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FREE MIKE KELLEY NOW!!!

To update those of you who have wondered and suggested, yes... I have it on my list to meet with my political reps. I went to the FBI last week and was told straight-out that they have no intention of getting involved with Mike's case or helping me protect my family against the vile threats against us by the evil Daniel Watts.

This week I will (again) be taking off time from work (God bless my employer who is tremendously supportive) to do legal research requested by Mike's atty and to compile a petition/complaint itemizing the list of allegations that The Committee brings to the table, challenging actions of the people who have trumped-up all this awful stuff against Mike...

And after I have that in writing, I'll be posting it here and sending it out to a long list of folks.

In general, things with Mike remain unchanged. He is still being detained in the Pulaski County Jail.  Yesterday I again made the (approx) 200 mile round trip to Little Rock for my weekly 30min visitation with Mike and the conditions he is forced to endure really piss me off.

I note with annoyance on the news that we quibble about whether or not to close Guantanamo and whether non-US citizens are 'entitled' to the protection of habeas corpus, yet we have a bona fide political prisoner -- jailed simply to shut him up, without conviction of any crime -- right here in  our own backyard.

As you can tell, I'm on a rant about this as I have been for months and shall continue to be until this unconstitutional injustice is eradicated.. I am weary of everyone just accepting this kind of 'business as usual' (see Email from a friend), taking the 'easy way out' by professing that there is nothing that can be done about it. Poppycock!!!

On related asides, I noted very happily that Jeff Pistole trounced Terry Kirkendol in the June 10 JP runoff election by a margin of nearly 2 to 1, and believe this is emphatically attributable to the bit about the Auditor’s report on the serious problems with our Sheriff's office finally making newsprint before the runoff election took place.

For another example, consider that the Van Buren County Democrat has, this week, taken to publishing our Sheriff's self-promotional propaganda on the front page, authored by no one other than CID Lt. Wesley Potts, who just happens to be the same Wesley Potts whose little brother, Jason Potts, 26, of Conway, was arrested back on February 1 of this year by Clintoolice for possessing a total of 4.19 grams of a 'white powder substance', a bag with a 'green leafy substance', rubber tubing, baggies, $50 in cash, a pocket knife, etc, etc, so on and so forth, while sitting outside of the baseball field at Clinton Schools. 

After being transported to Cleburne County jail for violating the terms of his probation (probation revocation -- same thing Mike is in jail for right now) as the young Mr. Potts had previously been arrested for other drug related offenses, Jason Potts was released from jail within the day because of communications between his older brother (the 'law enforcement officer' <ha>) Wesley Potts and prosecutors, who were able to get a judge to lift Jason's probation hold and get the cop's little brother released 'on his own recognizance' (ie: without a penny of bond) that same afternoon. 

To which I can only ditto the words of the person who provided this information: Bullshit. A guy trying to sell smack to kids on a school premise should be locked up, especially after a second offense.  Any Joe Blow would surely have had their probation revoked.  They would have locked me up and thrown away the key, but then I don't have a brother with the Sheriff's Office.

Isn't it time for YOU to get angry about all of this?  ~Christine

FREE MIKE KELLEY NOW!!!

All of which factually enrages me because this is simply another instance of 'the criminal justice system' NOT working to serve all of the people...

Of course it did serve the jail administrators who scooted out of work at 2pm to get a jump on the long weekend ahead... due to which also the Jail will be closed to visitation on Monday (which is the only other day of the week that Mike may have visitors)  -- even tho it is common knowledge that there are insufficient visitation facilities to ensure that every prisoner may be visited on every scheduled visitation day.

But hey, if you're a jail administrator, what does it matter to you?

Yet it should matter... Shouldn't it?

Has everyone on the planet gone nutz....???

And this is a drop in the bucket of 'cruel and unusual punishments' (see May 18, below) in light of the fact that we have here a man ALLEGED to have 'committed a crime' (on the word of a wife-beating drug dealer) who has had to go into debt to the tune of $20,000 to 'defend' himself from said allegations Ab>AND HE HASN'T BEEN TO TRIAL YET...

This over the course of 14+ months during which the charges brought against him by the state have been 'dismissed' and then politically manipulated to Federal Jurisdiction because the potato got too hot to handle when Mike pitched a bitch about local law enforcement taking the word of pedophile with a grudge at face value, enabling him -- the snitch -- to tromp all over my teenage daughters' dignity, honor and Constitutionally Guaranteed Human Rights.

