Aug 30

Once again, federal prosecutors declare government figures immune from laws they impose on others

Laws apply only to non-government individuals.

An investigation by the Department of Justice has found that Former FBI Director Jim Comey violated Federal criminal laws when he deliberately leaked internal memos and communications to the media in retaliation against Donald Trump.

However, the DOJ will not prosecute Comey. Like Hillary Clinton before him, Comey is able to commit federal felonies without fear of jail.

Once again, the U.S. Justice Department refuses to expose high-ranking government officials to prosecution for crimes which the Department regularly accuses other Americans of committing.

GOVERNMENT HAS BECOME MASTER; THE PEOPLE HAVE BECOME SLAVES

Americans increasingly suffer under near-total government institutions which are essentially immune from accountability.

Police are legally able to open fire and kill the American people with impunity. If they are suspended or dismissed for such violence, they often obtain monthly multi-thousand-dollar disability checks for life–due to the “trauma” they allegedly suffer.

According to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, government employees are now the very wealthiest class of workers–above even business owners or any other type of workers in wealth and income.

In recent years, the government has established in court that government agents may display and deploy ANY weapon against the American people

(Note that Lysander Spooner University regards all government secrecy as unlawful and unconstitutional. Neither James Comey nor Hillary Clinton should be prosecuted for disclosing government information; but neither should anyone else.)

Aug 29

There are only ten weather stations in the Southern Hemisphere that have temp records from the 1800s; none of them show a warming trend

Whenever someone claims to know the GLOBAL temperature for a given year (or date) in the past, be mindful that such a feat of knowledge is highly unlikely. This is especially true for dates in the distant past.

Worldwide there are only 116 thermometer stations with unadjusted temp datasets that go all the way back to January 1880. And most of them are located in USA and Europe.

For the rest of the world there are almost no long-lasting temp records. (And remember that three-fourths of the globe’s surface consists of ocean.)

Significantly, there are less than a dozen of these stations located in the entire southern hemisphere.

4 of 7 Australia charts show cooling. (The other 3 show no trend).

The lone thermometer station in all of Africa (at Capetown) shows no warming trend.

And South America has only one unadjusted dataset going back to 1880, located at Bahia Blanca, Argentina. That dataset also shows no warming since 1880.

See here.

Aug 29

More DOJ lies: Secret memos reveal prosecutors knew that Backpage.com was innocent of “human trafficking”—but they launched a prosecution anyway. Now a federal judge has ordered the memos sealed

In case more proof was needed that government budgets are bloated and overflowing . . .

For years, US voters have elected politicians who promised to cut government. Such politicians have then gone to state and federal capitols and voted for ever-more government.

A frequent tactic of “limited government” Republicans who win elections is to get sworn in and then immediately spot some new emergency which requires more government spending instead of budget cuts. A frequent target (at the state capitol level) is drunk driving.

Another ‘emergency’ is “human trafficking”; especially child trafficking. Politicians are rarely short of condemnation for this allegedly exploding menace. In reality, almost all “human trafficking” is simply consensual prostitution; and those who go searching for child prostitution have great difficulty finding any.

In 2018, federal prosecutors announced a major indictment against the proprietors of the www.backpage.com website for conspiracy, facilitating prostitution and money laundering. The U.S. government even seized and shut down the entire website.

Backpage.com offered internet classified ads for cars, jobs, real estate and personal relationships. It did include ads by strippers, massage providers and adult entertainment—all of which was entirely lawful.
But the sexy imagery of many classified ads attracted the attention of would-be heroes in government for a decade.
“For far too long, Backpage.com existed as…a place where sex traffickers frequently advertised children and adults alike,” said then–Attorney General Jeff Sessions upon the announcement of the April 2018 Backpage.com indictment.
But last year federal prosecutors accidentally sent an internal memo to defense lawyers which admitted the DOJ had no case.

The government’s case against Backpage.com, according to Reason magazine, “was hampered by the fact that Backpage kept trying to help stop sex trafficking.” In fact, Backpage.com took proactive steps to identify and block ads for prostitution and child exploitation.

“Witnesses have consistently testified that Backpage was making substantial efforts to prevent criminal conduct on its site, that it was coordinating efforts with law enforcement agencies and NCMEC [the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children], and that it was conducting its businesses in accordance with legal advice,” wrote Swaminathan and McNeil in 2013. Furthermore, they noted, their investigation failed “to uncover compelling evidence of criminal intent or a pattern or reckless conduct regarding minors.” In fact, it “revealed a strong economic incentive for Backpage to rid its site of juvenile prostitution.”

The site even ran continuous “Report Ad” button for readers to report suspected sexual exploitation content. The site also featured prominent links to the NCMEC CyberTipline. And while most sections of Backpage were free for users, “Backpage followed Craigslist’s policy, initiated at the suggestion of NAAG, of charging a fee for each adult services advertisement,” something NAAG championed for its ability to reduce ad volume and yield evidentiary data for law enforcement.

All of this was acknowledged by prosecutors emails to each other. But shockingly, a federal judge has barred Backpage.com’s defense lawyers from using the internal DOJ memos as part of their clients’ defense. The previous judge handling the case (who recused himself) agreed with the prosecution that the memos, which had been filed under seal in the Western District of Washington, must remain sealed and that the defense must destroy its copies. See here.

Aug 22

More fallout from Nature “climate contrarian” blacklist study.

August 14. Antigovernment News Bureau. Two weeks ago, the once-prestigious journal Nature published a peer-reviewed article which strayed far from the journal’s typical range of content.

