Storm Clouds Gathering

This past week, we learned that the IRS has targeted for additional scrutiny the tax exemption applications of groups with whose messages it disagrees. We also learned that the Department of Justice obtained the personal telephone records of hundreds of reporters and editors employed by the Associated Press without a search warrant issued by a judge. And during this past week we learned that the White House, the Department of State and the CIA all engaged in a conspiracy of disinformation so that the official version of events of what caused the murders of four Americans at our consulate in Benghazi, Libya, would not impair Obama’s re-election campaign in 2012. The common threads in all of this government secrecy and lying are a general rejection of government’s moral obligation to tell the truth, a disturbing yet brazen willingness to evade and avoid the restrictions the Constitution has deliberately built around government, and a glib admission that the government can do as it pleases so long as it can politically get away with it. http://original.antiwar.com/andrew-p-napolitano/2013/05/15/storm-clouds-gathering/#.UZTqBGuG6k4.email

Round the Clock Surveillance: Is This the Price of Living in a ‘Free, Safe’ Society?

The reality is this: we no longer live in a free society. Having traded our freedoms for a phantom promise of security, we now find ourselves imprisoned in a virtual cage of cameras, wiretaps and watchful government eyes. All the while, the world around us is no safer than when we started on this journey more than a decade ago. Indeed, it well may be that we are living in a far more dangerous world, not so much because the terrorist threat is any greater but because the government itself has become the greater threat to our freedoms. http://lewrockwell.com/whitehead/whitehead82.1.html

Regime Change Begins at Home

Charles Derber’s book by that title says it’s the only way to free America from corporate rule. It transformed America from “we the people” to what CEOs say goes. It put monied interests in charge. Presidents, legislators, and high level bureaucrats serve them. Whatever they want they get. Institutionalized injustice follows. It’s longstanding. Vital change more than ever is needed. America had previous corporate regimes. None match today’s extremism. Bold, creative strategies are needed to change things. Commitment creates possibilities. Nothing worth struggling for is easy. Failure to try assures disaster. America’s on a fast track to full-blown tyranny. It’s a hair’s breath away. Preventing it is top priority. It begins with knowledge. It involves knowing what’s at stake. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article34472.htm#.UVl64zSGDyo.email

Americans’ Economic Prospects and Civil Liberties Have Been Stolen

by Paul Craig Roberts. In the late 20th century and early 21st century, governments in the US and Great Britain chafed under the requirement that government, like the people, is ruled by law and took steps to free government from accountability to law. Appleton says that the result is a “tectonic shift in the relationship between the state and the citizen.” Citizens of the U.S.and UK are once again without the protection of law and subject to arbitrary arrests and indictments or to indefinite detention in the absence of indictments. In the U.S., citizens can be detained indefinitely and even executed without due process of law. There is no basis in the U.S. Constitution for these asserted powers. The unconstitutional powers exist only because Congress, the judiciary and the American people have accepted the lie that the loss of civil liberty is the price paid for protection against terrorists. http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2013/03/24/americans-economic-prospects-and-civil-liberties-have-been-stolen-paul-craig-roberts/

Why The Banking System Would Make Lenin Proud

Socialism is not crafted solely on the backs of standing human or robotic armies, police, and bureaucracy. The modern state must also possess an apparatus of big banks, as Lenin wrote at the onset of the Bolshevik Revolution, for it is banks which perform most accounting and financial recording. In socialism, banks must be expanded, made more comprehensive and, in our globalized age, reach worldwide. http://www.alt-market.com/articles/1402-why-the-banking-system-would-make-lenin-proud

Extremist Government Watch: Big Sis Refuses to Answer Congress on Bullet Purchases

Congressman Timothy Huelscamp revealed this week that the Department of Homeland Security has refused to answer questions from “multiple” members of Congress regarding its recent purchase of huge amounts of weapons and ammunition. “They have no answer for that question. They refuse to answer to answer that,” Huelscamp said. http://www.infowars.com/big-sis-refuses-to-answer-congress-on-ammo-purchases/

Attorney General Eric Holder: If the President Does It, It’s Legal

Since the early days of our republic, the Attorney General (AG) of the United States has served as the chief lawyer for the government, entrusted with ensuring that the nation’s laws are faithfully carried out and holding government officials accountable to abiding by their oaths of office to “uphold and defend the Constitution.” Unfortunately, far from holding government officials accountable to abiding by the rule of law, the attorneys general of each successive administration have increasingly aided and abetted the Executive Branch in skirting and, more often than not, flouting the law altogether, justifying all manner of civil liberties and human rights violations and trampling the Constitution in the process, particularly the Fourth Amendment. No better example is there of the perversion of the office of the AG than its current occupant Eric Holder, who was appointed by President Obama in 2009. Hailed by civil liberties and watchdog groups alike for his pledge to “reverse the disastrous course that we have been on over the past few years” and usher in a new era of civil liberties under Obama, Holder has instead carried on the sorry tradition of his predecessors, going to great lengths to “justify” egregious government actions that can only be described as immoral, unjust and illegal. http://www.lewrockwell.com/whitehead/whitehead76.1.html

The Selfishness of Virtue

Katrina vanden Heuvel

So for all their grandstanding about fighting “the wealthy” and “the powerful,” the evidence overwhelmingly suggests that the owners and writers of The Nation are inextricably entangled with power and wealth. In the relentless Texas Death Cage Match between corporate power and governmental power, they take the government’s side. So they’re not fighting power at all. They’re merely picking a team. Not that this is necessarily bad; I merely wish they’d have the honesty to admit it. Their behavior suggests that they know absolutely nothing about the poor and the working class and only use such people as chess pieces in a cynical game of moral status-jockeying against other elites. http://takimag.com/article/the_selfishness_of_virtue_jim_goad/print#axzz2O120Qx7n

An Orwellian America

Huxley, we are discovering, was merely the prelude to Orwell. Now that the corporate coup is over, we stand naked and defenseless. We are beginning to understand, as Karl Marx knew: Unfettered and unregulated capitalism is a brutal and revolutionary force that exploits human beings and the natural world until exhaustion or collapse. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-03-15/orwellian-america

Why Does Obama Need 1.6 Billion Bullets?

During the last 10 months, the Department of Homeland Security has purchased 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition, including millions of hollow-point bullets. The department also has purchased 7,000 fully automatic assault rifles, and it has overseen the retrofitting of more than 2,000 light tanks, which, of course, were originally designed to resist the mines and ambushes of the battlefield. Why does DHS need such offensive and defensive firepower? Remember, DHS stands for Department of Homeland Security, and “homeland,” just to be extremely clear, means the USA. Obama must be asked against which domestic enemy he is arming nonmilitary forces. It sounds incredible, to be sure, but are we watching administration battle plans take shape against American citizens on the streets of Your Town, USA? http://www.infowars.com/why-does-obama-need-1-6-billion-bullets/

‘It’s National Security’ — Government Transparency Hits Record Low in 2012 Under Obama

Surprise, surprise…the “most transparent administration ever” is, well, the least transparent. Not that any of you are shocked by this revelation, but a new report by the Associated Press demonstrates just how secret our government and intelligence agencies have become. http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2013/03/13/its-national-security-government-transparency-hits-record-low-in-2012-under-obama/

The Internet is Being Slaughtered in the Back Room

The Chicago Tribune is now confirming what we’ve been warning for some time: That every U.S. spy agency will have access to your financial data. The story doesn’t specify whether the IRS investigative division is included in that list, but if you still don’t think your rulers would stoop to that level, well… you’re simply evading. There is one crucial thing to understand about this: The rulers have no choice. The fiat currency games of the ruling elite are getting difficult these days. I’ll leave the details to the financial specialists, but debt is astronomical, interest rates can never rise again (without utterly killing national budgets), and inflation is just about to boil over. They need more money – lots of it – but the presses are already running at full speed and the consequences are mounting. That leaves them only one acceptable choice: Loot the producers. This has happened before, you understand. The closest example to ours is the end of the Roman empire. The state had expanded beyond sustainability, yet the rulers wouldn’t even consider scaling back. http://lewrockwell.com/orig11/rosenberg-p11.1.html

