Conspiracy News Now: January 2014

Friday, January 31, 2014

Florida Police Now Ready For Minefields

by Tim Lynch

From the New York Daily News:

?If you see my SWAT team roll up in this thing ? it?s over, so just give up,? said Chief R. Sean Baldwin in a release?.
The police department was able to purchase the armored vehicle through the 1997 National Defense Authorization Act, which passes excess military supplies to U.S. law enforcement.
More than $4.2 billion worth of property has been transferred to law enforcement since the program?s inception.

One wonders if these guys shout ?Yippee Ki-Ya!? as they drive down neighborhood streets.

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Latest Tyranny/Police State
- Capital Punishment for Traffic Violations
- Police Shoot Man Assembling Toy Gun While Sitting In His Own Car
- Dashcam Video Shows Scene As Officer Shoots 14-Yr-Old With Toy Gun
- Father Says He's Being Jailed For Paying Too Much Child Support & Over Visiting His Son [Updated]
- San Diego Deputy Threatens To 'Shove' Camera Light Up Videographer's 'A**'
- Video captures moment PCSO who pulled over a driver was then arrested HIMSELF for being twice the drink-drive limit by police officers he called for back-up
- The Right to Resist -- and the Duty to Interpose
- Texas Game Wardens Prepare for War

So mother fuckers in your mind you honestly think we will just roll over? whot the fuck do you think you clowns are, super human type heros beleive me when I say you do not want to die in that vehicle when that pos catches fire, You will cook beyond anything recognizable as a human so, really do you think its over when you roll up on that wheeled death trap? With fewer and fewer countries left to invade and bomb, the US war industry is now focusing on building a domestic military capable of waging full-scale war on regional and demographic American targets. Rather than starve to death, millions of the unemployed will have little choice but to join and start killing their fellow countrymen.

Hey, nothing personal - it's just business - and it's for your protection.

the very small micro chip from Motorola that is being test marketed in China at this time that will be used on americans in the US and all other nations at an undisclosed future date. It is a rice sized chip that will be injected into the right hand on the backside, this chip will store everything about you, where you work, how much money you have, your home address etc and will have your bank account info etc. You will scan your hand at the grocery store, Airports etc. The chip will track your every movement via satellite anywhere in the world. We are seeing the beginning of this in the new credit cards with a small chip enclosed in the plastic that does not need to be swiped through a card reader, it only needs to be flashed by a computer reader. These chips are storing far more data than the user is aware of, like banking and employment info that is sensitive to the user.

FYI: IF YOU HAD ONE OF THESE CHIPS AND TRY TO REMOVE IT CHIP, IT WILL INJECT A POISON INTO YOUR SYSTEM AND KILL YOU.

NOW IS THAT SOMETHING YOU WANT IN YOUR RIGHT HAND. I KNOW I DON'T.
This chip could get hit by something or just malfunction as all computers do and decide to inject the poison at any time, or the controllers of this chip could decide they want to have some fun and just kill of some people one day.

I ASK YOU TO DECIDE WHAT IS BEST FOR YOU.

YOU COULD ALLOW THINGS LIKE THE ABOVE....... OR YOU COULD TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF AND TAKE YOUR POWER BACK AS IT WAS MEANT TO BE BY THE ALL THAT IS THAT CREATED YOU.

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Thursday, January 30, 2014

Saxo Bank CEO Warns of Collapse Into "Totalitarian" Society

Paul Joseph Watson

Saxo Bank CEO Lars Seier Christensen warns that excessive government regulation, overtaxation and a coming economic collapse are all setting the stage for a slide into an overtly ?totalitarian? society.

In a blog post entitled,?What is the broader relevance of Ayn Rand for society?, Christensen adeptly describes how the predictions of the author, most famous for her 1957 dystopian classic?Atlas Shrugged, are now coming to pass.

The Saxo Bank CEO argues that free market capitalism and freedom in general is under constant attack by elites whose constant intrusions into the economy and people?s personal lives are predicated around the need to justify more centralization of power.

?First, the politicians assign ever greater powers to themselves, as they manage to convince the citizens of the need for even more interference, although the problems are created by interference in the first place,? writes Christensen, citing the European Union as an example of how, ?one mistake invariably leads to call for even more powers, leading to new mistakes.?

The deliberate effort on the part of the political class to undermine and restrict freedom and free market capitalism prevents the system from working efficiently, ?meaning that the underlying strength of human ingenuity and creativity is stopped from working and becomes increasingly powerless to pull us out of the morass we are in,? writes Christensen, adding that corporate fascism, or ?business people using government favours in return for giving up their independence,? is another of Ayn Rand?s warnings that has come to pass.

?In fact, the undemocratic, power-grabbing, emotional, populistic Washington that takes over in Atlas Shrugged is today most closely resembled by the EU and the Eurozone in the real world,? asserts Christensen, adding, ?We may have to go through a much more severe economic collapse before change will be forced upon us. Unfortunately, that change may also be?totalitarian in nature, of course. In fact, that is the more likely outcome in the short run.?

A central theme of Christensen?s editorial is his assertion that politicians can only survive in an irrational society and therefore constantly need to create problems and then appeal to emotion and pose as the saviors in a bid to remain relevant and seize power.

?[The current irrational world] creates a major opportunity for politicians that intuitively know that in a rational world, there would be little demand for their services,? writes Christensen. ?Only in an irrational, emotional universe, where opportunists can gain access to media and visibility to express "feelings" and try to take the moral high ground, no matter how unfounded in reality it is -- only in such an environment can you survive without having to produce practical, productive results, and instead prosper and benefit from empty talk and third-rate acting performances.?

Christensen also highlights the fact that the increasing prevalence of onerous taxation policies, such as in France, are destroying businesses and jobs while forcing entrepreneurs to take flight ? even to places like Russia ? in a bid to find their own ?Galts Gulch? where the free market is allowed to flourish and is not strangled by regulation and taxation.

?If we don't succeed in changing the values and direction of at least the next generation, I fear the full prediction of Atlas Shrugged will become reality and while that may hold some promise for the distant future, it is not something that I think people of my age feel like going through if we can avoid it,? concludes Christensen.

Christensen?s?blog post?provides several real world examples that back up his argument and is a must read in order to understand how the political class seem to be using Atlas Shrugged as an instruction manual for a totalitarian takeover of society.
_
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.

Latest Economy
- U.S. War on Poverty Failed While Global Poverty Declined 80%: Economic Liberalization Begets Prosperity and Equality
- Does a Minimum Wage Reduce Poverty?
- Too Big to Pop
- Is Colorado Pot Overtaxed and Over-Regulated Already?
- Beanie Baby Founder Facing Prison Because He Only Paid Some $1 Billion In Taxes, Should Have Paid $1.0055 Billion
- UK: Young people 'feel they have nothing to live for,' third have contemplated suicide
- 70% Of Americans Have "No Faith" In Government
- Marc Faber 'Congratulates' Ben: "Well Done, Mr. Bernanke!"

