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Sunday, April 21, 2013

School Calls Cops Over Water Pistol; Vows To Track Down Owner Using Surveillance Cams

Superintendent: ?You can?t take any of that stuff lightly?
Steve Watson


It is now a daily occurrence for school officials somewhere in America to freak out, call the police, and discipline students over anything vaguely resembling a gun. On Monday it was the turn of Malden High School in Massachusetts.

A teacher at the school reportedly glimpsed sight of a ?gun?, and alerted police who rushed to the scene only to discover a neon water pistol.

?A teacher reported hearing a clicking motion, and thought a student may have had a gun,? Superintendent David DeRuosi told reporters.

After school was dismissed, police located the harmless toy and filed a report, according to Malden Police Lt. Det. Marc Gatcomb.

??no persons were threatened that we know of,? Gatcomb wrote in an email.

Any rational person may have concluded that that was the end of the matter. Not in America 2.0, however.

School officials are now on the hunt for the culprit who brought the water pistol on to school grounds.

?You can?t take any of that stuff lightly today,? Superintendent DeRuosi said, adding that state of the art surveillance cameras that were recently installed as part of the school?s renovation, will help track down the student responsible, and allow officials to hold him or her responsible for such a heinous action.

Once apprehended, the student will face internal disciplinary action for the incident, school officials said.

As we have seen over the past few weeks, in the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting, these kind of ridiculous knee jerk overreactions at schools are now a daily occurrence.

Earlier this month, a 7-year-old boy from Maryland?was suspended for unintentionally biting his pop tart into the shape of a gun. The incident was the latest in a long line of ridiculous suspensions and disciplinary actions against students for anything even remotely gun related. It prompted?Maryland?Sen. J. B. Jennings to introduce a bill to stop such idiotic over reactions being played out over and over again in schools.

And boy are they being played out.

Last week a?third grader in Michigan was reprimanded by school officials when he brought a cupcake to school with aplastic toy soldier, holding a gun, on top of it.

A ten year old Virginia boy who was arrested for taking a plastic toy gun to school is now facing apotentially permanent criminal record over the incident.

A student in Florence, Arizona was recently suspended because he had a?picture of a gun on his computer.

A six-year-old kindergartner in South Carolina?was suspended for taking a small transparent plastic toy gun to school for a show and tell.

A day before that incident we reported on the five-year-old in Massachusetts who faced suspension for?building a small toy gun out of lego bricks and play-shooting his classmates.

We also?reported on an incident that erupted when a discussion between two children about a toy nerf gun caused a lockdown and a massive armed police response at two elementary schools in the Bronx.

In another incident, a Long Island high school was also?placed on lock down for 6 hours in response to a student carrying a toy nerf gun.

In yet another recent incident, a five-year-old girl was suspended after a three hour grilling, and described as a "terroristic threat" when she?brought a pink bubble gun to school.

A South Philadelphia elementary student was searched in front of classmates and threatened with arrest after she?mistakenly brought a "paper gun" to school.

A 6-year-old boy?was suspended from his elementary school, also in Maryland, for making a gun gesture with his hand and saying "pow".

Days after that incident, another two 6-year-olds in Maryland?were suspended for pointing their fingers into gun shapes while playing "cops and robbers" with each other.

In Oklahoma, a five-year-old boy was also?recently suspended for making a gun gesture with his hand.

And finally, a 13-year-old Middle School seventh grade student in Pennsylvania was?also suspended for the same hand gesture.
_
Steve Watson is the London based writer and editor for Alex Jones? Infowars.com, and Prisonplanet.com. He has a Masters Degree in International Relations from the School of Politics at The University of Nottingham, and a Bachelor Of Arts Degree in Literature and Creative Writing from Nottingham Trent University.


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Friday, April 19, 2013

'For Your Own Protection'

by William Norman Grigg

There is no situation that cannot be made instantly and immeasurably worse through police intervention. A splendid illustration of this principle is found in a recent ruling from the the Arkansas Court of Appeals.

According to the court, police were entitled to arrest, taze, and beat a teenager who had done nothing more sinister than speak to his mother on the street in front of their home. A police officer accosted the young man ? who, as a juvenile, is identified only by the initials "R.R." ? after he saw him approaching a woman who was walking a dog.

The officer, who belongs to a social cohort of people who are distinguished primarily by their timidity, claimed that he was "concerned for the woman?s safety." His fears should have been allayed when it was established that the woman was the teenager?s mother.

If the cop had been an actual peace officer, he would have tipped his hat and left. But he was a law enforcer ? that is, someone through whose dark ministrations innocent people are transformed into "criminals" ? and so he insisted on detaining and interrogating the entirely harmless youngster. To that end he sent for "backup," and a thugscrum soon coalesced around the puzzled and terrified teen.

As the Court of Appeals summarizes, R.R. was "tasered several times, removed from the backseat [of a police vehicle], thrown to the ground, tasered again, kicked, handcuffed, and arrested." All of this was done because the young man "moved around and wrestled around while the officers held him on the ground, making it difficult for the officers to put the cuffs on him."

Because he didn?t permit himself to be shackled like a slave in front of his own home because he had been seen speaking to his mother, the teenager committed the supposed crime of "refusing to submit to arrest."

The trial court in the case also acknowledged that the victim was "a fine young man, an excellent student, and active in sports, clubs and church activities." The judge reportedly expressed dismay that "an innocent situation ? just completely got out of hand" ? which is, once again, the familiar and entirely predictable outcome when members of the State?s enforcement caste materialize. Despite these superficial expressions of regret, the Judge sentenced the victim to serve one day in detention ? thereby leaving him with a criminal record because he had been on the receiving end of a state-aggravated assault.

Like most communities in its section of the country, Pope County, Arkansas, where that incident occurred, is thickly populated with Evangelical Christians, whose numbers probably include most elected officials, prosecutors, judges, and police officers. At some point in Sunday School they probably read the 22nd chapter of the Book of Acts, which describes how the Apostle Paul, accused of disturbing the peace, was arrested by Roman occupation soldiers and taken to a local barracks to be questioned under scourging.

As the interrogator was preparing to whip the apostle, Paul pointed out to the centurion in charge that it was illegal to flog a Roman citizen unless he had been tried and convicted of a crime. This objection caused the interrogator to desist immediately, and prompted the officer in command to express the fear that he could face criminal charges because he had chained ? that is, handcuffed ? a Roman citizen.

Every day in this supposedly free country, police commit an act that was impermissible for their antecedents in imperial Rome: In the name of "officer safety," they handcuff American citizens who are not criminal suspects while conducting investigations. Police also routinely inflict summary punishment ? using batons, Tasers, pepper spray, or other means ? against those who resist being detained without cause. Within a few years police will have at their disposal handcuffs that can impart electrical shocks to detainees.

In an 1894 essay published by The Strand Magazine, Inspector Maurice Moser of Scotland Yard wrote that the earliest historical mention of handcuffs was in the fourth century B.C., "when soldiers of a conquering Greek army found among the baggage of the routed Carthaginians several chariots full of handcuffs, which had been held ready in confident anticipation of a multitude of prisoners."

"My personal experience of handcuffs is small, because I dislike them," wrote Inspector Moser of the restraints. He pointed out that in Belgium, which at the time was the seat of a substantial empire, "the use of handcuffs by police is entirely forbidden."

Like most police officers of his era, Moser was a relatively civilized man who found the act of shackling another human being to be barbarous and punitive. Handcuffing a human being certainly doesn?t enhance the safety of the person being restrained. Nor does it relieve police anxieties about the all-encompassing threat to that most sacred of considerations, "officer safety." Witness the large and ever-growing number of cases in which officers ? almost always in the plural, of course ? beat, taze, pepper-spray, and even shoot suspects who have already been handcuffed.