I am personally appalled to the degree of being ashamed of being a human that so many people in such great positions of power and authority fail to get what Mike Kelley is doing for them (and all of us) right now.

Mike Kelley is right... the corruption is rampant. It seems to go all the way down to the mitochondria of the grass roots...

Each of us should please his neighbor for his good, to build him up. ~ Romans 15:2

May God have mercy on our souls...

Anyone wanting Mike Kelley's address in jail or to assist with his vindication, contact me at 501-745-4153. ~Christine

The Spirit of the Lord GOD is upon me; because the LORD hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound; To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all that mourn; To appoint unto them that mourn in Zion, to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness; that they might be called trees of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that he might be glorified. ~Isaiah 61:1-3
 

We have talked on the phone briefly each day since his detention began on Friday, May 9. For the record, these eight phone calls, each maybe 5-8 minutes in length, have cost nearly $7 a piece. At this rate, if Mike talks to one person every day he is detained and his detention continues through his June 30 trial date, over the seven weeks 'somebody' (on the 'outside') will have had to pay roughly $350 just to say hello to Mike and find out how he is doing.

Multiply this by the (roughly) 15,000 inmates routinely detained in Arkansas penal systems ($7 per day x 7 days per week x 15000 calls) and you get $735,000 per week for simple familial communication.

Then ask yourself, where does this money come from? (Hint: unless the accused is independently wealthy <ha!>, this money comes from the pockets of hard-working loved ones.) More importantly ask who does this money go to...???

According to Curenational.org:

Prison authorities and phone companies... profit from the calls - prison phone service nationwide generates as much as $1 billion a year, some estimate... But states also get income from the prison calls, up to 50 percent or more of the revenue they generate. Nevada got an estimated $2.9 million last year from calls made by 10,000 inmates. New York, with 67,000 inmates, got $20 million.

If you find this absurd, be advised: It is only a teeny-tiny drop in the bucket of the injustice being done by our criminal justice system with the prima facie case in point being Michael C. Kelley.

In response to the question so many folks have asked of me ("How can they arrest a man for trying to arrest a bad person?"), the thumbnail is that the judge's decision at the bond hearing held Friday, May 16, turned on the word of one DEA agent, Johnny Sowell -- who also happens to be one of the prime candidates of our scrutiny, re: dirty drug-war dealings (see: Watergate Pot Bust), for many months and is 'rumored' to be blood kin to Daniel Watts, the drug-dealing woman-abusing snitch whose revenge vendetta as aided and abetted by various officers of 'law enforcement' resulted in Kelley's initial arrest in March of 2007. 

The hard part of this whole thing for me has been that almost nobody seems to ‘get it’... That all of this is NOT about Mike Kelley nor is it about Shalom Weiss or Daniel Watts.  It is about 'protecting and serving' and 'keeping the peace' in yOUR community concordantly with safeguarding yOUR sacrosanct (and Constitutionally guaranteed) civil rights.

Susan McDougal was in Little Rock the other day. Several years ago she did a booksigning at an event I helped coordinate which embodied its own unique measure of civic atrocity.

A gracious lady, Susan. A woman Mike Kelley has admired since she did her own stint in prison for refusing the government's demands for her to 'snitch'. He wrote her a letter of encouragement back then, while she was doing time, and she had the decency to respond with a warm personal note which Mike has kept all these many years as a symbol of the bravery this woman showed in defense of yOUR Constitution and the values we Americans (supposedly) hold dear. 

Susan was, as is Mike Kelley, a political prisoner of a system gone berserk. And, of the precious ‘strange ones’ who do actually seem to get this fact, for the most part 'we' are all too busy handling the day-to-day of our own existence (and in too many cases 'ducking for cover' rather than expose ourselves to similar outrageous abuse) to ‘get involved’.

Thus it seems sometimes that I stand lone witness to the crimes that have been done to my children, myself and Mike Kelley. A bystander to and yet victim of the cataclysmic events which are catastrophically degrading the lifequality of our whole community, one human being at a time.