And that's why Saxo Bank gave 1 million Danish Kroner to a new
political party in Denmark, 'Liberal Alliance' - Because politicians cause all the problems ..
May I remind you that it's a BANK talking ?
The Danish taxpayers have payed hundreds of billions to all the greedy banksters, including Saxo-bank . They should just be happy we don't have their beloved 'free market', if we did they would all have gone bankrupt .

'The Market' solves everything, just like 'The Party' does ...

This will lead to the coming beast power prophesied in the bible

see british-israel.ca

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Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Cop Filmed Playing Poker On In-Car Computer Driving During Rush Hour On Unplowed Road

Chris | InformationLiberation

The new year brought some 40,000 news laws into effect throughout the United States. In Chicago, one of those laws was a ban on using a cell phone while driving. The studies which showed such bans may lead to more accidents because people hide their phones below eye level rather than stop using them were ignored in place of political hysteria and the demand to "do something."

Incidentally, the people tasked with enforcing such a cell phone ban have dashmounted computers with huge LCD monitors in their patrol cars. As you can see in this video just posted to YouTube, some use these in-car computers to play online poker while driving in rush hour traffic on unplowed roads during the "polar vortex."

Cops engaged in such "typing while driving" incidents regularly crash into people while casually using their in-car computer. Here's a local news report out of Arlington, Texas showing it's an epidemic. Nonetheless, cops are explicitly exempt from all these distracted driving laws.

_
Chris runs the website InformationLiberation.com, you can read more of his writings here. Follow infolib on twitter here.

"40,000 new laws...."

here we go again..... "if a tree falls in the forest, and, nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound?"

telling people that the government has written-up 40,000 new "RULES" ("laws" are inherent), I would liken to the age-old question I've quoted above. Perhaps, the government should be asking: "if there's nobody left who believes in 'government,' does it exist?"

wow, from 10 commandants, to a simple (CON)stitution, to 40,000 fake-believe laws in 2014..... i'll call "b/s" if no one else has the b@ll$ to.

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Tuesday, January 28, 2014

Texas Game Wardens Prepare for War

William Norman Grigg

The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD) has a newly minted SWAT team. To be sure, the agency maintains that this "cadre of specialty teams" will focus on search-and-rescue missions. However, the way Game Warden Cullen Stakes is dressed in the photo above makes it pretty clear that he's not getting ready to rescue people who have been stranded by floods, or have gotten lost in the woods.

Among the TPWD's specialized units is the "Scout Team," a group of 25 wardens who "have received a variety of training and can be used in border operations, dignitary protection, or any form of high-risk law enforcement, such as serving felony arrests or hostage situations," explains Texas Parks & Wildlife magazine.

"We can have a team anywhere in Texas in four hours, and that's the worst-case scenario," boasts Law Enforcement Special Operations Chief Grahme Jones. "A lot of times it's much faster."

For public consumption, the TPWD's einsatzgruppen are portrayed as kindly people who will pluck terrified children from rooftops during floods, or come to the aid of people whose boats have broken down. However, the agency's 532 wardens are "fully commissioned peace [sic] officers" who "have long assisted local authorities and state agencies," observes Texas Parks & Wildlife. In other words: They?re cops, which means they are agents of officially sanctioned violence.

Jones points out that in addition to looking for "game and fish law violations," wardens also "assist with community policing." The last is an anodyne phrase that should be terrifying to reasonably well-informed people.

The government that afflicts Texas is run by extravagantly punitive people with a penchant for criminalizing practically everything. Several years ago, this anti-social compulsion led the Texas Legislature to enact a measure that would literally make a felony out of telling a fish story: A participant in a fishing tournament who exaggerates the size of his catch could be sent to prison for ten years, and be fined up to $10,000.

Obviously, tournament organizers who offer cash prizes have a powerful incentive to prevent fraud of this kind, and thus can be trusted to enforce their own rules and disqualify cheaters. But this isn't satisfactory to the state's "Better living through official coercion" constituency, who eagerly seize on any excuse to expand the roster of offenses that could give rise to an exercise in police overkill.

Significantly, the sponsor of the "make a fibbing fisherman a felon" law, Texas state representative Dan Flynn (a Republican, natch) admitted that "everybody always exaggerates ... the size of their fish." This means that every time somebody drops a hook and then reels in a fish, he's a potential suspect -- and thus a worthy target for a pack of armored, heavily armed wardens eager to show off their newly acquired tactical skills.

I will not be surprised when someday soon states begin issuing hunting licenses and tag limits for sport killing of US patriots and Constitutionalists. what about lic. in the opposite direction?

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Monday, January 27, 2014

This Week's Corrupt Cops Stories

by Phillip Smith

Bad cops get sued in Chicago, drugs are missing in Baltimore, an Ohio cop rips off the DARE program, and a Louisiana jailer gets caught smuggling pot and tobacco. Let's get to it:

In Chicago, a Chicago-area couple sued a local drug task force on December 28, charging that members of the Lake County Metropolitan Enforcement Group (MEG) illegally detained them without cause and ransacked their vehicle and home for drugs, but, not finding any drugs, instead stole thousands of dollars worth of items, including money orders, which have been cashed by the MEG. MEG has denied stealing the other items, including a flat screen TV.

In Baltimore, drug evidence went missing from the Baltimore Police evidence room last Thursday. The evidence room is on the upper floor of police headquarters in downtown Baltimore. Police would not say what or how much was taken. The department is investigating.

In Amite City, Louisiana, a Tangipahoa Parish jail deputy was arrested Monday on charges he was conspiring to bring drugs into the jail and sell them to inmates. Patrick Collins, 58, went down after the sheriff's office received information that he planned to smuggle drugs in on that day, and he was caught with four separate packages containing marijuana and tobacco. He is charged with one count of malfeasance in office, two counts of introduction of contraband into a penal institution and possession with intent to distribute schedule 1 narcotics. At last report, Collins was still in jail in a neighboring parish.

In Troy, Ohio, a former Troy police officer pleaded guilty December 24 to ripping off the DARE program. Kirt Wright, 41, copped to running up $15,000 in unauthorized charges for his own use on the DARE program credit card. He pleaded guilty to one count of felony theft in office. He's looking at up to three years in prison at sentencing.

View the original article here

Sunday, January 26, 2014

Internal Affairs Divisions Dismissing 99% Of Misconduct Cases Against New Jersey Police Officers

by Tim Cushing

Not all cops are bad, but the insulation from accountability begins with the departments themselves, which often go out of their way to defend the actions of abusive officers. In some cases, pressure from police unions has kept unruly officers on the job despite the departments' efforts to remove them. Other times, the insulating force is also the first line of officer accountability: Internal Affairs. Often depicted as a hated entity within the force, the Internal Affairs division is supposed to be the public's first line of defense against cops who abuse their power. As documents obtained by the Courier News and Home News Tribune show, dozens of complaints against central New Jersey police officers are dismissed every year without ever making it past these departments' internal review mechanisms.

