Sandra Cortez's Ordeal: Once You're On The Terrorist "Watch List," You Can't Get Off

by William Grigg

Sandra Cortez, born in Chicago sixty-eight years ago, has never set foot outside the United States -- yet she discovered, through an error in her credit report, that her name is permanently inscribed in a terrorist "watch list."

Cortez has no criminal record, and an exemplary credit history. In March 2005, Cortez -- who at the time was living in Denver, Colorado -- attempted to buy a vehicle from the John Elway Subaru dealership.

?I thought I would be driving my new car back to work after lunch,? Cortez recalled. ?I couldn?t imagine what would happen next.?

Despite the fact that Cortez had a 761 credit score and money for a down-payment, the dealership's manager balked at the sale after running Cortez's credit history through the TransUnion credit rating service. Rather than closing the deal on the $18,000 Subaru Forrester, the manager -- his face drawn into a "stern look" -- assailed the puzzled woman with a series of "strange questions": ?Were you born in the United States? Have you always lived in the U.S.? When is the last time you left the country??

TransUnion had notified the dealership that Cortez's name was on the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control list owing to its resemblance to a "specially designated individual" from Colombia named Sandra Cortez Quintera.

This was obviously a coincidence involving a very common Latino name (it's akin to the incidental similarity between, say, a U.S.-born woman named Margaret Lindsay, and an Irish terrorism suspect named Maggie Lindsay O'Reilly). However, under the so-called USA PATRIOT Act, businesses such as the John Elway Subaru dealership in Denver face draconian fines and prison sentences for extending credit to anyone suspected of terrorist connections (unless, of course, they are connected to terrorist groups currently favored by Washington, such as the Iranian Islamo-Marxist cult called the MEK). ?Rather than selling Cortez the car, the dealership detained her at the office while it consulted with the FBI.

Eventually, Cortez was able to buy the car, and the dealership -- which had been caught in the same vise -- offered a sincere and extravagant apology. When she contacted TransUnion, the agency insisted that the notifications had been removed from her file. Nonetheless, in June 2006, the red flags appeared when Cortez attempted to rent an apartment. In fact, the notifications materialize every time Cortez has to conduct business that involves credit.

In a 2010 ruling, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals noted that "the alerts often reduced Cortez to tears. The alerts also caused Cortez to lose weight and they interfered with her ability to sleep to such an extent that she resorted to medication."

Following a lengthy legal struggle, Cortez was awarded $750,000 in damages by a jury. The government arbitrarily reduced that award to $150,000, and then stole roughly a third of that in taxes. Most infuriating is the fact that the Regime still refuses to take Cortez's name off the list.

?Most people think if you pay your bills on time, you will be OK in the credit world,? observes Cortez, who now resides in La Mesa, California. ?But that?s not how it always works. And sometimes, the mistakes can be paralyzing" -- especially when they are made by entirely unaccountable people who treat the rest of us like inmates in a prison society.
__
William Norman Grigg [send him mail] publishes the Pro Libertate blog and hosts the Pro Libertate radio program.

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Yeah, where is the Human Rights Watch when Americans need it? Nowhere to be found, since the U.S.A. dominates everything that 'polices' the globe in such matters. Americans obviously don't have their rights violated, ever, so why should anyone watch out for them?

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Don't Die in 2013: Confiscatory 55% Death Tax Set to Take Effect

The 2001 tax relief bill (EGTRRA), drastically reduced the impact of the death tax over the course of a decade, so that it was eliminated entirely for one year in 2010 ? a good year to die, joked a number of pundits. The bill lowered marginal rates and increased the applicable exclusion amount, but it also included a provision allowing individuals to carry over exclusion dollars that were unused by their spouse at the time of his or her death. This ?portability? measure effectively increased the applicable exclusion for many households, in some instances putting millions of dollars beyond the reach of the federal government.

The death tax rose from the grave at the end of 2010, with a Bush-era top rate of 35% and an applicable exclusion amount of $5 million ($5.12 million in 2012).

In 2013, the death tax will revert to its antiquated, pre-2001 form. The applicable exclusion amount will plummet to $1,000,000, and the top marginal rate will leap twenty points to 55%. A 5% surtax will also return, to be levied on estates between $10 million and $17 million. This raises the top effective rate of the death tax to 60%.

According to research by the Tax Policy Center, if the current death tax expires, then the resulting, stricter exemption threshold will force 114,600 estates to file for the tax in 2013 ? this represents a 13-fold increase from the previous year?s 8,800 estates, and countless wasted hours filling out tax paperwork. Of that cohort, an unfortunate 52,500 will be liable for the tax, way up from 3,300.

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So what's the big deal? Assert your freedom: knock Dad off this year.

It's good for you and if it's bad for your Dad, well, too bad. Because the only good is what benefits you; Ayn Rand said so.

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'Dark Knight' Shooting Leaves at Least 12 Killed, 50 Injured

At least 12 people were killed and as many as 50 injured when a gunman in a gas mask opened fire about 12:30 a.m. in a theater showing the new Batman (TWX) movie in Aurora, near Denver, Colorado.

Police found explosives in the home of a 24-year-old man arrested in a car at the shopping mall that housed the theater, Aurora Police Chief Dan Oates told reporters. The suspect, James Holmes, has no known ties to terrorists, although the investigation continues, said a federal official, who lacked authorization to speak publicly and asked for anonymity.

?We have no evidence of additional shooters,? Oates said. ?The gunman was found in a car in the parking lot with a rifle, handgun, gas mask.?

?The Dark Knight Rises? is rated PG-13 and there were many children at the sold-out show, including some in costumes, at the Century 16 Movie Theaters at the Aurora Town Center. One of the dead was a 3-month-old child, the Denver Post reported.

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It should be embarassing to those in the know. This is so fake it makes me laugh.

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Freedom is Dead; Long Live Freedom.

Wendy McElroy

Why has America, a nation known for rugged individualism, descended so quickly into submission and a police state?

In 1831, the French political theorist and historian Alexis de Tocqueville received a commission to examine the prison system in ?America. His personal purpose, however, was to examine the character of a new America to which many Frenchmen looked as a model. After turning in his official report on prisons, De Tocqueville published his more personal findings: a pivotal work entitled Democracy in America (two volumes: 1835 and 1840).