Last summer, police in Aurora, Colorado indiscriminately handcuffed and detained scores of people for the space of more than four hours following an armed robbery at a branch of Wells Fargo bank.

According to Officer Frank Fania, drivers and passengers in the vicinity "were handcuffed, then were told what was going on and were asked for permission to search the car. They all granted permission, and once nothing was found in their cars, they were un-handcuffed."

Once the victims were handcuffed, of course, they had no choice but to grant "permission" for their abductors to paw through their vehicles. What if they had withheld consent? What if they had refused to endure the indignity and injury of being handcuffed in the first place?

Fania insisted that the mass arrests were necessary and justified because it was a "unique" situation. But it?s more honestly described as mass application of the standard approach to "protective" detention of individuals who are not criminal suspects.

Owing to the semantic deviousness of police and prosecutors, citizens are increasingly unsure of their status when they are accosted by police: Are they under arrest, or subject to "investigatory detention"? If the citizen isn?t formally under arrest, is he free to leave? Can police draw their guns and threaten a citizen with lethal force if he is not formally under arrest?

That last question has been addressed in a recent ruling by Louisiana?s Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal, which held that those circumstances do not constitute a formal arrest ? at least when the legitimacy of that arrest is questioned by the defendant.

On June 8, 2010, Robert Carter of Jefferson Parish, Louisiana parked outside a convenience store. Acting on a tip from a snitch that Carter would soon arrive at the location to conduct a drug deal, two undercover detectives had kept the lot under surveillance. After Carter parked his car, the detectives used their unmarked vehicles to cut off his escape and approached him with guns drawn.

In a panic, Carter threw his car into reverse, severely damaging the unmarked car behind him.

During his bench trial, Carter claimed that the arrival of two armed men ? one of whom admitted in testimony that they didn?t clearly identify themselves as police ? made him fear for his life. After being convicted of felony malicious property damage, Carter ? a second offender ? was sentenced to 20 years in prison. On appeal, Carter insisted that the arrest was unlawful.

In a remarkable achievement in judicial sophistry, the appeals court ruled that what it called an "investigative detention" is not an arrest ? while insisting that Carter had no right to leave what the trial judge called "the arrested place [where] he?s supposed to remain." In practical terms this means that cops are permitted to detain any citizen at gunpoint without such an action qualifying as an "arrest" ? and therefore being subject to the restrictions supposedly guaranteed by the Fourth and Fifth amendments. Once the individual is detained, he can be shackled at the discretion of the officer ? and then beaten, jailed, and prosecuted if he objects.

The act of handcuffing another human being is a serious injury. When not done to restrain someone who has actually harmed another human being, handcuffing is a morally impermissible form of aggressive violence. It is meant to be a tangible demonstration of superiority that requires the victim to submit to the supposed authority of the aggressor. It is designed and intended to humiliate the victim. This is why it is done even to six-year-old inmates of government schools who are dragged away by police officers, nonagenarians who are abducted at gunpoint for neglecting to pay traffic tickets, or pregnant female inmates who are chained while giving birth.

This is also why police who are charged with crimes are often spared being handcuffed out of "professional courtesy" ? which in some cases has actually imperiled the arresting officer.

In the American Soyuz, any of us, at the whim of an armed stranger in a government-issued costume, can find himself being treated in the same way that the Carthaginians treated captured prisoners of war. At least Carthaginian soldiers didn?t insult the intelligence of their victims by insisting that they were being shackled for their own "protection."
_
William Norman Grigg [send him mail] publishes the Pro Libertate blog and hosts the Pro Libertate radio program.


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The Will Of The People Doesn't Mean Jack To Drug Warriors


by Dave Hummels

The Associated Press reports that eight former DEA administrators are urging the Obama administration to sue Washington and Colorado over their voter-approved moves toward ?marijuana legalization.

One former chief, Peter Bensinger, fears that successful legalization efforts will lead to ?a domino effect? in the US.? Where have we heard that phrase before?? Bensinger continues breathlessly, ?My fear is that the Justice Department will do what they are doing now: do nothing and say nothing ? If they don?t act now, these laws will be fully implemented in a matter of months.?

So drug warriors are losing their minds over Colorado and Washington.? Good!? We can only hope that Bensinger?s dire predictions come true and that more Americans are indeed waking up to the absurdity of marijuana prohibition.

The former DEA bureaucrats argue, accurately, that marijuana remains illegal under the Controlled Substances Act.? Even in cases involving medical marijuana, the federal government may abuse the commerce clause as a rationale to criminalize users, growers and sellers of marijuana (per?Gonzales v. Raich).? The commerce clause has become the federal government?s drug war equivalent of ?catch-all disorderly conduct statutes in the states.

Unfortunately, these goons have a solid case to present to US Attorney General Holder.? In New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann (1932), US Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis said, ?It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country.?? But today?s political class views federalism as archaic.

Hopefully the administration will choose to ignore this thuggish recommendation.? But if they do decide to litigate, this will be another sign that the feds don?t give a damn about the? will of the people.? Liberty-loving Americans should respond to this federal intrusion with a massive wave of civil disobedience.

Let?s start by publicly shaming the DEA heads mentioned by the AP: ?Bensinger, John Bartels, Robert Bonner, Thomas Constantine, Asa Hutchinson, John Lawn, Donnie Marshall and Francis Mullen.?? Get to know their names, libertarians.? They are your enemies!

Then, let?s publicize the efforts of these authoritarians to undermine the voters of Colorado and Washington.? Ask them why they continue to support a policy with openly racist origins which has resulted in mass incarceration.? Publicly reveal the motives? of the police agencies that enforce these laws .? When drug warriors drone on about ?protecting the children,? confront them with the horrific reality of wrong door raids, slaughtered family pets and children terrorized with flash-bangs.? Wherever an apologist for prohibition gives a speech or attends a meeting, he or she should be met by throngs of boisterous picketers.

As we expose these petty tyrants, we should also seek opportunities to throw a wrench into the machinery of prohibition.? A mass movement of jury nullification in drug cases may be a promising tactic. ?Prosecutors can use voir dire to remove one or two questionable jurors, but what if nullification becomes widespread?? They can?t remove all of us. ?In the future,? we should view jury duty as a chance to liberate non-violent people from the state?s clutches.

In Tao Te Ching, the Chinese sage Lao Tzu writes, ?The more laws are posted, the more robbers and thieves there are.? ?Time and time again, this observation has been proven correct. The violence of the drug war is perpetuated by government, yet officials insist they must keep fighting.? In their vile attempt to protect their old turf, former DEA bosses show their true colors.? They are gangsters with federal pensions.? They will do anything to ensure that they and their ilk continue to get their cut of drug war booty.? It is up to us to expose their racket and to finish the job sensible voters in Colorado and Washington started in November.
_
C4SS Fellow Dave Hummels is a Left-libertarian writer from Central Illinois. He earned a bachelor's degree in criminal justice from the University of Illinois-Springfield. Dave has over a decade of experience in the field of healthcare security and is also a licensed emergency medical technician.


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If the government in a country like the US is evil, it is a reflection of the evil state of the people.

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Thursday, April 18, 2013

Wrong Legislative Thought Of The Day: An Email Tax To Save The Post Office


by Timothy Geigner

There have been questions for quite some time now as to whether or not the traditional US postal system can survive the digital era. Frankly, the outlook isn't good, what with email replacing the sending of letters in large part and the postal service losing billions of dollars each year. The postal service itself tried to fight what I guess they thought was just a hip email trend by reminding everyone how terrible email is and how great letters are, or something. Sadly, it appears that campaign made little headway and the US mail system continues to look for a savior.