For the record, the hearing Friday was good in that we learned much. The prosecution is highly 'secretive' -- proven by the fact that the warrant used to arrest Mike this time was 'sealed'. A contrived, perverted and underhanded yet treacherously 'legal' enactment of 'the law'.  Indignity piled upon indignity (done to all of us) served-up in the illicit namesake of 'we the people' justice...

"We have met the enemy and he is us..."

When will we end our crimes?

Anyone wanting Mike Kelley's address in jail is welcome to contact me: christine@sassafraswilds.net or 501-745-4153. ~Christine

That classic line from Willy Wonka (the Gene Wilder version), is one of my favorite ways to remind myself that no matter how much of what does (or doesn't) get done, so long as we keep on plugging away at it, it will, as my mother would say, all come out in the wash.

On the Tracy Ingle matter, David Koon wrote an amazing piece pertinent to this tragedy, published by the Arkansas Times on April 24, 2008, it is titled "Shot In The Dark".

This was subsequent to Koon's journalistic investigation of the gnarly circumstances and we know for a fact that this reporter invested substantial time in digging for the truth.

About that truth, on April 18, Tiffney Forrester, Tracy's sister, offered her own account of the abysmal corruption that has infiltrated law enforcement today, which we share as a PDF

Interestingly, we have just been informed that the judge presiding in the Ingle's case has now put a gag order on it... and that those in the know about such things report this to be 'very abnormal' given the overall circumstances as such legal tactics are usually reserved for 'high profile' cases... ie: not just the 'authorized' shooting of a man who is claiming to be innocent of all charges.

According to Tracy's sister, Tiffney, this gag order was allegedly directed at Tracy as he was supposedly told 'not to speak with the press' -- thus begging the question "Whatever happened to freedom of speech?"

Also, the November Coalition has taken a stand that Tracy Ingle is 'a prisoner of the war on drugs' and we can only hope that more and more media start taking to task the 'authorities' who are perpetrating this holocaust of crime upon the decent people of the U.S.A.

Also as a matter of record, for those of you who have been curious about what became of The Committee's endeavor to get the VBC Sheriff's office to abide the law and keep accurate books, and update was published in Gozarks March edition. It is not a pretty picture and therefore not recommended for the faint of patriotic heart.

How can we ever have a clean and healthy society when those whose job and duty it is to abide the rules seem to be those who are best at rationalizing-away the necessity to follow the rules themselves..., ie: Sheriff's who don't keep books (and elected officials who, knowing this, still support them); people arrested for not having ID on their person; old men arrested for growing plants (so the local drug task force can get more funding); domestic abusers & drug dealers being 'employed' and paid with public funds by the cops.... ? The whole mess is sickening. "Beam me up, Scottie..."

PS: Regarding my personal quest for nomination to the ballot of the Petit Jean Electric Cooperative Board of Directors (click here for some history about this), I wish to extend my heartfelt thanks to the 107 people who signed the petition to nominate me. Thank you especially to my daughters Shalom & Shawna, and to my son Josh, and to Mike Kelley for their respective efforts in gathering all these signatures.

Sadly, 14 of the signatures could not be validated by PJE, thus leaving my petition drive short of the requisite 100 by 7 signatures.

Thanks are also extended to Dave Fugit of PJE for doing his best to notify me of this shortfall in a timely manner and thus giving me the opportunity to secure additional signatures before the requisite filing deadline. Due to the obligations of my full time employment in Marshall, I was unable to make use of this opportunity. 
~Christine, 501-745-4153

NOTE: while many of the postings below remain on point to the continuing circumstances, several announcements are dated but have been left in place for archival reference. ~C, 05-05-08

THE COMMITTEE will make a brief presentation on the agenda of the VBC Quorum Court, Thursday, March 20, 2008 at 7pm, at the Courthouse Annex building located on U.S. 65 at the corner of Shake Rag Rd. on the south side of Clinton, Arkansas. Come say hello!

A PDF of the presentation we made at the February 21 QC meeting -- including 2 pages of responses to the questions we posed to a State Auditor, 7 pages of cited reports from the Arkansas Legislative Joint Auditing Committee, 20 pages of applicable Arkansas Code and other supporting documents is available by clicking the top link in the list at right.

FYI: This is a large (37 pages) document which takes quite a while to download, even with DSL. If this is a problem for you, contact us and we will see about getting a copy to you by some other means.