From 2008 to 2012, citizens filed hundreds of complaints alleging brutality, bias and civil rights violations by officers in more than seven dozen police departments in Central Jersey?
Just 1 percent of all excessive force complaints were sustained by internal affairs units in Central Jersey, the review found. That?s less than the national average of 8 percent, according to a federal Bureau of Justice Statistics report released in 2007.
Elizabeth, for example, processed 203 such complaints in the five-year period and not once sided with a complainant. Woodbridge had 84 complaints, New Brunswick had 81, Perth Amboy had 50 and Linden had 33. In all those cases, these agencies either ?exonerated? the officers, dismissed the complaints as frivolous, determined that they did not have sufficient evidence or simply never closed the investigations.

Nationwide numbers aren't all that encouraging, with only 8% of complaints being sustained, but the New Jersey police departments are pitching near shutouts. These numbers can be taken to mean that either these departments only staff exemplary officers -- or that many cases boil down to not much more than the complainant's word against the officer's, something that rarely goes the complainant's way.

On a positive note, the journalists were able to compile the numbers thanks to New Jersey's Open Public Records Act which requires police departments to tally and track complaints, including how each case is disposed. On the downside, almost all information related to the officers involved is redacted.

Except in race cases, complaints against officers and how officers were disciplined ? which can range from spoken or written reprimands to suspensions or termination ? are kept confidential.
The tallies of complaints and how they were disposed are public records, as are use of force reports, which officers are required to file whenever they use bodily force or weapons to subdue a suspect. The public also has the right to read synopses of all complaints where a fine or suspension of at least 10 days was assessed. But the identities of officers, as well as the complainants, have to be redacted from these documents.

As Sergio Bachao of My Central Jersey points out, this provides public officers with more protection than it does private citizens. Complaints and disciplinary rulings against licensed professionals in the private sector are posted by the state using these citizens' full names. Obviously, doing so makes these professionals more accountable and provides other members of the public with info they can use to avoid potential scams, etc.

The redactions work the opposite way in these public records, protecting those who have been accused of wrongdoing. It's often not until a case has finally made its way to the courtroom that these officers' "rap sheets" are exposed. And in most cases, officers accused of deploying excessive force or abusing their power will be serial violators -- something that would have been noticed earlier if not for these redactions.

In the wake of the Deloatch investigation, then-Sgt. Richard Rowe was charged with mishandling 81 internal affairs in New Brunswick from 2003 to 2007. He was sentenced in August to two years of probation. The Home News Tribune also reported that Berdel had been investigated at least seven times by internal affairs, including once for an excessive force complaint. The complaints either were not sustained or never resolved.

One NJ assemblyman thinks he has a solution.

Assemblyman Peter Barnes III, D-Middlesex, said that all internal affairs investigations should be handled by county prosecutors or the state Attorney General?s Office.
?It?s long since past the day where you can say with a straight face that it?s OK to have officers investigate their own. It just isn?t a good system,? Barnes said.

Barnes has a bit too much confidence that prosecutors and state AGs will be a more "neutral" force than Internal Affairs. These entities operate in concert with police officers to prosecute accused wrongdoers. The close relationships with police departments are often hard to disentangle when an officer is facing potential criminal charges. It's not unheard of for misconduct cases to finally reach the AG level only to find the AG unwilling to pursue charges.

AGs and prosecutors often believe they're in the business of "fighting crime" (some even run for election using a "tough on crime" platform) when in reality they're only part of a system aimed at providing justice. Because of this misconception, prosecutors and AGs consider police officers to be allies in the war on crime and tend to be rather lenient when charged with prosecuting officer misconduct.

There's probably no perfect solution for this problem but some extra steps could mitigate a lot of these concerns. To be sure, there are a large number of complaints that fall into the "frivolous" category, meaning the percentage of misconduct cases that result in any sort of disciplinary action will still remain rather low. But requiring some sort of independent oversight would be a start. As it stands now, an internal division reviews these cases and, should it believe criminal charges might be in order, it forwards them to state AGs and prosecutors -- who are often as reluctant to pursue charges as the department itself.

Another suggestion would be the use of body cameras by police officers. Although officers and police departments still retain some control over the footage collected, early use has indicated that they tend to reduce complaints of misconduct or excessive force. Citizens are less likely to file frivolous complaints knowing there's footage of the incident, and officers are less likely to deploy excessive force for the same reason.

At this point though, with only 1% of complaints being sustained, citizens have very little reason to believe the system will hold bad cops accountable. Likewise, bad cops can look to the 99% "clearance rate" as an indicator that their bad behavior will go unpunished, if not unnoticed.

Nothing is going to get better when it comes to this criminal entity known as the police force. These sociopaths must froth at the mouth knowing that nearly 100% of complaints filed against them get thrown out. Prosecutors and Judges are part of the sociopathic club.

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Saturday, January 25, 2014

Scorsese's Pump and Dump

by Doug French

Former prosecutor Joel Cohen tells the Wall Street Journal the movie "The Wolf of Wall Street" should not have been made. Mr. Cohen believes the mere fact Hollywood megastar Leonardo DiCaprio portrayed the penny stock hustler glamorizes a criminal who, while very charming, woke up everyday wondering how he could break the law.

One would think any movie that annoys the ex-government prosecutor who took down Jordan Belfort and his firm Stratton Oakmont that much must be worth seeing. Unfortunately, securities fraud is hard to depict on the screen in a way that holds the moviegoer's attention, especially for nearly three hours.

"Pump-and-dump" is not as visual as, say, a gunfight. It is far easier to show characters enjoying the fruits of what the government considers fraud. So while there is the occasional reference to selling stocks of worthless companies and a cold call or two depicted along the way, most of what Martin Scorsese shows is the old Wall Street party stand by?cocaine being snorted from various body parts of naked females.

One wonders if any real crime was actually committed. Is it the role of government to prosecute individuals for calling people on the phone, stretching the truth, and selling dubious investments? There are multiple government agencies involved in regulating this sort of activity and investors sadly think the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the FBI force salespeople to tell the truth. ?Good luck with that.

As far as money laundering and shipping money offshore to avoid prosecution go, who is the victim? ?Scorsese's message seems to be it?s against the law to make lots of money and blow it on hookers and drugs.

Belfort gets started at a large Wall Street firm selling blue chip shares. He's mentored by Mark Hanna (Mathew McConaughey) who assures the young trainee the objective of selling stocks is to transfer clients' money to the brokers' pockets. Making clients money is not the idea. Any profits are on paper only and the broker must be sure to roll those profits, to the extent there are any, into other "ideas" before the client can turn them into actual dollars. The only people making cold hard cash for spending are the brokers.

The firm goes under and Belfort seeks other employment. He's about to take a retail sales job believing no one is hiring stock brokers when his wife spots an ad looking for that very thing. Scorsese's depiction of the penny stock chop shop is perfect. Located in a dumpy strip center, Belfort discovers a room full of losers, not a quotron terminal in sight, selling shares from the Pink Sheets (companies that don't meet the financial reporting criteria to be listed on NASDAQ or one of the other exchanges).

Belfort is stunned when he learns he can earn 50 percent commissions selling this junk. And sell it he can, spinning elaborate tales about the amazing profit potential of companies he knows little about. He sells dreams of riches to working folk.