Refuse to Buy or Sell With the Federal Government

Commerce with federal agencies usually requires well-funded firms to submit bids, access to bureaucratic practices and often influence from the lobbying process. Those companies that envision such business as the path to success are more concerned with financial reward than national preservation. The uninterrupted growth of government is a direct result of businesses providing the infrastructure and technological innovations that create the systems and wares that allow for the entrenchment of state sponsored oversight of every component of our society. The permanent causality of this methodical migration away from economic independence is the loss of self-esteem. Without economic choice, free enterprise is impossible. http://www.batr.org/negotium/031313.html

The War Against Bradley Manning

Thanks to the U.S. government’s growing intolerance for dissidents who insist on transparency and accountability, oppose its endless wars and targeted killings of innocent civilians and terrorists alike, and demand that government officials abide by the rule of law, that list of so-called “enemies of the state” is growing. One such “enemy of the state” is Bradley Manning, an intelligence analyst who has been targeted by the Obama administration for holding up a mirror to the bloated face of American empire. Manning is being prosecuted for leaking classified government documents which, like the Pentagon Papers a generation ago, expose systemic corruption within America’s military and diplomatic apparatus. The embarrassment caused by showing that the emperor has no clothes, as it were, has made Bradley Manning public enemy number one in the eyes of the federal government. http://original.antiwar.com/jwhitehead/2013/03/12/the-war-against-bradley-manning/

We Are Bradley Manning

I was in a military courtroom at Fort Meade in Maryland on Thursday as Pfc. Bradley Manning admitted giving classified government documents to WikiLeaks. The hundreds of thousands of leaked documents exposed U.S. war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as government misconduct. A statement that Manning made to the court was a powerful and moving treatise on the importance of placing conscience above personal safety, the necessity of sacrificing careers and liberty for the public good, and the moral imperative of carrying out acts of defiance. Manning will surely pay with many years—perhaps his entire life—in prison. But we too will pay. The war against Bradley Manning is a war against us all. This trial is not simply the prosecution of a 25-year-old soldier who had the temerity to report to the outside world the indiscriminate slaughter, war crimes, torture and abuse that are carried out by our government and our occupation forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is a concerted effort by the security and surveillance state to extinguish what is left of a free press, one that has the constitutional right to expose crimes by those in power. The lonely individuals who take personal risks so that the public can know the truth—the Daniel Ellsbergs, the Ron Ridenhours, the Deep Throats and the Bradley Mannings—are from now on to be charged with “aiding the enemy.” All those within the system who publicly reveal facts that challenge the official narrative will be imprisoned, as was John Kiriakou, the former CIA analyst who for exposing the U.S. government’s use of torture began serving a 30-month prison term the day Manning read his statement. There is a word for states that create these kinds of information vacuums: totalitarian. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article34167.htm#.UTYC-MnK5Es.email

The Shadowy Boondoggle That is ‘Homeland Security’

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which celebrates its 10th birthday this March, has grown into a miniature Pentagon. It’s supposed to be the actual “defense” department — since the Pentagon is essentially a Department of Offense — and it’s rife with all the same issues and defects that critics of the military-industrial complex have decried for decades. In other words, “homeland security” has become another obese boondoggle. But here’s the strange thing: unlike the Pentagon, this monstrosity draws no attention whatsoever — even though, by our calculations, this country has spent a jaw-dropping $791 billion on “homeland security” since 9/11. To give you a sense of just how big that is, Washington spent an inflation-adjusted $500 billion on the entire New Deal. Despite sucking up a sum of money that could have rebuilt crumbling infrastructure from coast to coast, this new agency and the very concept of “homeland security” have largely flown beneath the media radar — with disastrous results. http://original.antiwar.com/engelhardt/2013/02/28/the-shadowy-boondoggle-that-is-homeland-security/

Land of the Free Watch: Supreme Court Throws Out Challenge to Government Electronic Surveillance

The conversion of the United States into a type of “prison” with the inmates under the constant surveillance of the government “jailers” is progressing quickly; this time, with the help of the Supreme Court. By a 5-4 decision on Tuesday, the court rejected a challenge to the constitutionality of government wiretaps and monitoring of citizens’ e-mails, telephone calls, and electronic messages. Those targeted for the surveillance are not suspected of committing any crime, so searching their communications is a direct violation of the Fourth Amendment. http://thenewamerican.com/usnews/constitution/item/14638-supreme-court-throws-out-challenge-to-government-electronic-surveillance

When They Came for the Raw Milk Drinkers

by Ron Paul. While I oppose most gun control proposals, there is one group of Americans I do believe should be disarmed: federal agents. The use of force by federal agents to enforce unjust and unconstitutional laws is one of the major, albeit overlooked, threats to liberty. Too often Americans are victimized by government force simply for engaging in commercial transactions disproved of by Congress and the federal bureaucracy. For example, the offices of Rawesome Foods in Venice, California, have been repeatedly raided by armed federal and state agents, and Rawesome’s founder, 65-year old James Stewart, has been imprisoned. What heinous crime justified this action? Rawesome sold unpasteurized (raw) milk and cheese to willing customers – in a state where raw milk is legal! You cannot even drink milk from a cow without a federal permit! http://the-free-foundation.org/tst2-24-2013.html

Low Interest Rates Impoverish Savers

The besieged consumer gets another whammy from a banking system that thrives on charging usurious fees, while paying you near zero on your saving accounts. With the execution of the Bernanke rescue strategy, the prospects of personal or consumer loans are virtually non-existent. In Helicopter Ben speak; “maintaining monetary accommodation” just does not filter down to the common man. http://www.batr.org/negotium/020613.html

U.S. Citizens Fear Federal Government Threatens Rights

Fifty-eight percent of Americans said they were frustrated with the federal government, compared to 19 percent who are angry and 20 percent who are basically content. That’s an improvement from Aug. 2011, shortly after Congressional approval ratings plummeted after the debt ceiling fight. Then, a full 26 percent of Americans were angry, 60 percent were frustrated and only 11 percent were content. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33799.htm

Trying To Reform Government is Largely a Waste of Time

The truth is government is like rust. It never sleeps. Government grows for its own sake and it has no intention to stay limited. Every bureaucracy, once taken root, will grow as long as someone feeds it. Whereas private companies celebrate when they spend less to achieve more, government values the opposite things. Have you ever noticed how government always measures its success in terms of how much money it spends? It’s impossible to give government agencies enough money for anything. The more poorly they spend existing money, the better opportunity they have to clamor for more cash: “We never had enough to do the job right in the first place.” http://www.theburningplatform.com/?p=48277

Nature’s Capital is the Limiting Resource

by Paul Craig Roberts. Only in science fiction can humans escape the consequences of destroying their own habitat. In Robert A. Heinlein’s Time Enough For Love, the “Great Diaspora of the Human Race” began “more than two millennia ago” and has spread to more than “two thousand colonized planets.” The once “lovely green planet” Earth is a slum planet barely able to support life where only the poorest live, Earth’s natural capital having been consumed over two thousand years ago. Humans have found the ability to rejuvenate themselves and to live almost endless lives, but they are unable to rejuvenate the planets whose natural capital they devour. Humans have not encountered “one race as mean, as nasty, as deadly as our own.” As homo sapiens use up the environments of colonized planets, “human intergalactic colony ships are already headed out into the Endless Deeps,” leaving their ruins behind them. http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2013/01/24/natures-capital-is-the-limiting-resource-paul-craig-roberts/

The Squeegee Man

If you’ve ever lived in a big city, you’ve probably had to deal with the squeegee man. He approaches your car – even though you have not called him over. Without asking your consent, he commences to wiping your windshield with his greasy rag. In a moment, he will demand payment for his “services” – which you’d better hand over, if you don’t want him to attack you (or damage your car). This vignette encompasses everything that is subsumed under government: Random people accosting you with demands for payment – for “services” you never asked for, don’t approve of and don’t use – with the menace of violence looming over everything. Neither the squeegee man nor the politician nor government “worker” ever asks whether you’re interested in what they have to offer – not really. Because they never give you the option to decline. To say, “no thank you.” And have them leave you alone. Both take the position that “services” having been provided – asked for or not, used or not – translates to pay up! http://ericpetersautos.com/2013/01/22/the-squeegee-man/

Drugs Are Illegal, Right?