The primary purpose of Democracy was to explore the American political system but it also commented upon the character of civil society. De Tocqueville wrote, ?Amongst the novel objects that attracted my attention during my stay in the United States, nothing struck me more forcibly than the general equality of conditions.? Unlike status-conscious Europeans, Americans shook hands with each other as though there were no social distinctions. De Tocqueville was amazed by town meetings at which everyone unabashedly voiced their opinions and objections. America was not a nation of bowed heads.

Scroll forward about two centuries to 9/11 and the creation of a ?a bowed America. But 9/11 cannot explain the rapidity and ease with which a police state arose in the "land of the free." The terrorist attacks were not the cause but the tipping point in a long process that has worked quietly in America?s political background. For many years, institutions designed to protect individual rights have been eroded. These are institutions such as courts that respect due process or schools that teach critical thinking.

These institutions form a powerful barrier that shields liberty by restraining government. Over time, however, they became hollowed-out shells?or worse. They became tools of government intrusion and living mockeries of their former selves, from courts that blithely enforce unconstitutional laws to a public school system that teaches conformity. When the two planes crashed into the twin towers on 9/11, it was not merely the buildings that shattered but the last remnants of freedom-oriented institutions as well.

Most Americans did not seem to notice at first. Perhaps many had lived with liberty so long that they took it for granted that America was the freest nation in the world; it always had been; it always would be; it is innate within the American character. They missed a fundamental truth that is obvious to anyone in a totalitarian state. Namely, the continuation of both liberty and personal safety rests upon invisible institutions like freedom of speech and freedom of the press. Only when the institutions disappear does it become obvious that their presence means the difference between speaking with impunity and being shot as a dissident.

America?s freedom did not spring from characteristics innate within the American soul. Ask yourself a question: Why would a child born in Wisconsin be more naturally inclined to liberty than one born in Mexico City or the Ukraine? There is no genetic explanation. It was the institutions of America that were largely responsible for its freedoms; the institutions helped to shape the character of Americans by encouraging them to value peaceful exchange and productivity. Why? Because they were able to reap the rewards of civil society and hard work. This is what De Tocqueville saw -- the character of a free and equal people who felt at liberty to look others in the eye and to speak their mind. This is what amazed De Tocqueville -- a society of free men.

What is an institution?

An institution is any stable and widely-accepted mechanism for achieving social and political goals. Traditional institutions of society include the family, court systems, the free market, and churches. Institutions generally evolve over time to reflect the history and dynamics of a culture. For example, the institution of common law evolved on a grassroots level to meet the demand for justice by average people. Equally, the institutions of money and the market arose to satisfy human need and desire for goods.

As those needs and desires change, so do the institutions. Sometimes the change occurs due to conscious human design. Trial by a jury of one?s peers, for example, was a procedure consciously designed to maximize the justice of verdicts. This court procedure ?weathered the test of time well enough to now be viewed as a cornerstone of Western jurisprudence. When institutions are responsive and grassroots in nature, they become such a natural part of human progress that they change in a spontaneous manner, as in the continuing evolution of language. Like the free market, they strongly encourage peaceful interaction because that is what benefits the vast majority of people.

The political system is the institution upon which libertarians focus. They commonly observe that politics ?institutionalizes corruption?; political structures and procedures encourage bad results like the personal malfeasance of elected figures. A large reason for the corruption is that the political system is not responsive, not grassroots. As a static institution, it serves the embedded interests of an elite class rather than the dynamic ones of the average person. (The elite class consists of politicians and those with political pull.) What libertarians call ?corruption? is what the elites call ?profit?. They have consciously sculpted the institution to increase their profits through such procedures as non-transparency.

In a sense, the embedded corruption of politics is good news for libertarians because it spotlights a basic truth about institutions. They can promote liberty or statism depending upon their structure, procedures and the embedded incentives. The Founding Fathers knew this. For example, they attempted to limit the government by constructing a tripartite system of checks and balances designed to prevent the centralization of power. The Bill of Rights created incentives toward liberty by laying down ?societal ground rules to be upheld by the Supreme Court. (Whether the best intentions of the Founding Fathers were doomed to defeat by the inherent nature of politics is debatable.)

The specific structures and procedures of any institution will determine the results it produces. As long as the procedures are followed, the motives of those participating in the institution are irrelevant. Elsewhere, I offered the example of a man who works in a candy factory with the intention of producing canned tuna. As long as he follows the workplace rules and procedures, however, he will produce candy. A police officer may want to promote libertarian justice but as long as he enforces the laws of a totalitarian state, he will produce injustice.

Equally, as long as everyone respects the rules of the free market, it will function as a mechanism of peace and prosperity even if some of its participants are ill intentioned human beings. You may buy goods from a man whom you would never allow into your home; he can detest your religion or skin color even as money peacefully changes hands. As long as the rules of the free market are observed, freedom itself is served.

The burning question now becomes: how do we construct institutions that encourage liberty?

Conclusion

There are two answers on how to construct freedom-oriented institutions. The first: do not to construct them at all. Allow them to evolve through the spontaneous interaction of individuals pursuing their own self-interest. This is how free markets function, families are created, free speech rings out? Many ?institutions require merely to be unobstructed.

But other institutions require some design beyond the "anything that is peaceful" rule. For example, a court system requires procedures of justice such as "innocent until proven guilty." And, so, the second answer to designing institutions is: do so in as ?minimal a manner as possible and only to promote individual rights.

America?s rugged individualism has been called the ?soul? of its character. America needs its soul back.
_
Wendy McElroy is Author, lecturer, and freelance writer, and a senior associate of the Laissez Faire Club.

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Presumed Guilty in Florida: Drug "Crimes" with no Criminal Intent

by William Grigg

Thanks to a state Supreme Court ruling effectively disposing of the need for prosecutors to prove criminal intent, the Florida state government can continue imprisoning people for possessing substances they didn't know were illegal.

Florida is one of two states afflicted with drug possession statutes that don't require the government to prove criminal intent. The statute permits defendants to offer an affirmative defense of "unwitting possession" -- which means that the defendant, not the state, has the burden of proof. ?The state Supreme Court, ruling the recent case of Florida v. Adkins, has rejected a challenge to that statute filed on behalf of dozens of defendants awaiting trial on drug possession charges.

"There is no constitutional right to possess contraband," insisted Justice Charles Canady in the majority opinion. "Nor is there a protected right to be ignorant of the nature of the property in one's possession."

