The Big Picture/with Mark Anderson, American Free Press national writer, www.AmericanFreePress.net, or call 888-699-NEWS for more newspaper information. Email writer at truthhound2@yahoo.com.

[Writer also hosts “When Worlds Collide” weekly radio program Saturdays, 7 to 9 p.m. Central, www.RepublicBroadcasting.org, 800-313-9443]

While we often ponder the structures and powers of the Bilderberg Group, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and other centers of illicit influence on our foreign policy and other government operations, sometimes we overlook grassroots tyranny. This reporter can attest to the under-told story of how local governments, by and large, can be so heavy-handed and unfair that usually there is little point in appealing to them for relief from the abuses that rain down from above. And you would be surprised at the public-private connections from the very top levels to the bottom levels of government.

Combing through my reporter notes jotted down over the last 25 years reminds me of many Michigan episodes – from the Bridgman School Board that pressured its only honest member to back down on important financial reviews –along with a threatened fistfight from another board member toward this reporter for supporting the good board member editorially – to watching a retired man’s rural, repairable home get bulldozed by the Three Oaks Township Board for a not being in picture-perfect compliance with the junkyard ordinance and the building code, the unsettling reality is that dealing with officials who are both local and elected does not guarantee much, if anything.

This writer asked Jim Zahl, whose home was bulldozed, why local officials do such things. His terse reply: “Because they can.”

And it’s tough to forget the local, elected officials who made the decision in 2004 to toss an elderly man into the streets in the winter in Allegan County, Mich., because of some litter and scrap around his mobile home – a home they literally dragged off the land.

Had the men in the last two episodes lived in Amish areas, the Amish would have brought them food, hot coffee, building materials and labor crews to repair, rebuild and clean everything. In their undying spirit of self-government, love for neighbor and practical skills, the Amish are unsurpassed in a grassroots economic self-sufficiency that local governments do not provide or encourage, as a general rule.

One of today’s great ironies is that you could have the most honest election system in the world and still get tyranny. Indeed, Americans have full global bragging rights to declare, “America, where we ELECT our slavemasters!” (Maybe that should go on a T-shirt). Most Americans seem to miss the fact that voting within a system in which ballot access laws keep a wider array of candidates and their useful ideas off the ballot and therefore out of public office is nothing more than a certification of slavery. The tyrants want your money AND your vote. Wouldn’t it be more honest to just dispense with elections and have a more open form of “ruler-ship”?

Well, lest frustrated Americans begin catching on – what with all these tea parties and other outward signs of a restless peasantry – here come the think tanks which have an uncanny way of showing up to misguide the public. Case in point: In June, rural Lake Charter Township Hall in southwest Michigan was the scene of a meeting by Americans For Prosperity, yet another organization devoted to our rescue. It did not take long to see the big picture. While the cost of a proposed new public safety building across the street was the announced purpose of this meeting, organizational leaders were not shy about being pro-NAFTA.  Thus, in our midst at the town hall were free-traders who want “free markets” to prevail. A permanent-Republican, former state legislator Jack Hoogendyk, moderated the meeting and assured the 30 people there that Americans For Prosperity was there to help yet another community seriously wounded by the North American Free Trade Agreement that his organization generally supports without apology.

Well, July 4 rolled around and this reporter covered a Kalamazoo tea party. Lo and behold, there was Mr. Hoogendyk who, like many Americans For Prosperity spokesmen at tea parties held across the U.S., talked as if his organization and the Republican party were a wellspring of answers to most problems.

A quick check of Americans For Prosperity shows that it not only has state and local affiliates but a national office in Washington D.C.  Interestingly, the organization’s headquarters at 1726 M Street NW is less than a mile from the CFR’s new Washington office at 1777 F Street NW and less than two miles from the World Bank. That may not mean much by itself, but the organization’s Foundation has welcomed neo-con-artist Newt Gingrich (CFR) to share his counterfeit-conservative “American dream” speeches. The group’s overall message is glazed with tiresome references to the golden “Ronald Reagan” era which, while preferable to the current economic prison, was a period of ballooning debts owed to the bankers, our real sovereigns.

Moreover, this think tank’s office is in the same exact building as the Washington D.C. World Affairs Council, an intellectual/social outreach of the CFR itself. Odd indeed. Don’t birds of a feather tend to flock together?

Consider that books were written long ago (such as Blame Metro by Jo Hindman) that showed linkages between the CFR and the Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations. The ACIR infused globalist ideas deep into America’s affairs, down to the local level. The Hindman book showed that internationalized building codes, urban renewal and tons of zoning and tax schemes were hatched out of the Rockefeller-funded University of Chicago and other “higher institutions of learning.” Thus, it becomes rather clear that local government may not exactly be local.