That's where Gordon Wozniak, Berkeley City Councilman and bad-idea generator, hopes to enter into the equation with his monumentally dumb idea of micro-taxing email, a service everyone uses, to fund the postal system, which nobody cares about.

Wozniak told the council: "There should be something like a bit tax. I mean a bit tax could be a cent per gigabit and they would still make, probably, billions of dollars a year? And there should be, also, a very tiny tax on email," perhaps one-hundredth of a cent. He said this would discourage spam and not have much impact on the typical Internet user. Wozniak went on to suggest a sales tax on internet transactions that could help, in part, fund "vital functions that the post office serves."
Let's set aside for a moment that the proliferation of spam blocking software and appliances has mostly erased spam emails for anyone interested. If Wozniak wants to propose tax law, he should at least familiarize himself with the relevant laws on the books, including the Internet Tax Nondiscrimination Act, which bans internet taxes entirely. Seems like kind of a big roadblock, no? Fortunately, Wozniak's idea is not only dumb, but it's also completely unworkable, as noted by Harvard Law School's Jonathan Zittrain:
"To the extent that the cheap flow of flat rate first class mail has positive effects for society at large, the insistence that the Post Office be revenue-neutral may not make sense," Zittrain said. "Taxing email as an alternative, however, is a terrible idea: bad in theory and truly unworkable in practice. There have been proposals to see fees imposed on email by service providers ? or recipients themselves ? as a way of minimizing spam, but to impose an external tax on it when there are ready substitutes (Facebook messaging, anyone?), and when collection would be a nightmare, seems a non-starter. There is no reason to tax electronic mail users in particular to save the Post Office, any more than it would make sense to tax coffee drinkers to do it."
In response, Wozniak said that despite not being an expert on internet taxes (wut?), he still thinks the idea deserves to be considered because "many billions of emails are sent every day [and] an email tax could raise substantial sums." By the way, he delivered that statement...wait for it...via email.

Well, I'm not a bad-idea tax expert, but since there are so many bad ideas generated every day, we could solve every financial crisis everywhere by taxing the hell out of bad ideas. Let's start with yours, Mr. Wozniak. After all, the postal service needs you.


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Almost all shipping on feebay is through USPS how are they so inept with money? Golden parachute pensions?

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DHS To Purchase MORE Firearms As Arms Build-Up Intensifies


Forbes asks if huge ammo buys should become ?national conversation?
Paul Joseph Watson


Just days after announcing a 5-year, $4.5 million contract with Heckler & Koch, the Department of Homeland Security has released details of an identical agreement with weapons manufacturer Sig Sauer, as Forbes publishes an article calling for a ?national conversation? about the DHS arms build-up that has been dismissed by the media as a conspiracy theory.

Sig Sauer. Image: YouTube

A solicitation for a no bid contract?posted on the Federal Business Opportunities?website contains details of a DHS agreement with Sig Sauer to provide weapons parts under the remit of a $900,000 dollar a year contract set to run for five years.

The?PDF document?accompanying the solicitation is virtually identical to an?agreement announced last week?for Heckler & Koch to provide firearms replacement parts for the exact same fee and time period.

Despite our article drawing attention to the fact that the supposedly ?redacted? figure of $4.5 million on the original agreement with Heckler & Koch was in fact visible, the same error appears in the Sig Sauer agreement, suggesting that only the name has been changed.

Although controversy surrounding the DHS? purchase of some?2 billion rounds of ammunition?has dominated concerns about the federal government?s apparent arms build up, the DHS also purchased?7,000 fully automatic assault rifles?last September.

Despite the fact that some mainstream media outlets and leftist websites have tried to downplay concerns about the arms build up as paranoid conspiracy theories, the influential?Forbes Magazine today features an article?by Ralph Benko asking if the issue should become a ?national conversation.?

?At the height of the Iraq War the Army was expending less than 6 million rounds a month. 1.6 billion rounds, therefore, would be enough to sustain a hot war for 20+ years. In America,? states the article.

?Why, indeed, should the federal government not be deploying armored personnel carriers and stockpiling enough ammo for a 20-year war in the homeland? Because it's wrong in every way,? writes Benko.

Not according to the likes of Media Matters, Huffington Post, the Atlantic Wire and others,?all of which claimed the issue was ?debunked??merely because a DHS spokesperson told the Associated Press that the ammo buys were made in bulk to ?save money? on training bullets. As Benko points out, the federal agency has bought enough bullets to last for a century of target practice.

In reality, most of the bullets purchased by the agency are hollow point rounds, which are more expensive than standard training bullets and therefore unsuitable for target practice. Last week,?former Marine Richard Mason told reporters with WHPTV News?in Pennsylvania, ?We never trained with hollow points, we didn't even see hollow points my entire four and a half years in the Marine Corps.?

Those outlets reporting that the issue had been explained also failed to clarify how a single quotation from a representative of the very government agency being scrutinized could possibly mean that the matter had been adequately investigated and ?debunked.?
_
Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for?Infowars.com?and?Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a host for Infowars Nightly News.


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so why does feinstein.who brags about ccw and thinks like she does still have a weapon much less have the position? also the U.S. government uses paranoid conspiracy theories to justify the purchaces.but uses the same paranoid conspiracy to terrorize its own citizens.

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Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Woman injured in LAPD manhunt says cops won't pay taxes on replacement truck


By Arturo Garcia


The attorney for a woman who was mistakenly targeted by Los Angeles police during the manhunt for Christopher Dorner in February has accused the department of breaking its promise of a new truck for her.

?You tried to murder the woman, you put 102 bullet holes in her truck,? Glen Jonas told KNBC-TV on Monday. ?Now you?re telling her she can?t have a 4-wheel drive.?

Jonas his client, 47-year-old Maggie Carranza, refused a police offer of a new Ford F-150 truck if she agreed to pay taxes on it, in part because it meant Carranza would have to pay an additional $10,000 in personal income taxes she cannot afford. He said the department?s offer also barred Carranza from selling the vehicle for a year.

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what was the total number of rounds fired?so we know how many missed the truck completely.these 2 were lucky that this group of cops were such bad shots.now the mental midgets egos are leading again and doing everything they can to make it not their fault. criminals don't pay for their damage.

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Monday, April 15, 2013

Cops Caught on Camera Rummaging Through Homeowner's Bag and Car


Police officers looking for a convicted felon have been accused of violating a homeowner's constitutional rights after being caught on surveillance cameras digging through bags and searching a car without permission.

Officers had gone to the home of Jon Locke on February 5 after an arrest warrant for fraud was issued for his brother Christopher.

One officer can be seen on tape rifling through duffel bags, while another fiddles with a camera in the back yard of the home in Dallas, Texas.

Mr Locke told Dallas News that he wants an apology from Garland police department because the officers conducted a search on his property without consulting him. His brother Christopher does not live at the home.

The police department refused to comment on the matter but said that internal affairs was investigating.

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Need a 9mm mini gun on a tripod and I bet those fuckers would have wished they stayed home that day. what a joke i.a. is investigating.internal affairs,meaning the lower intestine or colon.

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What Holder Really Said


by William Grigg, LRC Blog

It took a 13-hour filibuster from Senator Rand Paul to wring this terse statement from Attorney General Eric Holder:

"It has come to my attention that you have now asked an additional question: `Does the President have the authority to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on American soil?' The answer to that question is no."

Like all statements from people who presume to rule others, this brief message from Holder -- -- who is Nickolai Krylenko to Obama's Josef Stalin -- should be read in terms of the supposed authority claimed thereby. This means removing useless qualifiers in the interest of clarity.