Drugs are illegal right? You wouldn’t know it based on the data. Regardless, fully 8.7% of our population uses illegal drugs (28,700,000 PEOPLE). More people are using illegal drugs than in any other time in history. In the last three weeks 102,811 people have been arrested for illegal drugs. We’ve spent $2.5 billion on the “war on drugs” already the first three weeks of this year (2013). http://www.drugsense.org/cms/wodclock. Turns out, people are unemployable because of their drug use. Employers do drug tests on prospective employees. It’s so bad around here, a new Wal Mart that opened had to delay opening because more than 50% of applicants couldn’t pass a drug screen. Even in states where marijuana is “legal” now, drug screens are preventing people from getting jobs. An unintended side effect of the war on drugs; people can’t get jobs. All the better for the government, they can get on welfare or disability and get paid to take drugs. Documented use of illegal drugs (or incarceration for drug offenses, sales, or distribution) never prevents a person from getting on disability or welfare (but does preclude getting a job). When will the madness end? http://www.theburningplatform.com/?p=47800

From the Head Down

Process does not obviate the violence – it merely masks it. Makes it palatable by evasion – in much the way that sauces were originally invented as a way to cover up the taste of spoiled food. But the rot remains – and it poisons all who partake of it. Expecting people pickled in authorized, legalized violence since childhood to not occasionally become overtly violent themselves is probably expecting too much. The ethical line has already been thoroughly trampled. Surely, it is no coincidence that as American society and thus, American government, grows ever more predatory – internally as well as externally – violent lashings out by ordinary people become ever-more-commonplace. Monkey see – monkey do. http://ericpetersautos.com/2013/01/17/from-the-head-down/

The Magician’s Con: Renewing FISA and the NDAA Under Cover of the Fiscal Cliff Debates

Such that it is, the realm of political theater with all of its drama, vitriol and scripted theatrics is what passes for “transparent” government today, with elected officials, entrusted to act in the best interests of their constituents, routinely performing for their audiences and playing up to the cameras, while doing very little to move the country forward. All the while, behind the footlights, those who really run the show are putting into place policies which erode our freedoms and undermine our attempts at contributing to the workings of our government, leaving us none the wiser and bereft of any opportunity to voice our discontent or engage in any kind of discourse until it’s too late. It’s the oldest con game in the books, the magician’s sleight of hand that keeps you focused on the shell game in front of you while your wallet is being picked clean by ruffians in your midst. http://lewrockwell.com/whitehead/whitehead67.1.html

Fiscal Cliff Over, Now the Attack on the People Begins

Budget debates are how government sets its priorities and the fiscal cliff package shows were h government’s priorities are: low taxes on the wealthy and corporations, giveaways to business and take-aways from the American people. People can expect much worse in the months to come unless they get organized and mobilize against austerity in a big way. Elected officials will need to be scared by the public in a big way to stop the bi-partisan assault on the people. http://www.globalresearch.ca/fiscal-cliff-over-now-the-attack-on-the-people-begins/5317610

Secrets and Lies of the Bailout

The federal rescue of Wall Street didn’t fix the economy – it created a permanent bailout state based on a Ponzi-like confidence scheme. And the worst may be yet to come. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/secret-and-lies-of-the-bailout-20130104

Statist Philosophy the Scourge of Christianity

The normal condition of man ruling over men resorts to the practice of coercive force. Statism so aptly reflects this system of compliance. When you strip away all the rhetoric and institutional validation, what is left is a doctrine of kingship. Governments are fashioned to exert control over people. Contemplate the intrinsic contradiction of this structure of dominance with the message of the Golden Rule. http://batr.org/solitary/010613.html

Bill of Rights, R.I.P?

Where are we today, 221 years after the Bill of Rights was made the law of the land right here in Richmond? We have a million pages of laws, and less liberty than any generation before us. We have more taxation and less representation than any previous generation. But we do have a rallying cry – written into the supreme law of the land, a cry for liberty and prosperity. This is the legacy of the Anti-Federalists, and it is alive and very real. The Bill of Rights is not an agreement, a contract or a conditional grant. It is a statement of a common and factual natural law. Men are born free. We are born free. We are born free, to live free, to create and produce freely as we are led and blessed to create and produce, to care for and protect our own property, our environment and our families, to trade peaceably with others, and to worship and express our individuality, our faith, and our liberty in a thousand ways. Government exists by our consent, and serves only to protect our rights. http://www.lewrockwell.com/kwiatkowski/kwiatkowski291.html

Hey You

Pink Floyd released The Wall 33 years ago. It was a concept rock opera album that explored the issues of ababdonment, isolation, alienation, authoritarianism, the brutality of war, a tyrannical conformist educational system, and the walls individuals and society build to protect themselves from having to confront reality and deal with the consequences of their actions. I attended the Roger Waters Wall Concert this past summer at Citizens Bank Park with my three sons. Three decades later, the message is more powerful than ever. The government oppression and never ending wars waged by the American Empire around the world have created a society built upon fear and loathing. Roger Waters’ vision is colored by Orwell’s 1984 dystopian nightmare of lies, misinformation, propaganda and brutality. The missing piece, which Waters didn’t see coming in 1979, was the ability of the oligarchs to use their control of the credit system to entrap the masses by convincing them to love their servitude and become so consumed with material possessions and the love of money that they would become nothing more than passive egotistical consumers. http://www.theburningplatform.com/?p=28764

Shadow Forces Behind Government

Let no man dare speak of a shadow government. The crony corruptocrats that make up the ruling elites of the world must maintain the illusion that elected governments are based upon willful consent and have the legitimate authority to establish rules of conduct that their citizen are obligated to obey. For those regimes that maintain their grip of power by undemocratic means, the apologists for the international community give a wide berth of acceptance in order to maintain the appearance of individual national sovereignty. http://www.batr.org/totalitariancollectivism/121612.html

Spooks Incorporated: Does Every Company Need Its Own CIA?

This article from Foreign Policy essentially proves what many of us have already suspected. The ultimate in neo-feudalism is when the corporate sector and the government sector converge, and sadly in these United States this totalitarian marriage is what now dominates the landscape. This is a very worrying trend. From Foreign Policy: Since 9/11, a quiet intelligence revolution has been brewing inside many of America’s leading companies. Hotel chains, cruise lines, airlines, theme parks, banks, chemical companies, consumer products manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies, and even tech giants have been developing in-house intelligence units that look and act a lot like the CIA. These offices are staffed with former CIA, FBI, and military professionals who have close ties to the U.S. government and conduct global threat reporting by working through formal channels and informal networks around the globe. This is the privatization of American intelligence that you’ve never heard of. And it’s part of the innovative and growing business of political risk management. http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2012/12/11/spooks-incorporated-does-every-company-need-its-own-cia/

Pay Differential — Private Sector and the Federal Government

A dreadful warning arises when public sector employment pay and benefits outstrips the remuneration earned by the private employment workers. Even the most hardened government proponent must succumb to the reality that private business generates real wealth that finances government through taxes. The expenditures of government on all levels are linked to the profitability of enterprises and sufficient margin that affords the ability to pay revenue levies. Thus, the proportion of wages between private enterprises and public employees has significant consequences. http://www.batr.org/negotium/121212.html

Land of the Free Watch: Not Just Buses, Street Lights Are Also Recording Conversations

News that the government is set to expand the nationwide installation of surveillance bugs on buses that record conversations serves as a reminder that similar systems are also being readied for street lights, along with a host of other devices. http://www.infowars.com/not-just-buses-street-lights-are-also-recording-conversations/

Land of the Free Watch: Obama Gives OK For Black Box Data Recorders to Be Installed in All Cars

With complete disregard for driver privacy, the Obama administration gave their consent to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to mandate black box event data recorders (EDR) be installed in all new cars in the US. The NHTSA says that by September 2014 all car and light trucks will be equipped with EDRs that will silently “record the actions of drivers and the responses of their vehicles in a continuous information loop.” http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33265.htm

It’s Happening Faster Than Even I Thought

The really scary thing is that after the various groups (guv, corp, intel, mafia) have all this information (and they do trade amongst themselves), they use it to generate individual-specific feedback. You’ve seen this for several years already. For example, after you do a Google search on skis you get ads for discount travel to Vail. Please understand that this was just the initial phase. Email providers like Google, Yahoo, AOL and the rest have dossiers on you: who you talk to, about what, how often, and much, much more. A few years ago, Google’s boss arrogantly bragged in public: We know what you’re going to do Tuesday morning. But even this is nothing, compared to what’s being built just outside of your view. http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig11/rosenberg-p9.1.1.html

Who’s Afraid of the Fiscal Cliff?

