Jan 13

Another U.S. Postal Worker Caught Burning Mail

Every inspection of every U.S. Post Office facility has always found duly-stamped mail in trash bins.

Postal workers have been caught throughout the U.S. burning, burying, hiding, and disposing of stamped mail rather than delivering it.

Here is yet another story of a U.S. Postman who was caught burning entire tubs of mail.

The U.S. Post Office has an unconstitutional monopoly on the delivery of 1st-class mail. The agency has EVERY POSSIBLE advantage in the marketplace: it pays no corporate, income or property taxes, it owns some of the most strategic and prestigious real estate in the country, it enjoys the power of eminent domain, etc.

Yet the Post Office cannot turn a profit and loses $5 billion annually.

Jan 12

Facebook and Twitter–which led the fight for government takeover of internet claiming corporations might censor online content–are now exposed as censoring online content

The push for a government takeover of the internet, sometimes called “net neutrality,” has been led by socialist government trusters and monster corporations such as Twitter, Facebook, Google, and Amazon.

These corporations all claimed that unless the government took over the internet and required all internet providers to obtain licenses, such internet providers might impose slower speeds or less access to disfavored groups, or censor political perspectives, or charge the poor more than the rich. Or something.

But it has recently surfaced that “liberal” (often code for pro-government) content is favored on Facebook, Google and Twitter and that “conservative” (often code for anti-government) content is actively and constantly suppressed, slowed, and censored.

Project Veritas recently went undercover and captured video of software engineers at the firms who candidly admitted that such corporations impede access for “conservative” or anti-socialist content. One engineer even admitted that the U.S. government pressured them to do so (regarding Wikileaks content).

Now it has been revealed that Facebook took the money from publishers to promote the book “The Scandalous Presidency of Barack Obama,” but then blocked the book from being discussed.

(Facebook executives met secretly with Obama in the White House on numerous occasions. It has been revealed that Facebook and Microsoft have received millions of dollars from government agencies–often secretly.

Jan 06

The Rich Flee Connecticut

Connecticut politicians have been raising taxes and increasing regulations for a generation.

Now people with high incomes are fleeing the State. They have taken some $6 billion with them. See here.

Many Connecticut expatriots are fleeing to nearby New York or to Florida. But those who left for state-income-tax-free Florida had an average annual income of $253,187.

The exodus of Connecticut’s rich population has left the high-taxing State with LOWER tax revenues than a year ago.

Jan 04

More death threats against FEC Chairman Pai

The heroic Ajit Pai, appointed by Trump as Chairman of the FEC, has been the target of dozens of violent threats. His family has also been threatened.

Pai recently led an effort in the FCC to overturn the government’s takeover of the internet which government-trusters called “net neutrality.”

At the very meeting of the FCC in which Pai and the other two Republican FCC commissioners outvoted the 2 Democratic FCC commissioners to overturn the “neutrality” rule, death threats and bomb threats briefly stopped the vote.

Now Chairman Pai has cancelled next week’s speech before the international CES electronics-industry conference in Las Vegas. There are reports that death threats by fanatical government trusters are behind the decision.

Jan 04

While France moves to ban “fake news,” German policymakers realize that speech restrictions empower critics

The historic struggle for freedom of speech and press is filled with stories of anonymous pamphleteers who overcame state repression to claim victory over darkness.

Governments have historically sought to ban speech which is critical of government. Sometimes government officials claim such speech spreads “sedition,” or promotes violence, or allows “millionaires and billionaires” to control elections, or is “fake news,” or is “hate speech.”

French president Emmanuel Macron is now moving to ban “fake news” (as defined by the government, of course).

While in Germany, government officials who have banned “hate speech” are discovering that their ban actually empowers government critics.

The biggest selling German newspaper, is now openly declaring that the German government’s new censorship law “failed on its very first day” and should be abolished immediately. The law, said Bild‘s editor, is turning anti-immigrant politicians into “opinion martyrs.”

