While Independence Day is about independence from Great Britain, today it’s also associated with more general notions of freedom — individual independence, not just political independence.

Unfortunately, America’s political class doesn’t want you independent. It wants you as dependent as possible. As the Rainmakers sang back in the 1980s, “They’ll turn us all into beggars ’cause they’re easier to please.”

So what can you do? Everybody focuses on the 2012 elections, and those are important. But why wait? Here are three things you can do now.

* Attack the funding. Many of the most anti-liberty activities of state and local governments are driven by federal funding — either direct funding, or grants.

There are a lot of these out there, and pro-liberty activists should identify a few and then urge members of Congress to eliminate the funding.

In the soon-to-emerge financial climate, there will be pressure to cut programs all over the place. Politics being what they are, every single program will have its coterie of defenders.

But programs where there is a constituency in favor of cuts will be less common, and are likely to make more appealing targets.

It’s probably best if the arguments are made in favor of money wasted rather than liberty threatened, because, alas, most seasoned politicians aren’t especially sensitive to liberty issues. They haven’t been very sensitive to money-saving, either, but I think that, at least, is about to change.

And don’t be afraid to ask tough questions: If your state university is 60 percent female — and many are — why does it still have a Women’s Center that was originally set up to ease the transition when it went coed decades ago?

Why are public schools offering DARE programs (shown not to work) but cutting gifted programs? You’d be surprised how much influence you can have by showing up at a city council meeting or a congressman’s town hall session and asking questions — especially if it’s on community-access cable.

* Stop supporting the enemies of freedom and start supporting your friends. Cancel your subscriptions to cable TV channels, magazines or newspapers that support big government over individual liberty.

Read the whole thing here.

Several times during the past 18 months, I’ve contacted people at the National Institute of Justice — the research, development and evaluation arm of the DoJ in Washington, D.C. — with seemingly-innocuous questions about a grant the agency awarded to a state mental health agency in Oklahoma almost five years ago. NIJ’s answers would better equip me to explain to my readers how NIJ works. Unfortunately, it seems NIJ officials prefer I remain “blind” to what’s going on inside the agency.

Some background: Curious to learn details about NIJ’s criteria for granting non-competitive awards, I forwarded several questions to Jolene Hernon July 28. After pointing out to my contact in the NIJ Office of Communications that less than one percent of the total amount of NIJ’s annual awards in 2009 was non-competitive, according to the Guidelines Regarding Non-Competitive Awards published on the NIJ web site, I asked several questions as follows:

• I asked Hernon to explain whether or not the guidelines used in granting non-competitive awards have changed since Jan. 1, 2005, and, if they have changed, asked her to explain those changes;

• Prefacing my request with “If the guidelines have not changed,” I asked her to explain the basis upon which a particular non-competitive award was granted; and

• Finally, I asked for a copy of the NIJ director’s “determination in writing,” as called for in the current guidelines, that the award in question was worthy of non-competitive status.

I asked the final question above after reading on the NIJ web site that the agency’s policy is to make non-competitive awards only under the following circumstances:

• Only one reasonable source — instances where only one responsible applicant can perform the work of the proposed award. Circumstances under which this may occur include when the NIJ Director has determined in writing that:

~ The applicant has proprietary information or proposes a project involving a unique idea, method, or approach toward advancing criminal justice, policy, and practice in the United States.

~ The applicant has made a substantial investment in an activity that would advance criminal justice policy and practice in the United States. The majority of NIJ’s non-competitive awards to other Federal agencies fall into this category. These agreements are developed to leverage the investment or infrastructure of these agencies to criminal justice application.

~ The applicant is the only entity known to possess the capability to perform the work.

• Compelling public interest — instances where the NIJ Director has determined in writing that exigent, urgent, or other compelling circumstances exist that make it in the public interest to make an award non-competitively. One example of such an instance might be an unusual and compelling urgency to execute a pilot project within a short window of opportunity to affect a public policy decision.

• Statutory requirements — instances where a funding recipient is specified by an appropriations act or other applicable law.

• Recommendations in Congressional reports, when a non-competitive award would be consistent with applicable law — instances where a House, Senate, or Conference Report accompanying an appropriations act or other law recommends an award to a particular recipient, and an award may be made consistent with applicable law, including any applicable executive orders.

I closed my request by asking Hernon to “Please let me know if you plan to respond to this as a media inquiry or whether I must submit the questions above via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).”

Make no mistake, I have received several short e-mail bursts from Hernon since July 28, but none qualify as answers. For instance:

• On July 28, she wrote, “I will respond. But it will take me a day or two to find out the answers to your questions.”

• On July 30, she assured me, “I am still working on getting answers to your questions.”

• On Aug. 12, she explained, “As I am not a grant manager, I do not know the system very well. So I have been coordinating with others here at our agency.”

• On Aug. 20, she told me, “The people who can help answer your questions have scheduled a meeting for next week. I will be back in touch.”

On Wednesday, after going 34 days without an answer, I sent this message to Hernon:

“I think you would agree that 34 days should be plenty of time for any government agency to answer my questions — unless, that is, they’re trying to cover things up or rewrite history. Should I expect answers anytime soon? Please advise.”

What happened to the citizen’s right to know?  Right now, I feel blind.

“Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., presently a darling among Republicans for his pro-growth policies, has long made known his dislike of the 2009 Obama stimulus plan as a ‘wasteful spending spree.’ Nice rhetoric for sure–and as it turns out not very pure. In October 2009 the congressman wrote a letter to Labor Secretary Hilda Solis in favor of a grant application in his district, which, according to Ryan, would ‘place 1,000 workers in green jobs.’”

That’s pretty stomach-turning, when you consider the source. The government can give us nothing that it has not taken from us. The government cannot give your favored constituencies anything it has not taken away from others. The politics of envy have never been as strong in the United States as in Europe – which fact has given us a chance over the decades, but it appears to be a dwindling chance.

And no one who attended any appreciable part of CPAC this past weekend has any time for the philosophy that these are just the accommodations that one must make to stay here and do good work.

The public increasingly understand the scam that is that new “green jobs” line of argument, and in short green jobs mean pink slips, but not before an awful lot of your money goes to create far more Indian, Chinese and other jobs for every generally temporary gig they set up here.

We also now know there should be tempered optimism about whether Republicans really are ready to lead, that is, whether they are any different than the mess that got tossed out a few short years ago. When your leading thinkers and principled-types can’t resist and/or don’t get the truth about this, they are in trouble. And that’s bad news for the rest of us.

Tea, anyone?

Party cruise ship receives $123,000 stimulus grant to protect it from terrorist attacks; “We feel that we’re really a low threat for a terrorist incident,” says owner, “but the stimulus was a nice perk.”

U.S. government made more than $98 billion in erroneous payments this year alone

Federal grant intended to prevent tobacco use spent on junkets, tribal elections, and publishing a newspaper

Utah police spend stimulus funds for a video recorder disguised as a box to monitor skate ramps at a park; Resident who uses the park said he has seen nothing worse than a few kids pushing each other in the park

U.N. spends U.S. aid and other nation’s contributions on extravagant gathering of dictators