutional rights. It was public space.

The student says one cop said, “Public domain, yeah we’ve heard that before!”

He says they pushed him to the ground and then handcuffed him.

His girlfriend was arrested when she tried to get his camera back. The camera belongs to Temple University.

She was charged with obstruction and disorderly conduct. This went on her record. She had to do community service to get this expunged.

The head of the journalism department asked an attorney to get involved. He sees this as having a chilling effect on free speech.

The Society will receive nearly $1 million in federal funding to help pay for installation of exhibits at the new Learning and Visitor Center at Wade House and to conduct archaeological surveys of five historic Lake Michigan shipwreck sites. The Society expects both projects to enhance local heritage tourism opportunities.

Local tourism. Yes! From across America, people will come to the Visitor Center at Wade House to learn about sunk ships. I can see it now!

If you sink it, they will come!

Where did the money come from? Who wants to increase the public’s awareness of sunk ships. The Federal Highway Administration.

The funding comes from the Federal Highway Administration’s Transportation Enhancement program. It will come in the form of reimbursements administered by the Wisconsin Department of Transportation after the two projects’ completion. The funds support qualifying projects that fit one of 12 criteria relating to surface transportation.

Apparently, the two organizations want to remind voters of the terrible risks associated with water-based transportation.

About $170,000 “will support the Society’s underwater archaeology program with a project called Wisconsin’s Historic Shipwrecks: Documenting and Promoting our Maritime Past. The project will involve conducting archaeological surveys of five shipwrecks, one pictured here, that represent a cross section of historically significant vessel types that have sailed Wisconsin waters.”

This will probably create a response from the Department of Lake Management, which will put up money for a museum exhibit of 15-car freeway pile-ups.

Archaeological documentation of the shipwrecks will allow for their nomination to the National Register of Historic Places, providing the sites with additional layers of legal protection. The project will also develop educational and outreach materials as well as historic markers using data and images collected during the surveys. Those data and images will also document the sites on two websites: wisconsinshipwrecks.org and maritimetrails.org.

Finally, the project will result in the addition of state-sponsored mooring buoys to mark the five sites and promote visitation by divers while protecting the sites from improper anchoring techniques.

And you thought government bureaucrats waste your money.