May 30

Former Speaker of U.S. House, Who Presided over a Vast Prisonization of American Life, Now Indicted by the Feds

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During the 1990s through the 2000s, Americans saw the most extreme criminalization and prisonization of any society in human history. Policymakers at every level created and extended a vast police state, with thousands of prisons, cops all over every street, troopers patrolling every highway and warrantless surveillance of virtually all communications.

At the lead of this police-state transformation was the U.S. Congress, and at its helm was Dennis Hastert, the Speaker of the U.S. House during the George W. Bush years. Hastert led the House in enacting draconian measures such as the USA Patriot Act, the Telecom Immunity Acts (to immunize telecom firms which violated client privacy) and a vast expansion of police powers and budgets at the federal level.

Now Hastert has been caught by the web he helped construct. The Justice Department looked into Hastert’s banking habits and investigated why Hastert appeared to be engaging in a large amount of cash transactions. Federal prosecutors have indicted Hastert for lying to FBI agents about the reasons for his cash withdrawals. The real reason for the cash withdrawals? The federal indictment tantalizes us with hints of salacious details, claiming Hastert need the cash to pay off an “individual” who would otherwise go public with embarrassing information about Hastert’s “misconduct.”

The indictment does not specify what “misconduct” Hastert was paying to keep quiet. Adultery? Satan worship? Child molestation? Hiring hitmen? Too many unpaid parking tickets?

Rest assured the Feds will roll out such intriguing details in the coming months. All in the pageantry of the modern American Stalinesque neoSoviet justice system that Hastert helped create and empower.

May 30

More Secret Government Experiments on Unknowing Medical Subjects Come to Light

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We all know of the diabolic experiments performed on political prisoners by the Nazis. A few are aware of the U.S. government’s Tuskeegee experiments, in which black men who went to clinics for checkups and routine treatments were injected—without their knowledge—with diseases and then monitored so that government agents could study the effects of such diseases.

But few are aware of the U.S. government’s ongoing and continuous use of non-consensual medical studies on unknowing victims. Recently it became public that the U.S. Defense Department sponsored a study at the University of Pittsburgh in which bleeding patients were given experimental plasma without their knowledge in order to observe their reactions.

A 2008 review of these consentless experiments found “a significantly increased risk” of heart attacks and death for the unknowing victims.
The Defense Department has defended giving unknowing people experimental drugs and treatments. The Department claims that it spent $6.5 million on “community awareness” and it informed people in the greater Pittsburgh area they could get free bracelets to wear at all times if they didn’t want to be unknowing experimental subjects.
Source: Laura Ungar, “Non-consent medical studies put ethics to test,” USA Today, May 29, 2015, 9A.

May 25

Big-City, Government-Supporting Newspapers Are in a Death Spiral.

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Last year 100 newspapers closed. Newspaper circulation has plummeted nationwide and newspaper ad revenue is down at least 50 percent in a decade.

The major, pro-government, newspapers are dying–and being replaced by alternative sources for news and commentary. A Pew research report indicates that the newspaper industry is already largely unprofitable. Major papers such as the New York Daily News are now up for sale, with very few buyers willing to take on such risk.

May 22

FBI Admits that Mass Data Collection has Never Stopped a Terrorist Act

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How Many Terrorist Attacks Has the U.S.A. Patriot Act Prevented?

Barack Obama (2 weeks after Edward Snowden’s revelations that the government was unconstitutionally monitoring all American phone and email traffic): “at least fifty.”

In reality, most “terrorist” prosecutions since 9/11/2001 have been accusations of planning, talking, or training–frequently relying on the testimoney of undercover government informants who “infiltrated” a small group of poor or unemployed males.

The agencies of the U.S. government have employed thousands of highly-paid government spies and bureaucrats for a decade, and have intercepted and unconstitutionally surveilled the phone calls and electronic communicatioons of the American people on a massive scale.

How many terrorist acts have the government’s illegal multi-billion-dollars-per-year data collection efforts stopped?

The answer is zero (0).

FBI Inspector General Michael E. Horowitz has now admitted in a 77-page report that the FBI has never solved a single terrorist-related crime or stopped a terrorist attack by using the USA Patriot Act. The story is here.

May 20

Obama Warns Coast Guard Graduates that Climate Skepticism might be Punished as “Dereliction of Duty”

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President Obama was in New London, Connecticut on May 20, 2015 to deliver the keynote address at the United States Coast Guard Academy commencement. During the graduation speech, Obama warned graduates that denying manmade catastrophic global warming or refusing to deal with it is negligence and “dereliction of duty.”

“If you see storm clouds gathering or dangerous shoals ahead you don’t just sit back and do nothing,” President Obama said Wednesday. “You take action to protect your ship, to keep your crew safe. Anything less is negligence. It is a dereliction of duty. So too with climate change.”

“Denying it or refusing to deal with it endangers our national security.”

Such shreeks of hysteria have now become all-too typical among the ruling class. But according to satellite and weather-balloon data, the earth has been cooling slightly for some 18 years. The south-polar icepack has been growing, and is at or near its highest levels on record. Ice has been building in Greenland and elsewhere, and glaciers appear to have been slightly growing at Glacier National Park and in the north-polar regions. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has essentially doubled in recent decades and now hovers around 400 parts per million.