What "Wolf" neglects is to actually show us a customer. Moviegoers saw Harry Reynard's anguish when he lost his life savings in "Boiler Room" a 2000 movie also based upon Stratton Oakmont. And who can forget the beaten down James Lingk (Jonathan Pryce), who falls for Ricky Roma's (Al Pacino) soft sell in David Mamet's masterpiece "Glengarry Glen Ross," the classic in this genre and a much superior movie to Scorsese's.

Belfort soon starts his own firm and hires a collection of old friends and odd balls to pitch shares. The idea is to gain customer confidence by first selling blue chips and then make the real money later pushing penny stocks. Belfort then instructs his sales force to sell the pink sheet shares to rich people exclusively, forgetting the middle class cliental.

Presumably rich folks are sophisticated investors, but like the poor they're always wanting to make something for nothing.

To make the real money, Belfort gets into the initial public offering (IPO) business. In the movie Belfort takes Steve Madden Shoe company public. Madden was a high school buddy of Belfort's partner Danny Porush (renamed Donnie Azoff in the movie).

The SEC enforcement attorney on Belfort's case, Ronald Rubin, wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street outlining how Belfort made his millions. Stratton Oakmont would sell the IPO shares to insider friends who would in turn sell the shares back to the firm at a small profit. The Stratton sales force would would then line up buyers.

Customers were told they couldn't get in at the initial price. Friends of Belfort and Porush would buy and sell shares between them at ever increasing prices until the shares hit the price Belfort was looking for and then the customer orders were filled at the highest price.

Then the money really started rolling in. More staff are hired. Forbes does a hatchet piece on ?Belfort which only makes more young brokers want to work for him. ?Management never grows up. A new wife is married. The parties get wilder. The drugs get heavier. Midgets get tossed.

Rubin provides a key admission in his analysis. "The run-up from $4 to $12 could be accomplished in minutes. This was a common first-day trading pattern for legitimate hot IPO stocks during the 1990s, so the manipulation wasn?t obvious," he writes.

What Scorcese's story leaves out is that Stratton Oakmont was wheeling and dealing during the late 1990's tech stock boom. Cheap Fed money sent everyone looking for easy riches and Belfort's salesforce was there to feed their customer's hopes and dreams. ?Who could tell the difference between Pets.com and the shares Stratton was pitching?

Rubin writes that the same boiler-room fraud wouldn't work today, ?"so long as the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (Finra) did their jobs, but the same was true in Stratton Oakmont?s time."

Belfort was a charismatic leader who created tremendous loyalty among his workforce. DiCaprio makes a couple stirring speeches to the Stratton Oakmont troops. But the government picks up Belfort' trail and ultimately he shows what kind of guy he really is.

Prosecutor Cohen is especially unhappy that DiCaprio's Belfort appears with the real Belfort himself at the end of the movie pitching Belfort's real life motivational speaking enterprise. But I thought it a fitting end to an overly long movie. Belfort is no Willy Loman. There is always something to sell, memories are short, and suckers are always ready to get rich.
_
Douglas E. French is a Director of the Ludwig von Mises Institute of Canada. Additionally, he writes for Casey Research and is the author of three books; Early Speculative Bubbles and Increases in the Supply of Money, The Failure of Common Knowledge, and Walk Away: The Rise and Fall of the Home-Owenrship Myth. French is the former president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama.

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Friday, January 24, 2014

Life in the Electronic Concentration Camp

By John W. Whitehead

What is most striking about the American police state is not the mega-corporations running amok in the halls of Congress, the militarized police crashing through doors and shooting unarmed citizens, or the invasive surveillance regime which has come to dominate every aspect of our lives. No, what has been most disconcerting about the emergence of the American police state is the extent to which the citizenry appears content to passively wait for someone else to solve our nation's many problems. Unless Americans are prepared to engage in militant nonviolent resistance in the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi, true reform, if any, will be a long time coming.

Yet as I detail in my book A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, if we don't act soon, all that is in need of fixing will soon be unfixable, especially as it relates to the police state that becomes more entrenched with each passing day. By "police state," I am referring to more than a society overrun by the long arm of the police. I am referring to a society in which all aspects of a person's life are policed by government agents, one in which all citizens are suspects, their activities monitored and regulated, their movements tracked, their communications spied upon, and their lives, liberties and pursuit of happiness dependent on the government's say-so.

As the following will show, the electronic concentration camp, as I have dubbed the surveillance state, is perhaps the most insidious of the police state's many tentacles, impacting almost every aspect of our lives and making it that much easier for the government to encroach on our most vital freedoms.

Tracking you based on your consumer activities: Fusion centers, federal-state law enforcement partnerships which attempt to aggregate a variety of data on so-called "suspicious persons," have actually collected reports on people buying pallets of bottled water, photographing government buildings, and applying for a pilot's license as "suspicious activity." Retailers are getting in on the surveillance game as well. Large corporations such as Target have been tracking and assessing the behavior of their customers, particularly their purchasing patterns, for years. In 2015, mega-food corporations will be rolling out high-tech shelving outfitted with cameras in order to track the shopping behavior of customers, as well as information like the age and sex of shoppers.

Tracking you based on your public activities: Sensing a booming industry, private corporations are jumping on the surveillance state bandwagon, negotiating lucrative contracts with police agencies throughout the country in order to create a web of surveillance that encompasses all major urban centers. Companies such as NICE and Bright Planet are selling equipment and services to police departments with the promise of monitoring large groups of people seamlessly, as in the case of protests and rallies. They are also engaging in extensive online surveillance, looking for any hints of "large public events, social unrest, gang communications, and criminally predicated individuals."

Tracking you based on your behavior: Thanks to a torrent of federal grants, police departments across the country are able to fund outrageous new surveillance systems that turn the most basic human behaviors into suspicious situations to be studied and analyzed. Police in California, Massachusetts, and New York have all received federal funds to create systems like that operated by the New York Police Department, which "links 3,000 surveillance cameras with license plate readers, radiation sensors, criminal databases and terror suspect lists."

Tracking you based on your face: Facial recognition software promises to create a society in which every individual who steps out into public is tracked and recorded as they go about their daily business. The goal is for government agents to be able to scan a crowd of people and instantaneously identify all of the individuals present. Facial recognition programs are being rolled out in states all across the country (only twelve states do not use facial recognition software).

Tracking you based on your social media activities: The obsession with social media as a form of surveillance will have some frightening consequences in coming years. As Helen A.S. Popkin, writing for NBC News, has astutely observed, "We may very well face a future where algorithms bust people en masse for referencing illegal 'Game of Thrones' downloads, or run sweeps for insurance companies seeking non-smokers confessing to lapsing back into the habit. Instead of that one guy getting busted for a lame joke misinterpreted as a real threat, the new software has the potential to roll, Terminator-style, targeting every social media user with a shameful confession or questionable sense of humor."

