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.

May 13

STANFORD AND DARTMOUTH PROFESSORS ACCUSED OF VIOLATING CAMPAIGN-FINANCE LAWS FOR STUDYING MONTANA VOTER TURNOUT!

montana judge voter guide

American voters are best informed when every voice is free and the mails and airwaves are filled with divergent views, forcefully expressed. Under the First Amendment, every American has the right to write, speak, broadcast and publicize his political views without government interference or permission. Recently, however, an army of well-meaning but misguided “reformers” have sought to place all manner of government restrictions on how much campaign advertising and broadcasting we are allowed to produce. Government agents have tried to ban everything from handing out flyers in parking lots to producing videos attacking politicians.

Now we read that three professors studying voter turnout in last year’s Montana judicial elections have been accused of violating campaign-finance laws just for sending out a research postcard (shown above)! The three political-science professors, Kyle Dropp of Dartmouth and Jonathan Rodden and Adam Bonica of Stanford, were seeking to find out whether Montana voters would become more engaged in the state’s judicial elections if they were informed that judicial candidates were identified along a “conservative” or “liberal” spectrum.

In Montana, state supreme-court judges are elected and nonpartisan. Candidates for the court appear on the ballot without any party designation. The professors wanted to see if providing information regarding candidates’ “conservative” or “liberal” leanings might influence voters to become more interested in Montana’s judicial elections. To study this, the professors mailed research postcards in 2014 to a sample of Montana voters in which 4 candidates for the State Supreme Court were identified along a political spectrum as liberal- or conservative-leaning.

Now the Montana State “Commissioner of Political Practices” has formally accused the professors of violating the State’s campaign-finance laws! The research postcards—with their designations indicating the candidates’ “conservative” or “liberal” identifications—are accused of being political advertising!

But which judicial candidates were the postcards supposedly “advertising?”

The Commissioner claims: “When it was mailed into the strongly Democratic precincts it was for [liberal judge candidate Mike] Wheat, because they put Wheat right on the line graph right next to Barack Obama,” Motl said. “When it was mailed into Republican precincts it was for [conservative judge candidate Lawrence] VanDyke because they put VanDyke right next to Romney.”

The State Commissioner of Political Practices has even included a claim that the professors violated THEIR OWN colleges’ human-subjects-research policies by failing to get proper approval from the institutional review boards of Stanford and Dartmouth—a claim far outside the Commissioner’s jurisdiction and outside even the jurisdiction of the State of Montana!

The Commissioner has referred the three out-of-state professors to the local county attorney for criminal prosecution! In the (likely) event the county attorney declines to prosecute the allegations, the Commissioner will, according to news reports, try to “negotiate a settlement or file a civil complaint.”

Stay tuned!

May 12

Government has repeatedly been caught paying for pro-government journalism

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Most observers are aware that news reporters at major media outlets tend to favor the government. Many are not aware, however, that government agencies have been caught secretly paying for pro-government news coverage and commentary. In 2005, the George W. Bush Administration was caught paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to columnists to get those columnists to write favorable opinion pieces about government policies. In some cases such government payments have been concealed or channeled through public relations firms or other difficult-to-track channels. Government agencies have at times been caught creating fake news stories and even secretly paying newspapers large amounts of money to publish such stories. Almost every inquiry into such matter reveals them to be widespread.

In a string of scandals sometimes grouped together under the name ‘Operation Mockingbird,’ the CIA was found to have spent many millions of dollars to influence news coverage throughout the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s. The CIA recruited leading American journalists to present news in accordance with the government’s views on international affairs. The CIA even interfered with foreign election campaigns and funded student and cultural groups.

News leaders at the Washington Post, the New York Times, Newsweek and CBS have been described as “owned” by this large-scale CIA operation. (The Graham family, which owned the Washington Post, were in charge of this immense network). Some 3,000 individuals were paid by this program during the 1950s alone. A 1976 U.S. Senate investigation revealed that government payments designed to control news coverage and commentary were costing taxpayers around $265 million per year at that time. Today, the true depths of the government’s control and “ownership” of major news outlets by such payments remains unknown. It is safe to say, however, that investigations into it have merely scratched the surface, and that such government payments to control “the news” is ongoing.

