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.)

Jan 01

There is increasing evidence that Google, Facebook and Twitter are censoring climate skepticism and colluding with each other in doing so

During the final years of the Obama Administration, executives at Google, Facebook and Twitter were regularly meeting with Obama in the White House.

Not long after, all 3 internet giants (which together rake in more than 85% of all online ad revenue) began promoting the “net neutrality” concept for a government takeover of the internet, as well as the government’s “fake news” meme.

In the past year, all 3 internet dominators launched initiatives to weed out supposedly “fake news”–based on a notion first announced by the CIA-funded Washington Post that “the Russians” were spreading fake news in U.S. media.

Now we see that these pro-government corporations regard any skepticism of the government’s apocalyptic-manmade-global-warming-by-CO2 claims as “fake news.”

Leo Goldstein of Watts Up With That? has authored an interesting report that suggests the major pro-government internet corporations are now COLLUDING with each other in their censorship decisions regarding “climate change” skepticism.

Dec 28

Hundreds of thousands flee socialist California

North Koreans flee to China. East Germans fled to West Germany. Cubans flee to Florida.

We recently reported that 33,000 people fled socialist Illinois in the past year, and some 247,410 people left Illinois over the past decade, taking some $13.7 billion with them. Illinoians are some of the most heavily-taxed people on earth.

Now Forbes magazine has reported that since socialist Gov. Jerry Brown was sworn in as governor of California, 243,099 people have fled California for other states, taking $7.794 billion with them.

Dec 27

Russian satellites capture U.S. training “ISIS”

U.S. intelligence agencies have been caught repeatedly funding, supplying, and training the very “terrorists” that U.S. taxpayers are then duped into “fighting.”

(Of course, almost every other world government has also engaged in such false flag operations.)

U.S. neocons and warhawks in government office use the excuse of ‘terrorists’ to justify constant erosions of the American Bill of Rights. And many of the ‘terrorists’ cited by U.S. intelligence agencies are undercover U.S.-funded operations.

Today’s Yahoo News has broken the story of yet another apparent false-flag training operation in progress. Russian satellites have reportedly captured “ISIS” terrorists being trained at a U.S. military base near Syria. See here.

Dec 26

United ‘first class’ seats are now mostly reserved for government employees–and higher-level government officials apparently bump lower level government workers to ‘economy’ seating as needed

As private-sector Americans struggle for existence, government officials and workers continue to gain wealth and privilege.

Here is a story published in the London Daily Mail (U.S. ‘mainstream’ news outlets have ignored it) about a school teacher who purchased a first-class seat on a United flight.

The school teacher was told before the flight that her ticket had been canceled, and was given a $500 voucher and a seat in the economy class (where poorer, nongovernment, travelers are seated).

The teacher noticed as she walked past seat 1A (which she had initially purchased) that the seat had been taken by Congresswoman Shiela Jackson Lee, a constant advocate of expansive, intrusive government who masquerades as a champion of the poor.

Dec 26

In socialist Venezuela, food trucks must now be escorted by military guards

Socialism is a curse that should be wished only on a hated enemy. Any society that adopts it will inevitably become sick and weak.

Just 4 decades ago, Venezuela was one of the wealthiest economies in the world. It was 12 times wealthier than China, and by some measures was the 4th richest country on earth. Its people enjoyed the longest life expectancy in South America.

Then the people voted for more government, and trusted government to control and distribute all goods and services in the economy.

Today, life in Venezuela is a daily struggle for survival on the streets, while a wealthy elite controls all resources.

Children work as prostitutes while babies die of hunger and malnutrition. The environment is increasingly devastated and deforested.

As reported by The New York Times, things have gotten so bad there that food transports cannot move without a military escort.

What’s worse, the country’s most vulnerable citizens — it’s children — are starving to death at a much higher rate than the adult population, which is also high:

With delivery trucks under constant attack, the nation’s food is now transported under armed guard. Soldiers stand watch over bakeries. The police fire rubber bullets at desperate mobs storming grocery stores, pharmacies and butcher shops. A 4-year-old girl was shot to death as street gangs fought over food.

See here.

Dec 25

Every claim behind “campaign finance reform” is untrue

In 2010 the Supreme Court decided Citizens United v. FEC, which struck down a small number of “campaign finance” laws–or at least their application–on First Amendment grounds.

Trusters of government went into hysterics. They claimed the Supreme Court had ruled that corporations are people, and that the Supreme Court had pronounced that money is speech in every instance.

(Of course laws which limit spending on political pamphlets and ads DO infringe on freedom of press, and corporations are–for some purposes–legal persons which can hire, fire, pay taxes, sue, be sued, create books and movies and publish news, websites, ads and information.)

And most of the “corporations” which fund political ads are NONPROFIT ideological groups such as the NRA or the NAACP. (and their influence on election outcomes can always be debated.)

Chief among the “campaign finance reform” advocates has been the New York Times, a FOR-PROFIT CORPORATION which buys its ink by the 55-gallon drum. The Times has been a consistent cheerleader for government expansion and intrusion into every aspect of human life.

And this year the Times actually came out openly as something of a pro-government Super Pac (but which is not subject to the campaign finance laws the Times promotes).

The Times’ editorial board changed the bio on the opinion section’s Twitter account to inform the public that it was “temporarily taking over” the feed to lobby against the Senate GOP tax bill. The board then proceeded to tweet out the phone numbers of various Republican senators and implored the public to deluge their offices with phone calls, “to urge the Senate to reject a tax bill that hurts the middle class & the nation’s fiscal health.”

See here.