Tracking you based on your metadata: Metadata is an incredibly invasive set of data to have on a person. Indeed, with access to one's metadata, one can "identify people's friends and associates, detect where they were at a certain time, acquire clues to religious or political affiliations, and pick up sensitive information like regular calls to a psychiatrist's office, late-night messages to an extramarital partner or exchanges with a fellow plotter." The National Security Agency (NSA) has been particularly interested in metadata, compiling information on Americans' social connections "that can identify their associates, their locations at certain times, their traveling companions and other personal information."

To put it bluntly, we are living in an electronic concentration camp. Through a series of imperceptible steps, we have willingly allowed ourselves to become enmeshed in a system that knows the most intimate details of our lives, analyzes them, and treats us accordingly. As George Orwell warned, "You had to live--did live, from habit that became instinct--in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized."

Thus, we have arrived in Orwell's world. The question now is: will we take a stand and fight to remain free or will we go gently into the concentration camp?
_
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead [send him mail] is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. He is the author of A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State and The Change Manifesto (Sourcebooks).

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View the original article here

Thursday, January 23, 2014

Total Privacy = Total Destruction Of The State

by Michael Suede

The state cannot exist without invasions of privacy. ?Without invasions of privacy, taxes could not be imposed. ?If all transactions and accounting records were private, incomes and revenues could not be verified. ?Tax evasion could not be prosecuted because no proof of incomes could be obtained.

Further, state currencies could not be imposed. ?If all transactions were private, the state would have no way of knowing what unit of account its subjects may have used to conduct their trades in. ?If a secret private currency were to run along side a state issued currency, the state issued currency would eventually become worthless.

If a person could be paid in secret, not have to pay taxes or the cost of inflation, and knew they could never be caught because the transactions are totally private, and the private currency was accepted everywhere the state currency was, wouldn?t they try to avoid the state issued currency in favor of the private currency??Because of these facts, all forms of privacy are abhorrent to the state.

The state, which is nothing more than a large group of brainwashed individuals who believe they have been granted the legitimate right to control others through the use of force, depends on having total information of all its subjects doings in order to maintain its own survival. ? But survival of what? ?Survival of the belief system. ?There is no ?thing? that anyone can point to and say, ?there is the state!? ?The state isn?t real. ?The state is a belief in peoples? minds.

Since the state is nothing more than a belief that resides in the minds of certain people, the cult members that compose a ?state? must continually check their subjects for signs that belief in the cult might be waning. This natural paranoia of cult members is what drives the expansion of the surveillance state. ?The Snowden leaks have made it clear that the NSA is just as concerned about what its own subjects are thinking as it is about foreigners.

Again, the NSA is just a group of cult members who believe they have the legitimate right to invade the privacy of everyone on the planet to ensure that the belief in the death cult called the American government is not being threatened. ?Since the state isn?t a physical ?thing,? but a belief, the NSA isn?t ultimately concerned about protecting ?things.? ?The cult of the NSA does what it does because they are terrified some other cult belief system will throw them out of power.

Why should Americans be concerned with what the Chinese are doing? ?Americans? are simply people who believe that living under the death cult of the American state is superior to that of living under the Chinese state ? otherwise why bother having any American state at all? ?Why not just let the Chinese run things? Why not hand over the American government to the Chinese? ?What does that question even mean? ? Does it mean handing over the belief in the legitimacy of one death cult to another death cult? ?What the hell?

The state is a belief ? not a thing. ?In order to get someone out of a cult, you have to seclude them from the cult group. ?Privacy is a key component when it comes to the toppling of cult belief systems. ? If I were to transport you to another human world where all transactions were private (no states), would you stand in terror, waiting to be struck down by terrorists or criminals? ?Of course not. ?You would quickly come to accept that as the reality of how things should be.

If the entire world views it as normal to have complete transaction privacy, you would view it as normal. ?It would be ABNORMAL to assume you, or anyone else, had the legitimacy to peek inside peoples? pocketbooks. ?Obviously the death cult called a ?state? could not exist in such a world.

Even if an entire population were to fully believe that the human condition could be improved by having people elect leaders from the masses, and then granting those few elected people the power to use organized threats of violence to assume control over resources; in a world where violating privacy was impossible, the public couldn?t impose such a system on themselves even if they wanted to.

Privacy.

Dig it.

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View the original article here

Wednesday, January 22, 2014

Colbert Smacks Down Statists On Legal Pot

Death at the hands of a SWAT team is for the children
Kurt Nimmo

Stephen Colbert?s Comedy Central segment the other day on Colorado?s recent legalization of recreational marijuana is worth note. Colbert takes two opponents to task: New York Times columnist David Brooks and Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post. Both oppose legalization.

Brooks, who is fondly referred to as ?the liberals? favorite conservative,? and Marcus, who is married to FTC boss Jon Leibowitz, believe the state should decide what consenting adults put in their bodies. Brooks cites a government-enforced "moral status" on marijuana use.

"I'd say that in healthy societies government wants to subtly tip the scale to favor temperate, prudent, self-governing citizenship," he writes. "In those societies, government subtly encourages the highest pleasures, like enjoying the arts or being in nature, and discourages lesser pleasures, like being stoned."

"On balance, society will not be better off with another legal mind-altering substance," Marcus writes. "In particular, our kids will not be better off with another legal mind-altering substance," never mind that this government determination resulted in around 750,000 noviolent "offenders" being arrested for possession of marijuana in 2012.

Brooks and Marcus also apparently believe spending $51 billion on a highly ineffectual drug war is a good deal. Maybe this sampling of victims who lost their lives as a result of David Brooks? less than subtle government enforced "moral ecology" should also be considered a price worth paying. Death at the hands of a SWAT team, after all, is for the children.

In October, a Gallup poll revealed nearly 60 percent of Americans favor the legalization of marijuana. "Whatever the reasons for Americans? greater acceptance of marijuana, it is likely that this momentum will spur further legalization efforts across the United States," Gallup reports.

Corporatist scribes like David Brooks and Ruth Marcus are losing ground in the effort to defend an immoral and bankrupt war on individual choice by consenting adults. As usual, and shamefully, they drag children into their argument in an effort to justify the state employing its monopoly of violence.

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View the original article here

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

To Be Governed Is to Be Controlled

By Pete Eyre

"To be governed is to be watched over, inspected, spied on, directed, legislated at, regulated, docketed, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, assessed, weighed, censored, ordered about, by men who have neither the right, nor the knowledge, nor the virtue."

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon articulated that in 1851. Would he be surprised at just how far-reaching the surveillance state and prison-industrial complex now reaches, a century and a half later? I doubt it. Even though it?s likely he couldn?t foresee global communications and related technological innovations, he was aware of the double-standards upon which arbitrary authority is based, and that until that parasitic entity is cast-off, it will continue to grow at an inverse relationship to the freedom of humanity.

Some conscience of today?s police state, in which virtually all actions ? especially those done electronically ? are documented, tracked, and possibly flagged and investigated, harken back to the days of the ?Peace Officer.? But that is futile. Granted, such a goal is made with good intentions ? most living in that era (except for non-whites) had less frequent and severe interactions with police employees, but the same conditions and perverse incentives utilized by its actors then, are used today. History, and incentives, prove that whenever a kernel of double-standards is allowed for, it will grow in size and scope, and become more tyrannical. Unless of course those said to be ruled ? the subjects, the ?citizens? ? opt for a better reality.