Like most rulings of this kind, Canady's opinion begins with the totalitarian premise that the powers exercised by government are presumptively constitutional -- and that it is the actions of the individual that must be justified. This inverts the American perspective on law, in which government can exercise only those powers explicitly delegated to it in the applicable constitution (state or federal).

Since the repeal of the 18th Amendment, there has been no constitutional provision authorizing the federal government to regulate the possession or consumption of mood-altering substances. The Florida state constitution is similarly devoid of such provisions. Thus there is no constitutional authority for Florida officials to prosecute people for possession of such substances.

Even if the Florida state government had the authority to criminalize drug possession, the statute dealt with in this ruling would be illegitimate because it doesn't require the state to prove the existence of mens rea -- malicious intent on the part of the accused.

In order for an act to be a crime, it must involve the deliberate violation of a clear and intelligible statute by an act that inflicts injury to another person. Individual drug consumption -- although unwise -- doesn't injure anybody else; as a victimless act, it cannot be construed as a crime. The same is true of mere possession of narcotics, which -- as the Florida statute acknowledges -- doesn't even necessarily involve criminal intent.

Under the Florida v. Adkins ruling, however, people can be convicted of a supposed crime on the basis of mere physical proximity to contraband they didn't know was on their property or among their personal effects.

In his dissent, Justice James E.C. Perry points out that the standard embraced by the court would permit the prosecution and imprisonment of "a letter carrier who delivers a package containing unprescribed Adderall; a roommate who is unaware that the person who shares his apartment has hidden illegal drugs in the common areas of the home; a mother who carries a prescription pill bottle in her purse, unaware that the pills have been substituted for illegally obtained drugs by her teenage daughter, who placed them in the bottle to avoid detection ... a driver who rents a car in which a past passenger accidentally dropped a baggie of marijuana under the seat; a traveler who mistakenly retrieves from a luggage carousel a bag identical to her own containing Oxycodone; a helpful college student who drives a carload of a friend's possessions to the friend's new apartment, unaware that a stash of heroin is tucked within those possessions; [or] an ex-wife who is framed by an ex-husband who planted cocaine in her home in an effort to get the upper hand in a bitter custody dispute."

The majority opinion blithely dismissed these possibilities -- at least some of which have been validated through actual court experience -- by insisting that the statute's "affirmative defense" provision addresses the rights of the defendant. As Justice Perry observes, this violates common law principles ? traceable to ancient Roman law ? by forcing the defendant to overcome a presumption of guilt:

"Under the majority's decision "? the innocent will from the start be presumed guilty. The innocent will be deprived of their right to simply deny the charges and hold the State to its burden of proving them guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. The innocent will instead be forced to assert an affirmative defense, whereupon the possession of a controlled substance, whether actual or constructive, shall give rise to a permissive presumption that the possessor knew of the illicit nature of the substance... The innocent will then have no realistic choice but to shoulder the burden of proof and present evidence to overcome that presumption"?. The innocent will then hear their jury instructed on the permissive presumption that they knew of the illicit nature of the substance in question."

The statute upheld in the Adkins ruling is involved in roughly one third of all felony charges in Palm Beach County. Peter Antonacci, State Attorney for Palm Beach County, expressed relief over the ruling. "It would have been a substantial mess if had gone the other way," he told the Palm Beach Post, in apparent ignorance of his implicit admission that his office is responsible for imprisoning a great number of people who had done nothing to harm anybody else.

Read the Adkins ruling here.

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there is no right to control what a man eats.

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TSA TROUBLE: Disabled Man Points Finger At TSA

Aaron Brilbeck

An elderly disabled Florida man is stuck in Des Moines because he says?TSA agents forced him to miss his flight.

When you think "Terrorist", Primo Meza is probably not the guy you're picturing.? Still, the elderly handicapped Florida man was detained by TSA agents so long he had to miss his flight home.

Meza uses an oxygen machine, and the batteries have to be charged for it to work.? As Meza and his step daughter were getting ready to board their plane after visiting his sick sister here in Des Moines, they were stopped by Transportation Security Administration workers because Meza's pacemaker set off one of their alarms.

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Police Chase Over Drugs Ends With Man Crashing Into Schoolbus Full Of Homeless Children

Chris | InformationLiberation

A Shreveport man who fled from police, ended up crashing his vehicle into a bus full of homeless children, fortunately the children all survived with only minor injuries. The man says he is innocent, which is a bit ridiculous if you watch the video, but the real problem here is this chase could have been avoided if we were not living in a prohibitionist police state.

Via Shreveport Times:

Police say Smith crashed his Ford pickup into the side of the bus after leading officers on a June 5 high-speed chase that started at DiamondJacks Casino in Bossier City and ended with the crash at Murphy Street and Portland Avenue. Bossier City Street Crimes Interdiction Unit attempted to stop Smith near the casino, and that's when he fled. Smith was a suspect in a cocaine distribution operation, police say.

The accident sent 15 children, ranging in age from 4 to 16, to area hospitals. All the children, most of whom were homeless, were later released from the hospital with minor injuries.

The fact of the matter is more innocent people are harmed as a result of prohibition than are harmed as a result of the drugs themselves. Despite prohibition, drugs are still in massive abundance, and in fact they're hugely profitable to distribute specifically because of prohibition. To incarcerate someone over a drug crime not only denies that individual their personal freedoms, but it's done at massive cost to taxpayers as well, who have to foot the bill for these people to be jailed to the tune of $30,000 a year.

Wouldn't it be better to just let people smoke their drugs in peace?
_
Chris runs the website InformationLiberation.com, you can read more of his writings here. Follow infolib on twitter here.

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Kim Dotcom's NZ Extradition Judge Sees U.S. as "The Enemy"

by Ernesto, TorrentFreak

New Zealand?s District Court Judge David Harvey made some interesting comments recently with regard to U.S. attempts to change copyright law worldwide.

Judge Harvey, who?s handling Kim Dotcom?s extradition case, is not a fan of these practices as became clear at the launch of the ?Fair Deal? campaign.

Commenting on the U.S. backed Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, which will push for harsher copyright legislation, he said the following.

?There are all sorts of ways this whole thing is being ramped up and if I could use Russell [Brown's] tweet from earlier on: we have met the enemy and he is [the] U.S.?

Auckland University law professor Bill Hodge told NZHerald that judges should be free to make comments, but that Judge Harvey?s remarks are ?unhelpful?.

