Nov 30
Greeting cards tend to have a distinctive size and shape. More than one U.S. Postal worker has been recently caught stealing cash from them. See here.
This is despite the fact that U.S. Postal workers are paid at least twice what they would make in the private sector for the same work.
Nov 29
The company’s own legal division is not allowed to know about or criticize the operation.
The Intercept is out with a stunning report on Google’s efforts to help the Chinese government build a pro-government, censored, internet.
* Google has contracted with Chinese companies (and the Chinese government) to build a huge new pro-government version of the internet.
* Google is building the pro-government “dragonfly” internet in secret–even from the company’s own workers. Only a tiny percentage of Google’s employees are allowed to know any details about it.
*Google engineers who criticized the operation were immediately removed and placed in other divisions of the corporation.
* Records of peoples’ searches are immediately available to the government. This allows the government to find and arrest or kill anyone who searches forbidden topics.
* All searches are linked to the searcher’s personal phone number and location at all times.
* Normally, all new Google products or operations must be cleared with the company’s legal division. This company rule supposedly prevents Google from getting into legal trouble. However, the Dragonfly search engine is being built without the legal division’s approval (or knowledge).
Nov 23
The relentless temp data analyst Tony Heller has tracked claims that the Arctic is melting for years.
As the “mainstream” (meaning pro-government) news media has amped up claims that manmade global warming is melting ice in the Arctic away to nothing, Heller has repeatedly published satellite data showing the contrary.
Ice in the Arctic declined for a time during the years 2000 to about 2011 or 2012. But, according to Heller, ice in the Arctic is now at around the mean for the years 1981 – 2000.
“The scam is on its last legs,” according to Heller.
Nov 23
An astounding story from Ottowa, Canada.
Concern that “mainstream” (code for government-supporting) newspapers are dying has led Canadian officials to propose efforts to support the government-stenographer news media.
With the explosion of more truthful and critical alternatives, consumers will no longer pay to read pro-government propaganda.
The proposal will give Canadians a 15 percent tax credit for subscribing to online pro-government “news” institutions. Government agencies will decide which media outlets are deserving of government support. See here
Nov 11
The All-Seeing Eye of the State
French tax authorities now are using a powerful new tool to identify “tax cheats”: Facebook and other social media.
Government agents scour through people’s social posts to see if people are using cars, meals, or housing which appear to be ‘outside their means.’ See here.
Nov 11
The Omnipotent State Strikes Again
New York City’s government imposes so many taxes and regulations on short-term lodging entrepreneurs that the City recently sent dozens of armed agents to raid a condo complex.
The accusation? That several of the condo owners were making a few bucks by lending out their condos to NYC tourists. See here.
The City recently imposed an ordinance requiring short-term-rental providers and networks such as Airbnb to notify the government of all rental transactions in the City. Government investigators also employ teams of investigators to monitor social media to identify black-market renting.
Nov 08
No group of Americans are more privileged than government “workers” and former government employees. Now another decorated former government combat veteran has opened fire on innocent private-sector Americans, killing 12.
The former Marine Corps corporal, 28-year-old Ian David Long, was likely on permanent disability checks for PTSD. On November 7, he reportedly walked into a country bar in Thousand Oaks, California and began killing private-sector Americans indiscriminately.
Just last year, a retired millionaire IRS employee, Stephen Paddock, reportedly murdered 59 country music fans at a festival in Las Vegas.
Nov 07
The Montana and federal constitutions supposedly guarantee equal protection of the laws.
Yet governments everywhere place campaign restrictions on private sector political campaigns. Such regulations do not apply to government advocacy.
Campaign finance regs infringe on the speech and press rights of the (nongovernment) citizenry, forcing private citizens to disclose to government every penny raised and spent by the private sector on political positions and candidates.
Yet government agencies openly promote themselves and campaign for pro-government positions. Recently in Bozeman, Montana, the Bozeman government promoted a ballot initiative designed to extract some $37 million from City residents. The City government erected signs all over the town and loudly called for voters to vote for more taxes.
According to the pro-government Bozeman Daily Chronicle:
This election season, Bozeman employees spent more than 556 hours on the center ballot initiative and the city put roughly $27,827 into getting the word out on the details of the bond. Bozeman also spent $32,263 on its latest design plans.
Montana law allows public employees and bodies to plug time, money and resources into campaign issues when it’s tied to their function.
Montana laws are so unfair that if a private resident erects a sign asking voters to vote AGAINST the proposed marble and oak government palace complex, the resident could be investigated, prosecuted and fined.
Many elected officials turn their official government websites into quasi-campaign websites–and are under no obligation to report such expenditures to the government political police. Witness the attached screenshot of the official Montana Secretary of State website. It is practically a campaign site, with “Cory Stapleton’s” name featured larger than any other print on the page. Corey Stapleton’s smiling image also dominates the website. (Any political opponent of Stapleton in future elections would need to spend thousands of dollars and disclose the source of every penny to the government.)
Nov 03
America’s government-supporting colleges and universities spew a steady stream of pro-government academic “research.”
Recent revelations show that it is ridiculously easy to get fake “scientific” studies published in government-supported peer reviewed scholarly journals–so long as the studies support government expansion and intervention.
Now a trio of government-trusting academics have produced a “study” purporting to show that billionaires secretly promote anti-government, deregulatory agendas without saying so or doing anything directly. The evidence? Well, billionaires must promote their own interests, right?
The most glaring problem with the purported research is that the world’s most prominent billionaires who take vocal positions on social policy issues tend to promote heavy taxation, expansive regulation and wealth distribution (ironically). Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Tom Steyer are just a few of the billionaires known to be “center leftists” in their political advocacy.
But the Guardian article reassures us that there are billionaires who secretly promote deregulation and pro-liberty positions. Such billionaires do so from the shadows, according to the “study.” Only the Koch Brothers are mentioned in the article as being such pro-liberty advocates.
An analysis of how most billionaires acquired their riches found that most are in highly regulated industries. Thus, it would seem to be in their self interest to promote MORE, not less regulation.
Oct 19
A dominant narrative among socialists, progressives and sociology departments everywhere is that capitalists and the rich are controlling American ‘policy.’
Yet tax receipts tell the opposite story. The poorest 50 percent of Americans barely pay any income tax, while the richest few are forced to pay a majority of all federal income taxes.