WHAT WE WANT:
The revival of integrity in law enforcement.

<> Ending 'paid informants' and 'plea deals' as both of these policies short-change justice in every community; 

<> Establishing a means for 'citizen oversight' of all law enforcement and prosecutorial activities so the 'common citizen' has a resource for when they feel they are being abused by the system; 

<> Defining 'community standards' for the conduct of all elected officials which are congruent with both the Constitution of the U.S.A. and our own community values;

<> Working with and effectively being a 'hometown bridge' between elected officials and common citizens to implement changes and improvements which we, the members of our community, determine to be in the best interest of our community as a whole.

Van Buren County Arkansas is rural America at its finest; at its most recognizable.

It is a pretty place, a hardworking place and a modest place where the people don’t have a lot of money or much say in things. They are patriotic and they soldier on against the adversities of daily life. They should not be put upon by harsh police actions and/or over-the-top penalties, even if some of us do run afoul of ‘John Law.’

"River of Clouds," Ozarks mountain-top view of the Little Red River, by Fritz Scheiman >>>>>>>

A common example of the situation here is what I like to call ‘the two thousand dollar marijuana cigarette’.

The Committee is always careful to point out that we are pro-police (let’s be honest, we need ‘em), we take no stand on the drug laws per se (we are not the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws -- NORML) and most of The Committee’s Friends don’t smoke pot or wouldn't even know what it looks if it fell in their lap. 

This is certainly the case with Joe Honea and his wife out in the Botkinburg region of our county, who have been caught up by the Drug Crimes Tasks Force in their ‘historic five million dollar pot cultivation case’ (September 2007), accused of ‘conspiracy’ because their land abuts six thousand acres of wilderness where some of their relatives may have had a hand in growing some plants.

<<<<<<< Michael C. Kelley, Joe Honea and Joe's great-grandson, Jeremiah, at the gate which demarks the end of Joe's land and the beginning of the property owned by Deltic Timber.

But back to the two thousand dollar joint. This happens every day here. I know of several examples but the one I am thinking about concerns a friend, John, 30-something and an underpaid cook for various of the area’s restaurants (when he can find work), has two little boys under five and a working wife. Like many young guys, John is stressed by the money woes he faces, isn’t in very good health (he has MS) and all too often drowns his sorrows in too much beer.

Sometimes he gets out of hand and the last time this happened, he got into a fight with his wife while drunk, started banging on the door to let him in and of course the sheriff was called. The deputies found one marijuana cigarette in his coat pocket on top of the drunk in public situation and it was off to jail for John. After making sundry court appearances, the judge found him guilty as charged (drunk and in possession of a schedule one substance, i.e. the joint) and fined him $750 --- which is the standard amount around here -- and allowed him to make payments of one hundred dollars per month.

A hundred dollars can mean the difference between enough food for the kids and paying the light bill.

John paid the fine monthly but asked the court to reduce it to a more manageable sum. The court refused so John sent them fifty dollars anyhow. He was re-arrested the other day on a new charge—contempt—and will go back before the judge who will likely add another five hundred dollars to his original penalty. This makes an already onerous situation more dire and will probably be repeated—where will the extra money come from if the original fine was too hard to bear?

Well, that’s the two thousand-dollar joint and it’s rotten. The Committee won't defend John for being foolish and drunk or for having the controlled substance on his person, but The Committee does say that this sort of thing in our community is nothing more than usurious, cruel and unusual punishment. It violates the 8^th amendment and it is more wrong than the crime John was originally charged with. We want this sort of thing stopped.

A quick (but probably inadequate) solution would be to give people like John one warning by the deputies (dictated by the sheriff as a ‘crime of low value’) and the joint in his pocket thrown away. A second offense for the same thing might bring charges akin to a parking ticket.

On top of cases like this, we have a Prosecutor down in Conway (Marcus Vaden) who places articles in the papers calling for our people to snitch-out their neighbors so that more Johns can be arrested. >>>

The Committee doesn’t approve of snitches. To paraphrase Harry Truman when he signed into law the establishment of the CIA in 1947, It is unpatriotic for Americans to spy on other Americans.

Snitching is a hot button issue in America today. There are congressional investigations underway on the practice, citizens are up in arms about the practice, murders as revenge on informers are mushrooming while narcotics police and DA’s are horrified over the uproar: How could anyone not approve of this practice?