What should Speaker John Boehner do? Tell the president politely that America’s problem is not that we are taxed too little but that we spend too much – and the GOP will not sign on either to tax rate or tax revenue increases. For Republicans believe that would further injure the economy – especially an economy limping along at between 1 and 2 percent growth. http://www.wnd.com/2012/11/whos-afraid-of-the-fiscal-cliff/

Statist Thugs and the Rocks They Crawl Out From Under

A mass exodus from ignorance and organized opposition to tyranny is the dream of every freedom loving person within the Liberty Movement today. We would like nothing better than to put an end to the expanding establishment police state in the most peaceful manner possible. The reason why peaceful and popular activism almost never occurs successfully falls not only to the establishment elites who seek out and abuse power; there are others who share in the blame. Regardless of the age, the culture, or the social conditions, there is ALWAYS a percentage of the general populace that embraces the totalitarian dynamic. They are not only useful idiots; they are conscious participants in the process of pacification and enslavement of their own society. During the blackest moments of mankind, they are the willing tools of oppression. As America faces down wave after wave of fiscal difficulties, a government gone rogue with false left/right politics, and policies that disregard civil liberties for the sake of centralized authority, so the statist thugs of our time will soon flow out of the dark recesses of our society. We all know them when we see them, but do we really understand what makes them tick? http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-11-21/guest-post-statist-thugs-and-rocks-they-crawl-out-under

Big Brother, Kill Lists, and Secrecy: What to Expect From Obama’s Second Term

What do NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program and the Obama administration’s recently developed “disposition matrix” have to do with one another? Two points resound in particular. First, both are only able to function in an environment of total secrecy. Also, they represent significant advances in the codification of a new norm for U.S. national security policy—one very much at odds with the constitutionally limited Commander-in-Chief of common lore. Perhaps even more ominously, the infrastructure development of the Obama administration’s policy of targeted killing signals a creeping move toward domestic application. As drone technology continues to be imported home, the convergence of the kill-list(s) within the NCTC bureaucracy—which houses huge repositories of both domestic and foreign intelligence with no probable cause of criminality—is a foreboding development in this saga of eroding checks and disappearing balance. http://original.antiwar.com/christian-stork/2012/11/16/big-brother-kill-lists-and-secrecy-what-to-expect-from-obamas-second-term/

Going to the Dogs

As totalitarianism descends, Our Rulers wax increasingly absurd. No particular of our lives is too petty or personal to engross them; like a gossipy old retiree with nothing better to do all day, they monitor every detail of our existence, controlling and pitting us against each other. Even a miniature schnauzer named Mikey is no longer beneath the federal government’s scrutiny. In a suburb of New York City earlier this month, the Department of Injustice extorted $58,750 from a “senior citizen complex” on behalf of an elderly widower. It seems the “complex” prohibited pets, but when Jack Biegel and his 74-year-old wife moved there, she refused to relinquish her “comfort dog,” Mikey. http://lewrockwell.com/akers/akers198.html

Ron Paul: Election Shows U.S. ‘Far Gone’

Rep. Ron Paul, whose maverick presidential bids shook the GOP, said in the wake of this week’s elections that the country has already veered over the fiscal cliff and he sees no chance of righting ship in a country where too many people are dependent on government. http://www.washingtontimes.com/blog/inside-politics/2012/nov/8/ron-paul-election-shows-us-far-gone/

Dysfunctional, Dishonest, Insane, and Intolerable

These musings centered upon the complete dysfunction of government and delusion of politicians who think they can create value by seizing money from taxpayers, creating programs and controlling our lives. The incompetence, arrogance, ineptitude and insanity of government officials at the Federal, State, and Local level are stunning to behold. A story from the local Wildwood newspaper crystallized why Wildwood and thousands of municipalities across the country continue to spiral downward as government assumes more hegemony over our economy and day to day lives. We need to ask ourselves whether we the people are getting better government service and efficiency today; with government spending at 35% to 40% of GDP, than we did in the 1950’s and early 1960’s when government spending was 20% to 25% of GDP. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-10-22/guest-post-dysfunctional-dishonest-insane-and-intolerable

Intensified Warrantless Spying in America

Post-9/11, lawless spying became policy. In 2002, Bush authorized it by presidential order. Big Brother watches everyone it sets its sights on. So-called threats were invented to justify it. Today, it’s more intensive than ever. http://www.veteranstoday.com/2012/10/15/intensified-warrantless-spying-in-america/

How Neo-Liberals Perverted Capitalism

The version of capitalism that is prevalent in the world today is globalized, oligopolistic, crony and blind to its own crisis of legitimacy. As a consequence, a ‘winner takes all’ or ‘feral’ version of capitalism became the accepted norm. In this version of capitalism, which the historian Eric Hobsbawm has described as “a pathological degeneration of the Adam Smith line”, companies became so focused on short-term profit maximisation that social responsibility and civilised values — including caring for customers, caring for their staff and caring the environment — were jettisoned. Once this sort of capitalism takes root, a race to the bottom generally ensues. http://www.ianfraser.org/the-pathological-degeneration-of-adam-smith/

Ron Paul: Government Dependency Will End in Chaos

The media insists on characterizing statements about dependency on government handouts as controversial, but in truth such statements are absolutely correct. It’s not that nearly half of Americans are dependent on government; it’s actually more than half. If one includes not just people on food stamps and welfare, but also seniors on Medicare, Social Security and people employed by the government directly, the number is more like 165 million out of 308 million, which is 53%. Some argue that Social Security and Medicare benefits are a right because people pay into these programs their whole lives, or that we need a government safety net in place for people who fall on hard times. However, this all becomes a moot point when the funds people depend on become worthless due to government default or rampant inflation.
This is less an issue of dignity or dependence on government, and more about the deceitfulness of government promises. http://www.silverdoctors.com/ron-paul-government-dependency-will-end-in-chaos/

Smile, the Government is Watching: Next Generation Identification

“You had to live – did live, from habit that became instinct – in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement was scrutinized.” – George Orwell, 1984. Brace yourselves for the next wave in the surveillance state’s steady incursions into our lives. It’s coming at us with a lethal one-two punch. http://lewrockwell.com/whitehead/whitehead56.1.html

More Than Half of All Americans Are at Least Partially Dependent On the Government

Once upon a time, the free market was the one that distributed nearly all the wealth in our system. But now the federal government has become a giant deluded “Santa Claus” that distributes goodies to the American people far beyond its actual capacity to do so. In fact, we are borrowing trillions of dollars that we do not have so that our politicians can continue to buy votes with handouts. Look, we will always need a safety net. We don’t want anyone in America starving to death or sleeping in the street. However, our current system has gotten completely and totally out of control. http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/more-than-half-of-all-americans-are-at-least-partially-dependent-on-the-government

The Corporate Surveillance State: How the Thought Police Use Your Cell Phone to Track Your Every Move