Proudhon continued:

"...To be governed is to be at every operation, at every transaction, noted, registered, enrolled, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under the pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, trained, ransomed, exploited, monopolized, extorted, squeezed, mystified, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, despised, harassed, tracked, abused, clubbed, disarmed, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and, to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, outraged, dishonoured. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality."

The fact that police employees act under the guise of ?public utility? and ?in the name of the general interest? means that police employees rightly ? at least, according to their flawed institution ? put the interest of an amorphous ?society? ? which translates into the norm desired by those who wield the reigns of political power ? before the individual who they claim to protect. That is the necessary nature of their institution.

Police have no duty to protect the individual, yet they, and their cohorts ? from the county sheriff to those at the National Security Agency, pretend in press conferences, and even to themselves, that they exist to serve the public. But what is the ?public? to these supposed protectors but an amalgamation of individuals within an arbitrary political boundary seen as malleable when disagreeable to the political whims of the day? How many countless souls have been crushed or caged and forgotten about in the name of ?the law??

This is indeed a battle of ideas. There are no cages so impossible to break free from as those of the mind. It?s why the ?education? (read: indoctrination of the youth) is so key to those working to further consolidate power. If the idea of arbitrary authority ? of men and women who, based on their title or costume, have the ?right? to control others ? isn?t discarded, then even if the current tyrannical regime is toppled through force of arms, another will step in.

Coercion can never bring peace ? that?s not to discount the use of defensive force, which is couched on principles of the non-initiation of force, and of recognizing and respecting each person?s right to self-determination. The bad ideas that facilitate today?s police state will erode as better ideas are adopted. That?s why sharing ideas and critical thinking is so key, as many of us have been exposed only to those that prop-up and perpetuate the current paradigm. As Leo Tolstoy penned in 1894:

"If a man, through the growth of a higher conscience, can no longer comply with the demands of government, he finds himself cramped by it and at the same time no longer needs its protection. When this comes to pass, the question whether men are ready to discard the governmental type is solved. And the conclusion will be as final for them as for the yong birds hatched out of the eggs. Just as no power in the world can put them back into the shells, so can no power in the world bring men again under the governmental type of society when once they have outgrown it."

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View the original article here

Monday, January 20, 2014

Father Says He's Being Jailed For Paying Too Much Child Support & Over Visiting His Son [Updated]

[Our readers pointed out there are some inaccuracies in the article coinciding with this video report so I've decided to remove it. You can still read it here. See FOX 26 Houston for a more accurate report. - Chris, InfoLib]

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Reading the article at the link, it looks little differently.

"I discovered for some reason his employer was withholding a large amount some weeks a small amount some weeks a zero amount some weeks," says Hall's attorney Tyesha Elam.

So Hall quickly paid almost 3 grand in back child support.

When Hall and his ex were in Judge Lisa Millard's court last November he owed nothing. "Opposing counsel testified twice that he's all paid up," says Elam.

But the attorney representing the child's mother wanted Hall to pay her three grand in attorney fees and Judge Millard agreed.

Court documents also reveal Hall wasn't following the court's scheduled times to pick his son up for visitation."

No word of overpayment; it looks like Clifford was underpaying for some time (blaming the employer), and that's why the mother sued. When Clifford learned about lawsuit, he quickly paid up, but the mother wanted attorney fees, which is reasonable. So the prison term seems to be for _under_payment before the lawsuit plus for visiting not on schedule.

@75145,
That sounds more logical , if reports on the site are not verified the credibility of the site comes in to question . There are enough "real" stories out there without having to mis-represent or distort the truth , after all thats what we come here to read . I agree, I've been coming to this site for years now and have to say I'm very disappointed at the mis-representation. 75145 is right.

I know for certain that there are thousands of people who traffic this site regularly and i'm sure many of them are loyal readers so there is no need to exaggerate, distort or mis-represent the titles to attract readership or keep readers interested.

Yes, I agree there are some inaccuracies in the report. I didn't check it enough before posting it, my apologies. The over paid claim came from his lawyer who said he "over paid" and "over visited."

"I'm like he couldn't have gotten a worse result," Elam says. "He could have gone in there with a monkey and gotten a better result. What did I do that my client has over paid over visited and is now paying 3 thousand dollars in attorney fees and is going to jail for 6 months."

This show how screwed up this legal system is. If he didn't pay his child support, he would be just like a lot of these dead beat men out here that is not providing for their children. They would be out here walking around free. This is why some of these judges out here need to retire, because they have gotten so comfortable and power hungry with their positions. 190197, the link to the judge's website pops up a 404 error... site taken down, or is the link wrong? 2423, looks like they hid all the content from her website probably due to the backlash of the story breaking out. What a disgrace to & misuse of the judicial system!

View the original article here

Sunday, January 19, 2014

U.S. War on Poverty Failed While Global Poverty Declined 80%: Economic Liberalization Begets Prosperity and Equality

By Mary Theroux

50 years after LBJ declared a ?War on Poverty,? the U.S. would do well to take a page from the global playbook--whereby economic liberalization and more open trade has resulted in an 80% decline in abject poverty since 1976.

The graphs below, taken from the National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper, ?Parametric Estimations of the World Distribution of Income,? surely ought to impress even the most avid central-planner:

To see how it happened, start with these graphs showing GDP (red) against the Poverty Rate (blue) for various regions over the past 40 years:

As the paper?s authors observe:

It is immediately visible that the series are almost perfect mirror images of each other: the poverty rate falls when per capita GDP rises and vice versa. ... In particular, we see no examples of poverty reduction without growth (or sustained rises with poverty accompanying growth) on a regional scale. [Emphasis added]

Thus, contrary to recent controversies around the issue, a rising tide does indeed raise all boats--regardless of region.

And for those decrying supposedly increasing inequality, the paper reveals very good news on this front as well--showing inequality declining in sync with poverty:

A look at China provides just one dramatic example. Since Nixon?s visit opening trade with China in 1972, and China?s subsequent ?Change, Reform, Open up? economic reforms beginning in 1978 and accelerating in the 1980s and ?90s, the Chinese economy has increased by 9.5% a year, resulting in vast improvements in both income levels and distribution:

While the paper?s authors did not include a survey of changes in economic policies across the regions covered by the study, any quick check against independent sources for such information makes its graphs just that much more exciting, with more and less dramatic improvements correlating with greater and lesser economic freedom.

It?s time for all who profess to care about the poor to join Bono in enlightenment. To all ?Progressives? in the U.S. bemoaning the U.S.?s flat poverty rate over the past 50 years, and ramping up to make 2014 the year of the fight against ?inequality?:

"Capitalism takes more people out of poverty than aid."

And the economic growth that brings individuals out of dependency flattens inequality.

On this 50th anniversary of a failed domestic War on Poverty, let?s bring this global lesson home and hold up those responsible for prolonging economic stagnation in the U.S. and increasing the numbers dependent on government assistance as the true villains in the inequality play.