Whether the U.S. authorities ask for a new judge because of this apparent ?bias? has yet to be seen.

Last week Dotcom?s extradition hearing was delayed until March 2013.

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I live in the US and I do not agree with the government's actions relating to this particular topic. Why do they believe that they can go around the world enforcing their will upon others? Who put the US government in charge of the rule of law for all of the world? We have so many problems here at home yet these people want to focus their attention abroad? Well don't worry everyone because the political scene is changing here and we will have these scumbags out of office soon enough.

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Did Merck's Gardasil Vaccine Kill a 3 Year-Old Toddler?

Cassandra Anderson

In June 2012 Chace Topperwein, an adorable 3 year-old boy from New Zealand, lost his battle with a rare and aggressive form of cancer. Chace was accidentally given Merck's Gardasil HPV when he was 6 weeks old; a vaccine that is intended to prevent cervical cancer from genital wart infection. A nurse mistakenly used the wrong syringe filled with Gardasil when she had meant to give the baby a meningitis vaccine.

Chace was diagnosed with myeloid leukemia at age 2 and died just last month. His devastated parents suspected that the Gardasil vaccine was to blame for his illness.

Merck does not list leukemia as a possible side effect of the Gardasil vaccine. However, Merck has failed to test its vaccine for links to cancer.

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Police Officer Killed Victim Of Break-In

Friends, family angry as questions go unanswered; one man charged
By Allison Manning

Maybe if the police officer had arrived just a minute later, the young man would still be alive.

That?s what the friends and family of Destin Thomas say, after Columbus police confirmed yesterday that it was one of their own officers who shot and killed Thomas while responding to a 911 call he had made on Tuesday morning.

Police gave few details yesterday about what happened between the 21-year-old Thomas and Officer William Kaufman, a 17-year veteran, citing the ongoing investigation.

They said that Kaufman shot Thomas twice, in his hip and chest. Thomas died at the scene.

?The fact that they?re trying to justify it, no apology or nothing, (just saying), ?Oh, we?re just doing what we were trained to do,?? said Thomas? cousin Derek Harris, 24. ?I didn?t know you were trained to kill the person you were supposed to help.?

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Cat has been mayor of Alaska town for 15 years

By Eric Pfeiffer

National polls show that voters all over the country are losing faith in their elected leaders. But the 900 residents of Talkeetna, Alaska, say their mayor is doing a great job bringing in tourist dollars and has served in office for over a decade.

"He's good. He's probably the best we've ever had," resident Lauri Stec tells KTUU. "He was just in the Alaska Magazine, and he's been featured in a few different things."

In fact, Stec hangs out with Mayor Stubbs most days at Nagley's General Store, even though she notes, "He's growling at me right now."

That's because the 15-year-old mayor is actually a cat, who was elected to office as a write-in candidate shortly after his birth.

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Obama is Wrong about the Hoover Dam

Douglas French

In his famous "you didn't build it" speech, President Obama cited the Internet, fire departments, the GI Bill, the Golden Gate Bridge and the Hoover Dam as examples of government action that helps business owners.

Each needs addressing, but let's start with the Hoover Dam.

The president is riffing off of Rachel Maddow's MSNBC commercial in which the TV pundit dressed in her best black T-shirt and hoodie, points up at Hoover Dam and says words to the effect that the dam reminds us that an individual can't build a dam ? or a company, for that matter. It takes a country to build projects of this magnitude.

Having a soft spot for environmentalism, it's surprising Maddow embraces the concrete monster. At the time, Hoover described the dam as ?the greatest engineering work of its character attempted by the hand of man.?

The massive structure cost $49 million (or $736 million in inflation-adjusted dollars) and measures over 726 feet in height and more than 1,200 feet in length. It took five years and 4,360,000 cubic yards of concrete to build, and was finished two years ahead of schedule. About 16,000 people worked on constructing the dam, with over 100 losing their lives in the process.

There's nothing new about government throwing taxpayer money around to create jobs. The Romans constructed aqueducts in small towns, industrial sites and large cities from France to Istanbul.

To construct the aqueduct of Segovia, Spain, Romans stacked massive bricklike granite blocks into a structure that reached a height of over 93 feet. Although no one knows for sure, it?s estimated that the aqueduct was constructed sometime during the reign of either Emperor Vespasian or Nerva to transport water from the Fuente Fria River over 10 miles from the city. The aqueduct has 167 arches and reaches its height at the Plaza del Azoguejo.

The impressive Roman structure only serves to attract tourists to the city of 55,000 today. When I visited two years ago, our guide, Jerry, told us Segovia?s population did not warrant such an expenditure when it was built. ?The Romans primarily built the aqueduct as a show of power.?

Just as the Keynesian policies of the New Deal tried to cheat the laws of economics, government?s damming of the Colorado River attempted to cheat Mother Nature by bringing water to the desert southwest ? water that just isn?t and never was there.

The great Western explorer John Wesley Powell was booed out of the room when he told the Irrigation Congress, ?Gentlemen, you are piling up a heritage of conflict and litigation over water rights, for there is not sufficient water to supply the land.?

But 75 years ago, when the dam was nearly completed, FDR proclaimed during his dedication speech that millions of present and future residents of the Southwest could count on ?a just, safe and permanent system of water rights.? The turbulent Colorado River that vacillated between droughts and floods would be tamed and become ?a great national possession,? and be counted on for irrigation to support a human migration seeking mild winters and new opportunities.

?The nation took him at his word,? writes Michael Hiltzik, author of Colossus: Hoover Dam and the Making of the American Century. ?Since that dedication year, the population of the seven states of the basin has swelled by about 45 million. Much of this growth has been fueled by the dam and its precious bounties of water and electrical power.?

As Hiltzik points out, the dam?s water promise gunned the growth of Southern California cities and attracted farmers to the West to grow water-intensive crops like cotton, despite the lack of normal rainfall required to support this kind of agriculture.

Just as government stimulus programs and artificially low interest rates that promise to spur growth and make up for the lack of private investment never work, Hoover?s promise that his dam would, as Hiltzik writes, ?provide all the water their states could conceivably need to fulfill their dreams of irrigation, industrial development and urban growth? is literally drying up.

The water level at Lake Mead is down nearly 100 feet from its high water mark, revealing a white ?bathtub ring.? According to Wikipedia, the lake's water volume is just slightly half the amount the lake could hold at its maximum.