Advanced technology now provides government agents and police officers with the ability to track our every move. The surveillance state is our new society. It is here, and it is spying on you, your family and your friends every day. Worse yet, those in control are using life’s little conveniences, namely cell phones, to do much of the spying. And worst of all, the corporations who produce these little conveniences are happy to hand your personal information over to the police so long as their profit margins increase. To put it simply, the corporate-surveillance state is in full effect, and there is nowhere to hide. http://lewrockwell.com/whitehead/whitehead52.1.html

The Eye of Sauron

People speak of the onrush of the police state. I think that many do not understand how fast it comes, or how thorough it will be. The political framework falls rapidly into place. Few or no safeguards exist, and probably few are possible. A growing authoritarianism rapidly erodes what protections we had. The courts allow random searches of passengers of trains and subways without probable cause. Warrantless tapping of personal communications is rampant, or done with secret warrants from a secret federal judge. TSA has Viper squads that stop cars at random for searches. In many places it is against the law to video the police, who everywhere become more militarized and less accountable. For practical purposes, citizens have no recourse. http://www.fredoneverything.net/Saurons_Eye.shtml

Global Crisis — The Convergence of Marx, Orwell and Kafka

While Marx understood the predatory, parasitic nature of Monopoly Capitalism, he did not anticipate the State’s partnering with Cartel/Crony Capitalism; in effect, the State has appropriated the appropriators, stripmining the citizenry to protect the financial sector from the consequences of their “business model” (leverage, fraud, embezzlement and the misrepresentation of risk). But the State doesn’t merely enable (“regulate”) the predation of financiers; it also stripmines the citizenry to fund its own expansion into every nook and cranny of civil society. This is where Orwell enters the convergence, for the State masks its stripmining and power grab with deliciously Orwellian misdirections such as “the People’s Party,” “democratic socialism,” and so on. Orwell understood the State’s ontological imperative is expansion, to the point where it controls every level of community, markets and society. Once the State escapes the control of the citizenry, it is free to exploit them in a parasitic predation that is the mirror-image of Monopoly capital. For what is the State but a monopoly of force, coercion, data manipulation and the regulation of private monopolies? What is the EU bureaucracy in Brussels but the perfection of a stateless State? http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-global-crisis-convergence-marx-orwell-and-kafka

Security and Self-Governance

by Ron Paul. We should face the sober reality that government cannot protect us from all possible harm. No matter how many laws we pass, no matter how many police or federal agents we put on the streets, no matter how routinely we monitor internet communications, a determined individual or group can still cause great harm. We as individuals are responsible for our safety and the safety of our families. Furthermore, it is the role of civil society rather than government to build a culture of responsible, peaceful, productive individuals. Government cannot mandate morality or instill hope in troubled individuals. External controls on our behavior imposed by government through laws, police, and jails usually apply only after a terrible crime has occurred. Internal self governance, by contrast, is a much more powerful regulator of human behavior than any law. This self-governance must be developed from birth, first by parents but later also through the positive influence of relatives and adult role models. Beyond childhood, character development can occur through religious, civic, and social institutions. Ultimately, self-governance cannot be developed without an underlying foundation of morality. http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul815.html

Pharmaceutical Drugs are 62,000 Times More Likely to Kill You Than Supplements

Based on the data showing supplements and herbal remedies are in the ‘super-safe’ category of individual risk, UK, European, and American authorities are completely out of line in their assertion that supplements are dangerous and need to be more heavily regulated. http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/07/24/pharmaceutical-drugs-vs-nutritional-supplements.aspx?e_cid=20120724_DNL_artNew_1

The Careerists

The greatest crimes of human history are made possible by the most colorless human beings. They are the careerists. The bureaucrats. The cynics. They do the little chores that make vast, complicated systems of exploitation and death a reality. They collect and read the personal data gathered on tens of millions of us by the security and surveillance state. They keep the accounts of ExxonMobil, BP and Goldman Sachs. They build or pilot aerial drones. They work in corporate advertising and public relations. They issue the forms. They process the papers. They deny food stamps to some and unemployment benefits or medical coverage to others. They enforce the laws and the regulations. And they do not ask questions. Good. Evil. These words do not mean anything to them. They are beyond morality. They are there to make corporate systems function. http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_careerists_20120723//

Spontaneous Order

It’s tough to do just about anything today without experiencing the far-reaching hand of the growing regulatory state. Virtually everything the average shopper see on the store shelf is stamped with government approval. With the increasing use of red light safety cameras and even domestic surveillance drones, the dystopian world which George Orwell painted so brilliantly in 1984 is sounding more prophetic by the day. The result is a new generation that is coming of age amongst a pervasive and all-inclusive nanny state. With a federal register that grows by tens of thousands of pages each year, tyranny is spewing forth across America from Leviathan’s home of Washington D.C. every single day. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-spontaneous-order-and-jersey-shore

The Elites Are Unanimous: Lower Everyone’s Wages and Standard of Living — Except They Don’t Say it Out Loud

America’s 1% are in harmony on the matter that concerns them most — who gets the biggest slice of the pie. http://www.alternet.org/economy/156219

The Libor Scandal in Full Perspective

As villainous as they might be, Barclays bank chief executive Bob Diamond, Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan, and Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs are not the main villains. The main villains are former Treasury Secretary and Goldman Sachs chairman Robert Rubin, who pushed Congress for the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, and the sponsors of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley bill, which repealed the Glass-Steagall Act. Glass-Steagall was put in place in 1933 in order to prevent the kind of financial excesses that produced the current ongoing financial crisis. President Clinton’s Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin, presented the removal of all constraints on financial chicanery as “financial modernization.” Taking restraints off of banks was part of the hubristic response to “the end of history.” Capitalism had won the struggle with socialism and communism. Vindicated capitalism no longer needed its concessions to social welfare and regulation that capitalism used in order to compete with socialism. The constraints on capitalism could now be thrown off, because markets were self-regulating as Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, among many, declared. It was financial deregulation–the repeal of Glass-Steagall, the removal of limits on debt leverage, the absence of regulation of OTC derivatives, the removal of limits on speculative positions in future markets–that caused the ongoing financial crisis. No doubt but that JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs and others were after maximum profits by hook or crook, but their opportunity came from the neoconservative triumphalism of “democratic capitalism’s” historical victory over alternative socio-politico-economic systems. http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2012/07/19/the-libor-scandal-in-full-perspective/

Spying on Americans Through Cellphone Carriers

What most Americans are blissfully unaware of is the fact that they carry in their pockets what have been described as near-perfect spy devices: their cellphones. Earlier this week, The New York Times disclosed that “cellphone carriers reported that they responded to a startling 1.3 million demands for subscriber information last year from law enforcement agencies seeking text messages, caller locations and other information in the course of investigations.” The report by carriers, made in response to congressional inquiries “document an explosion in cellphone surveillance in the last five years, with the companies turning over records thousands of times a day in response to police emergencies, court orders, law enforcement subpoenas and other requests.” http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=31899

The Federal Centralization Economy

A new hybrid of the command economy is being adapted to replace the last traces of a free market economy. The federal government, through the increase of administrative regulations and bureaucrat oversight is forcing a dangerous planned economy with dire consequences. It will not resemble the Soviet style of government ownership, because many business decisions will no longer rest with owners, but will need conformity to rules that benefit favored enterprises. http://www.batr.org/negotium/071812.html

Information Overload: Driving a Stake Through the National Security State

While the degree of surveillance of our activities here in Obama’s America may be much more far-reaching — thanks to today’s vastly more advanced computer technology — than under East Germany’s notorious Stasi (for Staatssicherheit), who reportedly had one in every three of that country’s citizens spying on the other two, the U.S. is nowhere near as repressive as any of those police states I’ve witnessed. We are not being hauled off to Guantanamo or Leavenworth simply because of what we say or write — at least not yet. But we can learn from those repressive states and from the resistance forces that have worked against them. http://www.nationofchange.org/information-overload-driving-stake-through-national-security-state-1342186946

Totalitarianism Watch: New Homeland Security Laser Scanner Reads People at Molecular Level