May 17

The “Real I.D.” Rebellion: 10 Years Out

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Ten years ago, in 2005, Congress passed “Real ID.” Congress gave states three years to begin issuing driver’s licenses according to federal standards which emphasized biological identification. The Real ID Act required states to build vast new computer-data infrastructures, with machine-readable technology for all drivers licenses. Biometric identifiers–fingerprints, eyeball imaging or facial-recognition technology–was to become part of driver licensing.

There was, however, a massive “REAL ID Rebellion” in 2006. People back home revolted, and many state legislatures passed resolutions condemning Real I.D. and pronouncing that they (the revolting states) would not comply.

Today, the rebellion is mostly forgotten, and the Department of Homeland Security has mostly managed to implement Real ID without so much as a whimper from the public in at least 5 years.

May 15

Government Beginning to Extend “Border” Checkpoints Deep Inside the Internal United States.

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Startling news from upstate New York. Federal Border Patrol agents have begun setting up travel checkpoints deeper and deeper into the United States, and aggressively interrogating American travelers. According to the Watertown (New York) Daily Times, federal agents are routinely interrogating drivers on internal roadways and even demanding to search vehicles without reasonable suspicion.

And when American citizens decline to consent to a search, the federal agents become aggressive and bring in K-9 units. (Search dogs always “signal” to their “handlers” that drugs (or something) have been detected, thereby triggering (in the minds of handlers) “probable cause” to search any vehicle; the “signal” might be a twitch of a whisker or the slight wag of a tail–perceptible to no one other than the government “handler.”)

There are reports that Americans who do not consent to aggressive interrogation or search are tasered or assaulted.

May 15

The myth of Citizens United v. F.E.C.

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Every material claim by campaign-finance “reformers” is a Lie. In 2010, the Supreme Court handed down a decision entitled CITIZENS UNITED V. F.E.C., holding that the First Amendment forbids the government from censoring videos based upon certain “campaign-finance-regulation” arguments. Since then, an army of “reformers” have claimed the decision would unleash “unlimited” spending on political campaigns and would turn American politics into auctions and allow the private sector to unduly influence government.

It has now been 5 years since the decision. Democrats ended up vastly outspending Republicans in 2010 but were crushed in the midterm elections. Then in 2012 the situation was reversed, with Republicans outspending Democrats in battleground congressional races and in the presidential race; but Republicans were walloped. Then in 2014 the situation was reversed again, as Democratic superdonors vastly outspent Republican donors but saw losses across the board.

Above are a pair of graphs showing the gradual changes in income tax distribution by income levels. Notice that the richest 1 percent in the private sector have been soaked more and more in recent years. (And the trend has only continued since 2010.)

If the private sector’s richest 1 percent were really in charge of American government, you would think they could do a better job of rigging the tax structure for their own benefit!

Every material claim of campaign-finance reformers is a lie.

May 15

The best railroad infrastructure is built by private hands in the private sector.

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Pictured above: the great entrepreneur James J. Hill

PRIVATE-SECTOR RAILROAD INFRASTRUCTURE IS GENERALLY SUPERIOR TO GOVERNMENT RAILROAD INFRASTRUCTURE

Days ago, a government Amtrak train derailed in Philadelphia, killing at least 8. Almost immediately, central planners and socialists began blaming (nonexistent) “infrastructure cuts” by fiscally conservative members of Congress. (That was before the evidence tended to indicate the engineer was traveling over 100 m.p.h.).

A great lesson regarding railroad infrastructure is found in the book “The Myth of the Robber Barons” by Burton Folsom. Folsom recounts the wretched, currupt history of government-subsidized transcontinental rail lines in the United States. The construction of the first transcontinental line–operated by the Union Pacific Railroad with incredible subsidies from the federal government–was accompanied by massive corruption, bribery, and ripoffs of labor. The same goes with the Northern Pacific line completed slightly later. Bankruptcy, insolvency, unpaid debts (especially debts to the workers who built the lines) were a major part of the story of the building of the first transcontinental lines–all of which were public/private partnerships.

“Oddly enough, though, one man did come along and did build a transcontinental through the Northwest. . . . with no federal aid.” “That man was James J. Hill, and his story tells us a lot about the larger problem of federal aid to railroads.” (Folsom, p. 25).

Hill built a transcontinental line across the most rugged sections of the American west: the Great Northern line which runs through the jagged peaks of the northern Cascades, the vast icy canyons near (what is now) Glacier National Park, and the forbidding barren plains of eastern Montana and North Dakota. The Great Northern railroad received NO MONEY WHATSOEVER from any government. James J. Hill paid for every acre and easement out of his own pocket.

Unlike the government-subsidized lines to the south (which were paid for on a “track-per-mile” basis by the government), the Great Northern line was built straight and true. “Hill built his railroad for durability and efficiency, not for scenery.” (p. 27). “[H]e didn’t skimp on quality materials. He believed that building functional and durable product saved money in the long run.” (p. 27).

By contrast, the government-subsidized UP and NP lines were “inefficient in gradients, curvature, length, quality of construction, repair costs, and use of fuel. This mean permanently high fixed costs for all passengers and freight using the subsidized transcontinentals.” (p. 31).

May 14

Juror Regrets Convicting Innocent Man of Murder two decades earlier

Very sad video of a juror who voted to convict Michael Morton of killing his wife 25 years ago. After DNA evidence showed that another man had killed Ms. Morton, other evidence surfaced indicating that government agents and prosecutors had hidden important facts from the defense.