What Holder is saying, in substantive terms, is that the President does have the supposed authority to use a drone to kill an American who is engaged in "combat," whether here or abroad. "Combat" can consist of expressing support for Muslims mounting armed resistance against U.S. military aggression, which was the supposed crime committed by Anwar al-Awlaki, or sharing the surname and DNA of a known enemy of the state, which was the offense committed by Awlaki's 16-year-old son, Abdel. Under the rules of engagement used by the Obama Regime in Pakistan, Yemen, and Afghanistan, any "military-age" male found within a targeted "kill zone" is likewise designated a "combatant," albeit usually after the fact. This is a murderous application of the "Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy," and it will be used when -- not if -- Obama or a successor starts conducting domestic drone-killing operations.

Holder selected a carefully qualified question in order to justify a narrowly tailored answer that reserves an expansive claim of executive power to authorize summary executions by the president. That's how totalitarians operate.


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It should also be noted that a 'terr orist' is never someone who threatens the people. This abstract idea is used by the government as a label when a person or a group of people is threatening the control structure they have in place or there is political advantages to gain. In other words, in America's future, if you disrupt the control network of the government, you can expect a crater in the area where you stand. It is crazy times we are in.

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Sunday, April 14, 2013

Man Charged With Disorderly Conduct For Telling Cop to 'Go F**k Himself'


Chris | InformationLiberation

A Gonzales, Texas police officer arrested Peaceful Streets Project activist Antonio Buehler (who was featured on our site last week in one of the most epic police confrontations of all time), for exercising his free speech rights and telling the cop, who was intent on harassing him and even laid his hands on him, to go f**k himself.

The cop threw a fit after he dared to curse him and decided to falsely charge him with the catch-all charge of "disorderly conduct," despite from the video it being entirely clear he arrested him solely for cursing, which is not a crime.

There is no basis for these charges as cursing an officer has been ruled repeatedly to be free speech, hopefully Buehler can sue the officer and win a small settlement.


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Remarkably, none of the coward friends dare to really support Antonio and repeat the f-word towards the cop - when they really should _all_ have chanted it at him. One of them even actually starts saying it, at 1:06, but quickly cuts off himself, and in all his further exclamations sounds very angry, while carefully "staying on the legal ground". Pathetic. ...I recall, I think it was in one of the episodes of "24" - the feds come to do a search in some law office; while they are searching, all the lawyers in the office are chanting uin unison "f@#k you, f@#k you, f@#k you". It appears, they have more courage than folks in this video.

If the cop saw such an opposition, he would have to arrest all of them, perhaps after calling for support which would come with the supervisor. Quite likely, that's where it would end, and for Antonio as well.

hey cops go fuck yourselves!I'm not hard to find you are all assholes at best.It is very rare for one of you to do the right thing. Contempt of cop. Enough said.
Do these people have JOBS?
Blithering idiots.
We've got massive problems in this country and these clowns want to go around harassing policemen and attempting to intimidate a small-town municipal court judge with their "Occupy" antics. @Dave Mundy, the massive problems stem from the corruption, which is directly related to the population being unable to stand up for their rights and confront their abusers even in small towns and small encounters. @ Anon 75145
The massive problem stems from uneducated people like you. You claim ?free speech? but I saw nothing but hate speech for no reason at all.
Antonio broke the law before he decided to verbally attack this officer. That is why he was attending city court.
GET A JOB and quit acting like a moron just to get attention. Antonio needs more hugs.
This guy needs a better hobby and all of you supporting this person need jobs.
And alas, there was a CHILD witnessing this?
www.GonzalesCannon.com
Dave Mundy
"Most folks figure me as a libertarian. I think less government is better, and that we tend to over-legislate and over-regulate a lot of things we really shouldn?t.
But there?s a limit to my faith in the good nature of my fellow humans.
By their very nature, all man-made laws limit our personal freedom. No man-made law is completely fair to everyone. But there?s a reason we have those laws ? to prevent others? selfishness and irresponsibility from harming the rest of society.
There are some folks, however, who hate laws. All laws. And anyone who tries to help maintain those laws.
They like to talk a lot about ?rights,? but seldom do I hear them talk about the responsibilities inherent in exercising those rights, and the respect for others incumbent in exercising those responsibilities.
The little fracas at Gonzales Municipal Court last Wednesday by an ill-named anarchist group which calls itself the ?Peaceful Streets Project? was as silly as you might expect.
A local man facing a very simple citation showed up at court with a band of anarchists in tow, and they proceeded to attempt to intimidate the court in typical mob-rule fashion. I won?t go into the specifics of the case because the local man asked for ? and received? a jury trial which will be conducted at a later date.
The intimidation tactics were led and orchestrated by one Antonio Buehler of Austin. Young Mr. Buehler was at one time a respectable citizen ? an Army officer, then an aspiring investment banker who decided it?s more fun and profitable to run around harassing police officers.
When Buehler attempted to tape court proceedings Wednesday, judge Deidra Voigt rightly ordered his phone confiscated. She returned the phone to him after proceedings were finished, telling him that her justification was that municipal court is not a court of record and that juveniles were present. She then ordered that he expunge the video from the phone, which he did, and she ordered that he not use technology to recall the deleted footage or face a contempt of court citation. She also ordered that his friends post no footage from anything surrounding Wednesday?s proceedings on the internet.
Buehler and his group went home to Austin and posted a video of Buehler?s ?arrest? on their Facebook page. Apparently getting arrested is a status symbol for them.
You?ll recall the name from a New Year?s incident in 2012 in Austin. Buehler attempted to interfere with policemen making an arrest of a woman suspected of being intoxicated. An officer ordered him to stop videotaping the incident and it was alleged Buehler spit in the officer?s face.
He has since been arrested several other times for attempting to interfere with police duties, as have several other members of his group.
To listen to Buehler and his crew, you?d think that law enforcement exists solely to trample a freedom-loving citizenry. In their view, pretty much any action by a law-enforcement official constitutes ?abuse.?
Buehler is alleged to have directed a rather explicit vulgarity at one of the Gonzales police officers present Wednesday, and others of his group were later heard outside City Hall directing similar verbiage at not only the police, but also city staffers. They were ordered off city property and given a verbal no-tresspass warning.
The anarchists claim they have a ?right? to say anything they want at any time to anyone. Under the First Amendment, they?re right. But you also have a responsibility to refrain from use of that language in certain situations.
Buehler and his anarchists might can get away with cursing at policemen, who by necessity have to exercise a lot more self-control than the rest of us. But I daresay they probably don?t want to exercise their right to ?free speech? in the face of those of us who aren?t really concerned with their rights, especially when they?re doing it in front of our wives and small children.
Most of us recognize that close relationship between ?rights? and the responsibilities inherent in being members of a lawful society. Without laws, and people to ensure they are enforced, society would devolve into chaos, thence into tyranny.
What irks me is that many members of this bunch are smart people who, if they directed their intelligence and passion in constructive directions, could probably accomplish a lot.
Instead, they choose to spend their time demanding that society accomodate their selfishness, greed and disrespect for others." Typical pig. Welkom to the USSA! There is no such thing as "hate speech". there is no such thing as a "verbal attack". The douche-bags that espouse this nonsensical rhetoric are at best, asshats and at worst, degenerate scumbag authoritarians. The Bill of Rights is dead. The fascist commie fucks in the government want no part of liberty. Anyone who enforces this idiocy should be tried for treason and hung. Any person that defends this excrement should be exiled to a country more befitting their perspective i.e. China, Russia, Cuba.

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Friday, April 12, 2013

Doug Casey: If I Were President

Doug Casey Interviewed by Louis James, Editor, International Speculator

L: Hola Doug; what's on your mind this week?

Doug: Well, it occurs to me that for all the times we've criticized the counterproductive, foolish, or just plain wrong ideas of others and have sometimes offered sounder alternatives, I've never fleshed out a picture of what I would do if I could call the shots.