The Department of Homeland Security will soon be using a laser at airports that can detect everything about you from over 160-feet away. http://washington.cbslocal.com/2012/07/11/new-homeland-security-laser-scanner-reads-people-at-molecular-level/

Trans Pacific Partnership: Corporate Escape From Accountability

Information has been leaked about the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), which is being negotiated in secret by US Trade Representative Ron Kirk. Six hundred corporate “advisors” are in on the know, but not Congress or the media. Ron Wyden, chairman of the Senate trade subcommittee that has jurisdiction over the TPP, has not been permitted to see the text or to know the content. The TPP has been called a “one-percenter” power tool. The agreement essentially abolishes the accountability of foreign corporations to governments of countries with which they trade. Indeed, the agreement makes governments accountable to corporations for costs imposed by regulations, including health, safety and environmental regulations. The agreement gives corporations the right to make governments pay them for the cost of complying with the regulations of government. One wonders how long environmental, labor, and financial regulation can survive when the costs of compliance are imposed on the taxpayers of countries and not on the economic activity that results in spillover effects such as pollution. Many will interpret the TPP as another big step toward the establishment of global government in the New World Order. However, what the TPP actually does is to remove corporations or the spillover effects of their activities from the reach of government. As the TPP does not transfer to corporations the power to govern countries, it is difficult to see how it leads to global government. The real result is global privilege of the corporate class as a class immune to government regulation. http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2012/07/02/trans-pacific-partnership-corporate-escape-from-accountability/

The Solution to Concentrated Power: The Triple Ds

The concentration of power into the hands of a few bureaucrats in Europe has failed, just as concentrating monetary power into the (privately owned) hands of Federal Reserve bureaucrats has failed. Enabled by a captured Central State, financial power has become concentrated in five banks, media control has been concentrated into six corporations, and so on, ad nauseum. Concentrating centralized political power inevitably spawns State/private-capital cartels that stripmine taxpayer/citizens. This cannot be avoided or staved off with 1,000-page legislative bills and 30,000 pages of regulations, all of which serve to consolidate the power of centralized government and private capital. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-solution-concentrated-power-triple-ds

Is Capitalism Incompatible With Democracy?

Capitalism can be subverted by either an Elite or the majority. Marx traced out how Capital (wealth) naturally consolidates into monopolies or cartels (shared monopolies). These concentrations of wealth then buy political influence via campaign contributions, armies of lobbyists and the full spectrum of cronyism: sweetheart deals, envelopes of cash, revolving doors between the cartels and their regulators, plum jobs for lazy nephews and so on. This base corruption of the Central State, which is now the dominant force in the economy, allows Elites to change the rules rather than accept failure (also known as losses). Thus we have Crony Capitalism: profits are private and yours to keep, losses are transferred to the taxpaying public. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/guest-post-capitalism-incompatible-democracy?tw_p=twt

End of the Nation-State

One of the huge changes brought by the printing press and advanced exponentially by the Internet is that people are able to readily pursue different interests and points of view. As a result, they have less and less in common: living within the same political borders is no longer enough to make them countrymen. That’s a big change from pre-agricultural times when members of the same tribe had quite a bit – almost everything – in common. But this has been increasingly diluted in the times of the kingdom and the nation-state. If you’re honest, you may find you have very little in common with most of your countrymen besides superficialities and trivialities. http://lewrockwell.com/casey/casey123.html

U.S. Corporate Tax Rate Consequences

Now that Japan lowered its own taxes, the U.S. stands on top with the dubious distinction of having the highest corporate tax rates. Claims that, when you consider all the tax loopholes, subsidies, deductions and tricks, the effective rate is not really the 35% level seem less reassuring. However, if you view any tax policy that focuses upon revenue collection, you miss the entire significance of the dynamics in trade. The slogan “Free Trade” applied in real terms, means capitulation of domestic production and prosperity for the sake of maximum international return on equity. In essence, the global corporatist supersedes the home domicile country for the joy of worldwide plunder. http://www.batr.org/negotium/040412.html

Both the Market and Government are Irrational

The “rational market” loves deception as long as it provides an excuse for equities to rise. The Federal Reserve’s focus on “core inflation,” which does not include rising food and energy prices, allows Federal Reserve officials to maintain that the inflation rate remains below target. By pretending that there is no inflation, the Federal Reserve continues to support banks with near zero interest rates while depriving savers and retirees of interest income. With no income from savings, people are forced to consume their capital. Thus, the Federal Reserve’s policy makes bankers richer and the country poorer. http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2012/03/14/both-the-market-and-government-are-irrational/

Governments Acting as Venture Capitalists

The United States has championed an economic system that rewards risk capital. The entire purpose of creating a business is to profit and grow the venture. By the nature of defining success for any organization, the long-term viability of continuous operations is a given. Yet in the age of sovereign wealth investment in international commerce, the latest import abnormality into America is the disease that governments must act as active investors in place of the capital markets. http://www.batr.org/negotium/030712.html

United Welfare States of America: In 2011 Nearly Half the Population Received Some Form of Government Benefit

While politicians may debate whether or not America is the most “generous” (with other generations’ money of course) socialist welfare state in the history of mankind, the undoctored numbers make the affirmative case quite clear and without any chance for confusion. The single most disturbing statistic: in 2011 nearly half of the population lived in a household that receives some form of government benefit, which in turn accounted for 65% of total federal spending, or $2.5 trillion, and amount to 15% of GDP. And yet some people out there still think these people, long since indoctrinated to do little but mooch off the welfare state (which will continue subsidizing its existence so long as debt rates are so low that the government can issue trillions each year without fears of consequences) will halt their iTunes purchases, will voluntarily stop subsisting on the government’s teat, or will rebel against a government which is their only source of income? Why? Especially since something tells us that there will be a peculiar overlap between this 50% and the 50% of Americans that pay zero taxes. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/united-welfare-states-america-2011-nearly-half-population-received-some-form-government-benefit

‘Democracy’ is Gangsterism

Bill Buckler, The Privateer, reckons: Today, the U.S. government “GOVERNS” 310 million people with an annual budget of nearly $4,000 billion and TOTAL (funded and unfunded) debt approaching US$100,000 billion. It takes about 5,400 times as many dollars and about 37,000 times more debt to “govern” about 3.35 times as many people as it did a century ago. Why? The answer is equally simple. Today, the U.S. government “governs” everything. It is all pervasive. It has taken over the economy from its people. You, dear reader, know better than anyone what is really going on. As a modern democracy matures, it shifts from being a nation of makers to becoming a nation of takers. Wealth and power are gradually transferred from those who earn it to those who use the system to commandeer it. The zombies take over, in other words. http://lewrockwell.com/bonner/bonner487.html

Decline of Masculinity Accompanied by Decline of Liberty

It’s pretty clear that our day to day lives in the U.S. have become far more regulated and dull than the lives of Americans a generation ago. We technically have freedoms, but they have been systematically stripped from us through economic and institutional pressure. For example, political correctness on campus, which was simply an expression of militant leftism back in the 1980s, has been codified at most schools, and both students and professors who run afoul of the speech standards will pay a price. Writing something politically provocative online, or simply saying it to a coworker, can often result in failure to get some job or even outright firing. People are frightened to voice their opinions — and for good reason. http://www.the-spearhead.com/2011/06/02/decline-of-masculinity-accompanied-by-decline-of-liberty/

Looter Traffic Tickets

This state – my state – has a thing for imposing grossly disproportionate-to-the-offense punishments. Oh, not on the cretins who murder, rape or even steal. It’s usually necessary to kill, rape or steal multiple times before my state begins to get cross-eyed. But god help you if you get caught breaking the law… the traffic law, that is. Virginia comes down hard, then. Maybe because the “customers” pay better. http://www.lewrockwell.com/peters-e/peters-e21.1.html