Intended to prevent radical groups from gaining influence, the new law appears to be having precisely the opposite effect. See here.

Jan 04

EPA’s top “climate change expert” was just sentenced to prison for fraud

John Beale was absent for years at a time, did no work, and traveled first-class.

Will Rogers once said It’s a good thing we don’t get all the government we pay for.

Here is news of the EPA’s highest paid “climate change expert,” John C. Beale, who was just sentenced to 32 months in prison for fraud.

Beale drew a salary and bonuses of $206,000 a year at the EPA.

Beale failed to show up at the EPA for months at a time, including one 18-month stretch starting in June 2011 when he did “absolutely no work.”

Beale took 33 airplane trips between 2003 and 2011, costing taxpayers $266,190. On 70 percent of those, he traveled first class and stayed at high end hotels, charging more than twice the government’s allowed per diem limit. But his expense vouchers were routinely approved by the EPA.

Beale “retired” in 2011 and his retirement party aboard a yacht was attended by the HIGHEST EPA OFFICIALS, including the EPA director. Yet Beale continued drawing salary for another year and a half.

Beale got away with absences for so long because he was a crusader for “the mission” of promoting the government’s climate-change hysteria. It was Beale who headed up EPA delegations to United Nations conferences on climate change in 2000 and 2001, and helped to negotiate agreements to reduce carbon emissions with China, India and other nations.

There are doubtlessly thousands more just like him in the federal government (and many state governments). Beale was prosecuted largely because of his track record of lying about his specific whereabouts and claiming he was on CIA missions.

Jan 02

More freedom, less crime: New York City sees crime drop after halting aggressive policing

Throughout the early years of the 21st century, HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of innocent people–mostly males of the lowest classes–were violently thrown against walls or sidewalks while New York City cops frisked and searched them without warrant.

Cop worshippers claimed the “stop and frisks” were necessary to fight crime. When activists, lawyers and judges worked to halt the humiliating, violent police tactic, tough-on-crime “conservatives” declared that crime would increase.

But it did not. In fact, major crime rates have declined to record or near-record lows after courts ordered an end to the warrantless stop-and-frisks. See here.

Jan 01

Bozeman, Montana government hires “affordable housing director”–thereby ensuring that housing will be increasingly unaffordable

Municipal planning is for the rich. It circumvents natural markets in which poor people pool resources, innovate and commute. “Planning” almost always means that housing becomes LESS affordable for poor people.

Where “planning” has been most heavy-handed, poor people live in cars or travel hundreds of miles to mow the lawns or shovel the sidewalks of elites. Witness Aspen or Estes Park, Colorado. Or Big Sky, Montana.

But the Bozeman City Council is almost as government-interventionist as that of San Francisco.

Now the booming Montana town is hiring an “affordable housing director”–whose $70,000 salary (apparently for 6 months) will be drawn from real estate developers. (This dollar amount, of course, will mean that every new real estate development in Bozeman will cost more than it did previously.)

Jan 01

NPR claims that Baltimore’s high crime rates stem from too few police; but Baltimore has the second-most cops per-capita in the U.S.!

The government NPR radio network and website is promoting a story suggesting that Baltimore’s high crime rates are owed to a lack of police officers in the city.

There is just one problem with this notion: Baltimore has the SECOND-HIGHEST rate of cops per-capita in the U.S.! (1st is Washington, D.C..)

Wherever city governments have cut police staff and budgets, crime has tended to go down. See here. This seems counterintuitive; but people tend to become safer when they take responsibility for their own personal safety.

Just as in health care and welfare policy, government intervention is a poison that worsens almost everyone’s circumstances. Towns that have fired, cut, eliminated or privatized their police departments have invariably found that crime goes down.

Jan 01

Iranian government shuts down internet to disrupt protests

Fortune and other news sources are reporting that the government of Iran is shutting down the internet in cities where there are anti-government protests.

(In Iran, internet providers must obtain government permission–similar to the “net neutrality” system proposed by many government-trusters in America.)