Now that millions have migrated to the Southwest and private industry has invested millions of dollars, Hoover's and FDR?s promises have confined those living and doing business in the West ?in the straitjacket of an ever-intensifying water shortage,? notes Hiltzik. And while Interior Secretary Gale Norton claimed to have stilled the ?conflict on the river? back in 2003 with the signing of two dozen agreements transferring water rights between various Indian tribes, cities and governments, the battle for water will rage on. The supply will never catch up with the demand.

After the 10-year drought, an additional intake pipeline into the diminishing Lake Mead is being installed. Almost 90% of the drinking water for Las Vegas comes from the lake. The new intake pipeline, officially known as Intake No. 3, ?will reach deeper into the reservoir to protect the valley?s water supply, should the lake shrink low enough to shut down one of the two shallower straws,? reports the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

The project targets 2014 for completion. "This new intake tunnel is 3 miles under Lake Mead, and then there is a tap of the lake about 3 miles out. I like to say it's as if you've got your bathtub full of water, and now we are putting the drain into it while it's full," says Vegas Tunnel Constructors (VTC) Vice President of Operations Jim McDonald.

The contract amount started at $447 million, but the cost has risen by over $100 million since the project began. The tunnel, after excavated for the pipeline, unexpectedly filled with water three times in the project's first six months.

Last month, excavation was delayed again when a VTC worker was killed 600 feet below ground when one of the tunnel segments was jarred loose, and pressurized grout was discharged, striking two of the workers.

Those in government never learn. They can?t print prosperity, and more water won?t magically appear if they dam a river. While the man on the street believes government infallible, politicians and bureaucrats cannot calculate the economic profits and losses of government interventions. Governments will forever fight over scarce water, and private use is increasingly being restricted by local ordinances.

?The spending for nonproductive public works, for the bureaucracy and for the Army led to excessive taxation, inflation and the ruin of the essential middle class and its leaders,? H.J. Haskell wrote in his book The New Deal in Old Rome, destroying the men French historian Leon Homo called ?the general staff of civilization.?

The New Deal dam project that Obama and Maddow are so proud of provided a few thousand jobs 80 years ago, but has spurred migration, farming and development that is likely unsustainable and may ultimately be, like the aqueduct in Segovia, just a giant tourist attraction. This is something future tourist guides will call "an example of American government power."
_
Douglas E. French is senior editor of the Laissez Faire Club. He received his master's degree under the direction of Murray N. Rothbard at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, after many years in the business of banking. He is the author of two books, Early Speculative Bubbles and Increases in the Supply of Money, the first major empirical study of the relationship between early bubbles and the money supply, and Walk Away, a monograph assessing the philosophy and morality of strategic default. He is founder and editor of LibertyWatch magazine. Write him.

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Government-Caused Impoverishment: Why Do We Stand for It?

by Jeffrey Tucker

Growing up in the Cold War, we tended to look at Russia as a nightmare slave society that was utterly and completely foreign to anything Americans knew or could possibly know absent some kind of invasion.

If I were to summarize the propaganda message of the time it would be this: We are free, they are not, and that's why we are rich and they are poor. And, man, did they look poor to our eyes. I could never understand it: How the heck does a once-great people put up with a government that is so obviously and apparently driving the whole population down, year after year?

Well, welcome to 2012 America. Have a look at the extremely scary Federal Reserve report, the Survey of Consumer Finance. If you have the stomach for it, read it yourself. The bean counters have put together the most broad and deep look at the finances of the median family. It turns out that the median American family is financially falling off a cliff, despite (or because of!) the trillions spent trying to prevent this from happening.

The short summary:
Two decades of seeming prosperity have been entirely wiped out since 2008, putting the net worth of the households at the same level it was in the early 1990s The housing crash is the main cause of the wreckage, but the actual income of the median family has fallen by 7.7% since 2007. The report compiles data from 2010 and would probably be worse in this respect if it included data from now Nearly all measurable increases in what the government calls economic growth actually come from consumers depleting what resources they have and not saving much, if any, income at all Meanwhile, 75% of households report that they are still holding an unchanged level of debt. Those households paying less in debt finance are doing so because they are deferring student loan payments and refinancing houses at subsidized rates. The report contains some amazing facts, such as that the only group in the U.S. that is not getting poorer all the time are those who are not working at all.

It's actually difficult to come up with a metaphor to fully capture the grim reality here. We could fall back on the farmer that is eating the seed corn held for next year's planting. Or perhaps we could imagine a household that is feeding the fireplace with wood from the wood that built the house. In short, this is not a sustainable pattern of family finance, and it is currently driving American wealth straight down.

To the extent we are not entirely aware of this, there can only be two reasons. First, the proliferation of debt finance is providing a temporary illusion. (For more on this, see the extremely important Wiggin/Buker book, The Little Book of the Shrinking Dollar.)

Second, the technological revolution came just in time to vastly increase the efficiency of just about everything industry and households do, thereby enabling more blood to be extracted from the economic turnip than anyone ever thought possible.

Take away those two factors and perform a mental experiment. Where would we be today? The calamity would be undeniably obvious and produce a political reality that would be more revolutionary than anything we've seen in any existing lifetime.

We are surviving and even somewhat thriving despite how we are getting ever poorer. This is an interesting economic paradox. The tools that we work with today ? cloud computing, instantaneous communication, the time cost of operations reduced from years to minutes ? have saved us from something that might have made the Great Depression seem fantastic by comparison.

Technology is so wonderful that it can actually serve as a kind of mask for underlying decline. Imagine a fisherman at a lake that has a systematically declining population of fish. He had been using a cane pole to fish, but one day, someone invents a digital fish finder and gives him a boat. This vastly expands his daily catch. It feels like prosperity, and it's true that his time is much better spent, but the underlying reality is still there. Eventually, the lake will die.

But to what do we owe these tools? Government has given us no technology of note in these years. The private sector, with its entrepreneurial drive, market savvy and inspiring resourcefulness, has managed to bring about the most-spectacular upgrade in the practical arts ever seen in the history of the world. And there is evidence that it has just begun: Consider 3-D printing and its implications, for example.

Another feature of the world since 2008 is that government and the central bank has pulled every conceivable lever to prevent what has happened from happening. It has not only failed to accomplish that end. It has actually forestalled the necessary liquidation that would have created a clear path forward for the rebuilding of prosperity. All of the interventions have stopped the readjustment process, and squandered trillions in the process.

