Oct 25
According to Yahoo News, a Vietnamese student has been ordered jailed for 6 years for blog posts that criticized life under the Vietnamese government. See here.
Like the government of the United States, the Vietnamese government employs teams of agents to monitor the internet and control the content of what subjects post.
Oct 23
by Roger Roots, founder of Lysander Spooner University
Governments want their subjects sick, weak, scared and dependent. Every generation of Americans has seen its life expectancy improve. Until now.
A new Bloomberg News report finds that Today’s Americans are retiring later, dying sooner and sicker in-between.
Social Security alone has incentivized millions of Americans to work less, invest less, save less, and disregard their health. By itself, the program is responsible for making America at least 3 percent poorer. See here.
In fact, the government pays people outright to be sick and disabled, incentivizing millions to go on monthly disability checks.
Medical mistakes by government-approved doctors and facilities are now the third leading cause of death.
The pharmaceutical industry, gorged on government-subsidized money and regulations, has succeeded in making millions of Americans dependent on government-approved drugs.
Taxes and regulations prevent most poor Americans from launching productive businesses and hiring others. Today, roughly half of All Americans pay no taxes and live at the expense of the other half, through government. Americans now spend more on taxes than on food and clothing combined.
The U.S. now has the highest tax rates in the developed world.
Oct 21
There was a time in American history when judges and attorneys became famous and beloved by fighting for individual rights and liberties. America’s founding fathers named cities, towns and counties after the most libertarian English judges. (For example, the Founders named many places after Lord Camden, the famous British judge who wrote a number of famed libertarian court opinions in the 1760s.)
Today’s lawyers, however, tend to rise to prominence mostly by siding with the powers of intrusive, expansive government. Many if not most judges are former prosecutors themselves.
Although Americans still revere freedom-fighting lawyers, there are fewer and fewer such lawyers to be found. Many of America’s most prominent libertarian criminal defense lawyers have found themselves targeted, prosecuted or even imprisoned by the American police state. (Clarence Darrow, F. Lee Bailey, William Kunstler, etc. were all prosecuted after becoming well-known defense lawyers.)
Now noted defense lawyer Harvey Silverglate has come forward with a chilling story about how federal prosecutor Robert Mueller attempted to entrap him during the 1980s. See here. Mueller later went on to be FBI director and is now leading an (apparent) witchhunt “special” prosecution of Donald Trump over supposed Russian influence in Trump’s election.
According to Silverglate, Mueller tried to set up Silverglate by sending a lying FBI informant into Silverglate’s office to dictate a false affidavit for a legal case. The lying informant was wearing a wire and trying to entrap Silverglate into using the false document. (Silverglate immediately told the undercover agent to leave.)
Harvey Silverglate is a well-known criminal defense lawyer, civil-liberties activist and author of the book Three Felonies A Day–which suggests that federal law has now become so prosecution-friendly that every American likely commits 3 felonies a day without knowing it.
Oct 20
Every government ultimately comes for all freedom, all resources, all property, and to kill or cage all who resist.
Now the “G7” (the world’s 7 most powerful governments) are combining with a common goal: to push for controls on the internet which are deemed “terrorist” or “jihadist.” See here.
(Of course, nothing said here should be construed as supportive of Islamicism–which is its own brand of tyranny).
Beware: freedoms of speech, press, expression and advocacy may be imperiled in the future like never before.
Oct 18
There is nothing constitutional about public schools. Early Americans knew nothing of them. They educated themselves according to their needs, with private schooling or home schooling.
But public schools have taken over America’s education over the past century. And through such schools, government incessantly promotes its agenda of central planning, government control and regulation.
Now public schools in Massachusetts are banning Halloween because it is politically incorrect. Too many costumes are troublesome–either depicting ‘wrong’ identities or causing other students to suffer traumatically. See here.
Over time, governments have turned every holiday that originally celebrated freedom into a holiday celebrating the state. Armistice day–which was originally a celebration of peace and the end of WWI–has been transformed into ‘Veterans Day’ to celebrate the soldiers of the state. Independence day–which originally celebrated defiance of the the state–has been transformed into a day of worship of the state.