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View the original article here

Saturday, January 18, 2014

Contraceptives for Nuns? Government at Its Most Absurd

By John R. Graham

How absurd can a law be, to force nuns (who have taken vows of both poverty and celibacy) to explain to the state why they don't want to pay for contraception? That requirement was too much for Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who issued a temporary injunction against Obamacare's mandate that health plans must cover contraception.

I am not sure it is possible to describe all the absurdity of the contraceptive issue in a few hundred words. And I do mean "all," because some of the law's opponents are engaged in a disproportionate response to the contraceptive mandate.

But first, the law itself. As a religiously affiliated organization, the Little Sisters of the Poor is exempt from the mandate. However, the law requires the order to file paperwork to that effect with the third-party administrator (TPA) of their health plan. They cannot just pay for a health plan that does not cover contraceptives without a co-pay.

Perhaps this bureaucratic burden is a fraud-prevention technique. There may be groups of lascivious atheists who plan to dodge the contraceptive mandate by dressing in black habits, registering as non-profit religiously affiliated monastic orders, and praying most of their waking hours. But I very much doubt it.

The New York Times editorialized against Sotomayor's injunction, claiming that it was just another case of an employer imposing its religious values on its employees. I did not think monastic orders had "employees." Isn't quietly working under the Abbess' or Abbot's direction part of the deal?

But the Times has a point. This is why a Catholic university, like Georgetown, has to obey the mandate. Sandra Fluke, then a law student there, participated in a Democratic publicity stunt on Capitol Hill in 2012, arguing that Georgetown should be forced to pay for her free contraceptives.

Is there no other solution than to impose the state's power on people and institutions who oppose contraception? Well one would be for Georgetown, and other Catholic universities, to expel all non-Catholic students and fire all non-Catholic staff. Alternatively (and I honestly have not read this anywhere else, so it must be remarkably original), Sandra Fluke could have attended law school at any one of the dozens of non-Catholic law schools in the United States.

On the other hand, why are the anti-contraception forces so up in arms about the mandate? Before Obamacare, contraception was a "universally available benefit and is excluded only at a customer/employer's request," according to a reimbursement consultant's report.

Most Catholics work for secular private or government employers. I have never met one who turned down a job offer at the New York Police Department, or IBM, or Morgan Stanley, or Walmart because the health plan covered contraception. Granted, these are not "mandates," but the Catholic is paying for what he believes is an immoral service, nevertheless.

Beyond advocating against the mandate, Catholic leaders should be advocating for individually owned health insurance, so that every person is free to choose the health plan that suits his needs. A Catholic who does not want to invest retirement savings in companies producing immoral goods or services is free to invest his money in Ave Maria Mutual Funds. Why isn't he free to purchase a health plan that is certified by the Church as compliant with its values, wherever he works?

This brings me back to a previous post, about the emerging private exchanges as a way to migrate from employer-based health insurance to individually owned policies. In such exchanges, employees have a choice of plans from different insurers. Those that are certified Catholic (or Baptist, or Jewish, or....) could easily be identified in the exchange, facilitating exercise of conscience without coercion.

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The country is goin down the toilet & people are debating the pros & cons of O'bombacare ! Priceless . Never mind the spying/policestate/constitution shredding/political corruption/illegal wars/drone strikes/TSAholes/IRS political targeting/CORE edudoctrination etc. etc. etc................
The people of Amerika just don't git it , arguing details & semantics , or libs blaming cons blaming whoever , the game is over for EVERYONE regardless of your political persuassion , all bets are off , TYRANNY is the (not-so)NEW game in town ! EITHER GET USED TO IT OR DO SOME FUCKING THING ABOUT IT !!!!
I'm hoping , for your sake & the sake of the rest of the world , it's the latter .

View the original article here

Friday, January 17, 2014

South Florida Deputy on Trial for Stealing Phone From Citizen Recording Him

by Carlos Miller

Broward County sheriff?s deputy Paul Pletcher was off-duty when he got into road rage altercation with another woman, so he pulled her over, stormed up to her truck and began berating her.

Her passenger pulled out a cell phone and began video recording, clearly capturing him saying, ?give me the phone,? three times before reaching into the vehicle and snatching the phone.

Pletcher then drove off, smashing the phone in a nearby parking lot, where it was later retrieved by Plantation police officer, whom were responding to the woman?s call.

Pletcher was eventually arrested and charged with several felonies where he is facing 11 years in prison.

His trial began this week.

His defense: He thought the phone was a concealed weapon, which caused him to fear for his life.

That fear is evident from the recovered video, which captured the following exchange:

?Give me the phone!? he repeated, reaching into the car and toward the camera lens.
?No talking to me like that.?
?Give me the phone, Now!?
?Don?t touch me.?
?Give me the phone!?
?Wait! Wait!?

Despite the visual and audio evidence against him that he was committing strong-armed robbery, his attorney is still able to look the jury in the eye and state the following:

??Paul Pletcher saw somebody who was driving erratically ? Paul Pletcher took the position that when that cell phone was out and being used it could have been a concealed weapon.?

Pletcher has gotten away with stealing cameras from citizens before, so he is confident he will get away with this crime, especially considering it took authorities seven months to charge him after the 2011 incident and more than a year to fire him, which might explain his smirking mugshot and his celebratory Facebook page.

_
Carlos Miller runs the website Photography is not a Crime.

Oh yea the tried and true bullshit excuse, but I am always in fear for my whinny life that, that phone looked like an anti tank weapon and I shit my pants in absolute fear. You worthless pos and that includes your sparkle pony bitch of a lawyer.

View the original article here

Thursday, January 16, 2014

Does a Minimum Wage Reduce Poverty?

By Per Bylund

In a long and seemingly technical?blog post on the Washington Post ?wonkblog,? Roosevelt Institute fellow Mike Konczal?suggests that?raising the minimum wage will reduce poverty.?He primarily relies on one meta study (Dube 2013, unpublished) to show that economists ?do agree? ?that raising the minimum wage would reduce poverty.?

Quickly reading through the article, it is obvious that this is the kind of perception Konczal wants the reader to get. Well, not so fast.?The blog post exclusively refers to aggregates of different kinds, which obscures the analysis.?And, if one reads more closely, Konczal includes several?limitations and constraints to his thesis,?and in fact agrees with the age-old truth that raising the minimum wage would kill off jobs. Minimum wage mandates above the present market wage of course has only one direct effect: jobs below that level are outlawed. Hence, any person on the job market with a productivity level (whatever the reason) below the minimum wage mandate will not be able to find a job.

Konczal?s text is a balancing act relying on arbitrary limits and vague language. For example, he relies on extrapolating on?the elasticity of minimum wage found in several studies to be around -0.24 (which means, statistically, that raising the minimum wage by 1 % would reduce the number of poor people by 0.24 %), but says that one ?shouldn't take the effects of small changes to see what would happen if we, say, increased the minimum wage 500 percent, or to levels that don't actually exist right now.? Right. This is true, but not because the elasticity of minimum wage at the level studied ?is? -0.24, but because it was ? using the specific data and?methods in the particular study.