The failing economy also tested the limits of the horrible regulatory thicket that has built up over the decades. The regimentation has long been awful, but not as consequential so long as production takes a predictable and linear course. But when change happens and adaptation is required, there's a serious problem. It's like asking a man in a straightjacket to run away from a collapsing house.

Imagine an alternative scenario. The bust of 2008 was permitted to happen. Bad banks and financial institutions were allowed to go bankrupt. No sector was saved. Housing prices plummeted. Fannie and Freddie took their lumps. Interest rates soared. Government slashed spending. The entire economy was deleveraged.

The effects would have been shocking, but temporary. Workers would have shifted from failed sectors to newly profitable ones. Consumers would have pulled back and had every incentive to save as never before. The poor could have afforded homes. Actually, homes would have become marketable as never before. The new savings would have funded investment, and the rebuilding of prosperity would have been massively aided by the great technological revolution.

Alas, this is not the reality we face. Instead, we are experiencing right now something very similar to what has always vexed not just the Soviet Union, but every society burdened by a catastrophically large and intrusive government. We are getting poorer. And we are putting up with it. For now.
__
Jeffrey Tucker, publisher and executive editor of Laissez-Faire Books, is author of Bourbon for Breakfast: Living Outside the Statist Quo and It's a Jetsons World. You can write him directly here.

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"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened..." - Winston Churchill

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Senator Boxer Confronted on Bilderberg

Watch Luke Rudkowski guide Mark Dice through his first confrontation with US Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) about the notorious Bilderberg Meeting.

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Hey, fuck you for collecting people's IPs and their opinions here, you extraordinary fuckhole-headed asses.

Get a life that does something good for society, you worthless pieces of shit.

Yes, I am talking to you, motherfucker.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but every site you've ever been to in your entire life records your IP.

We just so happen to chose to display the first 5 digits (for anon posters) and openly tell people about it, that's called transparency.

If we chose not to display those digits, we'd still have your IP, just like every other site ever, the only difference is people like yourself wouldn't even realize it.

I purge our records at the start of every month, most sites, like Google for example, never purge them ever.

If you want to hide your IP then use an anonymizer.

To Recap: Everyone's been tracking you forever and you've been blissfully unaware of this fact, we tell you about it, bringing it to your attention, and you curse us out.

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"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened..." - Winston Churchill

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The So-Called Private Economy

by Jeffrey Tucker

"The private economy is doing fine."

Those were the words of President Obama that unleashed a torrent of political hysteria. The Romney campaign immediately blasted him for suggesting that things are just hunky-dory, and he was right to do so, given the terrible slog we've been through and given that there seems to be no end in sight.

But the Romney response also missed the really telling point of Obama's remarks. The revealing thing about Obama's comment was not the comment as such but what he said immediately following:

"Where we?re seeing weaknesses in our economy have to do with state and local government ? oftentimes, cuts initiated by governors or mayors who are not getting the kind of help that they have in the past from the federal government and who don?t have the same kind of flexibility as the federal government in dealing with fewer revenues coming in."

The Wall Street Journal editorial page noticed this and pointed out that he implies that the key to economic growth is expanding the government, through stimulus and shoring up the finances of state and local government itself. Again, that is a fine criticism, but even that does not capture the essential nature of the problem here.

The core problem is that Obama, like most government officials, imagines the "economy" and the health of government are actually indistinguishable. The words are interchangeable. The problem is not that he is merely a Keynesian who believes in stimulus; the problem is that he views his job as primarily dedicated to serving his government and the spinoff governments at the state and local levels. This is and always has been his focus.

There is first an intellectual problem of which Obama is personally guilty. Long before he was president, I recall reading a very long and candid interview with him that revealed much about how he thinks the world works. It was intelligent, articulate and, in many ways, insightful. But what was completely missing from any of his remarks and, I assume, missing from any way that he thinks the world works, was a consciousness of the contribution that private industry makes to the world.

This isn't just a small oversight. The whole of our standard of living ? which has rocketed to heights unthinkable before the age of capitalism ? is completely due to what he and others brush off at the private economy. It is, in fact, not just a source of wealth; it is the only source of wealth, the font of every aspect of civilization that is connected to the material world, which in turn informs the way we think, what we do, who we are and what we can accomplish in the future. It is the sum total of what we refer to as civilization itself, built piece by piece by the private sector. Everything depends it: our health, our culture, our freedom and our opportunities.

Those who credit government with all these things are mistaking the parasite for the producer. Government has nothing on its own. It creates no wealth. It can only take from what others have already produced, draining away the surplus by force. Government is not the "thin blue line" between chaos and us; it is the vacuum suction that extracts the source of life from society and its members' capacity for managing their own lives.

The best way to understand this is through careful study of The Market for Liberty, a book released into the Laissez Faire Club. Here we have a comprehensive demonstration of the following: nothing the government does makes a net contribution to the well being of society, further, all essentials functions of government can be better provided through the private sector.

But people who do not understand this can become victims of propaganda. And the propaganda can be very intense. After all, what is called "the private economy" doesn't have a single spokesman to put a spin on every news event and explain to the public all the blessings that come our way because of private enterprise.

But government does have such a spokesman, many really. And the message is focused and relentless: Give money and power to the state, or else the world will fall apart. And these same people are always ready to blame everything on the market economy, from the Great Depression to the Great Recession.

The government sector, in many ways, is not actually part of the "economy" as we conventionally use that term. That's because its contribution is to reduce growth, wealth and innovation and to put barriers in the way of progress. It is no more part of the economy than a hurricane, a criminal hangout or a terrorist act is part of the economy. It is injurious to economy and to all the purposes of productive endeavor.

In other words, Obama has it exactly backward. But he is hardly alone in this view, and whether he holds a sound view of economics or not probably doesn't matter that much in the scheme of things. It's not as if he is solely responsible for the manner in which government policy is conducted. He is a temporary manager who plays mostly a ceremonial and political role.

The president in his person has far less control over government than the typical CEO has over a major corporation. It is also highly characteristic for the head of government to think of himself as primarily a champion of the apparatus he heads and the funding sources that pay him.

We are really dealing here with an ideological issue that is extremely pervasive on the left and the right.

