Jun 25
Socialism bills itself as a system to help the needy. Socialists believe that water, health care, food, and other commodities should be distributed by the government.
Bloomberg News is out with a report that in socialist Venezuela, the poor, starving and thirsty subjects are now made to pay the military for drinking water.
And the Venezuelan public water system is suffering from years of lack of maintenance. See here.
Jun 24
Pro-government “Conservative” Glenn Beck’s multimedia empire The Blaze “appears to be on its last legs after another round of layoffs,” according to The Daily Beast.
TheBlaze once generated a reported $90 million in revenue annually, but has been in a slow motion implosion over the past several years. Top-level managerial shakeups, seemingly ceaseless layoffs, and office closures have depleted morale, tanked the site’s web traffic, and caused cable distributors to jump ship.and after a prospective high-profile buyer lost interest.
Beck now reportedly has fewer than 30 employees.
Beck’s content is widely thought to be CIA-generated. The “mainstream” (government supporting and supported) media sometimes describes Beck as edgy or pushing ‘conspiracy theories.’ But Beck’s edgy ‘conspiracy theories’ are those wholly approved by the deep state and the military-industrial complex. Beck paints a preposterous picture of American policy being secretly driven by Muslims (a fake narrative pushed by the Neocon establishment), but refuses to embrace any suggestion that the government has lied about the events of 9/11.
Beck loudly decried the 2014 standoff between Bundy supporters and the Bureau of Land Management in Nevada, saying the American people should never have made demands on government authorities to leave the area.
Beck sometimes describes himself as libertarian, yet constantly pushes a pro-police, pro-military expansion agenda. Beck initially supported the banker bailouts of 2008 but then switched gears after it became clear the American people opposed the bailouts by wide margins.
Beck is suffering the same fate as pro-government media everywhere. The public simply won’t tune in to hear worn out demands that Americans must always trust the state.
Jun 23
Turkey is preparing for a national election. President Erdogan appears to be in jeopardy of losing his office.
So in the final days of Erdogan’s campaign, official Turkish TV and news sources have imposed a virtual blackout on any discussion of Erdogan’s opponents.
One opponent, Muharrem Ince, addressed a crowd of 4 million in Istanbul without any coverage on government TV. Erdogan, by contrast, spoke before much smaller groups and received widespread news coverage. See here.
Jun 23
Reason magazine has a startling report out. A leaked memo indicates that the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is wavering on free speech.
Free speech was mostly a movement of “the left” throughout the past 50 years. During the 1940s and ’50s the “establishment” was generally anti-communist, pro-capitalist and somewhat authoritarian.
“Liberalism” was closely related to free-speech movements.
But now several officials within the ACLU are wavering on free speech. Many view the maintenance of massive government programs and institutions of political correctness as more important than principles of free speech.
Jun 23
More than half of all Facebook and Twitter accounts are fake. And both Twitter and Facebook make money by selling fake “followers” and “likes.”
Prominent politicians and even musicians and actors purchase fake followers. Hillary Clinton purchased more than 2 million followers during her 2016 campaign.
And both Twitter and Facebook have been repeatedly caught manipulating content to promote pro-government memes and themes.
Now advertisers are spending less and less on ads featuring social media ‘influencers.’
Jun 23
There has been an unwritten rule among U.S. federal agencies (especially during the Obama years) that no “science” which disagrees with the prevailing message of manmade-global-warming-by-CO2 hysteria is allowed to be published by the government.
So a U.S. Forest Service researcher was forced to publish his countervailing climate research under alias names. He observed that planetary temperature correlates with sunlight and atmospheric pressure, not atmospheric composition.
The Washington Post reported on the story and turned it into a scandal about a government scientist using aliases.
Tony Heller of realclimatescience.com says that climate science has now reverted to 16th-century levels.
Jun 20
Governments routinely try to take over the internet by claiming such things as that internet providers are preparing to charge the poor more than the rich, or slow down the internet access of the poor, or that “terrorists” might soon use the internet to bring down the power grid, shut down the Pentagon, or melt down nuclear reactors. Each of these claims is easily disproven, but governments keep saying them.
Now the prime minister of Israel is claiming that non-government-controlled internet users may soon be able to hack into air force jets and cause them to crash. See here.
A quote from Reuters:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on governments worldwide on Wednesday to join forces to defend against cyber threats that he said could even bring down military and civilian aircraft. . . . we are absolutely vulnerable. Our airlines can be brought down, our fighter planes can be brought down,” he said.
Jun 14
Every socialist state will eventually reach a day of reckoning.
For years the government of Harvey, Illinois (an impoverished, high-tax, high-regulation socialist suburb of Chicago) has overpaid cops and firefighters and lavished retired cops and firefighters with extravagant pensions. (Many such retirees take their padded pensions and move to lower-tax, less socialist places.)
But the long-suffering residents of Harvey are now unable to meet the ever-growing tax burden. In April the municipal government was forced to lay off 40 cops and firefighters. See here.
In 2015, the millionaire retired cops of Harvey won a ruling in federal court requiring that their pensions be fully paid. Consequently, the town comptroller has been forced to redirect 1.5 million tax dollars from town budgets to the pension fund.
Harvey remains more than $7 million delinquent in its payments to the millionaire retiree pension fund.
Jun 13
Alternative news is thriving and Americans have access to more information than ever before.
But government-supporting (“mainstream”) newspapers continue to fall in circulation and importance.
The Pew Research Center has found that total US daily newspaper circulation, print and digital combined, was down 11 and 10 percent, respectively, from the previous year.
(Two major papers, the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, were excluded from the calculation because their circulation data is computed differently. Both the NYT and WSJ are said to be doing well.)
News ad data is also declining.
And, according to US government data (always suspect), 39,210 people worked as reporters, editors, photographers, or film and video editors in the newspaper industry in 2017, down nearly eight percent in a year and 45 percent from 2004.
Jun 11
Most people who go off to college don’t worry about being shadowed by undercover government informants.
But students at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs must contend with fellow students who are secretly working undercover for the government.
And, of course, the government abuses and burns its snitches just as it does everyone else.
Here is a column about a young man who volunteered to become an undercover rat at the Academy but was later expelled for demerits related to his undercover work.