U.S. Education: Show Us the Money

According to the 2009 OECD figures, the US government spends more per pupil than any nation in the world except Switzerland. The US spent an average of $149,000 for the K–12 education of every 2009 public high school graduate. That works out to $11,461 per year or so. So the solution is obvious: shut down the schools and invest the money instead. Just let the kids stay home and study on the Internet. Let’s even save some money to reduce the deficit, and only invest $11,000 per year. At 7% return, each child would have a $391,000 IRA when they’re 18. That way, even if they spend the next 50 years surfing or hiking the Appalachian Trail, they would all retire at 68 with $12,512,000 (assuming the same 7% average yearly return). This solves not only the education crisis, but the Social Security problem (they wouldn’t need it) AND the health-budget crisis (how much heart disease could there be, if everyone spent their time surfing and hiking?) So we are spending a really staggering amount of capital on public schools. How’s it paying off for the lucky recipients? http://www.lewrockwell.com/walker/walker41.1.html

Clinton’s Forgotten Dictatorial Tendencies

It seems like a century since Bill Clinton was president of this country. Unfortunately, the abuses of George W. Bush and the pratfalls of Barack Obama are causing many people to raise their estimate of Clinton’s presidency. But he earned his disdain fair and square, and a brief reminder of his abuses is in order. From concocting new prerogatives to confiscate private property, to championing FBI agents’ right to shoot innocent Americans, to bankrolling the militarization of local police forces, the Clinton administration stretched the power of government on all fronts. From the soaring number of wiretaps, to converting cell phones into homing devices for law enforcement, to turning bankers into spies against their customers, free speech and privacy were undermined again and again. From dictating how many pairs of Chinese silk panties Americans could buy to mandating that people on Prozac could be entitled to arrive at work late, to President Clinton’s efforts to require trigger locks for all handguns in crack houses, no aspect of Americans’ lives was too arcane for federal intervention. http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd1010c.asp

Administration Readying Internet Identity Tracking System

Jan. 7 (Bloomberg) — The Obama administration plans to announce today plans for an Internet identity system that will limit fraud and streamline online transactions, leading to a surge in Web commerce, officials said.

While the White House has spearheaded development of the framework for secure online identities, the system led by the U.S. Commerce Department will be voluntary and maintained by private companies, said the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of the announcement.

A group representing companies including Verizon Communications Inc., Google Inc., PayPal Inc., Symantec Corp. and AT&T Inc. has supported the program, called the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace, or NSTIC.

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-01-07/internet-identity-system-said-readied-by-obama-administration.html

Court Rules Mobile Phones Can Be Searched without a Warrant

The California Supreme Court ruled that police can search a suspect’s cell-phone text messages without a warrant, based on past cases where cigarette packs can be searched. A smartphone stores vast amounts of personal data, not even in the same realm as a pack of smokes. In this electronic age, the government moves America closer to a creepy police state.

More bad news on the privacy front pushes us closer to an police state in an electronic age. Monday, in a 5-2 split decision [PDF], the California Supreme Court ruled that police do not need a warrant before searching cell phone text messages of someone who has been arrested. In fact, the court determined that an arrested person has no privacy rights over any personal belongings they’re carrying on them when taken into custody. Police are allowed to seize and examine anything they find in the arrestee’s possession.

http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/ca-court-rules-smartphones-can-be-searched-wi?source=NWWNLE_nlt_daily_am_2011

Appeals Court: Email Is Protected Under the Fourth Amendment

An appeals court ruling that may reduce the sentencing for Steve Warshak, the head of a company who was convicted of fraud and other crimes as part of his business to sell “male enhancement” pills, also contained a powerful little nugget that brings the Fourth Amendment of the U.S Constitution into the digital age.

The ruling (PDF) found that the government’s seizure of some 27,000 private e-mails, obtained without search warrant from Warshak’s Internet service provider as part of the government’s investigation, was a violation of the Fourth Amendment, which protects against illegal searches and seizures. In this particular case, however, the court agreed with the government that its agents “relied in good faith on the Stored Communications Act” and that a reversal of the conviction was unwarranted based on the violation.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/appeals-court-email-communication-is-protected-under-the-fourth-amendment/42723

Homeland Security Admits That It’s The Private Police Force Of The Entertainment Industry

We’ve been quite concerned about the legality of Homeland Security’s domain name seizures — especially in cases where they took down sites that had a ton of legitimate content, such as various hip hop blogs, with no due process and no adversarial hearings. One other concern was where Homeland Security’s direction on this was coming from. As we noted, in an earlier similar domain name seizure situation, Homeland Security announced the seizures from Disney’s headquarters — which should raise lots of eyebrows. As we said at the time, imagine any other government agency announcing a third party action that benefits a particular company from that company’s offices. For example, imagine the FTC announcing antitrust actions against Google from Microsoft’s offices. Wouldn’t people question the legitimacy of that?

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20101130/23192212067/homeland-security-admits-that-its-private-police-force-entertainme

It’s Official: Rich Declare War on the Middle Class

The national debt quadrupled between 1980 and 1992. George W. Bush would repeat Reagan’s policies and double it again between 2000 and 2008. Meanwhile, the share of national income going to the top 1% more than doubled, from 9% to 24%. The share going to the top one-tenth of 1% of income earners more than tripled. We now have the most unequal distribution of income in the developing world and the inequality is growing rapidly. Shifts of this magnitude over such short periods of time have never been seen in American history. With the rich getting much, much richer, its means that everybody else is getting poorer. And in fact, real wages for median workers are lower today than they were in 1973. Indeed, while the inflation-adjusted income of the bottom fifth of workers fell by $6,900 between 1979 and 2007, the top 1% saw its annual income increase by $741,000! http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article26821.htm

The Generational Privacy Divide

Last week hundreds of privacy regulators, corporate officers and activists gathered in Jerusalem, Israel for the annual Data Protection and Privacy Commissioner Conference. The conference theme focused on the perception of a growing privacy divide between generations, with older and younger demographics seemingly adopting sharply different views on the importance of privacy.

Many acknowledged that longstanding privacy norms are being increasingly challenged by the massive popularity of social networks that encourage users to share information that in a previous generation would have never been made publicly available for all the world to see. Moreover, rapid technological change and the continuous evolution of online sites and services create enormous difficulty for regulators unaccustomed to moving at Internet speed.

http://thetyee.ca/Mediacheck/2010/11/02/GenerationalPrivacyDivide/

George Carlin — The American Dream

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLW1vFO-2Q&feature=related

Sandy Springs, First Community to Escape Unconstitutional “Voting Rights Act”

SANDY SPRINGS, GA — Authorities are allowing Sandy Springs to opt out of the federal Voting Right Act’s oversight of its elections.

The Justice Department agreed late Wednesday to exempt the city from the federal requirements. The exemption noted that there had been no allegations of anyone being prohibited from voting in the north Atlanta city in the past decade.

http://www.11alive.com/rss/rss_story.aspx?storyid=155376

New Bill Will Allow Feds to Label Websites Unacceptable

Senator Patrick Leahy yesterday introduced the “Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act” (COICA). This flawed bill would allow the Attorney General and the Department of Justice to break the Internet one domain at a time — by requiring domain registrars/registries, ISPs, DNS providers, and others to block Internet users from reaching certain websites. The bill would also create two Internet blacklists. The first is a list of all the websites hit with a censorship court order from the Attorney General. The second, more worrying, blacklist is a list of domain names that the Department of Justice determines — without judicial review — are “dedicated to infringing activities.” The bill only requires blocking for domains in the first list, but strongly suggests that domains on the second list should be blocked as well by providing legal immunity for Internet intermediaries and DNS operators who decide to block domains on the second blacklist as well. (It’s easy to predict that there will be tremendous pressure for Internet intermediaries of all stripes to block these “deemed infringing” sites on the second blacklist.)

http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/09/censorship-internet-takes-center-stage-online

Edgar Steele Needs Your Help

EDGAR J. STEELE has been entrapped by a legal system that presumes his guilt in the face of false charges. Ed, my husband, has been in jail and solitary confinement for three months in Spokane, Washington because of false allegations that he masterminded a murder-for-hire plot to kill me and my mother. I have never believed that Ed was involved in such a plot! Ed has defended the politically incorrect for years; people who, were it not for him, never would have had representation. Those who oppose Ed hate the truth and have threatened to harm Ed, me and our family in the past. Clearly, he is a political prisoner of the USA — and, quite literally, he is fighting for his life.

http://nationalvanguard.org/2010/09/edgar-steele-needs-your-help/

EPA to Ban Lead Bullets

Several environmentalist groups led by the Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) are petitioning the EPA to ban lead bullets and shot (as well as lead sinkers for fishing) under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). Although EPA is barred by statute from controlling ammunition, CBD is seeking to work farther back along the manufacturing chain and have EPA ban the use of lead in bullets and shot because non-lead alternatives are available. But here’s the catch: the alternatives to lead bullets are more expensive. A ban on the sale of lead ammunition would force hunters and sport shooters to buy non-lead ammunition that is often double the cost of traditional lead ammunition.  http://weeklystandard.com/blogs/epa-reviewing-request-ban-led-bullets

Wikipedia Legal Team Schools FBI in the Law

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has taken on everyone from Al Capone to John Dillinger to the Unabomber. Its latest adversary: Wikipedia.