I recently took the time to see the new movie ?Men in Black 3,? which imagines that there is some quasi-government agency that operates in secret to keep us protected from aliens. Using amazingly advanced technology, they blast away bad aliens and work with good aliens. They have been around for many decades, protecting us every day. They put a force field around the Earth to keep invasions at bay, and otherwise keep our streets safe, our food edible and our parks clean of horrible things.

If this scenario were even slightly true, it would be no secret. If government actually achieved even a tiny fraction of the feats in this movie, we would never hear the end of it. It would be advertised to us every single day. It would be used as the only excuse around for all the taxes, wars, regulations and controls on our lives. As they say, a crisis is a terrible thing for any government to waste.

If there were actually a dangerous gang of aliens threatening life on Earth, I'm quite sure that we would be left to fend for ourselves, just as we end up providing our own protection against criminals now through insurance, strong locks and, for many people, private firearms ownership. In every case I know of, the public sector's main tendency is to put barriers up to our ability to protect ourselves.

So no, the private economy is not doing fine, and the main reason is that the private economy is not being permitted to function as it should, precisely because the public sector is making it difficult to impossible. Until we can get this straight in our heads, we will never find ourselves on track to rebuild the prosperity that seems to be slipping away from us.
__
Jeffrey Tucker, publisher and executive editor of Laissez-Faire Books, is author of Bourbon for Breakfast: Living Outside the Statist Quo and It's a Jetsons World. You can write him directly here.

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Joe Scarborough: Why I voted for Ron Paul

Sorry, I could not read the content fromt this page.

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FOI Documents Show TOR Undernet Beyond the Reach of the Federal Investigators

Michael Morisy

Recently released documents detail the federal government's inability to pursue cybercriminals shrouded by the tricky anonymity tools used by the Silk Road marketplace and other darknet sites - tools which are funded in part by the federal government itself. In this particular case, a citizen reported stumbling upon a cache of child pornography while browsing the anonymous Tor network's hidden sites, which are viewable with specialized, but readily available, tools and the special .onion domain.

Documents, released through a Freedom of Information Act request by Jason Smathers on MuckRock, show that after being given details of the illicit material, investigators were stymied as to the origin of the pornography's host. In the investigators' own words, "there is not currently a way to trace the origin of the website. As such no other investigative leads exist."

Smathers' request was originally for all Justice Department records mentioning the Silk Road marketplace. The Justice Department forwarded the request on to the FBI for processing. In fact, the FBI had received an almost identical request, also filed by Smathers, and rejected it, claiming at the time that responsive records could not be found.

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The U.S. government was instrumental in the creation of TOR. The government can, of course, monitor it. That's why I don't trust TOR. The Government released documents assuring us the secret network it funded cannot spy on us.

Indeed. :-)

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Mitt Romney Once Harangued a Neighbor for Smoking Pot, Then Called the Cops

by Mike Riggs

Mitt Romney is one uptight sonofabitch, according to his neighbors in La Jolla, Calif., where?the GOP presidential nominee is known to be the kind of guy who will bust your chops if he catches you having a brew and a toke on the sand:?

The Romneys rarely entertain neighbors, but they have tried to weave themselves into the fabric of local life. Mr. Romney and his wife take regular walks around La Jolla, exchanging pleasantries with fellow strollers and occasionally enforcing the law. A young man in town recalled that Mr. Romney confronted him as he smoked?marijuana?and drank on the beach last summer, demanding that he stop.

The issue appears to be a recurring nuisance for the Romneys. Mr. Quint, who lives on the waterfront near Mr. Romney, said that a police officer had asked him, on a weekend when the candidate was in town, to report any pot smoking on the beach. The officer explained to him that "your neighbors have complained," Mr. Quint recalled. "He was pretty clear that it was the Romneys."

Buzzkill courtesy of?The New York Times.?

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This site contains copyrighted material the use of which in some cases has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Such material is made available for the purposes of news reporting, education, research, comment, and criticism, which constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. It is our policy to respond to notices of alleged infringement that comply with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (found at the U.S. Copyright Office) and other applicable intellectual property laws. It is our policy to remove material from public view that we believe in good faith to be copyrighted material that has been illegally copied and distributed by any of our members or users.
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AG Holder Accused of Lying About Medical Marijuana Crackdown

by Phillip Smith

US Attorney General Eric Holder appeared before the House Judiciary Committee Thursday and defended his Justice Department's crackdown on medical marijuana cultivation and distribution. Holder told committee members the agency was only targeting only those medical marijuana businesses that were "acting out of conformity? with state law."

That had medical marijuana defenders up in arms at what they called his falsehoods. Advocates pointed to numerous dispensaries and other medical marijuana-related enterprises that were operating in compliance with state laws and with the support of local elected officials that have been raided by the DEA or subjected to other federal enforcement actions.

Holder's comments came in response to questioning from Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), who pointed out that during his 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama had promised that he wouldn't use "Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws on this issue."

Holder agreed that the Justice Department had broken with Bush administration policy and promised not to go after people operating in compliance with state laws. But large-scale growers and dispensaries have "come up with ways in which they are taking advantage of these state laws and going beyond that which the states have authorized," Holder added. "Those are the only cases we've being going after."

Nadler pointed out that since 2009, the DEA and federal prosecutors have raided almost 200 dispensaries and growers and indicted more than 60 medical marijuana providers on federal drug charges and again asked Holder to clarify.

Holder responded that the Justice Department is only going after "those individuals (and) organizations that are acting out of conformity... with state laws."

Holder added, however, that in some cases, mainly in Colorado, the department was also targeting dispensaries located "too close" to schools. Those enforcement actions were taken not because the dispensaries were violating state laws, but because they were inside the 1,000-foot range specified by an enhanced federal sentencing statute.

Holder "lied to the House Judiciary Committee" in saying the Justice Department was only going after dispensaries and growers that were not in compliance with state laws," California NORML (CANORML) retorted bluntly. "The Justice Department's bad faith seriously impugns the credibility and competence of Attorney General Holder and his administration."

Steph Sherer, executive director of Americans for Safe Access (ASA), was only slightly more politic.

"What he said to our congressional representatives should be alarming not only to medical cannabis patients, but also to policymakers and the general public, because, based on all of the available information we have, it surely must be a lie," she wrote on the Huffington Post.

The Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) was a bit more diplomatic.