L: "If I were president"? But you're an anarchist!

Doug: Yes, but that doesn't mean that I don't have any ideas on what should be done, if there were anyone with the strength and courage to do it.

L: And a very good bulletproof vest.

Doug: Just so. I'm certainly not interested in taking up residence in the White House ? wouldn't want the job if offered. But say some other occupant of that government housing project got hit on the head and woke up honest, industrious, and willing to do what was right come hell or high water.

L: Okay, I'm game. What would she do?

Doug: Are you referencing that Heinlein story in which the crooked president dies and his honest VP takes over ? and she's a lady?

L: Good catch. Heinlein wrote that since men had held the office for 200 years, a law was passed limiting it to women for the next 200 years. He thought they would be less likely send young men off to die in wars for stupid reasons, and would generally be more sensible than men on many subjects. But anyway, as you were saying?

Doug: First, I would declare to the public that the problems we face today as a society have been generated by our own governments, particularly in the US, where it's pretty much 100% government induced.

L: "Government is a disease masquerading as its own cure." Bob LeFevre.

Doug: Exactly. And it should be admitted, stopped, and apologized for ? just as should have been, but was not done when the writing on the wall regarding the Vietnam War was clear to all.

L: Okay, I'll buy that; calling a spade a spade is very important in this day of spin and misdirection. But how would you go about the "stopping it" part?

Doug: The first thing to do is to cut the budget. Almost all of the harm the government does would be reduced or eliminated if it weren't able to steal so much money to pay for its harmful activities.

L: Taxation is theft ? just try not paying the "voluntary" income tax to the IRS ? okay, but they also borrow and print money.

Doug: That's just indirect theft. Borrowing money forces future tax slaves to hand over money against their wishes, and printing it steals wealth from everyone by making the money in their pockets worth less and less with every new dollar, euro, yen, or whatever printed.

But it's not just the act of stealing that is so harmful, but the things the government spends it on. They are almost always directly against the best interests of those from whom the money was taken.

We need to starve the beast; so all these marginal, so-called budget cuts the politicians are wailing about are just smoke and mirrors ? not a real, meaningful scaling back of the government. It's too late for half measures. I'd cut the budgets of the federal, state, and local governments by 98%. For starters.

L: You're joking ? 98% ? that'll never happen!

Doug: Yes, it will. It's just a question of whether it happens in a somewhat controlled, voluntary way, or whether it comes about as a result of a totally out-of-control collapse. What's going on today is completely unsustainable, so I'm convinced this sort of change is coming ? it'll just be that much more destructive if we let it come as an involuntary crash. It's like when you have an old, unstable building that will collapse sooner or later; it's wiser and safer to bring it down at a time and in a way you control than to let it collapse on its own, with no warning to those around.

L: A controlled demolition of the US and global economies. US voters would probably love that just as much as Greek voters love austerity programs.

Doug: Probably so, but it's still the right thing to do. The whole current structure is rotten through and through, corrupt and counterproductive. It needs to be replaced, not fixed.

L: Replaced with what?

Doug: Economic freedom, of course. Let the future build itself, based on the voluntary actions of all market participants, acting in free exchange.

L: You know I'm on the same page, but many of our readers may be skeptical.

Doug: It's good to question everything. But this is not just a theory ? look at Iceland, which didn't bail all the idiotic bankers out, but let them crash. It has recovered much faster than most people expected. And that's without embracing real, thorough economic freedom; it?s simply as a result of letting stupidity reap its natural reward.

It remains to be seen how well things work out for Iceland ? it still has way too much government in my view ? but there's an earlier, well-documented example in the history of Chile. When Pinochet overthrew Allende, he enacted deep and far-reaching reforms of the Chilean economy. He didn't go as far as I would have, but he did enough, and in such a way that it stuck and has had greatly beneficial economic consequences long after his departure. Chile is now the most prosperous country in Latin America, and may well be the most prosperous country in the western hemisphere.

L: I've been there many times and have noted the modern buildings and clean streets of downtown Santiago. The middle class in that city exercises on mountain bikes on weekends and enjoys excellent restaurants evenings. They dress fashionably and stroll along sipping Starbucks lattes? downtown could be a city in California. But there are hovels in the poor districts and dirt streets in the countryside. Are you saying Chile is more prosperous than the US or Canada?

Doug: Yes. Parts of the place may still look third world, but Chileans are not loaded with debt the way North Americans are. My understanding is that the average Chilean has greater net worth than the average US tax slave.

One important contributing factor to this is that Pinochet privatized the social security program, and Chileans pay into individual retirement accounts that they own and control. There are restrictions, but they can fire their managers and move them to those who deliver results ? this is good use of a vital market mechanism. These are real assets that can be liquidated and reinvested ? not like US Social Security, which is nothing but a vague promise backed by nothing but an impossibly debt-ridden government with financial problems that are about to get much worse.

Taking this single step in the US would enable a huge reduction in budget and unfunded future spending. There is absolutely no need for government involvement; people's retirement should be their own individual responsibility, and their employers' contributions to their retirement accounts should be negotiated between the people and their employers.

L: Just to be clear, you're not condoning Pinochet's death squads and such ? just commenting on the results of his economic reforms.

Doug: The facts are the facts. Pinochet was a rare bird. And yes, it seems certain that he had several thousand people killed ? but how many people did Baby Bush kill in Iraq over so-called weapons of mass destruction that weren't even there? Many of the world's big governments are guilty of far greater atrocities and numbers of deaths that are orders of magnitude larger.

The US has supported ? and continues supporting ? far more barbaric and destructive dictators around the world. It seems to me that Pinochet is demonized because he instituted many free-market reforms ? that was his truly unforgivable sin, particularly among leftist intellectuals.

L: The sort of people he had killed?

Doug: Yes. Two wrongs don't make a right, but the fact is that Chile has many advantages today because of Pinochet. It's not as cheap as Argentina, but it's cheaper than Uruguay. It's the least corrupt of Latin American countries, and one of the least corrupt in the world. You picked a good analogy; it has a fantastic California climate. It has a low population density. It has one of the freer economies in the world ? And it?s growing rapidly. Plus, they grow some world-class wines in Chile. It has many advantages.

What I don't like about Chile is that it's the most conservative country in Latin America ? probably in the western hemisphere. It's the most religious, and that's saying a lot in Latin America. They love their police. They love their army. And it's isolated. It's like an island, with the Andes to the east, the South Pacific and Antarctic oceans to the west and south, and a desert to the north. That makes the culture more provincial than I prefer ? but that is a personal preference. I find Argentina more welcoming to bon vivants, even with all the problems it has ? those problems really don't affect foreigners living there who have income from abroad.

L: So noted. I can't say I wish we had a Pinochet takeover in America ? the US version would almost certainly be hawkish and have the world's biggest military budget to play with. Scary. But suppose a Ron Paul type made it and was following your plan, cutting the budget 98%, privatizing Social Security. What would be next?

Doug: Default on the national debt. That would punish the people foolish enough or unethical enough to lend the US government money. It would reduce the budget and greatly reduce the ability of the government to spend beyond its means. But most important of all, it wouldn't make indentured servants out of future generations of US taxpayers.

Look, I know this seems unthinkable to most people, but it's going to be defaulted on anyway. There is simply no way it can be repaid, and an uncontrolled default would be catastrophic ? probably in the form of total destruction of the US dollar as we know it today.

It has to be emphasized that default on the national debt is default on the government's debt, not the people's. Most of the real wealth in the world will still be there after the dust settles ? it'll just be in different hands. The feds might even be forced to sell off their assets ? a sort of gigantic "going out of business" sale that would put those assets into more capable and productive private hands. NASA, for example, as we've discussed already.

