Jun 29

Guantanamo inmates deteriorating after multi-year hunger strikes

guantanamo

Who would have predicted 20 years ago that the United States would erect a prison system to hold inmates for life without charges, due process or evidence?

The U.S. concentration camp at Guantanamo is approaching its 15th anniversary, and dozens of inmates continue to be held without charge. The Center for Constitutional Rights is reporting that some of the Center’s Guantanamo clients have been on hunger strikes since 2007 (!) and have been forcibly fed by feeding tubes for more than eight (!) years.

These inmates are reportedly barely recognizable, having lost substantial body weight. Moreover the hunger-striking inmates are suffering memory loss, dementia, intense back pain and loss of sensation in hands and feet.

The Center has filed a motion seeking a court order granting habeas relief and compelling the government to immediately release one of the Center’s clients.

Jun 28

Bernie Sanders Says He will “Make Corporations Pay Their fair share” even as the U.S. has the world’s highest corporate tax rates.

Bernie Sanders

U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (Socialist-Vt), is campaigning for the Democratic nomination for President. His stump speech reportedly contains a promise to raise taxes on corporations and make them pay their “fair share.”

The problem is that the U.S. already has the world’s highest corporate tax rates. Hundreds of corporations are fleeing the U.S., looking for freer shores.

Jun 28

Greek society has been destroyed by welfare and government spending.

sociallism

Today, June 28, 2015: Greek and European central bankers have declared an incredible SIX-DAY CLOSURE of Greece’s banks. Greece has been bankrupted by years of welfare spending, punishment of savers and entrepreneurs, and overregulation.

Now the once-proud-but-now-bankrupt nation will experience the final wages of socialism and extravagant social spending: massive poverty, unemployment, debt and perpetual poverty.

Socialism is a curse that should only be wished on one’s enemies. Any society that embraces it will inevitably become sick and weak.

Jun 28

“Campaign Finance Reformers” Complain Only About Private-Sector Political Spending—While Ignoring Government Political Spending

brain on drugs

NFL football games regularly feature displays honoring the U.S. military: moments of silence, speeches and videos honoring the troops, and even synchronized air force “flyovers” in which F-16 jets fly over NFL stadiums in formation while fans cheer.

It came out in March 2015 that everything—even the moments of silence—are paid for by the U.S. military itself. In all, the armed forces spend almost 700 million dollars annually on ad campaigns.

Almost $700 million annually. That’s almost what was spent to elect Barack Obama president in the two-year 2008 election cycle. Yet when “campaign finance reformers” decry “money in politics” they speak only of private-sector money and ignore the much-greater threat of government money.

The government has been repeatedly caught paying news outlets for pro-government news stories. See here.

If you spent twenty thousand dollars to fund ads attacking government propaganda, your twenty-thousand-dollar ad campaign would be called “corruption” by some “reformers.” The billions spent by government to promote government are never viewed this way.

Campaign-finance reformers conceal their true desires: to unleash massive government regulation upon the business community and deprive that community of any right to protest or inform the public of the stupidity of such regulation.

Jun 28

THE ONION asks why humanity continues to allow its most power-hungry members to make all of humanity’s decisions.

Lysander Spooner
THE ONION, America’s premier mock newspaper, has long exhibited a libertarian, anti-government streak.

Now THE ONION has hit the nail on the head: “Humanity Surprised It Still Hasn’t Figured Out Better Alternative To Letting Power-Hungry Assholes Decide Everything.”
The same question has been asked repeatedly by economists of the Austrian School, and of social scientists and insightful writers generally. Lysander Spooner’s “No Treason” essay is filled with paragraphs making essentially the same point. Hayek, Mises, Hoppe and Lew Rockwell have made the same point repeatedly: politics is a realm where the vilest and most despicable almost always rise to the top.

Jun 28

Government’s global-warming hysteria mostly based on deliberate manipulation of data.

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Those who study climate (and the political climate debate) are well aware of how the government has presented an exaggerated case for carbon-dioxide-driven global warming: Government-supported scientists have “modeled” warming that doesn’t exist in reality; government-supported scientists have made emotional arguments; government-supported scientists have substituted unreliable temperature proxies cherrypicked to show a colder past (e.g., selected tree rings); government-supported scientists have mixed up rises in CO2 levels and heat to make it appear that rising heat came afterward, etc.

Climatologist Steven Goddard has shown that the case for manmade, CO2-driven global warming is mostly a product of knowing manipulation of past temperature data. See here.

Jun 28

ARCTIC sea ice, like Antarctic sea ice, is expanding, not retracting.

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A prevalent claim of global-warming alarmists is that ice in the arctic is receding. This was a central point of Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” movie.

But arctic sea ice has been growing for years and is at its highest level in 10 years. This is consistent with ANTARCTIC sea ice, which is at or near an all-time high. The globe has been cooling, not heating, for a decade or more.

Jun 28

Government Begins Pressuring Medical Profession to Spread Climate-Change Propaganda

BOSTON 2015

“Climate-change” hysteria is very much a movement of the highest government officials, the ultra-rich and wealthy academic elites. It is not a movement of a majority of Americans. The hysteria has been widely promoted by government agencies, and by wealthy political donors. But government global-warming messaging has failed to resonate with voting majorities, who view the climate hysteria as an exaggeration if not a hoax.

The government has spent hundreds of millions of dollars promoting its climate-change agenda. Now the President is pressuring members of the medical profession to spread the government’s climate-change-socialism alarmism during interactions with patients.

“The Obama administration has been hard at work trying to draw a link between global warming and public health issues.”

Jun 27

“Limited Government” Republicans in Kansas–like those in Montana, Nevada, and elsewhere–have just passed one of the largest tax increases in state history.

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NPR has a story about the “conservative,” “limited-government,” “tea-party-controlled” Republican legislature of Kansas. Like the overwhelmingly Republican-controlled legislatures of Nevada, Montana and elsewhere, the Republican-controlled legislature of Kansas has just enacted a budget with some of the highest tax increases in state history.

Jun 27

Obamacare is already causing massive damage to American productivity.

jail

As many economists predicted, the passage of Obamacare is significantly limiting American productivity and prosperity. “Because of Obamacare,” writes Larry Kudlow, “there’s an additional 0.9 percent Medicare tax on salaries and self-employment income, a 3.8 percent tax increase on capital gains and dividends, a cap on health care flexible spending accounts, a higher threshold for itemized medical expense deductions, and a stiff penalty on employer reimbursements for individual employee health policy premiums.”

According to Kudlow, each of these tax hikes is already producing lower rates of productivity and prosperity in the American economy. Part time workers now account for some 7 million jobs, compared to 4 million part-time jobs during the prior recovery. “Obamacare is a tax on full-time work.”

Kudlow continues, “Obamacare enrollment is coming up short, and the program is unable to sustain an adequate risk pool. Expert health insurance analyst Robert Laszewski and the consulting firm Avalere find that exchanges are succeeding in enrolling low-income individuals but are struggling to attract middle- and higher-income enrollees.”

Laszewski reports that Blue Cross Blue Shield of Texas wants a 20 percent rate hike; in Maryland, it’s 34 percent; Oregon’s biggest insurer, Moda Health, wants a 26 percent hike; and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee wants a 36 percent hike.