Oct 16
The market always wins.
For years, state and local governments have imposed hundreds of pages of regulations on cab companies. Cab companies often are made to get a “certificate of need” from the government before starting up. Cab companies must get government approval for all their rates, fares, routes and operating areas.
In some places, government-approved cab companies must constantly appear before government “taxi boards” composed of members of entrenched cab companies.
The regs ensure that poor people and people not approved by good-ol-boy establishments are kept out of the industry.
But a few years ago, enterprises such as Uber and Lyft began launching app-based “ride-sharing” businesses allowing common citizens to transport passengers who contact them by cell phone or I-phone apps.
Now, more riders in NYC are using Uber than the entrenched, government-approved taxi companies. See here.
Oct 16
Many government universities provide public event space for rent or for use by student groups. Generally student groups and clubs can reserve meeting halls for free while nonstudents and outsiders must pay for the use of facilities.
But many government colleges have a habit of discriminating among student organizations and speakers based on the content of the ideas being expressed.
Recent government impositions at UNC-Greensboro provide an example. Columnist Mike Adams (who has occasionally taught for the UNC system) details how University officials imposed a series of fees on the “Young America’s Foundation” (YAF), a conservative student club, which were not imposed on other clubs. See here.
According to Adams, the UNC YAF student club sought to bring in D’nesh D’souza to speak on campus. D’Souza is a well known lecturer, writer and filmmaker whose work occasionally criticizes big government.
“As soon as [UNC officials] saw YAF on the contract, administrators disregarded their own rules and reclassified the event, requiring a venue fee not charged to students or recognized student groups that host events on campus.”
Yet just months earlier, UNC had allowed a pro-government Hillary Clinton campaign event on campus under the guise that the Hillary campaign was being promoted by a student group.
No reasonable person could argue that the Hillary for America campaign rally was not an external event warranting a facility rental fee. However, when an official on-campus student group approached UNCG administrators about hosting D’Souza for a lecture, the University violated its own policy by charging a fee. Moreover, the fee was three times higher than an event that was clearly nothing more than a campaign rally conducted by an off-campus group.
Adams calls it “the free speech tax.”
Oct 13
Salon.com, the pro-government extremist site, has published a rare story critical of government.
Reportedly, FEMA “disaster relief” officials in Puerto Rico have been living in luxury among hurricane victims. See here.
Just one example given by the Salon article: Overpaid federal ‘disaster workers’ reportedly took “spa days” and used emergency tents provided by the U.S. government to have local Puerto Rican hurrican victims perform manicures and pedicures on them.
Oct 13
The Huffington Post is typical of government-supporting news media in the Trump era. Because the Post‘s journalists despise Trump, the online news site publishes countless reports regarding Trump’s failings.
Today’s Huffington Post features a story about three volunteer nurses who are doing disaster relief in Puerto Rico in the wake of a recent hurricane. See here.
The story is filled with details of how Trump’s FEMA agency is failing, misreporting facts, and boasting of accomplishments which are actually attributable to others.
The nurses report that FEMA has mostly just posted signs and posters around Puerto Rico which tell people to contact FEMA’s website or phone number. Phone service, internet, and power is mostly disconnected throughout the island.
But the nurses’ report is actually a testament to the power of human ingenuity to overcome disaster in the absence of government assistance. The report speaks of people rigging power and light systems from car generators, of local volunteers providing food and water even to the nurses themselves, and other ways that the people of Puerto Rico are succeeding to beat back the devastation caused by the hurricane.
Why, after all, is FEMA even necessary?
Oct 13
One of the recurring claims of pro-government voices is that apocalyptic-manmade-global-warming-by-CO2 is causing sea levels to rise due to melting ice in the Arctic and Antarctic. Government trusters use this claim to demand ever more government power, taxation, and central planning by elitists.
But the precise opposite is true. NASA data confirm that global sea levels are LOWERING. See here.
Ice and snow levels in both the northern and southern hemispheres are significantly above normal for the date. See here.
The English growing season is now a week SHORTER since the 1940s. See here.