L: I understand, but that would still hurt a lot of people who have their savings in Treasury Bills.

Doug: Those savings will be lost anyway, if they leave them in Treasuries. The people it would hurt the worst are the fat cats in bed with the government ? the kind who got their pals in Washington DC to bail them out. It'd be poetic justice.

L: Okay. What's next?

Doug: Eliminate the Federal Reserve. Get the government out of the money business entirely, so it can't inflate it to pay for things people would not willingly, knowingly pay for.

L: Why stop there ? why not go for complete separation of economy and state? The same logic applies as with the separation of church and state, which once seemed unthinkable and now is the norm in much of the world ? in the West, at least.

Doug: All in good time, Lobo. Next, I would take whatever gold is left in Fort Knox and use it to back the US dollar. After defaulting on the debt and the ensuing collapse, trillions and trillions of dollars would cease to exist. Assuming the gold is still there ? the government doesn't allow any independent audits of Fort Knox ? I would use it to put what dollars were left on a solid, inflation-proof footing, at whatever price of gold that could be accomplished at the time.

L: Right. What next?

Doug: Eliminate unnecessary, counterproductive, and unconstitutional government programs. Cutting spending is only a beginning; you have to abolish the programs if you don?t want the spending to come back. We've already talked about getting the government out of Social Security. This and other social spending is the biggest chunk of government spending and liabilities ? something on the order of $220 trillion, last I heard. So, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid have to go.

Unfortunately, people over 50 have come to rely on it too heavily to take it away from them, so their payments and benefits would have to continue. But people under 50 don't get anything, and the payroll taxes that support the programs would be ended immediately.

L: Who pays for the older ones who keep getting the benefits? They were deceived into thinking they were making savings deposits of a sort, but it's not true; the government has already spent every dime they put away for the future.

Doug: I know. A large portion of whatever income the government could honestly generate from core services like running the courts and military would have to be directed to this expense until it went away naturally.

L: That won't win any popularity contests, but I suppose it would be an extension of the default you?ve already recommended. Bankruptcy is never pretty. It's also unavoidable, when the money just isn't there. What next?

Doug: De-fund, eliminate, and abolish every single alphabet agency the government currently lavishes money on. If any provide services people value, the market will step in to provide those services ? at a fraction of the cost and without the ability to ride roughshod over citizens who dissent. For starters, every agency and government action not expressly listed in the Constitution should be uprooted entirely and the ground where it stood sown with salt. Enforce the 10th Amendment. Then we can see if there's anything left that we really don't need anymore.

It's important to understand that the budgetary savings are really the lesser issue here. What's really important is getting the government off the peoples' collective back. The state is sand and glue in the gears of the economy, and it needs to be completely cleaned away to allow it to function freely to create greater prosperity for all.

L: That wouldn't leave much? the military.

Doug: Yes. Unfortunately, most people in the US are under the delusion that the military is the one part of the government that is honest and works ? that it protects them from dangers foreign and domestic. The truth is that even if many soldiers are honorable, the politicians who control them are not, and their missions around the world are creating more enemies and stirring up more hatred almost everywhere they go. This is making the world a more dangerous place, not a safer one.

Further, the "military-industrial complex" Eisenhower warned us of is still in place, more entrenched, and greedier than ever. Remember the $600 toilet seats?

But more important than this financial debacle is that the military now exists to protect the government, not the people. Veterans are being increasingly indoctrinated to view civilians as potentially hostile enemies, rather than the very thing that justifies the military's existence. And when they muster out and go to work for law enforcement agencies (not people protection agencies), their training and attitudes become extremely dangerous to average citizens.

L: That'll be a hard pill for most people to swallow. They still want to think of most cops as being like Andy Griffith, even though the evidence is strong that many, if not most cops see civilians as potential threats and object to control. Your whole list is going to be hard for most people to believe, let alone accept.

Doug: No doubt. But once the avalanche has started, it's too late for the pebbles to vote. This is all going to happen. The only questions are how, and whether the damage and chaos can be limited along the way.

Unfortunately, I have to say that I see absolutely no way that these steps will be taken voluntarily. As we discussed when we talked about Ron Paul, the kind of person who could do these things would never get elected ? and if by some cosmic accident such a person were elected, he or she would almost certainly be assassinated in short order. Remember Kennedy ? and don't say it can't happen in the place that was once America. It's going to be like France after 1789.

Chaos is coming.

L: Our regular readers should know what you recommend doing about it?

Doug: Yes. I am doing exactly what I've been saying for some time now: I'm building cash to deploy buying great assets during the crash, I'm putting my savings in gold and silver, and the businesses I'm building are in productive agriculture. As a speculator, I remain convinced that these junior mining stocks that you follow have explosive upside ? as much now as at any point I've ever seen.

L: Okay then. Enough said. Not a happy vision of the future, but our aim is to offer the best guidance we can, not to sweet-talk people into smiling. And ? speaking of offering guidance ? our own chief economist, Bud Conrad, will be speaking at the upcoming Global Currency Expo, held April 5-7 in San Diego. He'll share his big-picture views of the American economy over the near future, as well as making some specific investment recommendations.

Doug: Yes, I enjoyed your conversation with Bud last week, and encourage those able to attend to do so ? it should be a great event.

L: Very well. Thanks for your thoughts, Doug.

Doug: You're very welcome.

Doug Casey writes every month for The Casey Report, which focuses on leveraging emerging trends to outstanding gains. These are the same tactics that have made Doug and other legendary investors like Rick Rule and Peter Schiff fortunes. Learn more about The Casey Report.
_
Doug Casey (send him mail) is a best-selling author and chairman of Casey Research, LLC., publishers of Casey?s International Speculator.


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Thursday, April 11, 2013

Private Prisons: The More Americans They Put Behind Bars The More Money They Make


by Michael Snyder

How would you describe an industry that wants to put more Americans in prison and keep them there longer so that it can make more money?? In America today, approximately 130,000 people are locked up in private prisons that are being run by for-profit companies, and that number is growing very rapidly.? Overall, the U.S. has approximately 25 percent of the entire global prison population even though it only has 5 percent of the total global population.? The United States has the highest incarceration rate on the entire globe by far, and no nation in the history of the world has ever locked up more of its own citizens than we have.? Are we really such a cesspool of filth and decay that we need to lock up so many of our own people?? Or are there some other factors at work?? Could part of the problem be that we have allowed companies to lock up men and women in cages for profit?? The two largest private prison companies combined to bring in close to $3,000,000,000 in revenue in 2010, and the largest private prison companies have spent tens of millions of dollars on lobbying and campaign contributions over the past decade.? Putting Americans behind bars has become very big business, and those companies have been given a perverse incentive to push for even more Americans to be locked up.? It is a system that is absolutely teeming with corruption, and it is going to get a lot worse unless someone does something about it.

One of the keys to success in the private prison business it to get politicians to vote your way.? That is why the big private prison companies spend so much money on lobbying and campaign contributions.? The following is an excerpt from a report put out by the Justice Policy Institute entitled "Gaming the System: How the Political Strategies of Private Prison Companies Promote Ineffective Incarceration Policies"...

For-profit private prison companies primarily use three strategies to influence policy: lobbying, direct campaign contributions, and building relationships, networks, and associations.

Over the years, these political strategies have allowed private prison companies to promote policies that lead to higher rates of incarceration and thus greater profit margins for their company. In particular, private prison companies have had either influence over or helped to draft model legislation such as "three-strikes" and "truth-in-sentencing" laws, both of which have driven up incarceration rates and ultimately created more opportunities for private prison companies to bid on contracts to increase revenues.