Nature’s online imprint Nature Communications delved into social science rather than natural science, generating a list of some 386 names of climate “contrarians,” denouncing them generally as unqualified hacks, and then purporting to compare the media visibility of such contrarians with that of ‘true’ expert scientists.
The clear intent was to deplatform, censor and blacklist those on the skeptic list.
In the days following the release of the article, a number of critics have found methodological flaws in the article. Much of the data supporting the ‘study’ is secret, missing or hidden. And the article violates generally-understood rules regarding the study of human subjects. Moreover, even the gist of the study appears to be false: much of the supposedly unearned media footprint of the skeptics is actually negative discussion.

Aug 17

Major science journal publishes article blacklisting climate skeptics

The journal Nature previously enjoyed great prestige among science journals.

In recent years, however, Nature‘s editors have heavily promoted climate doomsday messaging.

Now the journal has published a study purporting to show that climate change “contrarians” are overrepresented in media discussions of climate science.

The study first gathered a large list of known “contrarians” taken from anti-skeptic websites such as Desmogblog.com. This list included a number of celebrity non-scientist commentators such as Mark Steyn and Marc Morano.

Then the study trashes the contrarians as (generally) undercredentialled–and then compares the contrarians’ alleged media popularity with that of another list of recognized ‘consensus’-repeating university climate scientists.

The ‘study’ concludes that ‘contrarians’ tend to get attention and coverage vastly greater than they deserve.

The clear message behind the study is that observers and journalists should endeavor to ignore, marginalize or blacklist those voices on the contrarian list.

A number of scholars have already debunked the study. Contrarians are already suppressed in most mainstream venues.

Another scholar looked into the data sources behind the study and found many to be missing or nonexistent. Moreover, much of the commentary about those on the contrarian list is quite negative. See here.

And the list of ‘climate consensus’ names (which supposedly shows that highly-credentialed scientists are being suppressed under the media notoriety of contrarians) does not include noteworthy nonscientist celebrities such as Al Gore or Leonardo DiCraprio.

Aug 17

Another teen arrested for “threatening” federal agents–over social media posts

Every government that ever existed sought to equate criticism of government with ‘terrorism,’ ‘treason’ or threats.

Prior to the American Revolution, Brits could be criminally prosecuted for merely imagining the death of the king. (Numerous figures in English history were executed for merely imagining the death of the king in poetry or prose.)

In the United States the First Amendment has provided something of a barrier to such prosecutions. The Supreme Court, in Brandenburg v. Ohio (and many other cases) held that no American can be prosecuted for his speech unless such speech calls for imminent lawless violence.

Nonetheless, countless cops and prosecutors have pursued criminal charges against people who merely mention violent ideas about government agents.

During the second Nevada Bundy trial in 2017, federal prosecutors actually suggested that defendant Eric Parker committed the crime of “threatening federal officers” by simply bobbing his head up and down from behind a Jersey barrier.

Now an Ohio teen is being prosecuted for threatening federal agents for posting a light-hearted remark suggesting people should “shoot every federal agent on sight” in an online discussion about the 1993 Branch Davidian standoff in Waco, Texas.

The teen is also alleged to have posted “don’t comply with gun laws, stock up on stuff they could ban.” “In fact, go out of your way to break these laws, they’re (expletive) stupid.” See here.

Aug 14

As tax complexity increases, “tax manager” is now the hottest career

The United States grew from a poor fledgling nation in 1789 to become the earth’s most powerful country by the twentieth century.

It got there with no income taxes and a very low level of regulatory burdens.

But by 2019, the United States is drowning in violent police, regulations, and taxation levels which hover around 50 percent (depending on the state).

The poor are increasingly immobilized due to licensing requirements and burdensome regulations.

Now, a Marketwatch study has found that “tax manager” is now the hottest career in America. “Tax managers have the strongest career opportunities rating, according to employees in this position. They had a median base salary of $112,021 a year.”

Aug 14

It has never been harder for the poor to strike it rich

Government regulations are increasingly imprisoning the poor in cages from which there is no escape.

An analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland has found that the likelihood of a household rising into the top 10 percent U.S. income bracket from lower brackets has BEEN CUT IN HALF in just the past few years.

New business formation is gradually drying up as government’s regulatory role increases.

Aug 14

U.S. Postal Service on Pace to Lose $8 Billion in 2019

The U.S. Postal Service enjoys every advantage in the marketplace. It pays no property, income, or corporate taxes. It owns and occupies some of the world’s most strategic and prestigious real estate It has an unconstitutional monopoly on first-class letter delivery.

(By contrast, its package-delivery competitor FedEx pays billions annually in taxes.)

(To put these numbers in perspective, the budget for the entire State of Montana is about $5 billion annually.)

Despite its advantages, the U.S. Postal Service is on pace to lose $9 billion this year. The inefficient government agency has lost almost $30 billion over the past 6 years and lost more than $70 billion since 2007. This is greater than the GDP of many entire nations.

Aug 06

Governments worldwide erupt in orgies of violence against their own subjects

Indonesia: Undercover religious/government cops are roving the landscape searching for minor violations of Sharia-like moral codes.

Hundreds of Indonesians have been arrested, imprisoned and publicly flogged and whipped for appearing affectionate to the opposite sex. Both men and women have been whipped for smooching or holding hands.

In case anyone wonders what happens to those who disagree when socialists take over a society, Venezuelan death troops have now massacred many thousands of dissidents.

Millions more have fled the starving socialist hellhole for neighboring countries.

Perhaps a million more have died of hunger, disease and starvation.

In Russia, a thousand anti-government protesters have been violently jailed.

In the United States, police forces have killed about a thousand citizens annually for a decade. Many videos capturing these homicides are uploaded to Youtube. Some police forces have been captured on video raping citizens on the sides of highways after police claim to smell drugs.

Still, almost nowhere have police budgets or authority been cut—even where lawmakers have been elected promising to limit government.