SOURCES:

See Suzanne Goldenberg, Bush payola scandal deepens as third columnist admits being paid, The Guardian, Jan. 28, 2005, http://www.theguardian.com/media/2005/jan/29/pressandpublishing.usnews (accessed 4/26/2015) (revealing that the “Bush administration was confronted with fresh evidence of a far-reaching clandestine campaign to influence public opinion yesterday after a third conservative commentator admitted receiving payments for championing its policies.” “Michael McManus, a newspaper columnist, was paid up to $10,000 to praise the administration’s marriage initiative,” Maggie Gallagher “received $21,500 from the department of health and human services, and $20,000 from the justice department for championing the initiative in her syndicated newspaper columns,” and “Armstrong Williams, a conservative African-American columnist, had been paid $240,000 by the education department to champion the administration’s controversial policies in his print, radio and television outlets.”).
See id Goldenberg (noting that columnist McManus’ “fees were approved by a branch of the department of health and human services, and were funnelled through the Lewin Group, a consultancy firm,” and columnist Armstrong Williams “was paid through Ketchum PR, the public relations firm also involved in producing fake “news pieces” last year that touted the administration’s prescription drug bill. Some US television stations put the clips straight on the air.” )
See, e.g., Robert Perrucci & Earl Wysong, New Class Society: Goodbye American Dream? 234 (2008) (recounting that the U.S. Department of Education paid Ketchum PR $700,000 to promote the government’s No-Child-Left-Behind policy).
See Suzanne Goldenberg, Bush payola scandal deepens as third columnist admits being paid, The Guardian, Jan. 28, 2005, http://www.theguardian.com/media/2005/jan/29/pressandpublishing.usnews (accessed 4/26/2015) (reporting that the G.W. Bush Administration “claimed that its use of a fake reporter, Karen Ryan, to sell its programmes, was an isolated incident . . . [but that it] now appears that such covert campaigns were widespread”).
See Suzanne Goldenberg, Bush payola scandal deepens as third columnist admits being paid, The Guardian, Jan. 28, 2005, http://www.theguardian.com/media/2005/jan/29/pressandpublishing.usnews (accessed 4/26/2015) (reporting that the G.W. Bush Administration “spent more than $88m on public relations contracts last year – more than double the $37m it spent during Mr Bush’s first year in office. That brought the administration’s first-term spending on PR to $250m”).
in 1966, Ramparts magazine published an article revealing that the National Student Association was funded by the CIA. The United States Congress investigated the allegations and published a report in 1976.
Deborah Davis, Katharine the Great: Katharine Graham and her Washington Post Empire 137-38 (1979).
Deborah Davis, Katharine the Great: Katharine Graham and her Washington Post Empire (1979).
See Alex Constantine, Mockingbird: The Subversion of the Free Press by the CIA, first chapter of Virtual Government: CIA Mind Control Operations in America 42. See also Hugh Wilford, The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America (2008).
Final Report of the Select Committee to Study Government Operations With Respect to Intelligence Activities. April 1976. pp. 191–201.
Writing in The Rolling Stone in 2007, Carl Bernstein wrote “[t]he CIA’s use of the American news media has been much more extensive than Agency officials have acknowledged publicly or in closed sessions with members of Congress.” THE CIA AND THE MEDIA: How Americas Most Powerful News Media Worked Hand in Glove with the Central Intelligence Agency and Why the Church Committee Covered It Up http://carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php (accessed 5/12/2015).

May 11

Government health care regulation driving more people to do their own dental work.

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Health care is probably the most regulated industry in the world. Much of this regulation subsidizes demand without increasing supply, causing prices to rise. Consequently, health care costs have generally risen much faster than inflation. Now, more and more people are simply avoiding government “health care” altogether and seeking to treat themselves. Here is a story about the increasing number of people who have been driven away from the overregulation and high prices of government-approved dental care and are opting to do their own dental fillings.

If people were more free to purchase their own CAT scan machines, MRI machines and other medical devices, the prices of such technology would come down quickly. If people were free to make their own medical purchases over the counter without government-approved-doctor prescriptions, medicine prices would come down quickly. If people were free to seek health care from non-government-licensed doctors, health would greatly improve for most Americans.

May 10

Scientist discovers that government temperature data for Maine has been systematically altered

climate temps maine

Study the table above. We’ve all heard that government officials have been caught “adjusting” temperature history to make past temps look colder and recent temps look warmer in comparison. Now Mike Brakey, an engineering physicist and heat transfer specialist, has carefully tabulated certain “adjustments” that have been made by NOAA scientists who clearly altered official records between 2013 and 2014 for the state of Maine. Notice that the direction of change is entirely one-directional: temps in the past have been “adjusted” lower for past years.

Even more significantly, the adjustment trends INCREASE as one goes backward in time. Temps between 1895 and 1925 have been generally adjusted lower by 3 to 5 percent; while temps for the period between 1986 and 2014 have been adjusted lower only 0 to 1.3 percent.

These government adjustments have essentially rewritten Maine climate history.

But it’s a “consensus”; Don’t look into it. Nothing to see here.

May 09

Woops! Social Security now expected to be insolvent within 5 years.

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Here’s some big news. A review by Harvard and Dartmouth researchers has found that the Social Security Administration’s actuarial forecasts have been consistently overstating the financial health of the program’s trust funds since 2000.

Specifically, the agency has been ignoring evidence that Americans’ life expectancy has risen more than the agency has projected. A more realistic assessment–conducted with more accurate data from the private insurance industry–reveals that Social Security will have insufficient funds to pay out all its claims as soon as 2020–not 2031 as previously predicted.