"The problem with Holder's statements is that the federal government's determination of compliance with state law is still fairly ambiguous, even arbitrary," MPP spokesman Morgan Fox told the Chronicle. "This makes it difficult for medical marijuana providers to know if they are safe, creating a chilling effect on the entire industry and resulting in pain, suffering, and potential danger for patients forced to resort to the illicit market."

The states should decide whether a dispensary is violating state law, he added.

"At the end of the day, it should be state authorities who determine if operators are in compliance with state law, not federal prosecutors who view the entire industry through a filter of illegality," Fox said. "Beyond that, using any federal resources to interfere with medical marijuana in states where it is legal is an inexcusable waste when there are far more serious problems that need attention."

CANORML was quick to point to a long list of California medical marijuana facilities that had been raided, threatened, or driven out of business by federal enforcers despite having sterling reputations, local official support, and complying with state laws and local regulations. Among them are many well-known and -respected operations including the Berkeley Patients Group, the Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana, Richard Lee's Oaksterdam University and Blue Sky Coffee Shop, Mendocino County's Northstone Organics, and at least five San Francisco dispensaries, including the Vapor Room, Hope Net, Divinity Tree, Shambhala, and Medithrive.

CANORML noted that in all of those cases, local officials denounced the Justice Department enforcement actions, "but US Attorneys have insolently disregarded community sentiment."

And that's just in Northern California. US Attorneys in other parts of the state have been equally -- if not more -- active in going after medical marijuana providers. Just one day before Holder addressed the committee, federal prosecutors in Southern California announced a crackdown on Los Angeles County dispensaries, with the DEA raiding two dispensaries and federal prosecutors sending threat letters to 34 more.

The statewide crackdown has been ongoing since last October, when the state's four US Attorneys jointly announced their campaign to rein in the industry. According to ASA, the federal actions have forced more than 300 medical marijuana operations to shut down.

"It's simply not believable that all of these taxpaying businesses were operating in violation of state law," Sherer noted, before asking a series of pointed questions. "If they were, why didn't the state take part in the raids? Why didn't the state or local authorities issue arrest warrants? Why would state and local politicians stand up for businesses breaking state and local laws?"

And stand up they have. Local elected officials, state representatives, state officials, even California Attorney General Kamala Harris have all urged the feds to butt out. Harris wrote to all four US Attorneys in December, telling them the federal government was "ill-equipped" to interpret and enforce state medical marijuana laws.

The fight continues. On Wednesday, the same day the feds announced a new phase of their offensive in Southern California and the same day President Obama visited the Bay Area on a fundraising trip, three San Francisco supervisors wrote an op-ed asking him to "keep the commitment he made to stop the federal government's attacks on medical cannabis."

For medical marijuana advocates, listening to Attorney General Holder saying he is only targeting operations in violation of state laws is bringing back memories of that old country and western music song: "Who are You Gonna Believe? Me or Your Lying Eyes?"

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Minor Cuts to Defense Budget Could Lead to War: Top US Military Official

Chris | InformationLiberation

With minor defense budget cuts scheduled to kick in next year, the Pentagon is going into fear-mongering overdrive to prevent such a scenario from taking place.

According to a top U.S. General, slight reductions to the Pentagon's defense budget will pretty much lead to WW3.

(Please ignore the chart to the right, as acknowledging the U.S.'s insanely bloated military budget only gives aid to our enemies.)

Via Fox News

The top U.S. military official suggested Wednesday that scheduled Pentagon budget cuts could lead to war.

Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified before a Senate committee Wednesday alongside Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. Both offered dire warnings about the potential impact of the automatic budget cuts, known as sequestration, which will go into effect starting next January unless Congress intervenes.

Dempsey said the cutbacks could lead to the cancellation of weapons systems and disrupt "global operations." In turn, he warned, the U.S. could lose global standing -- opening the door for enemies to test American military might.

"We can't yet say precisely how bad the damage would be, but it is clear that sequestration would risk hollowing out our force and reducing its military options available to the nation," Dempsey told the senators. "We would go from being unquestionably powerful everywhere to being less visibly globally and presenting less of an overmatch to our adversaries, and that would translate into a different deterrent calculus and potentially, therefore, increase the likelihood of conflict."

Panetta made a similar argument last year when he said the sweeping cuts could weaken the military substantially, and invite "aggression" abroad.

Yet so far, Congress has not averted the planned cuts, which were set in place after lawmakers failed to reach a broader deficit-reduction deal.

The Pentagon would face cuts of about $500 billion in projected spending over 10 years on top of the $492 billion that President Obama and congressional Republicans already agreed to in last summer's deficit-cutting budget.

Dempsey said the cuts would mean fewer troops, the possible cancellation of major weapons and the disruption of operations around the world.

Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, chairman of the Appropriations Committee, called the description "candid but frightening."

While these government parasites whine about how they couldn't handle even the slightest reduction in taxpayer loot, the public in the meantime lost conservatively 40% of their net worth in the time period between 2007 and 2010. That study does not accurately factor in the rising cost of living, so it's likely even worse. During that same time period, defense spending rose 23%.

Boy, they sure must be struggling!

The truth is if the military had less money we'd be infinitely less likely to face conflict, as the U.S. government would have less money to spend on killing random foreigners (in order to justify their huge budgets), we'd be less likely to face blowback from their foreign policy.

Of course, this is all a pipe dream as they're not actually going to reduce any spending, there is too many pigs at the trough for anyone to cut the gravy train off. That said, the problem with socialism is you eventually run out of other people's money. With the U.S. now completely bankrupt, a Greece-style collapse is just on the horizon.

I'm looking forward to it.

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The United States needs a massive military. Their armed forces are so badly disciplined that only by applying over-whelming fire-power can they hope to win (see Vietnam, Somalia).

It is a very sad state of affairs.

pigs at the trough. The problem is our pols can't let the other side appear stronger on defense. So the race to the end goes on and on and on and on and on and with borrowed money.

This site contains copyrighted material the use of which in some cases has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Such material is made available for the purposes of news reporting, education, research, comment, and criticism, which constitutes a 'fair use' of such copyrighted material in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. It is our policy to respond to notices of alleged infringement that comply with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (found at the U.S. Copyright Office) and other applicable intellectual property laws. It is our policy to remove material from public view that we believe in good faith to be copyrighted material that has been illegally copied and distributed by any of our members or users.
About Us - Disclaimer - Privacy Policy
"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened..." - Winston Churchill

View the original article here