There are no constant relationships in the social world, which is the reason Konczal shows reluctance to extrapolate too far from the mean; but the same fact should also make him weary to assume the found elasticity is applicable on different time periods. (But the latter obviously doesn?t bother him.)

Throughout,?Konczal uses the term ?poverty.? But poverty statistics take into account only income, not what tasks are carried out within employment. If raising the minimum wage prohibits certain jobs (on which Konczal agrees), is it then not likely that the remaining jobs will change? Some of the tasks carried out by low-productivity labor cannot profitably be carried out by employees with higher wages, which means ? to the?extent they must be carried out ? business owners and entrepreneurs will need to find other ways to get them done. Perhaps through excessive automation and capital investments, which would slightly increase the demand for labor in higher-earning professions (while raising the barriers to entry for other entrepreneurs). (This is, by the way, one of the rather crazy progressive arguments for outlawing manual labor ? that it forces entrepreneurs to ?innovate,? which increases productivity and thus wages for those remaining employable.)

Is it not likely that a higher minimum wage, which prohibits certain low-producing jobs, will force those in such jobs by choice (that is, those choosing low-productivity employment though they would be able to earn higher wages elsewhere) will instead seek employment with higher productivity? Is it not also likely that those who cannot muster higher productivity levels would accept unpaid overtime or other types of?unpaid work just to remain salaried? Both of these effects may reduce the aggregate poverty statistic while forcing those unwilling or unable to get such ?perks? from employers into unemployment. (It is furthermore probable that this in turn leads to an increase in black market employment opportunities, as well as outright abuse in the work place, as unscrupulous employers seeks ways to ?deal? outside the system?s restrictions.)

But Konczal seems oblivious to these effects, perhaps because they cannot easily be studied using aggregates: the type of studies he refers to tend to perform statistical magic on selected data that reveal ?levels? of employment, wages, poverty, etc. Exactly what the results?tell us is far from clear, but this is typical for mainstream research. Changes within employment aren?t generally observable in the aggregate data, so why not assume it is unimportant?

Of course, Konczal cannot get around the fact that raising the minimum wage above the market wage?will cause unemployment. And, which is unfortunate for statistics-enamored progressives, unemployment shows up in the aggregate employment?statistics too. So he concludes that, based on?the studies he cites, it is the case that ?there are significant benefits, whatever the costs.?

Yes, some aggregate statistics will indeed look ?better.? Whatever the costs.

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View the original article here

Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Warmist: 'Every Weather Event in the Modern World is Attributable to Climate Change'

Chris | InformationLiberation

In an article from Common Dreams saying the 'Polar Vortex' is due to global warming we find this little gem:

From Common Dreams:

The idea that any particular "weather event" is or is not climate change [...] belies the deeper fact that all weather events are complex results of underlying climate conditions. As Jim Naureckas, a journalist at the media watchdog group FAIR, explained to his readers in the aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines last year, "attributing particular weather events to climate change is ridiculously easy."
The reason for that, he continues, is because (emphasis his):
"Every weather event in the modern world is attributable to climate change. This is because weather is a chaotic system, which is to say it varies wildly based on initial conditions. Once we raised global temperature by a degree Celsius?which is an enormous intervention in the physical world?we irrevocably changed all weather, producing an entirely different set of events than the ones that would have otherwise occurred."

The planet's entire history of radical climate change through millions of years now takes a back seat to human emissions. We're told to believe one theoretical change in degree by humankind is bringing the planet to the brink of disaster -- yet somehow the planet survived multiple ice ages, multiple warm periods, and even a mass extinction event which wiped out the dinosaurs.

If you haven't yet realized it, global warmists are an hysterical doomsday cult. When their end-of-the-world global warming predictions failed to materialize, they rebranded their doctrine to "climate change," something which has always been a constant throughout the history of the world, and conveniently something which they hoped could not be "disproved" because it can mean whatever one wants it to mean. To quote Mr. Naureckas, "every weather event" is proof.

What would be truly remarkable and unprecedented is if the climate stopped changing, to suggest the climate changing is some sort of proof of our sins against the planet and our need for repentance by trashing all modernity and returning to the stone age is thoroughly anti-science and anti-human. If there was such a need for a constant permanent climate, the most likely way it would be achieved is through human ingenuity, not through "returning to nature" and getting what we've always got; a constantly changing climate.

The scientific profession, like our economy as a whole, is being destroyed due to political meddling by corrupt politicians intent on enriching themselves at everyone else's expense. The grants given to scientists to research global warming takes scientists' focus away from real issues such as improving technologies and making scientific breakthroughs which improve life on our planet and instead has them studying the migration patterns of birds and how they may or may not be impacted by one degree's change in temperature. Rather than working to invent a new efficient engine, they're working to invent justifications for political policies.

Ironically, this massive drain on human progress could actually bring about the doomsday mass extinction event they so fear, because rather than humanity become independent of the need for planet earth altogether, we're still entirely dependent on it. If we all die to a supervolcano, a devastating meteor strike, or a massive solar flare, what a shame it will be we hadn't colonized space because our scientists were too busy studying global warming's effect on the mating habits of salamanders.
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Chris runs the website InformationLiberation.com, you can read more of his writings here. Follow infolib on twitter here.

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The underlying "engine" of all this is the fact that modern capitalist economy can't function without some "big idea" at every given period, the catalyst of the development. Like drug addict, it can't live daily life in just "regular mode", it needs a doze of stimulant. In various periods it was different things - building the roads, exploring the universe, then was short period of Y2K hysteria, then security hysteria. Given that the global warming, or climate change, is much less harmful than "war on terror", maybe it's the lesser evil. They're both frauds. A free market economy unlike the state-capitalism we have today is driven by production, not state theft and redistribution. Through the servicing of people's needs you make profit, not through lobbying the criminals in power to give you tax-slaves' loot. Real capitalism is about voluntary trade, you want what someone else has so you trade them something you value less for something you value more -- you want an apple more than you want a dollar, the farmer wants a dollar more than an apple -- both profit in such an exchange. State-capitalism based around central banking and an ever expanding money supply is dependent on constant expansion like any other ponzi scheme, yet when things come crashing down 'free markets' are blamed. If by modern capitalism you mean state-capitalism or non-free market fascism then I agree, but free market capitalism should not be tarnished by something which is it's polar opposite. There have been 5 mass extinctions in the history of life on earth and we are living in the 6th. Climate change deniers seem to all be the same. Taking a practical, testable and proven phenomenon and twisting it to be some dastardly feat of mental manipulation by the powers that be. Whether or not it is natural or man-made, climate change does indeed happen...it is not inconsequential as you all seem to be implying. Chris I like your site but sometimes i wonder if you are directing your distrust at the right issue...well, mostly just the climate change thing. It seems more like a "haha I was right, scientists are wrong" sort of deal. Once again I like your site and do agree with much of what you post. Also I agree that the yellowstone supervolcano, solar unrest, cosmic impacts, magnetic polar shifts and nuclear disasters are potentially much more immediate and definitely need to be addressed. anybody notice that the climate change people wear the heaviest coats and clothes?

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