If you can believe it, three of the largest private prison companies have spent approximately $45,000,000 combined on lobbying and campaign contributions over the past decade.

Would they be spending so much money if those companies did not believe that it was getting results?

Just look at what has happened to the U.S. prison population over the past several decades.? Prior to 1980, there were virtually no private prisons in the United States.? But since that time, we have seen the overall prison population and the private prison population absolutely explode.

For example, between 1990 and 2009 the number of Americans in private prisons grew by about?1600 percent.

Overall, the U.S. prison population more than quadrupled between 1980 and 2007.

So something has definitely changed.

Not that it is wrong to put people in prison when they commit crimes.? Of course not.? And right now violent crime is rapidly rising in many of our largest cities.? When people commit violent crimes they need to be removed from the streets.

But when you put those criminals into the hands of private companies that are just in it to make a buck, the potential for abuse is enormous.

For example, when auditors visited one private prison in Texas, they "got so much fecal matter on their shoes they had to wipe their feet on the grass outside."

The prisoners were literally living in their own manure.

How would you feel if a member of your own family was locked up in such a facility?

And the truth is that there seem to be endless stories of abuse in private prisons.? One private prison company reportedly charges inmates $5.00 a minute to make phone calls but only pays them $1.00 a day to work...

Last year the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the nation's largest private prison company, received $74 million of taxpayers' money to run immigration detention centers. Their largest facility in Lumpkin, Georgia, receives $200 a night for each of the 2,000 detainees it holds, and rakes in yearly profits between $35 million and $50 million.

Prisoners held in this remote facility depend on the prison's phones to communicate with their lawyers and loved ones. Exploiting inmates' need, CCA charges detainees here $5 per minute to make phone calls. Yet the prison only pays inmates who work at the facility $1 a day. At that rate, it would take five days to pay for just one minute.

Speaking of work, private prisons have found that exploiting their inmates as a source of slave labor can be extraordinarily profitable.? Today, private prisons are stealing jobs from ordinary American workers in a whole host of industries.? The following is from an article by Vicky Pelaez...
According to the Left Business Observer, the federal prison industry produces 100% of all military helmets, ammunition belts, bullet-proof vests, ID tags, shirts, pants, tents, bags, and canteens. Along with war supplies, prison workers supply 98% of the entire market for equipment assembly services; 93% of paints and paintbrushes; 92% of stove assembly; 46% of body armor; 36% of home appliances; 30% of headphones/microphones/speakers; and 21% of office furniture. Airplane parts, medical supplies, and much more: prisoners are even raising seeing-eye dogs for blind people.
And many of the largest corporations in America have rushed in to take advantage of this pool of very cheap slave labor.? Just check out some of the big names that have been exploiting prison labor...
At least 37 states have legalized the contracting of prison labor by private corporations that mount their operations inside state prisons. The list of such companies contains the cream of U.S. corporate society: IBM, Boeing, Motorola, Microsoft, AT&T, Wireless, Texas Instrument, Dell, Compaq, Honeywell, Hewlett-Packard, Nortel, Lucent Technologies, 3Com, Intel, Northern Telecom, TWA, Nordstrom's, Revlon, Macy's, Pierre Cardin, Target Stores, and many more. All of these businesses are excited about the economic boom generation by prison labor. Just between 1980 and 1994, profits went up from $392 million to $1.31 billion. Inmates in state penitentiaries generally receive the minimum wage for their work, but not all; in Colorado, they get about $2 per hour, well under the minimum. And in privately-run prisons, they receive as little as 17 cents per hour for a maximum of six hours a day, the equivalent of $20 per month. The highest-paying private prison is CCA in Tennessee, where prisoners receive 50 cents per hour for what they call "highly skilled positions." At those rates, it is no surprise that inmates find the pay in federal prisons to be very generous. There, they can earn $1.25 an hour and work eight hours a day, and sometimes overtime. They can send home $200-$300 per month.
But of course some of the biggest profits for private prisons come from detaining young people.? Today, private prison companies operate more than 50 percent of all "youth correctional facilities" in the United States.

And sometimes judges have even been bribed by these companies to sentence kids to very harsh sentences and to send them to their facilities.? The following is?from a report about two judges in Pennsylvania that were recently convicted for taking money to send kids to private prisons...

Michael Conahan, a former jurist in Luzerne County, was sentenced on Friday to 210 months in custody by Senior U.S. District Court Judge Edwin M. Kosik II. Conahan was also ordered to pay $874,000 in restitution. [...] As Main Justice reported in August, Ciavarella, former president judge of the Court of Common Pleas and former judge of the Juvenile Court for Luzerne County, was sentenced to 28 years in prison and ordered to make restitution of $965,930. [...]

Conahan's role in the "cash for kids" scheme was to order the closing of a county-run detention center, clearing the way for Ciavarella, once known as a strict "law and order" judge, to send young offenders to private facilities. This arrangement worked out well for Ciavarella and Conahan, as well as the builder of the facilities and a developer, who pleaded guilty to lesser charges.

The arrangement didn't work out so well for the young offenders, some of them sent away for offenses that were little more than pranks and would have merited probation, or perhaps just scoldings, if the judges had tried to live up to their oaths.

Are you starting to see why private prisons are such a problem?

Hundreds of kids had their lives permanently altered by those corrupt judges.

When you allow people to make money by locking other people up in cages, you are just asking for trouble.

The more Americans they put behind bars, the more money these private prisons make.? It is a system that needs to be brought to an end.


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Assuming that all victimless crimes are banned and prisons are only a means for providing restitution to victims and families of the victim, aren't private prisons a good thing? I would rather see one of those "Harlem Shake" idiots above behind bars than a drug dealer. Getting restitution (money) for victims families is not justice. Money doesn't bring someone back from the dead. At the end of the day everyone is in it for themselves thats why private prisons are flourishing. There is no justice in this world the only thing you can do is pray and read the bible. This is one of the reasons justice should be kept pure of such perverting influences as personal benefit.

Those who enthuse over the idea of "private justice" should take heed: If government justice is perverted by profit motive, then how much more perverted would be a justice operated by private citizens or companies given the power to grind the axe of their profit motives?

The only answer is less private involvement in justice: Not a perfect answer, but better than the alternative.

Private justice doesn't necessarily mean throwing people in cages, it'd probably revolve around restitution and making victims whole, rather than robbing them and victimizing them a second time by forcing them to pay for their abuser's imprisonment.

"Government justice" is a contradiction in terms.

Oh, yes, probably not in cages. But ... such justice would tend to be in the hands of the motivated. So, as an example, RIAA would want to be in charge of private justice related to copyright infringement; and would have you making restitution for songs you didn't steal (because it's profitable to make you do false restitution), based on a claim that they can only be made whole by that false restitution.

In fact, it's because of RIAA and similar groups that you can be charged $150,000 for a song you accidentally shared. Private justice? Not a bit.

And, really, if you think these prison corporations would go away and give up on having their cages filled...well, their cages would still be filled. Their motivation for profit doesn't go away just because they're in charge of justice...

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Wednesday, April 10, 2013

Only an Incipient 'Terrorist' Denounces State Murder


by William Norman Grigg


According to the SPLC, the people in the burning building were the "terrorists."

?There are, in increasingly frightening numbers, cells of angry men in the United States preparing for combat," warns an unusually strident house editorial by the Los Angeles Times. "They are usually heavily armed, blinded by an intractable hatred, often motivated by religious zeal.?

That description was not applied to the masked, armor-clad Berserkers who kick down doors in the early morning or late at night and terrorize families over non-violent "offenses." Nor was it offered in reference to the militants who have purchased more than 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition ? much of it hollow-point rounds unsuitable for military use ? while distributing armored vehicles and other military hardware to their adherents in practically every city nation-wide. The Times didn't direct that rhetorical salvo at the people who are openly discussing plans to fill America's skies with robot planes that can ? and will ? be used as weapons platforms.