The bureau wrote a letter in July to the Wikimedia Foundation, the parent organization of Wikipedia, demanding that it take down an image of the F.B.I. seal accompanying an article on the bureau, and threatened litigation: “Failure to comply may result in further legal action. We appreciate your timely attention to this matter.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/03/us/03fbi.html?_r=4

Stop Unequal Justice: Help NPI End Affirmative Action

It’s time to end one of the last vestiges of “state sponsored racial discrimination” in the United States.

It’s unnecessary. It’s unjust. It’s un-American.

* Racial and ethnic minorities now account for 43 percent of Americans under 20 years old. Among people of all ages, minorities make up at least 40 percent of the population in more than one in six of the nation’s 3,141 counties. (1)
* Almost five times as many counties are losing white children as gaining them.

http://www.nationalpolicyinstitute.org/petition/

It’s Illegal to Sell Home-Baked Goods in Florida

Largo – Many chefs get started right in their own kitchen.

However, in Florida, it is illegal to cook something at home and then try to sell it.

It is a law that has been really frustrating for Barbara Schmal, so she is trying to do something about it.

Schmal loves creating gorgeous cakes in her own kitchen.

“I just love doing the cake decorating part of it and trying out new recipes and new techniques,” Schmal said.

http://www.abcactionnews.com/dpp/news/region_north_pinellas/largo/woman-hopes-state-will-enact-cottage-food-act-to-help-floridians-that-want-to-bake-and-sell-items.

The Amish Run Afoul of the Obama Administration

The Obama administration has developed a keen interest in the Amish folks of Lancaster County, Pa., due to their lifestyle and not their carbon footprint. The cattle on their dairy farms produce milk and manure.

It is claimed that great piles of manure are the source of pollutants from Lancaster County to the Chesapeake Bay due to run-off from heavy rains. Lancaster County is far from the Chesapeake Bay.

Agents have been dispatched to “educate” the Amish in methods the Obama administration requires for lifestyle changes. They use no electricity and few automobiles, so how dare they live without government assistance?

http://www.dailymail.com/Opinion/201007130898

Dictatorship Watch: TSA to Block ‘Controversial Opinion’ on the Web

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is blocking certain websites from the federal agency’s computers, including halting access by staffers to any Internet pages that contain a “controversial opinion,” according to an internal email obtained by CBS News. http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-31727_162-20009642-10391695.html

Internet Monitoring Needed to Fight Homegrown Terrorism

Janet Napolitano

As terrorists increasingly recruit U.S. citizens, the government needs to constantly balance Americans’ civil rights and privacy with the need to keep people safe, said Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/06/18/napolitano-internet-monitoring-needed-fight-homegrown-terrorism/

Cumulative Voting Used to Elect Non-White Candidates – Could it Help Break the Two Party System?

PORT CHESTER, N.Y. — The court-ordered election that allowed residents of one New York town to flip the lever six times for one candidate — and produced a Hispanic winner — could expand to other towns where minorities complain their voices aren’t being heard.

But first, interested parties will want to take a look at the exit surveys.

The unusual election was imposed on Port Chester after a federal judge determined that Hispanics were being treated unfairly.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iuYztkfrDc_f76DaA40jU-IXWS9AD9GDV6JG0

Black Lawmakers Want to Limit New Ethics Office

Charles Rangel

Rep. Marcia Fudge, D-Ohio, and 19 fellow black lawmakers in the all-Democratic caucus quietly introduced a resolution last week that would restrict the powers of the Office of Congressional Ethics to open new investigations and make its findings public. The office, formed by Congress in 2008, is run by a panel of private citizens.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jNTKBrqRVcuAER4brajYB7XhGMSQD9G3CKRO0

Obama Embraces Dead Bill

Foreign Ministry reports circulating in the Kremlin today are warning that an already explosive situation in the United States is about to get a whole lot worse as a new law put forth by President Obama is said capable of seeing up to 500,000 American citizens jailed for the crime of opposing their government.

Sparking the concern of Russian diplomats over the growing totalitarian bent of the Obama government is the planned reintroduction of what these reports call one of the most draconian laws ever introduced in a free society that is titled “The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act”.

http://www.eutimes.net/2010/05/new-obama-law-warned-will-jail-500000-americans/

Texas Schools Returning to the Fundamentals?

Education officials in the US state of Texas have adopted new guidelines to the school curriculum, which critics say will politicise teaching.

The changes include teaching that the UN could be a threat to American freedom, and that the Founding Fathers may not have intended a complete separation of church and state.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/us_and_canada/10141121.stm

From the Nanny State to the Bully State

During the course of this decade we will witness a global battle over the fate of the nascent Bully State. The Bully State will be this decade’s “bad cop” to the Nanny State’s “good cop” of past decades.

The past generation of welfare statism saw the unduly protective Nanny State bleed into every sinew of our daily lives. Sociologist David Marsland explains that, “Once you have a big welfare state in place, the excuse for state nannying is infinite in scale”, he says. “This … continues the process of reducing self-reliance and handing responsibility for ourselves to external bodies.”

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=10457&page=1

Political Blogs May Be Regulated By The FEC

It look like American bloggers could face a new threat that may make people think twice before criticizing their political leaders online. Apparently the US government thinks bloggers are becoming a public hazard, and like a few other industries (i.e. airplanes, banks and nuclear power plants) need to be regulated by the government (in this case the Federal Election Commission). http://www.blogherald.com/2010/05/20/political-blogs-regulated-fec/

Mainstream Meteorologist: The Military Is Spraying Our Skies

The video below features a weatherman talking about the military using aircraft to spray “chaff”. The video has been getting cheers from those of us who look up and notice the spraying of our skies, but it is less likely a rogue weatherman uncovering the big chemtrail mystery and is more likely a script to pacify the masses.

http://www.noonehastodietomorrow.com/agenda/weather-modification/2259?task=view

Pentagon Tightens Ban on “Supremacist” Activity

Since the SPLC warned the U.S. military about extremist activity among active-duty personnel in 2006, the Pentagon brass has steadfastly denied that a problem existed and insisted that its “zero-tolerance” policy was sufficient to keep organized racists out of its ranks.

That changed this past November, when the Pentagon quietly tightened its policy on extremist activity, which formerly only banned “active participation” in extremist groups but did not define what that meant.

http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2010/04/13/pentagon-tightens-ban-on-supremacist-activity-after-years-of-denying-problem/?ondntsrc=MBQ1

The West’s First National Attempt at Internet Censorship Put on Hold in Australia

I’ve been covering Australia Broadband Minister Stephen Conroy’s efforts to implement a proposed “voluntary mandatory” Internet filtering regime to “protect children” for some time now. The plan, which initially targeted child pornography, quickly deteriorated as Conroy added “inappropriate content” and “offensive and illegal material to the list, as well as legal pornography, gambling, and even P2P traffic, making Australian citizens rightly upset.

http://www.zeropaid.com/news/88940/aussie-govt-postpones-net-filter/