There are probably times when the police should be tipped off to something bad. A mass murderer living next door, a child molester in the neighborhood, an Al-Qaeda sleeper cell in the apartment above you. But in general ratting is just plain wrong.

If there is a serious criminal enterprise ongoing in any community, the authorities should deal with it the old fashioned way—a trained, deep cover police investigator infiltrates, but not with a wily-nilly, 'kick down the door' approach; not with ‘information’ gleaned by some dope addict drug-peddler who made a deal to cut his own time; not with a sociopath sycophant scum bag who would turn in his own brother for revenge or a few bucks reward.

Such individuals exist almost exclusively by virtue of the Drug Crimes Task Force. They are encouraged and enabled to prey upon the weak and powerless extensively in Van Buren County and everywhere else. Most are themselves dope dealers who get a free pass to peddle their wares unabated while at the same time vindictively narcing-out innocent parties or perceived rivals in the black-market trade. The Committee does not believe that there is organized crime in VBC, despite claims by Vaden to the contrary.

Take Daniel Watts, 29, of Shirley, for example. We know he is a sheriff’s informant because in a recent court case the sheriff and the prosecutor were forced to ‘out’ him. He is a loathsome character. Two convictions for abusing and stalking young girls, an admitted drug dealer (see: Taped Confession which references cancelled check at right), a notorious poacher, an accused thief and other equally nefarious things, Watts is a real prize but our sheriff Bradley and prosecutor Vaden not only will not arrest or prosecute him for dealing drugs, they won’t even talk about it.

The Committee is now studying other ways to deal with Daniel Watts with citizen arrest and a lawsuit to force the sheriff and prosecutor to do their jobs being some options. How has it come to this? Well, it has and that is one reason The Committee was formed. In the time-honored tradition of grassroots politics, some of us have had enough and have realized that if you or I have a gripe, we can save our breath because there is NO OVERSIGHT on law enforcement and their policies or actions around here.

This has been the case since the founding of the State of Arkansas. This is why the sheriff’s office is up for reelection every two years. The founders felt that if you don’t like these guys, get some new ones. Good advice we think. Remember the election for sheriff and chief prosecutor takes place in a year. Let us know if you have some good, honest citizen in mind for those jobs.

The Committee has received calls from several police officers in our county and that is the truth! These men, two of whom are high ranking officers in their communities, support our goals. Our goals are their goals.

They know that punitive penalties such as described above, vicious informants like Watts and policies on using informers are wrong because this makes our citizens hate, distrust and fear the cops. We can’t have that in a free society, but that is the result these deceptive and abusive practices bring to bear.

Honor and respect for law enforcement is what should be the case, but it must be earned by forthright integrity, not coerced by double-standards.

Also, many clergymen in our County are anxious. Usually conservative men and women, these folks come from the Arkansas soil and their faith in the police is being shaken such as when good Christian people like the Honea’s are dragged through the ordeal of a marijuana raid.

<<<<< Click image at left to request a "Watergate Pot Bust: Where's the BEEF?" DVD

To make an emphatic point, note the attached replies from the agencies that The Committee has attempted to communicate with over our concerns. Join us. This is a crusade for HONEST law enforcement. Tell us of your views and complaints.

The leaders of law enforcement are not the real police, they are grasping politicians. The real police are not the narcs or the DA.  The real police patrol our streets and roads, deal with dangerous domestic disputes, search out child predators and try to help our more troubled citizens. They need better pay, better working conditions and better training at federal and state expense.

We can no longer put up with this invasion of evasion and corruption. Think about these things friends, the elections are not far off. ~michael c. kelley

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Thanx & (((hugs)))
Christine Beems, Chairwoman, 501-745-4153, bewise@hypertech.net

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LEARN MORE & GET INVOLVED!

We are the leaders we've been
waiting for.

About Christine Beems:

For those of you who don’t know me, please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Christine but many folks call me Chris. I’m 58, self-employed and the single mom of five marvelous kids.

For more about me, visit my bio, our family website and my personal playground. (((hugs))) ~C

        We're all in this together...
             ...and it's all about accountability.

"If not me and you then who?
If not now, when?"

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The Committee, 501-745-4153, 223 Primrose Lane, Shirley, AR 72153, bewise@hypertech.net