The Times editorial collective focused its indignation upon a much safer target ? namely, ?white, right-wing Americans, all with an obsessive attachment to guns, who may represent a greater danger to the lives of American civilians than international terrorists.? The statist screed makes passing reference to what it calls ?the massacre of a bizarre sect by federal agents in Waco, Texas,? twenty years ago ? without passing moral judgment on the ?massacre? in question. Slaughtering religious eccentrics is a venial offense compared to the grave heresy committed by those who speak ill of the Holy State, since their "blather" ? not the murderous actions of those who impudently presume to rule us, mind you ? "tends to get under the skin of the Timothy McVeighs of the world."

Once again: Immolating harmless people in a church is a perfectly proper thing, assuming that this act of mass murder is carried out by the consecrated hands of the State's enforcement caste, but referring to it as mass murder is the sort of thing only an incipient terrorist would do.In recent days, we've heard that the Obama Regime ? which is running out of plausible foreign enemies ? is seeking to broaden the scope of the "war on terror" to include "offshoot" groups that are connected only by rumor to al-Qaeda (which was always more of a brand name than an actual organization). Terror Warriors need not fret; ere long we'll harvest the nettles that have been so plentifully sown by the Regime's implacable aggression abroad. In the meantime, however, the Times suggests that the "war on terror" should re-direct its focus inward.

Citing the most recent missive from the self-appointed Stasi at the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Times claims that there are 1,360 proto-terrorist groups ? sneeringly denounced as "patriots," "constitutionalists," and "sovereign citizens" ? scattered throughout the Soyuz. "These groups should be closely monitored, with resources adequate to the task, even if it means shifting some homeland security money from the hunt for foreign terrorists," concludes the paper.


A Sheriff's Deputy in Gem County, Idaho deals with a "Constitutionalist."

The Times editorial ? which could be digested into the phrase, "The conspiracy theorists are plotting against us!" ? brings to mind an incident in the early 1980s in which East German officials arrested a group of human rights activists for "defaming" the state by claiming that it suppressed freedom of speech. As Tony Cooper, an instructor in terrorism negotiation at the University of Texas-Dallas, pointed out in 1995, the Regime in Washington is perfectly capable of such totalitarian behavior.

"I see the formation of a curious crusading mentality among certain law enforcement agencies to stamp out what they see as a threat to government generally," Cooper told the Washington Post in 1995. "It's an exaggerated concern that they are facing a nationwide conspiracy and that somehow this will get out of control unless it is stamped out at a very early stage."

Never forget: A "conspiracy theorist" is someone who notices things without official permission ? and a "terrorist" is anybody who challenges the government's monopoly on violence.
_
William Norman Grigg publishes the Pro Libertate blog and hosts the Pro Libertate radio program.


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Tuesday, April 9, 2013

Iraq Shows the Failure of Militarism and Socialism


by Jacob G. Hornberger

With the 10-year anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq upon us, there are three things that I find particularly fascinating.

First, the people who favored the invasion have different rationales for why they favored the invasion. Some of them say it's because Saddam Hussein conspired with al-Qaeda to commit the 9/11 attacks. Others say it's because there were terrorists inside Iraq. Others say that it was to bring democracy to Iraq. Others say it was to find WMDs, including those that the United States furnished Iraq to help Saddam with his war against Iran. Still others say that it was to enforce UN resolutions.

It's as if the U.S. government placed a smorgasbord of rationales for invading the country before the American people and said, "To enable you to feel better about the massive death and destruction that U.S. forces are about to wreak on the country, we are providing you with a range of rationales on which you can base your support. You are free to take your pick."

Second, except for libertarians and a few liberals there has never been any big push for an official investigation to determine whether every one of those that rationales for invading Iraq was bogus, as a way to cover up what was nothing more than a classic U.S. regime-change operation.

Were the American people intentionally misled into supporting the invasion of Iraq? Was it a classic regime-change operation the entire time? Was the deep fear of terrorism generated by the 9/11 attacks misused to garner support for the operation? Alas, all too many Americans just don't want to know.

But that's not to say that the passage of time won't change that sentiment. For example, right now there is a criminal trial taking place in Argentina for crimes committed during the 1970s and 1980s. The criminal defendants are former government officials, including military officials, from various South American countries who are charged with participating in a coordinated killing campaign known as Operation Condor, an operation in which officials of the U.S. national-security state, especially the CIA, actively participated. While it has taken more than 30 years to bring the defendants to trial, at least it shows that officials who purportedly commit such crimes can never sleep easy no matter how much time has elapsed.

Third, while there are undoubtedly a few die-hards who claim that the invasion and multi-year occupation of Iraq converted the country into a paradise of freedom, prosperity, and harmony, I think it's safe to say that most Americans have arrived at the realization that Iraq is no different a place than when Saddam Hussein was in charge. Different faces but the same authoritarianism, torture, killing, violence, executions, and indefinite incarcerations without trial.

In fact, a strong piece of circumstantial evidence of how bad things are in Iraq is that not one single American neo-con and not one single American congressmen has taken his family on vacation to Iraq since the date of the U.S. invasion back in 2003. Indeed, not even President Obama dared to spend even one night in Iraq when he made one of his periodic unannounced visits to the country to see the troops.

Why are things such a mess in Iraq? Possibly because God has created a consistent universe, one in which immoral means beget bad results.

But there's another factor to consider, one that was detailed in an article entitled "Report Details Mistakes Made by U.S. in Improvement Projects for Iraq" in yesterday's New York Times. The article points out that the $60 billion in foreign aid to Iraq has essentially gone down a rat hole.

U.S. officials blame the failure of their "rebuilding" projects on poor planning and supervision. They just don't get it. The projects are nothing more than socialist public-works projects, no different from those in socialist countries. As such, they are inherently defective. Therefore, it's not a question of incompetency or inefficiency. Instead, the problem is that the Pentagon embraces socialism as the way to rebuild the countries it destroys. It fails to realize that socialism has never worked and will never work.

A fascinating insight into the military mindset was provided by former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, who stated in that NYT article that the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq prevented the United States from dissuading Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki from making "bad decisions" and "going off a cliff." I can't help but wonder how exactly Panetta would have used those U.S. military forces to convince Maliki to do things differently. Of course though, what Panetta fails to recognize is that nothing, not even the threat of deadly force, can make socialism succeed.

The federal government is facing a perfect storm of messes arising from its domestic and foreign programs, including Social Security, healthcare, welfare, spending, debt, the dollar, the drug war, the war on terrorism, Afghanistan, and, of course, Iraq. Americans would be wise to question the welfare-warfare system itself rather than hope that U.S. officials will keep trying to make it work.
_
Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the practice of law to become director of programs at the Foundation for Economic Education. He has advanced freedom and free markets on talk-radio stations all across the country as well as on Fox News' Neil Cavuto and Greta van Susteren shows and he appeared as a regular commentator on Judge Andrew Napolitano's show Freedom Watch. View these interviews at LewRockwell.com and from Full Context. Send him email.


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This war was about regime-change and business. I remember watching countries from all over the world argue about who was going to get the job of rebuilding Iraq. But the Iraqis would not stop fighting and it became too dangerous to do business in the country, so everyone left. Now the country is a shit hole thanks to the United States of America. I hope you're happy. Thank god we here in New Zealand saw the truth and did not get involved. This is why the constitution in America is dead because you have a government infiltrated and dominated by Zionists. Socialism has been a disaster for America since it was littered on us during the Progressive Jew Deal Era. All these occupations in the Middle East have been for Israel.

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